What Pope Francis I achieved in his introductory moments took communication almost to the level of communion, well beyond the “know your audience, stick to your points, relax, persuade” etc.. He moved people who are not Catholic! How?

Lesson 1. You cannot fake it. It has to be sincere. You have to believe.

Pope Francis exuded joy, simple and unadorned. People could resonate.

Pope Francis IIt has to be sincere.

Lesson 2. They are your people, not your audience.

His eyes, posture, gestures and words expressed a quiet sense of humanity and fellowship. He seemed to speak to each person, individually.

Lesson 3. Ask for help. Reach out and include them in your challenge.

When he asked for the crowd to pray for him, he asked as one person to another. Certainly he did not exalt himself or speak down to the crowd, but nor did he lower himself .

Sum: New popes step into sanctified shoes and can depend on a resounding welcome. This response went further. The reporters all raved about the silence during the prayer for him. They are wrong. It was not silence; it was the sound of thousands bending their good will to a single purpose.

That is quiet, profound foundation-building in its highest, most graceful form. That is communication as communion.

And it’s also nice to know that people can still communicate without words, hoots, hollers, chants or rants.

Communication lesson for designers? Speak to the individual, personally, simply and sincerely, and they will respond.

Unless you are Adolph Hitler, of course, in which case you can just rant and rave and “remove” anyone who doesn’t resonate with the message.

I have met few people in the design community with greater heart, more zest for life, and more talent at merging design excellence with business acumen than Shaun Jackson, so it was devastating to hear Tuesday, January 15th, that Shaun Jackson had died that afternoon.

When Shaun Jackson passed, the design and business world lost a leading light. I know my world is an important degree smaller and less bright because he isn’t in it.

I knew him best for his charismatic presentations: Will anyone who was at the IDSA 1994 Dearborn conference ever forget when he started to undress on stage, removing first the tie and then the business jacket (the women held their breaths!), and then layer after layer to emerge in full Harley leathers?

“That’s when I knew that he was special,” says Celia Weinstein, IDSA conference manager at the time. “He challenged you to think out-of-the box.”

Shawn did not just design; he looked at the norm and redefined it, as his many benchmark products (and the 1994 presentation) demonstrate. He made excellence his standard.

He understood that innovation does not tell its story, it embodies the story.

It takes risks. But it prepares and mitigates those risks as far as possible with calculation and thorough preparation, perfecting an idea relentlessly in the crucible of design principles and business acumen.

There lies the element that sets him apart in the community of designers. He was as much a business leader as a design leader. He launched two companies on the backs of his design innovations and grew them into global markets. He had the intellectual power, talent and charisma to play in all the sandboxes.

Shaun was interdisciplinary by inclination, seeing design and business as a continuum through which to serve people. And he saw education as an essential fuel for ensuring that this continuum produced real value.

Shaun held  faculty appointments in art and design, architecture, and business, while he led the firm, Shaun Jackson Design Inc., with several clients such as Apple, Dell, Toshiba, General Electric Medical Systems, Herman Miller, Nike, L.L. Bean, Eddie Bauer, Harley Davidson and Patagonia. He started both Eclipse, maker of soft saddlebags for motorcycles, and High Ground, maker of  cases for laptops that fold open into mini-desks.

Indeed, he produced extraordinary value himself, holding more than 50 patents, establishing winning companies with winningly designed products.

His long-time friends say it very well.

Mark Dziersk, managing director of LUNAR Chicago, described Shaun as an inspiration, a visionary.

“Shaun was formed by the combination of pure positive energy and the will to make everything better and more meaningful. You couldn’t help but be drawn to him. He changed the world … but there was a lot more that he was planning to do. I will miss him forever.”

Bob Schwartz, general manager of global design and user experience at GE Healthcare, agrees, saying, “When Shaun made his fortune in business and sold his company, he decided that, rather than continue down the mogul path, he would dedicate his life to teaching. He used his resources, wit, intelligence and sense of adventure to help shape the thinking of scores of young design minds. A more noble contributor to the ongoing future of design is hard to find.”

And beyond the professional Shaun is the private man for whom friendship was a precious gift. Celia recalls with feeling the many times he offered support to his friends, saying, “Beyond all our professional collaborations, Shaun was my friend. I always knew I had his ongoing support and his friendship. I will miss him forever.”

Is ignorance the playground of creativity? Is knowledge a deterrent or accelerator of creativity? These are a crucial questions in this knowledge-based economy where fast-paced change is demanding creative agility. Paul Hatch, president of the Chicago office of TEAMS Design, weighs in from his global experience during his continued conversation with Kristina Goodrich of Design’s Voice.

5-Stars to Chase for Extreme Customer Service

With Hurricane Sandy approaching the mid-Atlantic, Chase Consumer Banking sent an email that reflects the highest order of customer service.

The email described a package of temporary policies to meet the banking and financial needs and worries of customers in a crisis. I’m talking delay of deadlines, waiving of fees, access to aid, etc., (see below for direct quotes):

The policies are designed: they identify and solve a problem, creating a well thought-out and sincere interaction between customers and Chase, whether the customers use the offered help or not.

The keystones of Chase’s strategy:

Honesty Chase was honest with itself about the image of banking as impersonal, rule-bound, uncaring, incomprehensible and fee-seeking and designed policies that would help overcome these image problems…at least for Chase!

Value It anticipated how a customer would feel and what they would need, building a bridge of relevant value, putting customers’ peace of mind ahead of corporate rules (and short-term profit) and

Timeliness It sent the message out before the crisis hit!

Sincerity By nailing all of the above in a letter whose tone was personal, professional and, above all, non-promotional, Chase conveyed a sincere desire to serve

All together, Chase managed an unprecedented communication coup. It built brand loyalty and thus—you guessed it—long-term profit. In fact, the policies’ lack of explicit self-interest sets it apart from anything I’ve received from a bank in 15 years.

Be Prepared!

You may not always be in crisis, but you can always anticipate your customers’ concerns and best interests and respond  in advance.

What Chase sent:

Here are highlights (not in order) from the email:

“We will be calling many of our customers in the hardest hit areas to see if there are other ways we can help. ”

“Our branch and telephone bankers are empowered to go the extra mile for customers with storm-related problems or concerns.”

“…we are waiving the following Chase fees through Wednesday, October 31st …

Ҽ Overdraft Protection Transfer, Extended Overdraft, Returned Item and Insufficient Funds Fees for deposit accounts.

“º Late fees on credit cards, business and consumer loans, including mortgages, home-equity, auto and student loans.”

“…we will generally waive the early withdrawal fees on CDs to help customers with their cash flow.”

“We hope these efforts can play a small part in easing some of your worries…if you need help, please call us…”

The voice and focus of this letter showed me a company that has it’s customers’ back. It was the first time I might have dreamed of thinking a bank could be a force for good in a community.

Who should have sent this email but did not? My insurance company!

At least someone learned the lessons of Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill!

The inundation of the airwaves with election advertising has never been more nauseating—and inept. Besides the attacks and the misrepresentations, both Republicans and Democrats provide an endless stream of uninspired and predictable messaging. Does anyone really listen? What can designers learn while these groups waste billions of dollars breaking the cardinal sins of communication?

• A little repetition goes a long way
• You have to engage your audience
• Use a laser not a shotgun
• The medium is visual, so give people a visual reason to watch—They won’t listen if they aren’t watching!

In an Oct. 25, 2012, column for the Washington Post, Ned Martel nails the total failure of these campaigns to use advertising effectively. In “Could the pols use a bit of wisdom from the Mad Men,” he especially attacks them for bludgeoning everyone when marketers have known for generations that you target messages to key audiences, using their preferred media. That way:

• You don’t irritate people with ads they don’t care about and
• You reach your target audience with a well-crafted, tailored message that may cost more to create, but costs far less to deliver

Communication lessons for designers? Target! Both your message and your medium. Who’s your audience precisely, where do they look for information, what interests them? Is it the Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg, Wired, Absolute Sound? or Reaching out to the medical industry? Who is the contact you need? Tell engaging stories! Don’t rant, repeat, reduce, assume, talk down or beat your breast; rather, tell stories with personality geared to that particular audience’s interest. Make your examples personal, digestible, believable. That’s the difference between communication and strategic communication. Actually, sounds a lot like design, doesn’t it?

Scott Wilson spoke eloquently about the the chick-and-egg question of form and function in his follow-up TIME magazine interview following up his well-deserved National Design Award for Product Design from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Scott Wilson, now with Motorola

Asked, “How much of design for you is function, and how much is form? Do you find it hard to satisfy them both in some projects?”, he said:

“It’s almost all function. The form part is easy once you’ve defined the problem and designed the solution. If you have good research or good insights, the thing kind of designs itself. Putting a form around it is the easy part, really. Finding the insights and finding the connections and the right puzzle piece that may be missing, that’s the hard part.”

I’ve worked with designers for a long time, and few have expressed it so well! See more at http://ti.me/TG6mxV.

DMI is a global design organization that has moved the bar of design management up many notches since its formation in 1975. Michael will head a strong organization that has nearly 1,400 members in 44 countries.

The DMI press release quotes Incoming Board Chair Jerry Kathman of LPK as saying, “The mission of DMI has never been more vital. Michael’s experience and passion for DMI will guide us as we create new ways of sharing our ideas in an ever more networked world.”

I’ve known Michael since his volunteer days with the Industrial Designers Society of America, where he developed an amazingly effective membership marketing campaign after earlier designing a superb Design Gallery when the national conference was in Boston in ‘91. As the release and site says, he truly brings to DMI a unique combination of experience in:

• global design management,
• business and technology strategy,
• marketing, and
• community and association management.

He has led creative and marketing teams at Firebrand, Fitch, George P. Johnson, Red7Media and INXPO software and provided strategic planning, service design and communication for such brands as Johnson & Wales University, Reebok, Mazda, Chrysler, IBM, GE and others, will serve the organization well.

“As DMI evolves into a global network of design experts, we’re thrilled that Michael brings such impressive experience not only in core design disciplines but also new ways to extend the DMI experience in powerful ways through richer networked communities and knowledge-sharing solutions,” indicated board member Jeannette Hanna.

You can already check out his blog at http://dmidialog.blogspot.com/?view=classic. Here’s what he has to say: “I believe we face a unique moment that invites design and innovation leadership to make its voice heard and its value felt more strongly in business, in the economy and in education.”

Sounds great, Michael!

September 8, 2012, Bill Moggridge passed away and with him the design profession lost one of its most influential voices and significant leaders of the past 40 years.

(Photo my Mayo Nissen, taken at the Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design, 2010)
Bill pioneered ideas that shaped the scope of design. His work was itself a demonstration project of what design should be and how designers should approach their work.

Bill advocated for Big D Design, whereby he meant that design is far greater than a particular discipline and that as a process it integrates whatever insight will lead to a more comprehensively satisfying solution.

Having expanded to Silicon Valley with a new branch of his firm, ID Two, in 1979, Bill’s first big splash on the U.S. design stage came in 1982 when he accepted that year’s only Industrial Design Excellence Award from the Industrial Designers Society of America.

So comprehensively innovative was his team’s winning Grid Compass Computer that the jury had been unable to find anything else at its level. Already they could see the profound impact it would have on the yet-undefined field of laptop computing.

That’s when I met Bill and first heard of how the computer that was to define laptops had been developed in close collaboration with engineers. One or two other design firms had been applying an interdisciplinary model since the late ‘70s, most notably GVO, Inc.. But Bill was to take the concept much, much further.

Ultimately, Bill flung his Big D net to include psychologists, anthropologists, and anyone else likely to open doors on a better understanding of the human experience.

Experience Design’s Pater Familias

And therein lay his greatest contribution to the world of design, big or little “d”: The concept of experience design. Bill proposed that the purpose of design was to create an experience, not a product.

In fact, he was quoted as saying, “If there is a simple, easy principle that binds everything I have done together, it is my interest in people and their relationship to things.” (Wikipedia does not give its source.)

Today, our experiences are shaped by our interfaces with software and web sites, an escalation Bill foresaw in the mid-‘80s. He understood how a technology intended to make life easier could, in fact, make it full of aggravation if not dangerous error*.

Bill framed for us the disconnect between average people and technology, with its new languages and capabilities. He presented us with a petri dish of DNA, demonstrating the very long string of knowledge sources required to successfully mediate the experience.

Not only is Bill’s leadership indelibly written in his works, his teachings, his texts and, above all, in his personal proof-by-doing, his ideas have penetrated deeply and spread broadly. Collaborations are occurring that were not possible before he came on the scene. The design of our interactions with “products” (be they software, hardware, or environments) is not accidental or left to the perspective of one discipline, be it programmer, artiste, or engineer.

Needless to say, to truly design a satisfying experience, you need Big D. And for Big D you need a respect for the expertise of others and the ability to play the integrator. It’s a Big job, but someone has to do it. Why not Design?

*Unfortunately, not everyone paid attention to Bill regarding user interface challenges. Or perhaps the possibility of a perfect interaction is simply an oxymoron, as my experiences this morning attest. But I won’t whine.

Resources

Videos

Tribute to Bill Moggridge as director of the Cooper Hewitt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWkk9sr_GOs

Designing Interactions, by Bill Moggridge, published in 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interactions-Bill-Moggridge/dp/0262134748/ref=la_B001IGO628_1_1?ie=UTF8&;qid=1348163533&sr=1-1

Designing Media, published in 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Media-Bill-Moggridge/dp/0262014858/ref=la_B001IGO628_1_2?ie=UTF8&;qid=1348163533&sr=1-2

Amazon has dedicated a page to him: http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Moggridge/e/B001IGO628/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1348163507&;sr=8-2-ent