innovation playground Idris Mootee

I Am Not A Gadget! Or Am I Becoming One? How Close Are We From A Full Blown Computional Culture?

Sometimes I feel like I am a gadget. We all performing various specialist and general tasks everyday and somehow you feel each of these tasks are not related. And the worst part of our job is to perform something that is so tedius and doesn’t really require any creativity, analytic and imagination. And you wonder why this work cannot be done by a gadget. Or if I am doing the job, does it mean I am a gadget?

There are over 600,000+ personal pocket gadgets out there for whatever purposes and over 700,000 apps for iPhone 7000,000; Android and 99,500 Blackberrys to turn your smartphone into a gadget. There's an app for almost anything and someday my resume will look like my iPhone and people will look at how many apps I have to decide whether I qualify for that job.

Human is supposed to be good at problem solving. Or at least we think we are, I am not getting into that debate. There are differences between the different types of problem solving from pure creativity to system level thinking or analytical processing.  Creativity requires periodic, temporary “encapsulation” as opposed to constant calculation or recalculation. You need time for working privately as well as times for group ideation. Encapsulation is what allows for the possibility of self-testing that enables a quest for excellence.

The big question is will the proliferation of gadgets push us towards a more creative culture where our time is better spend on the creative side while our gadgets take care of the rest or in another scenario where these micro-computing machines (gadgets) will take over and we will be pushed towards a computational culture?

All these micro devices, bit data-warehouses and pervasive communication facilities are now omnipresent in our daily activities. The way we live, work, play, communicate and interact with each other is in permanent flux due to the influence of these cool gadgets. Historically speaking, technologies are developed as a result of the need for faster means of calculation to achieve the unachievable before the world emerging into a full-blown computational culture. Emerging in its modern form in the seventeenth century after the introduction of typography, that culture, it is here argued, remains dominant today.

Can future gadgets evolve to a point that they understand our feelings and not just commands and preferences? As part of our extended mind and heart and algorithm that can add feeling to an otherwise mathematical, non-physical, and consequently non-aesthetic, thought? This is the theme of the next issue of MISC for March. Look out for the big Gadget Issue.

The Economics of Co-Creation. Can What Happened To Microbrewery Happens To The Auto Industry?

A lot of talk and interest around the concept of co-creation. It is no question that this is going to have asting implications of how products and experiences are designed, developed and marketed. In 3-5 years, customer co-creation will be the part the norm of everyday business. Much like early days of ecommerce when people struggled with the legal, technical, operational issues. Slowly these issues will work their way out and we would look back and say “that’s simple…. makes perfect sese.”

What’s a great example of co-creation? Let’s first try to define it here as sometimes people refers it to anything from idea crowd-sourcing to technical expert groups to simple product/service/marketing customization. One good example of real co-creation is a company called Loco Motor.

I met Jay Rogers (founder and CEO) at the PDMA Co-creation Conference when I was moderating a panel. He was hosting the event and I was extremely impressed with what he is trying to do and has achieved to date. It is the first co-creative automobile design and purchase experience in the world. Just as the auto industry is dying for new ideas and change and Detroit needs a new strategy and it is more than making a better car. There are many structural issues to deal with and it is complicated. Jay is attempting to disrupt the auto industry by using co-creation as the strategic core.

The people in the car industry that have tried to innovate in the last 100 years and mostly fail, what makes him think he has a chance? Perhaps Detroit should concentrate on redesigning the business model and the whole experience before redesigning cars.

The first product Rally Fighter sells for just under $60,000. It’s an incredible car that looks like a life size HotWheel and gives me fond memory of my childhood. Remember the Hot Wheels yellow track?

The Rally Fighter is designed by the online community and ismanufacture at the microfactory in Phoenix, Arizona with a sustainable and highly efficient process. Jay wanted to build cars all his life, after raising $10 million seed capital, he launched the company with a simple idea that is extremely difficult to pull off. Loco Motors hosts a passionate online group of car-lovers or fanatics who compete to design vehicles for some regional communities in contests that run about once a month. The winning designs is then produced and sold to the communities.

There is more than to the flexible and customizable micro-factory, the concept here is when you give people tools, a strong community network with shared passion, some inspiration, small incentive you are in game. In fact, he is reinventing the customer co-creation experience for automotive. There are more than needs to be done in order to reinvent the economics of the industry. I think every business should look at Loco Motots and see what is relevant for their industries.

Will Loco Motors remains to be a niche business or eventually springing into a platform that supports a auto-cottage industries I don’t know. But we also need to think how we reduce traffic including rethinking local supplies network for certain products and cutting down unnecessary traffic.

An example is to look at how we replace pizza or UPS delivery with perhaps flying delivery drones – pizza right through to your windows. I am not sure if someone has thought about flying delivery drones man by 14 year old part-time students that doesn’t even have a driving license. The military drones can be converted to do the job. It is more realistic than flying personal transport, because in the event of an accident the worst is you don’t get your pizza. May be this is another idea of Jay, his Marine Corps background can be very useful. A central drone delivery operations theater that supports the nation’s takeout industry.

Experience Design Innovation Can Use Nostalgic Clues To Create Emotive Connections. Don't Under Estimate The Power Of Nostalgia.

As technology pushes forward and sometimes it is easy for us to forget about the past. I think marketers and product designers could benefit more from looking to the past. I am not ready to claim that many of the classic design whether it is product or interfaces will stand the test of being both functional and timeless, but I can comfortably say that many brands/ products /interfaces carry a lot of sentimental value for many people. And many of these deign will not only survive this lifetime and well into the next generation. 

For me, I am at a stage where the best objects or brands or products are the ones that connect me with my childhood and memories of my time with my Dad when I was a little boy. I have been collecting these objects since a while back and they seem to contain a bit of my past. I guess as we age we will become more receptive to marketers and designers who make use of what market researchers call "a longing for positive memories from the past."

The science of nostalgia isn't yet fully understood, but studies have shown nostalgic cues that can be exploited and the ways in which images from the past can yield favorable attitudes about products in the present. Ask our team of resident anthropologists and they can explain why.

The best examples would be my McIntosh amplifiers, JBL studio monitors and Leica cameras. I couldn’t really accord these (not the top end models) when I was 14 and my dad ended up buying me the entry models. I remember the joy when we bought a pair of giant speakers and we struggled to carry that home. It seems the objects I love most around the house are those that reminds me of him.  He once said to me “You're the most wonderful boy in the world, and doesn’t matter what you choose to do you will do it well. And you can do anything you want to.” 

I’ve heard the saying “A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it” and I am not sure who said that. That’s kind of what I feel when I look at stuff around me. I have a thing for McIntosh (picture above my living room) and have quite a few of them lying around everywhere, I think I have at least 3,000 watts of pure clean power to feed to my JBLs. These pretty "Big Blue Meter" McIntoshes are more than sound machine, the classic design and the physical knobs are part of a very simple user experience. I am sick of remote control and I can’t even use them other than power on and off. It brings me the question why machine + usability + style can come in such a nice package then and we hardly see many today (Apple is the exception).

A nice surprise for me is now I can download a McIntosh app for my iPad (picute above). It is very smart idea, not that the app will upgrade the sound from my iTunes, but the skins with the big blue VU meter brings moments of joy even when I am not in front of my McIntosh. Now I can listen to and playback music from my iPad within the classic McIntosh experience. I can now access to my digital music library in a simple elegant interface inspired by the line of McIntosh audio equipment. Genius idea!! And it is free too!!

A great brand/product and even interface if stylistically design and adding some nostalgia touches can power up a wave of innovation that has strong emotive connections.  With more and more people entering the boomers lifestage, expect to see collectable toys inspired nostalgia factor. The essence of these brands is very appealing and emotive; something that people grew up with. It is more than Lanvin porcelain dolls and Prada toy keyrings, it is time to visit eBay.

 

 

We Have Proved Once Again That Brand Marketing Can Drive Social Change, Further Customer Engagment And Build Brands. And Won A Gold Award For Best Financial Service Marketing.

Aviva Canada just announced winners to Aviva Community Fund with half a million dollars payout to programs across the country. This is the second year of a very successful campaign created to use brand to drive social change. The Aviva Community Fund, a unique competition designed to lead, empower and support positive change in communities across the country, was first launched in 09 when we presented the idea to the client.

The idea is an open source idea platform for people to submit and decide how to use the money to drive real social change and provide positive impact to their communities. We are grateful to our client's team who worked with us side by side and our design and development team working day and night to accommodate the evolving needs of the program. This is year two and we won a gold award for this campaign. Great work team!

The sustainable impact of the idea or campaign is another proof to show that the world has changed so much since the early days of advertising. The events of the last decade and the Internet has made us aware of the challenges around us.

Advertising has always been the primary mechanism to create awareness and build brand equity, but it is not a question of which 50% of the money is wasted, it is a question of why 80% of the money spent is not building brand equity and merely creating awarness?

Our research shows that 79% of consumers are willing to change the brands they buy or if they believe their actions contribute to making our world a better place, and over 67% would help a brand “promote” (by using Facebook or other social media) if a good cause were behind it and is credible. Also, 73% of consumers (under the age of 35) said it is their mission to contribute to a better society and environment.

Among all respondents, “helping others and contributing to their communities” was cited as the second-most important source of personal contentment, after “spending quality time with loved ones.” Over 54% respondents are not fully convinced that corporate social responsibility advertising is credible when they cannot associate that with real action. The power of PR is diminishing when the program is not designed to engage consumers. This study was part of our ongoing research to look at how social causes can help brands which are low involvement in nature to drive engagement.

One interesting take away point, 67% of consumers are comfortable with the idea that brands can support good causes and improve our societies and make money at the same time. When is Wall Street ready to factor in a second or third bottom line into their valuation of companies? It is time.

Powerful And Affordable Real Time Data Mining, Visualization And Interactions Are Powering Up A New Culture Act - And Enabling "Infovation".

Just landed in Rhode Island and spendin the next 2 days in Providence, long working sessions ahead, expect to some productive knowledge exchange. The topic will be around where arts meets science, design meets technology.

We talk about how information changes our life and how it affect the way we make decisions both as individual and as a team or society, I think we are still unaware of the true power of change information visualization can have and the impact when applied in an interactive and social mobile settings.

Imagine a scenario everytime a politician suggests an idea and you can see realtime information in simple graphics visual data to confirm his/her coment or when a company makes a statment you can see how other respond with an instant trust index? That's a very likely future, an idea which I am working on. Can't say more.

And I don’t mean just data visualization such as bar chart and 3D chart etc, primarily it is the study and application of the visual representation of quantitative data, meaning "information which has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information."

Infodesign of infographics is actually different (it is like when I was trying to explain the differencne between customer experience and user experience/usabiity 10 years ago) from data visulaization. Information graphics (or so called infographics) instead of visualizing data, it is the strategic use of data by incorporating interactions, icons, charts, diagrams, graphs, tables and maps to present information that could bring new knowledge and sense making. Not only it helps to explain oterhwise difficult to understand data, but also illuminate and explain system complexities or system relationships in an easy to digest manner.

This is not new, in our human history our ancestors created cave murals and giant paintings to show us what was happening including what their understand of the the world, an event or even the universe. The power of infodesign lies in its effectiveness in simplifying complex data into understandable visual representations that can be universally interpreted.

The power of real time interactions with live data brings the potential to a whole new level. The human minds are real time computing machines that works to constantly changing and creating value and meaning of objects; the interactions between human brain and semiotics is conducted every time we see a visual representation of a scenario and makes possible of expanding our human cognition to absorb large amounts of data at just one single glance or click.

Here comes the most interesting part, infodesign is powering up an “infoculture” where massive real-time socailly digitally distributed (useful and useless) information is enabling a new form of cultural act. It is where science meets arts, and will continue to power up new possibilities as we learn how to use them. I will be the first one here to call it “Infovation.” Remember you hear it here first. Will write more about it next few days.

One more thing, how many schools out there actually teaches information design? Not many. We are still training people yesterday's skills for yesterday's job. No wonder it is hard for designers to find work. I think design schools should be paying for the continuous education of their graduates, becasue they never trained them enough or properly in the first place.

The Future Battle Of Seach Will Be In Social Mobile. Does Social Search Make Any Sense?

A friend of mine visited me from Japan and our conversation was around mobile search, since Apple’s acquisition of Siri, a company that makes voice-operated personal assistant app for the iPhone, people wonder what’s Apple intent was. This move has big implications for the future of mobile search and is just a first step into the game.

This space is where Google is not winning as generalized search is not working and so people have to resort to specialized apps. It can be super-local for hyper-specialized and need-based. It is more than just getting information but getting some jobs done. It is two steps within minutes versus most online search is the first step. Whether it is about finding a nearby pub, getting a movie ticket or getting a dinner reservation through OpenTable, context is crucial. So business model is pretty much based around affiliate commissions from partners.

There are still a lot of usability issues to solve and there is little tolerance to sifting through irrelevant search results and they include: How to create clear quick access action buttons? How do you combine motion and gestures into the usability language? How to use limited real estate particular there are a lot of information to display? How to meet the user’s needs quickly? He or she has less than 3 minutes to get what they want. How to deal with user mistakes? It is not just a backward button?

Is social search the answer? I don’t know and I am not sure. There are apps that go out there and search for rankings and aggregate them and translate them into usable data. I think there are some apps that simply go through social networks and find out what people are recommending. Adding social layers onto search results is one option but I don’t think it is an effective solution. I am not sure I know what is the best filtering technique? I think location matters. What people are tweeting is often irrelevant. Searching for ‘likes’ in Facebook can’t be too useful. We are still a few years away from AI search.

Researchers at IBM have been working on a machine called Watson that can sift through a terabyte of data and crank out answers to complicated questions in a few seconds. A version of the software that runs Watson could reside on a doctor's tablet computer in 3-5 years, analyzing test results to proffer a diagnosis, according to Dave Ferrucci, a senior manager at IBM.

Smartphones are getting more prevalent and powerful enough to handle complex tasks. More than 70% of Americans will own a smartphone by the end of 2013 and mobile tablets sport more powerful processors that let users run complex artificial intelligence apps on them. Ai will be available at the palm of your hands.. .in no more that 2 -3 years I hope.

In the meantime, Google will be buying up anything that helps the to colonized the mobile space. Anytime you need to use any of these services on your Android devices, you need to log into your Google account. That means all your location history, browsing history, and preferences are available for Google to use so that they can show you send advertisements your way.

For Now Tablet Is Dominated By iPad, And Then There Are Hundreds Of Others Who Want A Piece Of The Action.

Microsoft just posted a really good quarter and has been openly criticized for its lack of strategy in the tablet market and other consumer market. This software giant has failed to innovate in many fronts despite massive resources and strong talent based. The company has also failed to create any buzz on their product launches; you wonder what is not working with this company. It is not lack of money for sure, and not about lack of talent either.

The iPod has only been on the market for half a year, the buzz has quiet down but adoption is high and broad unlike previous products. This is an instant success and looks like no one us close to being a threat. Though Samsung, LG, HTC, Dell, HP and Lenovo, and others are unveiling their own tablets, no on has the advantage of full software and hardware integration. Apple's complete integration of hardware, software, operating system, and applications is a major competitive advantage.

Many think Galaxy is only potential threat to Apple. The Galaxy's screen has about three times the surface area of typical smart phones, including the phone. When it comes to tablet features and performance, here's how the Galaxy measures up to the iPad. The Galaxy is about the size of large paperbacks and don’t expect battery to last more than 8 hrs.

Samsung has identified two problems to solve as a competitive weapon to compete against iPad. First is flash. And then the other is face-to-face communication. The Galaxy has two cameras, one facing you and the other facing away, and you can use the Qik app to videoconference with other online members. This is an attractive feature and for sure will be matched quickly.

There are a handful of Qik enabled phones out there, but it still hard to find someone to talk than using Skype. iPad2 might incorporate a camera and FaceTime. Android have more apps, above100, 000 apps but the proportion of high-quality apps that you have to pay for has not gone up significantly. Apple leans way the other way on this, limiting some of its 300,000 apps solely to iPad distribution. And most are willing to apps for the iPad. Mobile usage has become pervasive. Mobile devices (smart phones, tablets and whatever in between) will be experienced dramatic evolution in the next 5 years. It is the new competitive ground and becoming a real category on its own rather than something as complimentary to the PCs.

These tablets or large smart phones are fast becoming mini-computers with nearly 13 million iPads shipped this year and expect to grow 3x next year. These tablets’ bigger screens promise more immersive experiences for marketers. The web will become more app like and the user experiences will converge. I can see tons of innovation opportunities to drive new behavior. It is so easy to view content on iPad and people considered that as less private, and more willing to share. 2-3 users sitting in a coffee shop can easily view the screen. And as a shared device, the iPad invites social interaction and imagine design apps for real life social interactions rather than virtual. A game that can be passed around and played or something that people can use in a retail environment, sort of self-help navigation in mall and view merchandise and promotions etc. I can come up with another ten scenarios.

I am looking forward to see the Blackberry Tablet rumored to cost just under $500. The PlayBook will have a smaller screen than the iPad (7-inch PlayBook versus 9.7-inch iPad), and there won't be a 3G option (it shouldn’t as it should use the BlackBerry connection). The screen resolution will be similar the iPad, but will translate to more pixels per inch. The PlayBook will also have bigger ram than the iPad (1GB PlayBook versus 256MB iPad), and RIM also included in two cameras (5MP back, 3MP front). I think this is useful for BalackBerry users like me and will guaranteed a minimum adoption. Great, now I’ve got one more thing to add to my briefcase.

Brand Talk on Love, Sex And Emotion. Marketers Love Drinking Their Kool-Aid.

Can a company/brand create such powerful emotive connections to make customers love them? Your advertising agency will be quick to say yes. I am not sure. I can imagine a few scenarios that it happens but is is very uncommon. Marketers like to convince themselves that you can buy ‘love’ and that’s the ultimate goal for great marketing. What's that book name "Lovemark"?  That's an example of advertisers drinking their own Kool-Aid. Yes, many customers can have a level of enthusiasm because we provide them with a great customer experience, is that love? That’s what I want to write about.

Neurologists suggest that the early stages of love are governed by parts of the brain that are used for goal-seeking and reward, and resembles obsessive-compulsive disorder. Such as the first time you look at an Apple iPhone, a Harley Street Bob, a Hermes Kelley, a Mercedes SL AMG and a Patek Philippe Calatrava.

Here's how our brain works, at the early stage of a romantic relationship sparks activity in dopamine-rich brain regions normally associated with motivation and reward. The intensity is proportion to the activity. Advertising doesn’t make them love your brand; they attract their attention and interest.

The part of our brain associated with emotion, the insular cortex and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex, are not activated until the more mature phases of a relationship. In the context of brand marketing, the emotive connections require consistence good customer experiences including the love and hate. Love happens as a result when the sum total of the interactions that a customer has with a company's products, people, and interfaces reach certain threshold. Starting from the moment when customers purchase a product to the moment when they unwrap the box and sharing their joy with their friends on Facebook.

Here's a myth. Love is not emotion, it is a strategic capability to gain happiness. And love by itself has no object. It is some invisible and unexplainable energy of consciousness sometimes we are not even aware of it. It is beyond form, yet inclusive of form. Love is a capability that can be developed, nurtured and learned. We develop this capability when we were very young. Over the years, we develop the ability to love and care for the other person(s) and sometimes even objects.
Emotion is a different animal. It is feelings (or reactions from our brain activity) that aroused as a result of stimuli. When you see something, you want to touch it, feel it and probably own it. Many people marry for the sake of convenience or benefits. The same way we are loyal to certain brands for the same reasons. Either because there is a lack of choice of simply the product category is of low involvement.

Sex, love and emotion are three different things. In an ideal world, they intersect at certain junction. Sex is not the single manifestation of love (although it can be one of them), regular purchase and consumption of a brand is not a manifestation of love for the same reason. Some people are always under the misconception that the manifestation of love is sex; the manifestation of loyalty is purchase frequency. Yes, it may be. But mostly not.

Take away for you for the weekend, emotion often gets us into trouble but we must recognize them as part of being human and accept them into our consciousness, where they need to be cared for and managed. And that cab be learned.

Have a great weekend and please share your thoughts.

Interaction Design Has An Important Role To Play In Our Future, It Has The Power To Transform Cultures.

There is two articles on IC today, one on Inc. magazine and the other in Globe and Mail. We're getting some good press coverage and we need to continue to make our story heard. In the meantime, we continue onto my journey of building global capabilities. Interaction design (IxD) will be a core focus, and I don't mean just web or mobile interactions. IxD will be one of the most important strategic capability for companies to build meaningful engagement and sustainable differentiation as part of their enterprise level experience strategy.

How would interaction design change in the next 10 years? It is a relatively new area of practice, beyond traditional GUI design or web interface design. Interaction design go beyond just the clicks and links and is becoming an indispensable aspect business design, product design and service design. Interaction design is traditionally define as the study of devices with which a user can interact, in particular computer users or screen related. The practice typically centers on "embedding information technology into the ambient social complexities of the physical world. I think the word 'device' will eventually become irrelevant. I think IxD is about to take on a larger mission -- empowering communities and transforming cultures.

Here's my point of view, traditional industrial design focuses on a product’s form and function, but interaction design requires very different perspectives and approaches for increasingly complex business and design problems. Think media industry, it is transforming itself from a traditional broadcast medium to an interactive one and this change will accelerate faster and faster extending their ubiquity and interactivity to devices, objects and spaces. Rapid technological development is introducing new types of functionality, for example to sense, feel, control, monitor, connect, search, respond and transact for different types of applications.

I am talking about the circle of influence with interaction design. How does interaction design transforms culture; it begins when a small networks of people simply start sharing ideas, feelings, hopes and frustrations etc. and that is when culture emerges. Their behavioral patterns, mindsets, emotional responses as well as aesthetics, rules, norms, and values that are being shared influence culture and as a result produce certain artifacts.

These 'virtual artifacts', through people’s interacting with them, influence cultures and facilitate emergence of new culture. Interactions then become transformative social mechanisms whereby these ‘virtual artifacts’ are made accessible or shareable through networks of communities further facilitating more connecting and sensing, their creations are further linked to specific interactional, locational, cultural and economic context.

The ‘virtuality of our everyday life’ as a result of the interactions powers up new creation and distribution of culture never before in the modern history of mankind. This is where the real disruption is for marketers and media producers. It is hard to distinguish one’s role at the complex juncture of creation/production and consumption in our everyday activities. Interactions of our everyday life take on new meanings. Interaction designer have bigger jobs to do.

My favorite French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) gave us the tools to understand the media society and counteract the total assimilation into capitalist overproduction. Truls Lie finds a previously unpublished interview he made when Baudrillard visited Oslo in 2000. "Disappearing", says Baudrillard, "should be an art form, a seductive way of leaving the world. I believe that part of disappearing is to disappear before you run dry...." An idea for all interaction designers, make sure you include a 'disappear' function in all your designs.

What Do You Know About The New 3G? Girls, Gaming and Gender. Look Out For The Sony PSG (Playstation For Girls)

Gaming is mainstreaming these days with average gamers over the age of 34 years old that has been playing games for 12 years. The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 40 years old. Surprised? And many are women.

Social gaming is become a global phenomenon, last year was a breakout year for virtual goods in the US which had been only an Asian thing. The virtual goods industry in Asia generates about $7B a year in revenue, seven times the US, this means major valuation differences between Asia and US with China's nine largest public online game companies valued in the $50B range compared to the top four US companies that are valued in the $22B range. Expect to see continuous growth and new competitors, Apple will eventually join the party, may be 2013.

Many still think gaming is a boy’s things and I think this is worth challenging. Historically speaking, probably yes. Women and video gaming doesn't sound like a fit. In Simone de Beauvoir’s pioneering work (1949) on women, The Second Sex, created impressions of girls at play with their dolls. After the French Revolution then came the eloquent denunciation of housework. Then in the 60s, women in the US pushed liberal feminism that the pre-1914 period never done before. If you looked at the advertising between 1950s and 11960s you will know what I mean. Femininity has come a long way.

There are still a lot of mystique on femininity, these mystique transformed doing housework, bearing children and shopping into almost a religion, a lifestyle many women accept or reject. Consumer ideology continued to reinforce this mystique. Do women like this whole package or it is the ideal lifestyle projected onto them by advertisers and marketers? Did marketers and male media executive try too hard to fool women into paying for a femininity they did not need at all. Or was it a good thing after all? I don't want to get into this debate. But I do have a POV.

No question men like video games. Or there are simply not enough titles that are designed for women? I think women equally like video games. Columbia College Chicago hosted high school girls in a summit focused on gaming and gender equity. What they did was bringing together female game designers and academics to look at the female voice in the digital gaming industry. It is called the 3G Summit, like the name? The Future of Girls, Gaming, and Gender.

It was a four-day event that engaged young women from Chicago-area high schools in a series of discussions about young women’s place in the gaming culture. Video game is rapidly evolving and now delivered over smart phones, iPad and social network sites as part of social connectivity, consumer engagement, and cultural expression.

I think the women’s gaming market is largely untapped. Many games are beginning to look like interactive movies. Where is the equivalent of “Titanic” for video games? I can’t think of any video games that are built around romance. May be the 2008's Prince of Persia, but there's no player involvement, you simply follow the story along and the attempt at non-linearity makes the development of the relationship muddled and mostly nonexistent. I can’t think of a RFG that has a strong romance and sex theme. Here is a screenshot from a sex scene in the God of War.

Sex (not romance) is now part of many popular games, gone are the days when Mario and Luigi were jumping around looking for magic mushrooms. Some video games allow the player character to have sex or romantic relationships with NPCs, wonder how the logics were built behind those romantic relationships. I guess it comes down to enough talking and pick up some good weapons; they will start to like you. I am looking forward to see the first person romantic video game designed by women for women… the PS3 free online feature will proof to be very useful, the age of video gaming romance is here.

My Next Book Will Be Called "The Authenticity Gap". I May Not Get Many Serious Readers. How About "Authenticiy Without Commitment"?

The Authenticity Gap - that should be the title of my next book. Well, I don’t think I have time to write another book, it takes me almost 5 weeks last time. I guess I will need at least 8 weeks. But no. May be a blog post, it takes only 15 mins. I do like the name, but I guess it won't sell well. May be "Authenticity Without Commitment", this is a far better title, I think I can sell 200,00 copies and sell a lot of seminars. Will get sponsorship from BP for sure.

Marketers have been talking about authenticity and brands for a long time and have been trying to be authentic, they are using the wrong tool. And often they don't know what it means. Advertising doesn’t make brands authentic. They build awareness and interest… but rarely building brand equity these days. That was a very different case 20 years ago. Today every individual, organization and brand is struggling with closing this gap.

When you are being viewed as ‘authentic’, people will tolerate your mistakes if they are the results of good intent, understand you’re human and seeing you as ‘real’. Consumers want ‘real’ brands, ‘real’ companies that empathize, and ‘real’ leaders that care. When public relation companies getting ‘real’ in using social media, it simply widens the gap. Sam problems with CEOs, employees want ‘real’ leaders that do not read out from a prewritten piece of paper, they want ‘real’ leaders that understand their needs. It also include saying and doing the very difficults, telling an employee that he is not the right fit for the job in an honest and respectable manner is part of being authentic, helping that individual to find his core is more important that force fitting someone into a job that he/she do not have the passion or the potential to be best.

Consumers also want ‘real’ brands and products that mean they accept the ‘imperfection’ and ‘limitations’ and want the ‘transparency’ to go with it. 90% of advertising out there doesn’t pass the ‘authenticity’ test. I am tired of advertising that trying to be cute and I am sick of those ads that the CEO shows up and talk about how they care about consumers. Stop Botoxing your companies, start changing the core of the organization and start ‘doing’ what is responsible for shareholders, societies and the environment.

All authentic brands are in many ways is the identity reflecting on company culture and leadership. They help that culture become visible and understood both customers and employees. They also embody the values and purpose of the company and giving them a face a personality and a voice that can be seen and heard. The mistake people makes is they try to engineer that from a marketing perspective, from extending that from the core. Icing is icing, it doesn’t change the quality of the cake.

That’s why many organizations are now relying on Corporate Social Responsibility to make organizations authentic, it is not a PR campaign, it is a business strategy that informs the brand, product development, customer service and marketing strategy. It is simply the best thing a company can do – going back to the heart of the company/brand and rediscover that the inner voice and use that to remind the public / employees that organizations can also be human, it is people making decisions, not a machine. We made mistakes, we correct them. We don’t ignore it and turn on a PR machine and hopefully we spin them enough people will forget it.

What's The Next Big Innovation In Soft Drinks? Here's What I've Got From My Dream.

Soft drinks makes have been pushing for innovation to create new categories, expand new markets or help push up prices, many are betting on increased demand for adult targeted higher quality soft drink. Research indicates that 5 or 6 out of 10 now think it is “worth paying extra for quality goods”. Also expect to see continuous legislative pressure limiting advertising marketing to kids under age16.

What drives premium pricing? I think energy-infused (functional) products and those with real health benefits are most likely to get people to pay more, while carbonates are still slowly losing share to fruit juices and bottled waters in established markets.

So what’s the latest innovation in soft drinks? I have some ideas here. I had a weird dream the other night, I dreamt about working with my team in our lab creating the next coolest soft drink ideas. When I wrote about it in Facebook, here are what my friend from Germany was saying: “You guys at IC should come over to Germany some time: we’re the masters in mixing soda. We’re even crazy enough to buy all readmixed: bionade, mezzomix, fritzkola just to name a few.” That's my friend Gunter Wehmeyer in Germany. And Jesse Diephuis (IC co-head of design) suggested: lychee, coconut Jelly + Soda + Vodka = SakuraSoho.

So here are my top few ideas from my dream, but I can’t remember the rest. I wish there is a way to store and archive our dreams. Anyway I will share 4 or 5 out of the 8 that I remember. I guess I am selling the other ideas.

Exotic Fruits Anti-toxidant Soft Drinks. There are so many antioxidant-rich berries that we have never heard of, such as aronia, yumberry and maqui berry to become the next acai berry. Take a few weeks traveling in Africa you can fund a dozen of these berries to help you with diet and fitness, anti-depression and stress. With so much toxic from our daily food intake, now that’s worth paying a premium for.

Anime Soft Drrinks. Not sure you’ve heard of Akikan. It is a romantic comedy slated for a about a boy who went to a vending machine to get a can of melon soda and ends up with the can transforming into a bishoujo (babe). Don’t you love that? This new category of soft drink is a crossover from the world of anime into our real world. The cool ideas is that they need to be fused with carbon dioxide from kissing to survive. This can really make soft drinks consumption experiential.

Exotic Spicy Soft Drinks. Okay now you know what I am talking about. Imagine masala flavored water? Wasabi and curry flavored sodas? Satay and basil sodas? You can add to the list.

Faith-based Soft Drinks. This is obvious. How about Kosher sodas or Halah Colas? Call it Peace Cola created for two of the world's oldest and greatest religions. Faith brings people together, politics draw them apart. So the idea of the Peace Cola can be very inspirational.

Or we can do Dalai Lama Tibet Soda (endorsed by Richard Gere naturally)? And what about sodas from the the Church of Scientology. I can imagine a series of futuristic sodas, made from California naturally.

Design’s Fundamental Role Is Problem Solving. So What Problems Did These Three Designs Try To Solve?

My plan for Europe did not materialize thanks to Yjafjallajokull (pronounced as ay-uh-fyat-luh-yoe-kuutl-ul), it is the the name of the Icelandic volcano. I was looking forward for two days intense innovation workshop.  This doesn’t happen often but it literally put Europe air traffic on a stand still. Think about those fresh flowers in Amsterdam? This is not helping me in terms of my work keeps piling up. Life is full of surprises.

My last post on Design Thinking drew upon a lot of discussions both here, Facebook and linkedin groups. I’ve got lot of people sending me their scores and I think people are having fun with it, but please don’t take it too seriously.

Back to design, here are a few everyday design ideas to share with you:

First one is a breakfast kit. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day for me. And this Downtown Breakfast Set aims to take care of all your breakfast needs in one elegant package. I am a breakfast person and I cannot function without it, so this works for me.

The design included a coffee maker, a milk frother and a toaster. The design is pretty nice, but there are a few human factor issues. First, where’s my juice? Where do I put my utensils? Butter? Jam? What about a cereal holder? I think they can easily expand the options. For me, I am a tea drinker. Oh, I need a magazine or newspaper holder too.

For digital cameras, you wonder what’s the next killer feature? Shockproof, waterproof, voice activated and instant upload to Flickr etc. If you are a dog lover, you will like this. Fuji Film was struggling to come up with a differentiating feature, and they were desperate or creative enough to start thinking about animals.

Their new Finepix Z700EXR features face detection for felines and canines as a major selling point. It has the world's first Auto Dog / Cat Detection function, with the ability to detect dog or cat faces, optimizing focus and exposure for pet photos. An auto-release function can also be selected to automatically shoot the photo when the pet is looking directly at the camera. The limitations are 1/Up to 10 dog or cat faces per photo 1/cannot detect pet faces in profile 3/cannot detect faces in scenes with both dogs and cats. Not sure how it will work when someone’s face and hair looks like a dog.

The third idea is full social media immersion. Now you can send someone a hug through Facebook. It was designed by Dzmitry Tsetserukou, an assistant professor at Toyohashi University of Technology; the goal is to add a new layer of feedback to online interaction, making them more real and engaging. It'd be coupled with software that could analyze a variety of electronic communication like Twitter, SMS and Facebook. It would translate the "positive text" it identifies to send you a nice squeeze through the HaptiHeart. More overt interactions, such as two avatars hugging in Second Life, would get the same response. Now you can literally get a real poke from someone through Facebook. Cool idea? What happen if you play Street Fighter with it?

Who's Twittering You? The Big Ben, Great Wall Of China Or The Pyramids Of Egypt?

I read somewhere that Big Ben can now twitter you for the time and guess how many people signed up? Over 50,000 and I guess there are lot of people don’t trust their watches. The Great Wall of China will soon be sending you messages saying how many people were up there in any given day or the US federal government sending you at a given time how big the deficit is and how much it is costing you as a tax payer or how much debt every new born baby has. Or North Korean government to use Twitter to announce how many soldiers or missiles they have at one given time.

White House was using Twitter to keep the momentum going and keeping track of which Democratic lawmakers had changed their minds and decided to vote in favor of the bill. That’s a creative use. Politicians fully understand the power of Twitter's ability mobilize grassroots support for their legislative agendas.

With the advances in a host of technologies like RFID and NFC, a lot of smart interactions and data can now be transmitted anywhere with minimal integration. There are some interesting experiments like BakerTweet, a system made by UK. agency Poke that allows bakers to dynamically send out tweets to customers alerting them when a fresh batch of buns coming out from the oven. Not sure how valuable this is.

We can expect to see many interesting use in the next 12 months. Any physical objects could become a real-time visualization tool for anything.   A company called Violet, which makes Mirror, an RFID reader USB-attached mirror that enables any computer to react to the presence of an object. he Mirror’ is one of the coolest gadgets I’ve seen in a long time. Hook the $60 plate up to your Mac and get ready to read some RFID tags. The set includes Ztamps (basically RFID tags) that you can stick on objects and assign actions.

For instance, say you attach one to a toy car. When you put the toy car on top of the The Mirror by Violet, it could open up your browser for you to read your favorite car blogs. There can be so many creative applications, there are the three that I can think of such as tagging of your computer’s mouse so when it is placed on certain spot on your desk it will trigger an application, like playing Monopoly.  an example would be placing the mouse on a particular spot will inform your company to activate your Skype to talk to you buddy. Or tagging your car keys can trigger your G-mail account. Tagging your afternoon tea cup will activate your PC to launch a browser with your favorite Power Point deck. Can you think of more?

Emotion Detection Technology Will Become Mainstream. You Can Decide Not To Pick Up The Phone When Your Boss Is Angry.

The financial crisis has pretty much stalled all start-up investment activities but now there are signs that they are slowing coming back. Among a few cool companies on the radar is Exaudios. It is the equivalent of a lie detector but works more like an emotional detector. They can analyze the intonation of someone’s voice when they call you on your cell to see if he or she is calm, stressed out, cheerful or simply angry. They claim that it is up to 80% accuracy. I have been playing with the idea for a while and I think they have solved some of the key technical challenges.

Their strategy is to sell this to call centers but I am not sure why, I guess when an angry customer call then they can  switch to an automated response and when a happy voice call they forward the call to the sales center to cross sell you cable channel package or whatever. I am trying to think of other applications potential, but then any human can sense that if the other person is happy or upset, why do we need this? Only if they can apply this with different offerings and test you response. I don’t think it makes sense for call center at all, because most people are pissed anyway that they have to call for support. Everything can be done on the web, and if they have to call, they have reasons to be unhappy.

I think most call center people knew I was unhappy when I called, I didn’t think they were empowered to do anything. They weren’t allowed to give you a name to escalate. And sometimes people don’t care, why would that person three thousand miles away sitting in a five hundred people call center cared about your emotions? There is not much they can do anyway.

The only thing I think it would work is when a customer starts yelling, the system will detect it and the call will be redirected and jointly handle by a senior person, that way you can yell at two persons instead of one. Or there are special units that are good defusing angry customers, call them ‘negotiators’. The intonation analysis software can also correlate with physical conditions.  I still don't think call center is the right application although they think that's where the money is.

The company also sells a solution for HR. It is SaaS application that allows organization to determine the emotional attitude of a candidate towards a specific job, providing an insight into the personality of a candidate and suitability for a specific job. I am not sure how it works. Everyone can sound happy during a job interview. They also claim that the solution predict the likelihood of employees to work together as a team. That’s a stretch and you have to convince me. But I do think this technology has potential, but not the applications they have in mind. I have a few in my mind.