Design Exercise: General Motors

Resetting GM More or Less

An evening with IDEO without design is like Jack without Jill. So we wrapped the night with a design challenge: apply our More/Less principles to General Motors, a company going through it’s own Big Reset. We and our guests quickly sketched and scrawled ideas on cards then posted them to wall. How might GM re-emerge with a healthier business model? What are the service opportunities? Here’s a sampling of some of the more provocative and fun ideas. No one suggested to change the logo from blue to green but some ideas came close.

Download the set: The Big Reset – Design Exercise.

Stewart Spiegel – Online Advertising ‘Domaination’

Rounding out the speakers for the evening, Stewart Spiegel, VP of Digital Commerce for Converse explained how they had been breaking some serious rules around their online advertising campaign, and winning big in the process.

Stewart spoke to us about one of Converse most recent advertising campaigns dubbed “Domaination”. The campaign took a completely user centered view of advertising online. Instead of paying Google for advertisements around their product (“shoes” and “sneakers”), they bought advertising for phrases they knew their target customer was searching on (“how to kiss” and “prom”). By appearing in a space that no one was competing, they could have a unique conversation with their customer. And because no one was competing for the advertising dollars, the campaign was really cheap by advertising standards ($100K)!!

Stewart shares the Domaination campaign with us.

The campaign recently won Converse a Gold Effie from the American Marketing Association. You can view the video that documents the campaign here — it’s amazing!!

Ben Fry – Visualizing What’s Next

After learning from Ayr on the benefits of running small experiments to yield big results, we transitioned to our second guest speaker, Ben Fry. Ben is a data visualization expert and Director at Seed Visualization, a design studio devoted to data visualization. His extensive background in understanding how data can tell stories has helped people make sense of complex and massive problems.

As Colin introduced Ben, he noted that as society’s problems become more complex, we increasingly lean on data visualization to explain abstract concepts and make sense of patterns. Colin reflected on various visualizations that attempted to explain the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and he noted that newspapers like the New York Times have begun to use visualization to explain topics like the federal stimulus package or the auto industry bailout. As we think about how our societies will evolve, we’re sure to see more and more tools using data visualizations to help gain a better understanding of the world around us.

Ben Fry explains how data and design can create arguments and change conversations.

Ben began his talk by illustrating how data can tell stories. He noted that while a handful of numbers can be abstract, if we use them in a visual context those same numbers can tell stories and bring us to deeper levels of understanding. The right data can help us find our location in the city, or explain our genetic makeup; it’s all in the numbers and the way you look at them.

Then, Ben shared some of his work with the audience illustrating how powerful and useful visualizations can be. After a few basic demonstrations, he began to delve into his work visualizing genetics. Much of genetics is centered around helping scientists compare patterns of sequences to find similarities and differences. Ben’s visualizations helped researchers find a deeper understanding of the data they were working with. You can read more about his isometricblocks work here.

From there, Ben transitioned into some interesting comparative visualization he’s done. First he showed some visuals that compared the versions of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Interestingly, as the book was released in different revisions, the work itself evolved. The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ didn’t even appear until the fifth edition! He followed this comparison with a great visualization that compared the performance of Major League Baseball teams with the salaries it pays its players. You can view that visualization here.

Finally, Ben wrapped up with a project called AllStreets in which he used the latitude and longitude data from streets across the use to recreate a map of the United States. He showed close ups of several regions of the country, illustrating how we could infer natural boundaries, like rivers and mountains, through the streets that have been constructed to navigate the terrain. It was as informative as it was beautiful. More on that project here.

An image of the Appalachian Mountains from Ben's AllStreets project

It was an amazing to see the breadth in his work, from genetics, to geo-location, to major league baseball. Inspiring stuff indeed.

For more information on Ben and his latest exploits, please visit benfry.com

Clover Food Labs – A Lesson in Prototyping

After a nice social break and a sampling of hors d’oeuvres, Colin introduced the evening’s first guest speaker Ayr Muir.  Referencing an earlier point from his presentation, Colin commented that Ayr is doing more by taking a small step approach over a giant leap with his business plan for Clover Food Labs—a working beta of a fast food restaurant based out of a truck.

In tradition with the food trucks common to the MIT campus, Clover Food Labs is a new kind of food truck that resides on Carleton Street opposite or MIT’s Medical entrance. This is Ayr’s real time prototype that plays with seasonal, local, fresh ingredients where he, chef Rolando Robledo and a small staff offer breakfast and lunch menus to the locals.  And, everyday is different depending on the experiment which yields instant customer reviews. Feedback is an essential ingredient to Ayr’s process either live or via social media channels, where Ayr is an avid blogger.

Ayr explains the methods and madness behind Clover Food Labs.

Ayr shared a few insights with our audience while taking us through personal photographs that further illustrated his fast food journey to date.

First, Ayr learned that Gaining the Right Experience was essential, from the service side. Hands on research and an appreciation for the opportunity was necessary step in realizing his goals. Who knew the hidden challenges in seeking and sustaining employment at your local fast food restaurant?

Second, he reinforced the need to be Open to Failure. Rolando and Ayr thought is was more important to get feedback direct from the customer instead of focusing their learnings on a more traditional focus group approach. Within 7 weeks they went from 100’s to 1000’s of failures, while adapting along the way in working directly with their customer base—live. This ultimately yielded a better education for his team by furthering their understanding of what the customer really wants, and continues to do so.

Clover is regularly mobbed at lunchtime in Kendall Square.

Third, Ayr communicated the importance of Being Transparent, as so much happens in the kitchen.  The back of their truck is open to the public to view the fresh seasonal produce for the day’s menu. Because the obvious is in plain view, he doesn’t have to advertise or call out overused industry jargon with words like Fresh Local and Organic.  Ayr states that 80% of their customer base is aware of the brand’s food choice, but through channels of conversation with staff members. No signage is necessary since the values of their offering is reinforced by an open kitchen dynamic that endures the daily changes and supports the nature of the brand.  Ayr finds great satisfaction in watching his customer base come into this realization on their own.

You can follow more on Clover Food Labs here: www.cloverfoodlab.com, and view when hungry.

Designing The Big Reset — engaging in ideas

Last Wednesday evening, the IDEO Boston office hosted an event aptly titled “The Big Reset” with a collective of 75 friends, clients and thought leaders to reflect upon how today’s economy may shape tomorrow’s business opportunities. Rather than trying to predict the future (we’d rather design it), we sought inspiration in today’s confusion by framing and connecting trends and behaviors from Zach16 to ZipCar, and from Mint to StickK.

Michael Hendrix sets the stage

IDEO’s Michael Hendrix, Boston studio director, opened the evening’s conversation and introduced colleague Colin Raney, business design lead, who invited the audience to rethink the phases of cultural change and how we might apply these insights today.

Colin asks "What causes a reset?"

Within the first half of his presentation, Colin provoked the crowd by asking  “Where do we start?” and then suggested “Let’s start with people,” quickly unfolding thoughts on personal identity, brand experience, adherence and loyalty.

As our world changes, our identities are in flux

Three guest speakers followed Colin’s introduction further illustrating how change can be implemented through innovation:

• Ayr Muir, Entrepreneur/Founder of Clover Labs
• Ben Fry, Director of Seed Visualization and its Phyllotaxis Lab
• Stuart Spiegel, VP of Digital Commerce at Converse

We finished the night by applying the evening’s design principles to GM, helping us imagine how the company might reinvent itself as it reemerges from bankruptcy.

Colin’s presentation from the event can be downloaded here in PDF form.  Also, follow the related discussion on Facebook, where people are sharing answers to, What do you desire? More___ and Less___

Next, stay tuned for a closer look at Ayr Muir’s presenation and more about his team’s delicious contribution to the night’s agenda … we’ll leave you a small taste here.