Unfortunately I have less time right now than I’d like to write at greater length about each of these three items I’ve recently read. I think each is worth taking the time to read so I’m recommending them here with just a few quick thoughts.

It’s “Masters of Design” special issue time again over at Fast Company. One of the articles was a standout for me – the one about the big McMakeover at McDonald’s. A few years back it seemed the trend was to apply the term “mcdonaldization” to suggest that a fast food model was taking over a particular process, organization or industry. It was a put down, meaning that creativity and innovation were replaced by rote, soulless routines that reduced the quality of service in favor of speed, efficiency and convenience. I even recall an article from College & Research Libraries, the peer-reviewed library journal, that used the term in its title, and it’s been used fairly regularly in higher education to refer to the big business approach taken by for-profit online higher education programs. What’s interesting about all this is that the Fast Company article is high praise for how McDonald’s is using design to re-invent itself – and be anything but McDonaldized (Ok, they’re not exactly breaking the fast food mold). The article highlights the work of Denis Weil, the designer leading the makeover, who says that “Design is doing something with intent.” The article inspires me to think that when it comes to re-invention and mass change, if McDonald’s can do it, why can’t libraries. Well, if we had a designer like Denis Weil (and some of McDonald’s cash), I think we could.

Just yesterday I downloaded Steven Johnson’s TED Talk on “good ideas”, and I’m looking forward to watching it soon. (NOTE: if you weren’t aware of how easy it is to download a selected TT to iTunes – it is easy – give it a try). So today I came across a WSJ article written by Johnson about the origins of good ideas and the importance of being a tinkerer. I now realize he is coming out with a new book on this exact topic. The article provides a taste of the book, which makes the point that real innovation isn’t the work of a lone creative genius sitting alone in a room when a light-bulb idea pops out. That may happen occasionally, but Johnson uses real world examples to demonstrate that good ideas emerge when different ideas, products or processes that already exist come together in new or different ways. In the past much innovation has happened in closed environments, such as corporate R&D shops, and intellectual property laws have kept it competitive and private. Johnson believes that open innovation may create an environment in which many more good ideas can emerge. Read the article, watch the TT – and perhaps you may be inspired to be the “tinkerer” for your library.

From the “user experience backlash” department – sort of – comes this blog post titled “Can Experience be Designed?” from Oliver Reichenstein at iA. While the language suggests that Reichenstein has a problem with the validity of user experience designers, what he basically asks is if the idea of experience design is bullshit. Can you really design an experience for people when everyone achieves a slightly different experience from any particular design which he or she encounters? He asks “Do experience designers shape how users feel or do they shape with respect to how users feel?” Can an architect design a house that delivers a certain type of experience or does the house’s design lead to a spectrum of experiences – based on the lives of the inhabitants and what they bring to the experience? Reichenstein then proceeds to give the reader much to think about the concept and practice of user experience design. I like these types of articles because they force me to question some of my beliefs about design thinking and user experiences. It also helps me to clarify what, in a library, can be improved through user experience design, and how it might be accomplished. I’ll be further reflecting on this one.

I had seen the advance announcements about Want Magazine, and was eagerly looking forward to the debut of issue one (a/k/a Release 001). Now we can all read Want Magazine. The first issue became available just recently. Want Magazine looks like it will be a valuable learning source for those of us who want to better understand how designers think and what drives their creativity and creation. It appears that the format – and who knows just exactly how Want will evolve – is recorded interviews with a rich mix of designers. Each interview is posted with text notes from the interviewer – which is helpful if you don’t have time to watch the interview and want to know the key takeaways. According to its mission statement here’s what we can expect:

What makes our magazine unique is that we are willing to take an apparently mundane occurrence, and celebrate it. We do not take experiences for granted. We trust them to instill change, to have the power to transform, to improve lives and the lives of others. First and foremost, we intend to celebrate the makers of experience –those who devote their full time, energy and passion to making memorable moments and positive feelings. Among these people, we highlight the professionals in the field of User Experience Design. Their discipline is purposely centered on the research, planning and execution of strategies, activities and results that bring purpose to users of products, interactions and places.

The chief problem of Want is that I’ll never find the time to view all the great interviews. I’ve taken a look at the ones with Peter Merholz, Don Norman and Cordell Ratzlaff – and all were well worth the time. I hope to get back to check out a few more of the interviews. I think Norman has some profound thoughts about why people become enthusiastic about complex systems and the process by which that happens. I also like Ratzlaff’s view of what user experience is:

I think it encompasses the entire relationship that a person has with the device or product or application that they’re using. That includes the functionality of the device. It includes the physical relationship between the person and the product. And it includes the emotional relationship. It also encompasses every touch point between the person and the product.

What both Norman and Ratzlaff have to say strikes me as directly related to the library experience – or rather what we need to do to design a better one. There needs to be an emotional attachment and an emotional relationship. I see this in the students who win our library research prize. They are incredibly passionate about their research, and they’ve formed strong attachments with our collection and librarians. I recommend that you sign up for updates from Want Magazine. If you want to learn more about user experience, or even just want to understand it a little better, then take a closer look.

Several good articles about the intersection of design and innovation are found in the 2009 (V. 30, N.3) issue of the Journal of Business Strategy. It is not freely available on the Internet, but many academic libraries subscribe to Emerald online journals and this issue is available there. I wanted to mention two article in particular that I’m reading because they pertain to design thinking (well more than a few in this issue are but these two are of greatest interest to me – you may find others of value). The first is titled “Beyond good: great innovations through design” by Steven Sato and the other one is “Innovation is good, fitness is better” by James Hackett.

I’m doing some preparation for a talk about the value of taking an entrepreneurial approach to librarianship. Invariably, if you delve into entrepreneurism the topic of innovation enters the conversation. Both of these articles offer some good insights into how design thinking can provide a framework for increasing or stimulating organizational innovation. Hackett is particularly strong on the connection between design thinking and the evolution of an organization. He believes that only the fittest organizations are the ones that survive industry turmoil. Using his own experience as the CEO of Steelcase, an office furniture company, Hackett describes how design thinking was used to keep moving to the next level of organizational fitness. I found it most interesting that he says he first learned about design thinking 20 years ago at the Illinois Institute of Technology Institute of Design; design thinking is hardly as new an approach as I once thought. For Hackett the most critical aspect of achieving fitness is critical thinking. He provides a path for moving from thinking to implementation in the article.

Sato’s article is the more dense of the two, but he attempts to create a closer relationship between design thinking and innovation, differentiation and simplification. Sato defines design thinking as “a systematic approach that optimizes value to customers with benefits to the company”. He sees the main function of design thinking as providing the balance in deciding what to produce that customers will use with the most effective way of making and offering that new product or service. Sato’s concepts may be best understood by examining figure 4 in his article. It summarizes how design thinking can be applied to innovation, differentiation and simplification. Most of these examples are based on work done at Hewlitt-Packard. As an example of innovation we learn how HP used a design thinking process to automate micro-finance transactions. I found Sato’s article provided a rather difference perspective on design thinking, one I hope to put to use soon.

I hope you’ll have an opportunity to read these two articles. While this special issue of Journal of Business Strategy has several more that focus on design thinking, I’d recommend these two if you have limited reading time. But if you have more time, don’t stop there. Check out some of the other articles as well.

When speaking about design thinking at a library conference or in a webcast one question will routinely be raised: “How are librarians actually putting design thinking to use?”. It’s a good question and one that I can answer with a few examples. I often try to encourage participants in the discussion to think of ways they might already be using design thinking or some part of that process without realizing it. I provide examples of how I’m using it in my work. But having even more examples would be better, and in time I think there will be as librarians begin sharing their applications of design thinking in the literature. I recently came across an example of that exact thing.

In the latest issue of the journal Medical Reference Services Quarterly I discovered an article titled “Single Service Point: It’s All in the Design” by Pamela S. Bradigan and Ruey L. Rodman, of the John A. Prior Health Sciences Library at Ohio State University. It appears in the Winter 2008 issue (v. 27) on pages 367-378. It’s not freely online but your library may have a subscription via the Haworth Jounals online collection. Here’s the abstract from the article:

‘‘Design thinking’’ principles from a leading design firm, IDEO, were key elements in the planning process for a one-desk service model, the ASK Desk, at the John A. Prior Health Sciences Library. The library administration and staff employed the methodology to enhance customer experiences, meet technology challenges, and compete in a changing education environment. The most recent renovations demonstrate how the principles were applied. The concept of ‘‘continuous design thinking’’ is important in the library’s dailyoperations to serve customers most effectively.

Where this article can be most helpful to other librarians wanting to know how they could use design thinking is the well laid out discussion of how the five steps of the IDEO design thinking process were applied in the merger of their two service points into one. They elaborate how they put into practice the ideas of understand, observe, visualize, evaluate/refine and implement. All of these phases are fully discussed in the book The Art of Innovation. As a result I think it becomes easier to grasp how this process can help a library to identify problems and then develop appropriate solutions. Bradigan and Rodman used design thinking to first determine in what ways their patrons needed a better, more streamlined service desk. Their solutions were based on understanding and observing their library users.

While it’s likely that this journal doesn’t get read much beyond the medical librarian community, I’m hoping it will reach a broader audience. I am encouraged that it will because the Journal of Academic Librarianship included this article in its “Guide to the Professional Literature” in the January 2009 issue. That’s how I discovered it, and I hope more librarians will as well.

Editor’s Note: Cross-Posted from ACRLog.

It’s rare that I’ll write about one of my personal projects – maybe a casual link here and there – but today I want to share with you the link to a recent project that I’m particulary proud to bring to your attention. This past spring semester I engaged in a unique experience. For the first time in my career I served as the guest editor of a journal issue. A good friend and colleague, Lisa Finder, a librarian at Hunter College and current co-editor of Urban Library Journal invited me to serve as the guest editor of the spring 2008 issue. When she said I could choose any theme I liked that sealed the deal. After some careful thought I decided to assemble a collection of articles that would showcase the creative abilities of librarians. We call this issue “The Creative Library“. Lauren Yannotta, also a librarian at Hunter College, is ULI’s other co-editor.

If you are new to Urban Library Journal you should know:

Urban Library Journal is an open access, refereed journal of research and discussion dealing with all aspects of urban libraries and librarianship, welcomes articles dealing with academic, research, public, school, and special libraries in an urban setting.

The editors and I were amazed at the number of quality manuscripts we received in response to our call for papers. Choosing those to include was quite difficult. I think you will find the articles in this issue offer great examples of creative librarians at their best. For an overview of what’s included take a look at my introduction to the issue. Here’s a snippet from that overview:

That’s why this special issue about creativity in libraries is just right for the times. First, it’s important to celebrate the many creative minds working in this profession. Libraries have traditionally orked with restrained resource pools. To have come so far with so many successes is owing to the high levels of creative thinking in our libraries. Second, as we find ourselves in times of rapid change our most valuable asset is our ability to master the art of adaptation. If one program fails, if users seem to be going elsewhere for their information, if user expectations shift unexpectedly, then library workers must use their creativity to quickly adapt. By understanding our user communities, we can create new programs that leverage our skill sets to deliver new services and new ideas that will continue to make the library a community destination, both physical and virtual. We have compiled here a set of dynamic articles that demonstrate that there is no lack of creativity in the world of librarianship. But you probably already knew that. Anyone who has worked in this field for any length of time knows there are many creative people attracted to the field of librarianship. Yet we rarely use our journal literature to promote the many acts of creativity happening at our libraries. This special issue of Urban Library Journal changes that.

Did I say that this is a free, open access journal. So it’s free. What are you waiting for?

With the American Library Association’s Annual Conference just about to begin, today I’m thinking about the Midwinter Conference that was held back in January 2008. At that event I attended a thoughtful program that featured a speaker talking about mastering the art of adaption, something librarians were advised to do – individually and organizationally – to thrive in the 21st Century. I thought of this program just the other day as I read a short but interesting essay titled “Design and the Elastic Mind.” I came across this article when a colleague of mine gave me a copy of a magazine called Seed. I had never heard of it. I guess I’d describe it as a popular science publication. This particular issue, the March/April 2008, was “The Design Issue”. My colleagues know I’m interested in design. In this essay by Paola Antonelli, which leads off the design articles, she writes:

 ”As science and technology accelerate the pace of society, design has become more and more integral to our ability to adapt to change. Indeed, in the past few decades people have coped with dramatic changes in several long-standing relationships—with time, space, information, and individuality, to name a few. Designers are translating these “disruptive” scientific and technological innovations by providing thoughtful guidance and a collaborative approach. In order to step boldly into the future, we need design.”

I’m glad to hear that we need design. But what caught my attention is that Antonelli says that while being adaptable is good, the rapidly accelerating pace of change requires more than adaptability. What we really need is elasticity. According to her that means:

“being able to negotiate change and innovation without letting them interfere excessively with one’s own rhythms and goals. It means being able to embrace progress, understanding how to make it our own. One of design’s most fundamental tasks is to help people deal with change. Designers have the ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores and to convert them into objects and ideas that people can understand and use. Without designers, instead of a virtual city of home pages with windows, doors, buttons, and links, the internet would still be a series of obscure strings of code, and appliances would be reduced to standardized skeletons of functions.”

So it may be that we need to shift from mere adaptability to an elastic mind. Just exactly how we do that is discussed further in the article, but it involves shifting our temporal rhythms. And of course, new design principles that go beyond human-centered design will help us achieve this elasticity in ourselves and our objects. Take a look at this essay, and if you can obtain a copy of the Design Issue, you may find more there worth exploring. I did.

There’s nothing quite like reading good, clear explanations of the basic concepts and approaches we focus on here at DBL. Librarians may struggle as they seek to understand and familiarize themselves with design thinking, user experiences and other important elements of a library that delivers a great user experience. That’s why I found Kate Rudder’s interview with Nathan Shedroff to be informative and enlightening on several levels. Shedroff is experience strategist, author, and the Program Chair and founder of the brand new MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts. Unlike some of the more technical articles on design thinking and user experience, the interview format makes it possible to learn from an expert who puts the theory into a more practical framework. Here are some snippets from the interview:

Design processes, specifically, approach the challenge to imagine and devise new solutions, in any context, by looking at customers in meaningful ways, integrating data from a variety of sources, and using it as a starting point instead of an ending point. Design respects different kinds of prototyping and iteration, which is an important part of the process.

You don’t have to be a designer to learn to innovate like one, but it helps if you’ve been through the process a few times to understand what to expect and how the process needs to be supported.

Design [with a big "D"]is about how people approach a challenge and develop a solution and, as such, these processes are extendable into almost any domain: interaction design, organizational design, etc. However, most of the time that the word design [with a little "d"] is used, it is often referring to a particular type of design or domain: graphic, industrial, web, interaction, fashion, interior, etc. and it invokes all of the baggage associated with that domain in both the speaker and the listener.

Great designers have processes they rely on to investigate, ideate, prototype, iterate, validate, and communicate that they can employ to validate what their intuition may be leading them to.

Check out the rest of the interview. I think you’ll find it a good learning experience

To make my life even more exciting I’ve signed on to guest edit an issue of Urban Library Journal. But I’m especially excited about this issue because the theme is “The Creative Library.” So I encourage you to consider submitting a proposal or share this with a colleague who you think brings a creative approach to their library work. Here are some suggested themes for articles, but use your creativity in developing an article proposal.

 

If you need more information about the issue or how to submit your proposal, take a look at the full call for proposals.

 

Since this is the break week for lots of us I thought I’d keep it light with a few quotes that I came across recently that got me thinking. I could have chosen a line from any of these quotes for the title of this post, but the one I did choose, from Roger Martin, I think speaks best to this blog’s first year of existence. In the past, as a librarian, when it came to the word “design” the only option was a discussion of building interiors or exteriors. DBL has created a new option that, for many, did not previously exist. Now design can enter our vocabulary as a way to discuss a process for thinking about ways to improve our workflow, our services, the way we innovate and the overall user experience we deliver. We hope that reading DBL has changed how you think about the word design, and has provided some new ideas for thinking about how you approach problems and develop the solutions. Thanks for your readership.

“It does not take vast resources to create buzzworthy experiences. And the events themselves, like the campus visit experience I described, can be commonplace. All it takes is a willingness to identify and enrich key touchpoints, to equip and engage faculty and staff, to train well, and to continually improve. But first, there must be a willingness to change positions with your students, donors, and other audience groups, and to work at seeing those experiences from their perspective.”

Robert A. Sevier from “Delivering on Your Brand Experience” an article about experience marketing and how it can be used to turn routine experiences into memorable ones.

“I’ve become conviced that many innovative ideas fail to be commercially successful beacuse we haven’t understood the role of design. Design isn’t decor. At Stanford, we teach ‘design thinking’- that is, we put together small, interdisciplinary groups to figure out what the true needs are and then apply the art of engineering to serve them. Only by combining design and technology will we create innovative products and services that can suceed.”

Hasso Plattner, cofounder of SAP, from an article titled “Launching the Next Generation”

“And the Big Idea for 2008? Stop competing against your competitors. Your traditional rivals aren’t your biggest worry. Disruptive innovation is hitting corporations from outside their business. Verizon (VZ) was forced to open its cell-phone service because Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) smacked it hard. Verizon’s new business model will probably generate 10 times the demand for service. You just never know. That’s life, in beta.”

Bruce Nussbaum in an article “Innovation Predictions 2008”

“I see creativity as central to design strategy. For me, design is centrally about creating options or possibilities that do not currently exist, not choosing between or among options that currently do. So at its heart, it is about the creation of something new. This highlights the difference between business administration and business design. Business administration entails the intelligent selection from among existing known options and the taking of action on the selection in question. Business design entails the creative production of a new option that is superior to the existing options.”

- Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto (From a presentation at the ID Strategy Conference 2007)

IN, otherwise known as Inside Innovation, is a regular supplement included with BusinessWeek. It is a good source for keeping up with recent trends in design and companies that use design thinking for competitive advantage. The November 2007 edition of IN is included in the November 26, 2007 issue of Businessweek, but it is also available online. If you happen to skip this particular IN you won’t miss much. This one is a bit short on articles about design; the focus this time around is on innovation. Two companies, HP and Yahoo, are profiled about the development of an innovation culture within their organizations. You may want to find out more about how companies are using software mapping to organize their intellectual property and information content. While it’s not a “must read” issue, if you have a chance take a look – some of the charts may catch your eye.