So, are these designers actually worth it? Aren’t they just people who you go to for aesthetic opinions? Aren’t you the one who adds business logic to their miserable scrawls (and boy, do they wail!) when they present it to you? Well, here are all those answers boyo and some of them are pretty cocked. So don’t say I didn’t warn you.

What is Design?
Commonsense. Yeah. Pretty much common sense mostly. I could say design is a complex process that consists of an understanding of gestalt and it’s effects on perception, an understanding of cultural  trends, a close alignment to the real world business or operational needs and is a direct anchor to specific aesthetic experiences. It’s all true, however, here’s a simpler way of saying it.

a. An understanding of gestalt and it’s effects on perception
Even babies understand how shapes and forms communicate. Becase you have commissioned a logo, you are looking at it as an object, a checklist of core values perhaps, but not as a sensory experience. You cannot because you’ve already thought it. But me, i’m different. As a designer I’ve trained myself to look at the world differently. It’s my job to manipulate people with sensory stimuli, because I’ve had years of experience in knowing what stimuli pushes which button. To me it is common sense.

b. An understanding of cultural  trends
Who do you think dictates what is fashionable this season in mens wear, or which colour palette or beat rules the waves? Designers of all types chart global trends in fashion, music, films, graphics, street culture and more. Why chart trends? It’s the oldest social phenomenon. The joneses next door, peer mirroring thing. We’re all bloody monkeys. So, unless you’re sitting there charting trends like me, you’ve joined the party at the bumpy side of Roger’s Bell Curve.

c. A close alignment to the real world business or operational needs
If you still think designers are those bearded nuts, with touchy feely nonsensical ideas about brands and who’s crap you have to listen to because your CEO is a closet painter, then you’re so busted! We still have our beards, but a good designer will give your marketing team a run for their money. Design schools actually have guest lecturers who give out lessons in marketing and budgeting in advertising y’know. And then there’s the fact that every canny designer knows to hit the Nielsen website at least once a week and especially before meetings with certain puffy clients.

So,if it’s all common sense, why the dog and pony show?

Aha. I’m glad you asked. Before you understand why designers act like Santas’ with elves during presentations, you have first understand what happened during the ‘design-process‘. See, no matter what anyone says there is no such thing as a design process. It’s just an term used in retrospect to explain the duration during which the concepts evolved. Trying to replicate the damn thing is useless. So, the designer was sitting there, exhausted from reading all that source and reference material staring at that stain on his bathroom door, when BAM! he sees a form and it all makes perfect sense. He runs back and sketches it. It works. He quickly runs it past a mental checklist. Reflects business, scalable, cohesive, pratical…etc.) Once he’s sure, he commits it to paper.

When it’s time to present it he knows that if he ever told you that he came up with the concept while taking a shit, you’re likely going to take a second opinion. Therefore those endless slides on value research, forum testing, connection with aesthetic ratios in nature and a whole lot of other crap like this. What’re you going to say? It looks like you did it while you’re taking a shit? Cough up that last payment bro. This is how it is.

Wait, my designer doesn’t say stuff like this.
I know. Any ideas on how you’re going to resolve that? Huh? anything?

“One might perhaps have expected the plaintiffs to contend directly, in light of the issues in this lawsuit, that the 1981 film is based on the book. However, by mounting an indirect attack, in which the major premise is that the 1932 film is based on the book, plaintiffs apparently hoped to impale MGM with a ‘Morton’s Fork’: either the 1981 film followed the 1932 film, thereby infringing the book, or the 1981 film did not follow the 1932 film, thereby breaching the 1931 Agreement. Even if plaintiffs’ major premise were sound, which our discussion in the text … demonstrates it is not, MGM was not necessarily forced into the dilemma that plaintiffs seek to create. Since the standard by which we judge the similarity of film to book is not the same standard by which we must judge the similarity between the two films … the Fork is flawed by the fact that its tines are not true opposites. Thus the possibility remained that for its new remake MGM could eliminate the arguably infringing elements of the 1932 film in a way that did not substantially alter the story, thereby complying with both the copyright law and the 1931 Agreement. As it happens, this may have been the course MGM followed. Most of the specific incidents in the 1932 film that plaintiffs claim were taken from the book, i.e., Holt’s killing of the ape, Tarzan’s killing of the lion with a stranglehold, and Holt’s asking Jane if she can use a gun, are not in the 1981 film.”

Not that my plays are any good mind you. To this day I mostly lose to anyone that I play with, so it’s not the fact that it is a game that makes it amazing. It’s what chess does to you. Chess teaches you penetrative thought.

During college I joined a martial arts dojo to learn karate and during the initial few months of intense classes, I found myself diving deeper into the world of martial arts. Walking home from college, I would visualise passerby’s purposely maintaining a poker face, walking at me and at the last minute launching a preplanned attack, which I would deflect using a series of combinations, etc. Then something strange started to happen. I started seeing martial arts solutions to day to day problems. It’s not that I specifically think kick, punch, jab. Rather, the solution is directly based on the problem, but i’m always left with the feeling that the solution taste’s a bit martial artsy.

It seems that my mind is able to draw a parralel between martial arts combinations and common day to day issues, without mixing up the graphical language or terminology for each. After picking up chess I’ve started noticing that same thing. I need to stress that this is NOT volitional on my part. I don’t apply my learnings at chess on real world problems. I just find myself aware that the solution feels like a chess move. Somehow, I feel like there’s a bishop out there covering the queen and inevitably it turns out to be right.

Chess is turning out to be a graphical user interface to determine life’s decisions with.

I thought about it some more. I noticed that once the skill I am learning either becomes entirely a part of me, or ends up being forgotten these flashes of awarness stop or decrease substantially. Then it seems to be the case that these flashes occur the most when I am at the upward peak of the learning curve. Since they are not a volitive function, I can at best ride the wave and the only way to keep them in abundance is to ensure that my brain is constantly picking up something entirely new every once in a while.

As an after note…
Scientifically speaking there cannot really be an ‘I‘. I mean, sure from a religious point of view or from a sociological point of view a sense of identity does exist. I know I am George Supreeth. However, on careful scrutiny I am not able to place the source of this feeling. I just cannot localise it. Yet I am!

Benjamin Libet’s experiments (1979) showed that the concious decision to act occured 0.2 seconds before the action. However the readiness potential to act occured o.55 seconds before the act. This has it’s echoes in modern day experiments in the postdiction effect recorded by David M. Eagleman. It follows that the awareness that is I is then really a user interface to life. It’s an inference based on itself. (awareness)

Morpheme Strikes Again

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE INDECISIVE COO
“Do you know where I’m standing?” The voice boomed over my cell phone. “Umm, no sir.” “I’m standing on the vestibule of my flight, waiting for my turn to be frisked and you’re telling me that the launch of my product is delayed by a name? Are you mad Bhattacharya?”

I couldn’t forget the tone of the voice and it followed me home and back to work the next day. The disembodied voice belongs to Niren Gupta my boss, the CEO of Intrateck. After almost a year of working in stealth mode, Intrateck was about to release a device that would blow the socks off the wireless industry, and as Murphy would have it, the juggernaut snowball came to a sudden stop a month before the launch. See, we didn’t have a name for the product, and in the retail industry – especially the home segment the name meant everything.

I signaled to Padma that I don’t want to be disturbed for a bit. Shut the door on my cabin and sat down to think. An internal naming exercise had thrown up about 120 names and none of them could be substantiated. In the group discussions that we had, every single named turned out to have a flaw, some strategic some plain stupid. My logic is to just pick the most sensible of the whole lot and just go, see what the test audience has to say and roll it out. But Niren would have none of that. He needed the product out in time for the annual IT.com event, and a market test we just didn’t have time for.

Hey, don’t look at me. I’m just the COO.

Sigh.

My phone rings, its Niren again. “Sorry bhe. Bheja phirgayatha kal. I think I cracked our problem. Listen, I’ve just taken on a bunch of people I met in Bangalore. Morpheme. They specialize in helping out with things like this. I’m having them get down there to meet you. Take care of it will you?” “What’s the name again?” I asked as Padma tossed me some stickies and a pen. “Ha ha, Morpheme. Later Bhats, wish me luck and I’ll return with a lot of money.”

Niren was always like that. Well at least now we were rolling. I called in a couple of the boys and tried to figure out what was required to get the consultants some place to plonk, and busied myself with some other stuff.  A few hours later a knock on the door and Padma pops her head in. “The doctors are here” She grins. I raise an eyebrow and two people walk in.

“Hi, Anupama, Morpheme. Niren said we’d find you here.” Hmm. Dark, pretty and with a killer streak I noted. “Arvind Bhattacharya” I smiled, offered my hand and looked at the studious one. “Himanshu Patel, trick cyclist.”

“I fix the leaky faucets around here” I said. “C’mon in.”
“I can tell you right away that you’re doing at least 4 things wrong from what you are telling us Arvind” said Anupama, a crinkle forming on her pretty nose. “Example?” I said. “Well this whole consensus approval thing for starters.” She shot back at once. “Remember that that all our employees are stakeholders Anupama, we do need their buy in. Some of them have invested their soul into this product.”

“Let me explain what she’s saying” rumbled Himanshu. I liked this guy. So far he had explained what Morpheme really does and what the expectation levels ought to be. He had mentioned straight away that they weren’t an ad agency or creative boutique and that they wouldn’t just submit a bunch of names. “This is your business.” He said. “We just facilitate the whole thing and hand hold until your product gets out there.”

“See… let’s look at this process of naming for a bit. First let’s stop calling it a name and start calling it an ‘association’ right? Because that’s what it really is. You’d like to think of it as a label or a tag that marks a product, but a name is more than that. It’s an association that people make based on data they already posses.

“hmmm. I’m with you so far. So, going by what you say we’re in for a lot of trouble. How do we predict who associates the name with what?”

“ Yup. You put your finger on the button. let’s try an experiment. I’m going to toss you a word and we’ll do some free associations right? Here we go, Ourage.
“??. You mean orange don’t you.” “Nope, I meant Ourage though I see how you associate that with orange.” Sly bastard, I thought. “Ok I see where you’re going with this.”

“Right… See, we have to understand some fundamental rules about people and how they can be manipulated. Most people look at manipulation as nefarious or downright immoral. But persuaded just does not have the right meaning that manipulated does. So when a kid manipulates his mom to carry him or a teacher manipulates a student to learn, it’s just that. Manipulation.”

I nodded. I could sense a lecture in Psychology brewing, I just didn’t know how literally.

“Now ever since Freud hit mainstream literature we have had a steady stream of pop science books that have shaped mass opinion over the years. Once Noumenality acquired a so called language, it entered mainstream consciousness. It’s like the proteins and vitamins revelation in the 50s. Before the component parts of food were discovered, people just focused on eating tasty health food based on folk or social historical knowledge. The discovery of aspects such as Vitamins, Proteins and Carbohydrates changed everything. See how that has affected mass opinion today. People calculate protein, carb and vitamin content with such confidence and matter-of fact ness that it’s mind boggling. The flip side is that people forgot the original basic connection between food and the organism, right?”

Wow.

“So, once popular books on Psychology appeared, people started forming interpretations based on so called psychological frameworks. It’s pretty amazing actually. You can spot many instances of this in everyday life. Normal people judging with a psychological bias. This fractured sense of perception based on half baked knowledge is great in parties or when you’re shooting the bull, but is pretty much useless otherwise. This has lead to an extremely functionalist way of thinking in urban social groups. We tend to think that people are a lot like computers.

See the human organism unlike computers perceives all at once. There is no camera called the eye, a microphone called the ear and a central processing unit called the brain etcetera when it comes to perception. People perceive all at once as only people can.”

“This has been a revelation all right, but what’s the connection with group consensus?” I said.

“A human being is more than a feedback machine. You could line a group of servers here and run a simulation and wait for feedback and then you’ll be getting exactly what you expect. But with people it’s a completely different kettle of fish. Remember that people have different motivations, desires, agendas, feeling, and emotional investments etc that get in the way of rational decision making. And can you really blame them?”

“When you ask people for feedback on a name you are setting a complex system to work. The human cognitive system of information retrieval in no way works like a computer. So for example when you say Ourage, a computer spots the error, but to a human being it could just as well mean Orange, even if he did spot the fact that it is Ourage. This means that people over analyze in double time and armed with almost 7 decades of pseudo psychological rationalization processes, argue sometimes even convincingly. See, a name’s just a name until you add context. Your product name for instance will never appear to a viewer, suspended all by itself. It will always appear in context. The idea is to pick a trigger word and follow through with an efficient pitch and collateral to form a CONTEXTUAL FRAMEWORK around the name to help the viewer form an INFORMED OPINION.

So when you ask for a group consensus you’re asking for trouble. When you say the word TREE, a computer breaks out its thesaurus. But a human being begins a complex process of ‘retrieving’ word, image, phonetic-sound, and other associated sensory data such as smells and tastes that go with the word-image. It doesn’t stop there… further searches bring abstracted data on trees, conceptual models, neural networks… a whole mass of information that is also rationalized instantly.”

“It’s something for one trained person to be aware of all of this activity, introspect, sort and sift through the morass to arrive at a decision. But when you try the same process with a crowd… sigh. See, the trick is to manipulate them to think that they are brainstorming about some thing else, and then to catch them off-guard with the name. Some way to limit over analysis, and to set a framework for a decent rationalization for the name.”

He squinted and pushed his glasses up a bit. I saw Anupama give him a fond smile.

“Right. I see that we’ve made a mistake so far. “I conceded. “Do you guys want to catch some lunch upstairs? I need a break too. Let’s meet back here in about an hour.

I went out onto the balcony to light a smoke, and absent-mindedly flipped through the fat dossier that Anupama had handed me when they first walked in. An embossed logo on the front cover said Morpheme.

I flipped the cover to get to the program details.

Morpheme 180 – It read. And then inscribed in small letters…

“Or  FIRESTARTER,  D A S H,  FRAME OF MIND, or even… THE ALL SEEING EYE OF THE INNOVATION MOVEMENT THAT CHANGED ORGANISATIONAL PERCEPTION OF FOSTERING INNOVATION.

The thing is, it works.

The program promised to do exactly what he explained it would.

Well, Niren brought us so far didn’t he? I don’t see us doing an about turn on this one.

Naming Innovation

A short story

“Dang! Drat… drat… double dang!” It was Tom, the hulking Canadian expat from MarComm. “Ever since Mads (Madhav) lost it, we’ve had to sit through these ridiculous sessions with that rat Trivedi. One of these days…”

Madhav, the next in line to be head of Sales here at Gavitech had to be admitted after an emergency last week. Acute nervous breakdown. Apparently the mounting targets just got to him. The powers that pee soon picked, Hanu Hunter Trivedi- head of H.R to help the rest of us ease stress without breaking stride. Hunter it seems has taken the task to heart. To make matters worse some bright spark had gone and gotten him a copy of Bono’s lateral thinking, and now he absolutely insists on trying out chapter after harrowing chapter on us.

Sandhya from the next cubicle ambled over. “Shit. That fucker had me doing bunny hops and musical chairs to Mambo on the day I decided to wear tights.”And that stupid albatross story”…: It was Maya, also from Marcomm. “What the hell does cannibalism have to do with ERP?” Sandy started to curse again. I caught Tom wincing and grinned. Tom used to be a lumberjack, but even he couldn’t hold a candle to these two. The yelling continued until I shouted for them to calm down. “C’mon, give him a break guys. He’s just trying to help out. He’s supposed to be H.R right?”

“Yeah I understand the company’s responsibility here” said Tom, “But he’s crucifying us!”

“There are alternatives!!”

Everyone shut up, stopped and turned. It was Weasles. Well, Waynad Putthukeril actually, but everyone just called him Weasles. He was the intern. I saw him start to tremble as Sandy began to stare him down. “For real, man. I have a cousin who works at this place. They’re experts. They specialize in this stuff. Here wait, I’ve got a card.”

He passed it around. And I opened Firefox to check the website out. Morpheme. I thought that sounded Greek for some reason. The website had a story, so I shushed the gang and read it out loud. It was an anecdote about Walt Disney and pigs.

“Pigs is sow right…” mumbled Weasles and everyone groaned.

“Let’s just call the guys right? Let’s ask them what they think” It was Hunter. He had heard the whole thing. Everyone nervously looked at each other, but he just smiled. “Look I’m sorry you feel that way, but maybe you’re right. I’m not a specialist; let’s just speak to the experts. In fact, let’s call them on speaker.”

Some one answered, and Hunter asked for the marketing dept., politely announced that he’d like to put the guy on the other line on the speaker phone. “This guy’s got balls” Tom whispered.

“Hi, I’m Somesh… and I’m an engagement officer. How may I help you.”

Hunter crisply explained the situation. How does one help people as a collective? A sales target is a physical reality. It’s the reason people wake up and come into this building. H.R on the other hand is essentially a value addition. “I never have trouble dealing with people individually. Even stress relief measures aren’t that much of a problem. It’s trying to quantify vague goals like – Fostering Innovation that get me. I don’t think there’s anyone on this planet who has the metrics to track innovation growth.” There was an edge to Hunter’s voice. I visualized him squirming before the board.

“Actually you’d be surprised,” replied Somesh. “Tell me, Did you have a look at our website?” “Yup” I answered. “And did you read the story?” All of us except Hunter knew Walt Disney’s Piggy story. “Yeah, we read about the pigs.” “So, what was your take away?” asked Somesh.

I looked at the others. “You’re saying that conformity doesn’t always pay. That companies ape each other like lemmings, and when the market draws blood everyone pays more or less the same price.” “Yeah like that H.R crisis wave that hit the I.T industry in 2006. All the biggies, Satyam, TCS, Infosys and Wipro. Everyone Suffered.” Said Sandy. “Yeah sure” added Hunter. “We get the point.”

“Actually you’ve missed it” said Somesh flatly. There was an uncomfortable silence. “See, there’s language. And there’s meta-language. And innovation is a meta-term. One innovates in retrospect and one never actually ‘sets out to innovate’. You got the moral of the story right, but what you missed was Walt’s insight. The keystone that changed the animation industry was not THAT pigs ought or not to be repeated. But that a single insight, a momentary flash of innovation could change everything.”

“I still don’t get it” said Hunter. “You’re saying that innovation cannot be gotten at through direct action? That it isn’t a process oriented ‘cause-effect’ thing.”

“Oh no!” corrected Somesh quickly. “It is in fact process oriented, but it can only be understood in the light of meta language. Here, let me use a traditional example. Say you were tasked with teaching someone, a nephew perhaps… to be brave. You see the problem here? You can teach someone self defense or public speaking techniques, but bravery is a byproduct of experience. It’s a meta-term to describe a state of fearlessness. Innovation is a similar thing. It’s a byproduct.”

I think I saw a flicker of understanding in Hunter’s eyes.

“What we do is we take a look at your business, your workflow and the overall system… and then we design a program that we actually measure over a period of time. If you have a minute, I could explain it to you”

Hunter vacillated but the rest of us got the lead on him. “Nope, go ahead.” I said.

“Our program is called One Eighty – As in, the number 180.”

I called it up on their website. Yup. There it was…. 180 in big bold letters!

“See, this is based on our internal philosophy called Quantum Innovation. An organization is just like a cellular organism. It’s a living breathing entity with a personality that we call Brand equity. It competes for life and survival in landscapes that are similar to ecosystems elsewhere. The smallest indivisible particle of such an organism is the individual. This is where innovation really begins, and this is also why we call it Quantum Innovation.”

“The 180 refers to a turnaround in the individual.  We literally make people step back and look at the structures that support them. Teamwork is not an aspiration or even a directive. It is merely a fact of life. Society is nothing but teamwork on a cultural scale. We help individuals recognize their own standing within a larger system and innovate at the grass roots.”

“Hey look, there’s tonnes more I could tell you. We have actual case studies I could show you on how we helped organizations do a 180 degree turnaround from a me-too to market leaders…”

“Yeah, why don’t you drop in sometime” said Hunter.

“Thursday good?”

“Yeah”

“I’ll send you some stories meanwhile. It’ll give you an idea of what we do.”

“ok.”

“Great Hanu, see you there. Later Guys.”

There was silence. Sandy broke in first. “Hey Hanu, sorry da. Shit, this really is specialist stuff… I know you tried your best. It just got to me thats all.”

“Shucks, that’s ok” replied Hanu. “Hell, now I see that book in a whole new light. Lets get that guy in and sign up for a 180 ourselves.”

“C’mon boy” Sandy called out to Weasles. “You deserve a commission for this. I’m buying beer.”

At the sound of beer everyone filed out. With a quiet office I settled down to think. I remember an old zen story about this monk who pointed out the moon to his students and all they did was look at his pointing finger, never the moon. That’s what the guy was trying to tell us. When someone like Covey comes up with a bunch of management principles, he’s pointing at the moon… but all the piggies are busy staring at the finger.

Well, Thursday works for me.

—————————————————————————————————————————

Article seems familiar? Also seen on Rockfish

I made the connection…

It was Gilbert Ryle telling me what the trouble was. It was the difference between knowing how and knowing that. The client was making the classic Ryle’s ‘category mistake’. My bastardized version of Ryle’s rendition goes roughly like this.

There’s this intern who’s doing his rounds of the industry, and is being shown the various activities towards brand building. “I see the brand managers” he says, “and the advertisements, the brand manual and the product even… but where the heck is the brand?” The intern’s mistake is his assumption that the word brand belongs to the same category of words that advertisements, brand managers, and brand manuals belong to. Branding is the invisible intended effect of the visible branding effort.

The difference between knowing how and knowing that…

Take colour. Apply semiotic rules. See it as a language. Then you’ll spot my client’s category mistake.
(Though Semiotics is another system of ‘tagging’ sign structures, all we need to do is acknowledge the fact, not reverse engineer it. It is a classification, not a directive. It’s useful in literature or to communicate to each other. Assuming that it’s actually so is the mistake.)

We tend to treat colour as an attribute. Like a tag appended to things. This is a mistake that comes from a functionalistic view of looking. We are taught to accumulate knowledge. That the knowledge of something is nothing, that is until the void is filled with the knowledge of the thing, therefore allowing us to know the thing itself. Therefore A for Apple and apples are red, and red is a safe colour for food, though if you step out on the road at a red signal you’ll probably get killed… and so on.

We are taught to tag colours, in the assumption that we will have the ability to actively use this tag as a thoughtful pre-cursor to an action. Let me paint an example.

There is a new sports drink in the market. A designer is called in to design a poster that should cause people to associate the product to sports and fitness. During the brief, marketing also tells the designer that the brand colours of the firm are lilac and mauve, and he’s told to use it to increase brand recall. This presumes that the end customer will have a tiny pre-thought to the thought he has when he first sees the brochure. That is “Oh, Lilac and Mauve”, //tag// -register colour to Sports Drink name -//tag//… End of pre-thought. //Start of Main thought// “Oh, a sports drink! It makes me want to run around a bit…”

See how category mistakes create a muddle? (Seeing we’re on a roll, the above predicament is the classic Ryle’s Regress. If a thought precedes every action, and a thought is an action of the mind, then what precedes the thought, before the thought? Another thought?)

Contrary to what some ‘experts’ say, a human mind is vastly superior to a system-functional. Our mind allows us direct and absolute perception unmatched by an functionalist system of tagging and meta tagging. Ryle wanted people to see for themselves that the human organism perceives more directly. The human organism does not see a tree, thinks a tree and then perceives a tree. It perceives all at once as only sentience can. Ryle was a philosopher who wrote for the benefit of mankind. I’m a businessman. To me category mistakes are unforgivable, and when my competitors do it, absolutely delightful.

It’s 12.00 Am, and I finished the rest of the chapter. While I type this I realize that this post is about one simple category mistake that relates to colour. There are thousands of creative decisions being made out there by others in the Industry. Some by large firms with mega-ad spends, and there are start-up entrepreneurs who’re turning over their life savings onto identities and product launches. There are legions of client executives who are selling the client ideas, and brand savvy managers who throw back ideas of their own. There is a clamor for ‘customer eyeballs’ and ‘footfalls’ all of which is promised by communication material that costs crores.