I suppose there is an endless supply of people passing unsubstantiated personal opinion as established fact, especially online. Kathy Sierra’s recent post (see below) is but one example of this epidemic corrosion of knowledge. Kevin O’Keefe at Lexblog gives us another example. Of course he isn’t just some pusher of high-fructose-corn-feel-goodness—he’s a former trial lawyer, someone who’s job it is to distinguish fact from opinion. Yet he says:

LexBlog still gets clients saying they want all links on their blogs to open a new window. Why? Because they fear people will leave their blog. Is that nuts or what?

Want to tick people off? Have your links open new windows. Have users click to a number of links on your blog so they now have 8 or 9 windows open. Make it difficult to browse because the back button can’t be used to browse because every link is a new window. You’ll have people unsubscribing from your blog in a New York minute.

So after overstepping the bounds of his expertise from law to usability, what evidence does he provide? None. His opinion on usability and surfing practices is fact because he says so. Well, opinion is not fact, especially when your opinion is wrong: I’ve experienced (and I do have expertise in this matter) in formal testing the exact opposite of what Kevin says. Browser users do not surf sequentially, but do so in parallel—a behaviour better supported by links that spawn new windows than links that reuse the same window.

So what’s the big deal? Clearly it isn’t the Lexblog post. Its that as we loose both respect for and familiarity with actual evidence in a flood of personal opinion passed off as fact, discourse quickly becomes little more enlightening than a Crossfire style shouting match—and that’s where progress stops.

Unfortunately I’ve found that desgin discource is particularly prone to this.

I’ve never been a fan of “what’s hot, what’s not” lists. However CNN money has a very interesting article about how the Jack Welch business dogma may be working its way over to the “not” list.

Now I will admit that Welch has probably forgotten more about running a business just this week than I’ll ever know. But I have to wonder if we’re nearing a sort of Copernican revolution in business. Has much of what we’ve held to be true, including Welch, only seemed true because of our limited perceptions? The west was quite sure the earth was the center of the universe before Copernicus and Kepler provided the theory with Galileo and Brahe providing the evidence that the sun and not the earth is the true center (of course with even a little more perspective we “know” that the universe’s center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere, making all of these guys right but for varying wrong reasons–but that’s a topic for another blog).

Daniel Scocco at Innovation Zen posted something that got me thinking about what the CNN articles really means, which reminded me of this chart from Barry Ritholtz.

I’ve looked pretty carefully, and despite Welch’s book being widely read, none of the stars from 89-99 continued to shine between 02-06. As Ritholtz says in an earlier post, old stars don’t lead new bulls.

Furthermore as Kaplan and Foster point out in Creative Destruction (and as Scocco points out in his post, and as you can read in this pdf):

In 1987, Forbes republished its original “Forbes 100” list and compared it to its 1987 list of top companies. Of the original group, 61 had ceased to exist. Of the remaining thirty-nine, eighteen had managed to stay in the top one hundred… They survived. But they did not perform. As a group these great companies earned a long-term return for their investors during the 1917-1987 period 20% less than that of the overall market. Only two of them, General Electric and Eastman Kodak, performed better than the averages, and Kodak has since fallen on harder times… Similarly, of 500 companies in the original S&P 500 list in 1957, only 74 remained on the list in 1997 and of these only 12 outperformed the S&P 500.

With this sort of long-term failure rate something must be wrong in our theories of prudent business management—as wrong as Ptolemy was about the sun going around the earth, and as wrong as the Catholic Church for adhering to such dogma for over a millenium despite centuries of glaringly obvious contradictory evidence. Scocco suggests what’s wrong: MBA programs are about administration, not innovation. And I’d go a step further by adding that administration and innovation are not just different but antithetical (like puzzle problems and wicked problems).

Just because blog posting is technically effortless doesn’t mean it should be intellectually so. I’m not railing against fluffy posts about trivial matters—I love fluff and trivia. What I am railing against is the all to common practice of posting a thin pretense of insight that crumples under the lightest scrutiny—I’ve labeled these twinkies in an earlier post–and the throngs of praising sheep who eat it up (“oh the emporer’s delicate fabric is beautiful!”). In other words I’m railing against the design world’s vapid blather with delusions of meaning.

For example, Kathy Sierra’s “Does the US suck at design?” offers us the following thesis: a culture of design is about aesthetics and style, and such cultures flourish only outside the US. The corollary to this is that design culture withers in the US.

She demonstrates her thesis with the following 4 points of evidence:

1. Western Europe has good graffiti
2. Barcelona has gorgeous women
3. Architecture outside the US is older
4. And Swiss and New Zealand currency is more colorful

To begin with the foundation of her very premise, that design equals style, is so naïve, so unsophisticated, so misguided that it seems more appropriate coming from an accounting manager whose oatmeal cubicle walls proclaim “Hang in There” with kittens dangling from trees, than someone who positions themselves as some kind of authority on design.

But even if each of these premises were true, they still would not support Sierra’s thesis. Unfortunately this level of reasoning is all too common in the design world. And we designers wonder why we aren’t given the credit we think we deserve—perhaps we are. So, not only is Sierra’s logic incredibly faulty (her conclusion just doesn’t follow from her premises) but her premises are themselves demonstrably wrong (at least to the level of rigor shown in her post). So because I’m in a combative mood and have some time, let’s tackle each one …

Western Europe has good graffiti. Well, since Sierra offers no more than loose personal opinion to demonstrate veracity here’s some counter personal opinion. I too have been to Western Europe (actually only a few select cities, so I can hardly claim expertise over such a large and diverse area). The only place where I was impressed by the graffiti was in Barcelona (many of my pics to the right feature Barcelona’s graffiti). It is more clever, subversive, political, curious, amusing, absurd and smarter than any I’ve seen over here. However in terms of visual aesthetics and style (the metrics Sierra uses) I found it plain and uninspiring, certainly nothing like the Technicolor tag explosions you’ll find adorning some of the less well heeled buildings in such an unassuming city as Dallas.

Strike one!

Barcelona has gorgeous women. I found this particularly funny. My girlfriend and I spent a couple of weeks in Barcelona. We absolutely loved the city (especially its witty graffiti) but were quite surprised by how consistently unattractive the women were physically—and the viral mullets and wrestling boots they all wore at that time didn’t help the matter.

Now, as a heterosexual male in the prime of life with no weird fetishes that would land him jail I can say with absolute certainty that Manhattan may have the highest density of physically attractive women in the world (the world that I’ve seen anyway). And I’m not talking about fake plastic models here; I’m talking about regular women who live in the city going about their daily business. Barcelona ain’t even near that ballpark.

Steeee-rike two!!

Architecture outside the US is older. Can’t argue with that, but I can make a giant red herring salad out of it.

Foul!

Swiss and New Zealand currency is more colorful. While also true I could write pages on how facile and misguided this reasoning is, but I’ll opt for brevity instead.

Sierra complains about how dull and similar US dollar bills are. She further complains about how unusable they are, giving them an F. I have used money all of my life, and I have never myself, nor witnessed anyone else, ever having any difficulty using US dollars bills. I hardly think a product with a centuries’ old track record of successful use deserves an F for usability. To be fair, her comment about adding non-visual cues to bills for the blind is probably a great idea.

The greenback’s usability is (the blind notwithstanding) simply not a problem. And John Carroll says one of the greatest mistakes design can make is to solve the wrong problem.

Since design is style in Sierra’s world, let’s dig into the US dollar’s visual design. But let’s avoid the subjectivity trap of aesthetics, and focus on something more stable like semiotics What Sierra calls “dull” is actually quite powerful. The bills’ conservative visual design communicates a strong, unrelenting, historically unbroken continuity with the nation’s fiduciary stability and commitment.

Similar to what the Rock of Gibralter communicates for Prudential, the dollar bill’s visual designs communicates gravity, trust, permanence and importance, the kinds of feelings old banks used to radiate with their marbled floors and Doric columns. They were temples.

Stamps can be all colorful and whimsical, because they are small, insignificant, single-dosage, disposable currency. But money is permanent, money is forever, money is too important, and the US dollar bills look the part. Save the colour for Monopoly.

And those same old dead white guys, the guys who founded the US as both a polity and as revolutionary political idea stand behind that dollar just as they stand behind the constitution, yesterday, today and tomorrow. Its all about trust, trust that this bill is worth something, and will always continue to be worth something. What the hell does a coloured penguin represent?

Stiiiike three–you’re out!

I’m actually not trying to convince you that I’m right on any of these points. Rather I’m trying to show that there are equally (and I think much more) valid opinions that contradict the ones Sierra serves up in her dizzyingly anemic logic.

Oh, and I almost for got my favourite where she says “[t]hen again, all those MySpace pages could be a real setback…” demonstrating a monumental incapacity to see beyond self-reference and betraying an absolute solipsistic miscomprehension of what makes MySpace so incredibly fantastic at what its does. Its like old folks in the 50s complaining about rock-and-roll–its a good sign that culture has left you behind in the loving arms of irrelevance.

Sierra’s ‘evidence’ so rooted in the vicissitudes of personal subjectivity maybe be interesting in a getting-to-know-you sort of way, but it is by no means support for a contentious or meaningful claim. Unfortunately this level or reasoning is epidemic in design and it is killing our profession’s credibility in the business world.

Thanks but no thanks Kathy, you can keep your twinkies.

Why on earth do all coffee mugs come equipped with that little (and sometimes not so little) puddle receptacle on the bottom? What purpose does it sever other than to collect enough water to make a mess on the floor every time I empty the dishwasher?

This is a part rhetorical, part serious questions, I mean really, what is that indent for?

Sorry, I’ve been out of touch lately. We’ve just moved into out new place, and I’ve been fighting back cresting waves of boxes and old junk I don’t remember ever buying (where does it all come from?!). So this move that I’ve been wrapped up in for a couple of months now is finally drawing to a close, and I’ll have time again to start blathering on about design and innovation once more.

In the mean time here’s a great quote I found on Overheard In New York that pretty much sums up my feeling about interactive art and design:

I disagree with the notion that design as a discipline, and designers by extension, are somehow specially positioned to address the world’s problems. First let’s make some distinctions.

Engineering’s methods, values and activities are optimized to solve puzzle problems. However that which makes engineers good at solving puzzle problems also makes them bad at solving wicked problems, which design’s methods, values and activities are optimized to solve.

By analogy then, that which makes designers good at solving wicked problems also makes them bad at handling intractable predicaments. Indeed it’s almost trite to say that design is a problem solving endeavour. However predicaments are by definition insoluble. Approaching a predicament from a design perspective then necessarily treats it as a problem. This creates an inherent contradiction which asks all the wrong questions and usually results in worsening the situation. I wonder if such a contradiction also drives supply side thinking likewise resulting in worsening solutions.

I’m not saying designers should not engage. Indeed people are certainly not merely the sum of thier professional discipline’s methodologies. And so designers are also simultaneously citizens, parents, students, tax-payers, gay republicans, etc.–many of which are roles better positioned to help with mitigating the results of intractible predicaments than thier role as a designer. So I guess I’m questioning the design’s academically prevelent messiah complex.

Actually I’ll go a step further. I am going to make a bold and contentious proclamation (and on the scantest of objective evidence too): Design solutions to intractable predicaments end in either failure or tyranny.

ps.
I know at least one person who should have some good counter arguements.

Supply side economics, a term coined by Jude Winniski, is a macro-economic perspective that (and forgive my gross oversimplification) revives a Frankenstien version of classical economics together with Say’s law. Classical economics is the period and school of economic thought ushered in the 18th century by Adam Smith in part as a rebuttal against mercantilism, and laid to rest in theory by John Keynes and in practice by the Great Depression. It is also characterized as trickle-down economics, or as George the first said “voodoo economics“.

Keynes characterized Say’s law as “supply creates its own demand,” because of Say’s and classical economics’ implication that demand is merely a consequence of supply. A more sophisticated reading might be to say that supply allows related latent demands to manifest themselves. This allows for Say’s law to be wrong (by omission as Keynes believed) while also revealing how it could appear to be right.

Curiously I have never come across the notion of supply side apart from it economic heritage, despite its pervasiveness as a mode of thinking well beyond economics. In all cases supply side thinking is toxic. Here are some of its failures.

• The War on Drugs. The idea here is to restrict supply by guarding borders, jailing agents within the supply chain as well as end consumers, conducting not-so-covert foreign wars, increasing militarization of security, and increasing law enforcement powers, etc… The results are quite simply an endless and catastrophic failure that has virtually no impact of drug usage while creating an artificially high price on commodities that cost virtually nothing to produce, making criminals very very very rich, and driving that money underground. Supply side thinking blinds one to the essential truth that as long as demand for drugs persists supply will find a way.
• The War on Terror. The idea here is to stop terror by targeting supply—known terrorists. This of course ignores the underlying causes that created the supply of terrorists in the first place, leaving these causes free to continue incubating more terrorists. Supply-side thinking here is a recipe for endless war (of course that might actually be the goal).
• The War on Obesity (Are you noticing a pattern here with the war metaphor? War is almost a necessary consequence of supply-side thinking it seems) Americans are obsessed with being thin, spend the most money on diet related products, and are consistently and unhealthily the most over-weight people on earth. That’s quite a paradox. Well the root is supply side thinking. Look at the solutions to obesity we have in the marketplace—nearly all of them are supply side solutions. Diet pills that allow you to eat as much as you want and never get fat. Extreme diets that prescribe eating certain unpalatable foods at certain times of day. Prepackaged engineered weight loss foods with points you can count to restrict your daily supply of fat and calories. How many solutions aim at modifying demand? How many try to help people want to eat less, or help people want to eat better? In the meantime you can now buy “husky” size car seats for your children who are too fat to fit in the regular sized ones. Supply-side efforts to make us thinner are actually making us fatter earlier.
• …endless movie sequels, fourteen different flavours of Law and Order, more features, super sized fries, etc…

And I won’t even get into supply-side’s economic failures (ok well just a little–the supply siders have bankrupted our children and our children’s children).

In other words, supply side thinking often has disastrous results, making worse what it meant to make better. This seems especially true in term of intractable predicaments (like crime, drugs, terror, obesity) and wicked problems (like new product innovation).

So how is supply-side thinking toxic to new product innovation? Because it begins with the question “what have we got?” This is the wrong question to start with (and it is after all the question that drives us). The question should be “what do people need?” All too often new product development means the engineer looks on his shelves to see what stuff he’s got, and the marketing manager tries to figure out who she can talk into buying it. This results in cold cornflakes in India (cheers niti).

Supply-side thinking restricts creativity to the known, to the controllable, to the certain and discourages reframing issues. Supply-side thinking seeks to find alternatives to gasoline. Demand-side thinking wonders why we need gas. Actually its not gas that we need, its the power to move things from here to there; gas has just been what has most commonly helped us accomplish this. What if we could move things without combustion fuel? What if we could produce more locally? What if we planned different kinds of cities? Then alternative fuels become just one of many possible solutions on the table, instead of the only one–and almost for free we discover solutions to bigger structural problems, of which petroleum scarcity is only one.

The most creative people I have worked with (and yes that includes lots of people who are not designers) are folks who do this kind of reframing naturally. Furthermore they do it from the demand-side, from the perspective of the users or customers (demand) rather than executives or managers (supply). These are the kind of people who are capable of real breakthrough innovation, the kind that redefines categories, the kind that give you exponential growth.

Put your innovation on detox—forget about the supply side.

The first stage of my move is complete. After a comfortable road trip, a few cute little towns, and a couple national parks I’ve landed back in my new old home. Here is the view from my living room window. Not too bad. Even on a grey rainy morning its awefully dramatic. I’m pretty anxious to settle in a get productive again. However my stuff is still en route, with an undertermined arrival date. Oh well. I’m glad I brought some extra clean socks.

Well this is the day before my big move from San Diego back home to Vancouver. I’ve been a little swamped with packing up the house, and trying to finish up a number of projects here. I do seem to move a lot–5 cities in as many years. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to kick back and relax when I get to Van.

… later that day …

So the house is pretty much all packed up. Most of the stuff is already on the truck, and the last big things will go on in the morning. Its quiet and echo-y in here. The shrill laptop key-clicks remind me just how empty this space is, and I find myself rummaging through memories of past moves. Curiously they have all taken place at about the same time of year–perhaps I’m just following some sort of reptilian annual migration.

All of my prior moves felt like the beginning of some kind of adventure. They all had a crisp scariness to them. This one feels more like an end. It feels like an end to the firey wanderlust I’ve had since about 17 when I decided I wanted to move to the other side of the world. I wasn’t really running away–I was running to–to what I still don’t know, but that probably isn’t the point.

I think this one will be the last, and its a little sad because there are so many places I never a got a chance to live in: anywhere in England or Japan, Paris or Helsinki, Budapest or Sao Paulo. Sure I can always visit, but I’m a terrible tourist. I need to live, pay rent, shop, eat, do laundry, slowly get soaked up by the daily rhythms of local life. I once spent a month in Rome doing nothing but mundane living among the ruins, and it was one of the best trips I’ve ever had.

Perhaps I’m on the edge of what is just a different kind of adventure; but something feels a bit less adventurous about it. Don’t get me wrong, there are few places in this world I’d rather live in than Vancouver. I feel an intense personal affection for that city such that living anywhere else again would feel adulterous. I guess I’m just a bit sad to watch the embers cool.

Ce ci n’est pas in image

Later this week I’ll be off to the Overlap unconference.

I don’t go to conference as much as I used, because over the years I don’t think I have ever gotten anything of value out of a signle one.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I did go to Montreal last year for the UPA conference. I absolutely love Montreal. If the winters were just a little less harsh I’d move there in a heartbeat. If you’re ever there, find Swartz’s deli and have one of the greatest most evilest sandwiches around. The conference however was a complete waste of time. And I almost went to IA summit in Vancouver, but I’m glad I didn’t because the word from friends who atteneded was that just some sound and some fury.

However Overlap is something entirely different. Overlap isn’t so much a conference (or even an un-conference) as it is a conversation, and great things come from great conversations. Furthermore this event is free, meaning participlation is based on passion, not profit.