Meaningful feedback resulting as motivation?

Finland is a country of self service. Where this is most imminent, is cafes and restaurants. Mostly, you need to get your orders yourself and even clean the table afterwards. In a bit better places you might get service, but often it's poor or unmotivated.

Despite few exceptions it seems that service is clearly better in cultures where waiters salary consists mostly of tips. For long I considered tip based salary somewhat bad deal, but I have changed my mind.

Compared to fixed salary, tip based salary creates immediate feedback channel between customer satisfaction and waiters behavior. Furthermore, the feedback is truly meaningful to the waiter. Skilled waiters can even make a career and climb up the ladder to better places with better tips.

The experience of the profession becomes this way totally different than in Finland, where common understanding is that anybody can be a waiter resulting in that nobody actually wants to do it nor be proud of ones profession.

How to train people incompetent

"Uusavuton" is a finnish term for younger generations who don't know how to make food or clean the house. Newly incompetent might be the direct translation. (According to natives, english does not have the term, since all UK and US kids are anyway like this. ;)

I happened to read two articles below and those made me do a following conclusion:
Finnish society and individuals are over achieving in fulfilling all regulations and creating a bunch of new details to follow. At the same time there is urgent need to support new entrepreneurship. We excel in byrocracy - when we should excel in enabling creativity and business.


Unfortunately articles are only in finnish :/
Taloussanomat: Keittiö, jossa ei saa leipoa – ja muut hullut kiellot
Gradutakuu: Opittu avuttomuus

User observation for better breakfast?

For a moment I was sure that I was a subject in a user study:

I was balancing on my left foot, with two plates on my left hand, trying to push slider door open with my right foot to place the milk jar from my right hand into the fridge. All this while the waiter observed.

Unfortunately this was not user study - they were happy with their service.

Exped Airpillow - instant classic

When hiking or traveling my weak spot is the pillow. Having a poor sleep can ruin a lot. After trying many versions from regular ones to high end down -versions I can say that I know guite a lot of pillows.

Exped has made a good job in ensuring excellent sleep in winter conditions with their Downmat. Now I dare to say that they have made a iconic travel pillow:
Airpillow M is extremely small, lightweight, has comfortable surface and is easy to fill and empty. Also it looks good. Only down side is that it's so popular it's hard to find at least in Finland. I found mine in Scandinavian Outdoor Store :)

Aging in style

I love products that age with style.
In fact I might not be the most careful user of products, since I want them to look that they've been used. Especially outdoor gear looks a bit newbie if it's brand new.

When I unscrewed these worn lock pedals I felt slightly sad, but on the other hand happy to be able to look what they've gone through.

If you try to find a material that ages with style - go with aluminum, but be careful not to overdo the finish since the phase between glossy surface and worn out style might be nasty.

Graphics work: theme for a homescreen clock

My strengths are on the product and services concepts and not so much on the graphical design. Despite the tendency I sometimes have artistic urges to fulfill.

Not so long ago, we realized a co-operation possibility with my ingenious colleague, who has coded a clock/timer application to Ovi Store on his spare time. I had a vision to work with fonts covered by paint or dirt and he could use a theme for his application. As in design work generally - there was a feeling of magic in bring this -this time artistic- vision alive. Theme builds on the Symbian Anna software refresh.


Here's the preview of the theme, but you can as well download the whole application to your smartphone to get a better picture :)
 

Enhancing creativity and innovatio by doing mistakes

Have you ever felt that the success is must and you cannot fail? Did you feel stressed?


Most (if not all) people do feel stressed if failure is not an option. What we know about stress is that it limits the our creativity and our capability to see possibilities instead of threats. If your resources are low and solution is needed instantly - isn't it quite obvious that you try something that has been tried before and works for sure?

In organizations where jobs are in danger, showing that projects run smoothly and mistakes do not happen can feel important. Unfortunately this kind of thinking leads into several problems.
Organization stops learning from each other, ability to create new innovations drops and information of ongoing crisis or failures of larger scale can be buried. -And we need to remember that this happens in ALL levels of organization. -We all have somebody to report ;)

Sam Swaminathan tells a story in www.managementexchange.com how one organization was changed by celebrating the Mistake of the Month.

Personalization using product printing and modelling interface

Nervous System is a magnificent company. They manage to combine three highly appealing trends and form beautiful products as end result.
1) Personalization: Enabling user to modify the design or make completely unique design to make product truly personal via intuitive user interfaces.
2) Biomimicry: Combining nature and digital by basing the designs on patterns found in nature. If you think about it Now - there's no better foundation to build algorithmically formed designs.
3) Using 3D printing as manufacturing method to accomplish all this.


Check some of their videos or try their modelers and enjoy :)



Growing a Hyphae Lamp from Nervous System on Vimeo.

Industrial design - fighting against windmills

Old colleague of mine left the company to continue her PhD in an academic project in metal industry. The main problem is the old one - how to get users needs and opinions better into consideration in product development.

The same issue continues to puzzle in all branches where R&D plays a role in success or failure of products. I see this area as area where industrial designers operate. We are supposed to be the answer to the very problem! -Why have we failed?


Industrial designers have learned the methods of user centered design, we can conduct user studies and usability studies, we can recognize behaviors and see the parts which could be improved. We can even improve service processes. Why majority of the industrial designers skip most of this and work only on trends, forms, surfaces and finishes?
-Could it in the end be the lack of competence?
-Could it be the strict organization models?
-Credibility in the eyes of management?
-One possibility is our own ambitions. Every industrial designer wanting to be a "Star Designer" - drawing masterpieces with just intuition.
-Or could the reason be the lack of terms and definitions for a industrial designer that not only makes an artistic interpretation of the actual product, but also finds and uses the user data to create a product proposition to this foundation?
-In the end, it might be just a matter of education and knowledge in the company management.



I have described the work of industrial designer as fighting against windmills. The management is slow, stubborn and resists change. All the little pieces of change and true needs of user that we can fight to the products are all little victories! -It's just to decide that which mills you want to fight against and by which means :)

Stupid users

The title might feel pompous.
After I add my motto; Never underestimate the stupidity of a human being - It surely sounds even worse.

My excuse is that I admit my stupidity also as a designer. We tend to overlook the challenges users have in their interaction with our designs. The issue is the same, the important thing is that we study the issue - what ever the point of view may be.
Demystifying Usability has some good thinking on How to deal with Stupid Users.

The main points to remember are:
1. Users who have trouble with designs and feel stupid lack a key behavior required in using most interfaces: Discovery and Exploration.
2. Users who struggle with interfaces and feel of incompetent do not notice or use features.
3. Users who struggle with designs that do not feel intuitive are not comfortable with interface elements that are too different.
4.Users who do not make interface design distinctions ignore complex or multi-step tasks.
5. Users that lack the confidence with computers have a thinner comfort barrier and a general helplessness.

How to lose leadership?

A friend of mine updated her status with wise words about not caring too much about the talk that goes on behind our back when we stand alone in the front line.

If you are few steps ahead of your peers or time, it might mean that you are leading. You usually have lot of people who are talking and shouting behind your back. All it takes at that point is to believe in what you are doing and enable people to follow you.

But what happens if you start listening the critics around, miss the focus or lose your belief? Sometimes it results in stress, pressure and hasty decisions in seizing funding or canceling projects.
-Decisions need to be made, but it is always good to analyze that what is my decisions really based on; peer pressure or analyzing the environment.


Following video is about gaining leadership, but to maintainit, leader needs the ability to trust your followers when they start to develop their own moves. -Unfortunately that is something what managers in big companies sometimes forget..

The third truth

The efforts to save Euro after the elderly bachelors along the Mediterranean have bankrupted the nearly whole EU is a hot topic. Hot topic also for the reason that anti EU discussion has raised it's head also in Finland.

In these discussions it's not our politicians who make the decisions, but abstract things like EU and Brussels, that have impersonated. People feel that they've lost their control and don't understand what is happening.


When doing decisions for other people it is natural to think how this law/system would be the best for the general audience and in theory. A lot of the decision making is not fixed into everyday situations, but instead in ideals and the Third Truth. -The truth we assume is the "right thing" for the general opinion, but might not be right for the creators of legislation nor for the people.


Similar  kind of behavior is visible in how culture is formed inside a group of people, nation or in religions. Even yellow press is a huge player on creating a third truth in their way of writing things in passive "A bank was robbed". -But in this case it has an active abstract actor; EU.

I don't blame people talking about EU like it was a person doing decisions. -In a way, EU is an impersonation of that Third Truth.