11 – Thinking what is next again, and again and again

I do have everything I need. I have a comfortable environment, I have a beautiful wife, I rent a nice place in Tokyo and I do have a job that is challenging and pays relatively well, not great, but fair enough.

Why am I unsatisfied with life? So I go back to self-help (which in Japanese they call self-development) books. Do they help? Sometimes, most of the time. You just have to choose which one to follow. I like the 99u.com website from Behance and their recommendations.

So lately I started to read http://99u.com/book/maximize-your-potential and the discussion of the day was: Am I doing something meaningful? I know I am making the world a little bit better a little piece at a time, but I there is something bothering me real deep. I lost my cause lately.

Six months ago I had this idea that I knew a lot about Product Planning User Experience and could share with everyone.  But those 6 months showed me that a lot of what I thought was  right was actually incomplete. At my previous job I had a user target that was clear, but at my new job the target is not clear. They ask me all the time to create something for everyone, but I feel I am creating for no one. It feels boring sometimes, it feels like what I doing has no meaning.

Is the problem the job? I don’t believe so. I believe the problem is how I dealt with it, without patience, getting mad at people for their poor abilities with scheduling, getting mad at people because their levels of quality were different than mine.

But after deep thoughts on it, I am reviewing what I do. What is up next, how to finish what I started. And start something again, propose something before somebody ask me to do what they want. What do I want to propose? I will think of something and write here after I discover it.

10 – Gear

I will be honest with you, everything you need is lots of paper and some pens and you are set for life. But we know that technology evolved a little bit more than this.

Let me tell you about my personal gear:

VAIO Duo 13

PC: VAIO DUO 13

Besides the fact that I was involved in the project, this PC has the long battery life I ever saw, up to 18 hours.

The Stylus that substitutes my Wacom pretty well and the tablet format that I love.

 

Microsoft Arc Keyboard

Keyboard: Microsoft Arc Keyboard

This is the best keyboard I have typed in so far in my life. I get REAL pleasure typing on it. It just makes me want to write more, what is really important for our profession.

 

Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse

Mouse: Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse

Why do we like to suffer, just use a mouse that is ergonomic. The Microsoft one looks really pretty as well.

Post its, similar to what my desk looks like. =)

Paper: Post its

It is great for ideas, for lists, for everything. Just use and abuse it!

 

Remember, you don’t need any of this, but when you use it, it just makes life a little bit better.

 

9 – Exercício mensal de Auto Análise

Toda vez que tenho que pensar algo novo, um novo software, um novo serviço, o que quer que seja, eu paro um pouco para pensar em mim mesmo. Será que as coisas que eu gosto agora são as mesmas de antes? O que me move, motiva? O que eu faço bem? O que eu faço mal? 

Qual link eu posso fazer de mim com o produto, com a minha criação?

Não importa quantos anos eu já venho trabalhando na área, a desenho acima foi feita essa semana e tenho certeza que estarei refazendo o mesmo diagrama assim que começar uma tarefa nova.

A gente muda e precisa se lembrar disso.

8 – Aula Inaugural da Estácio – Achando meus Sonhos

Ontem eu tive um dia muito construtivo como palestrante da Aula inaugural do curso de Jornalismo, Publicidade e Design Gráfico.

A platéia foi ótima e fiquei com uma energia muito boa, muito motivado a continuar trabalhando na minha carreira internacional.

Gustavo Dore explicando sua formação

Gustavo Doe com as professoras Renata e Aline

Gustavo Dore – Study Hard

Platéia da palestra de Gustavo Dore

Em Anexo coloco meus slides. Fique a vontade para baixar e compartilhar. Espero que lhes sirva de motivação.

7 – Vision

A Vision that shower us all

What about Vision? Why is it necessary? Why it should come first? What is all the fuzz about?

“When the sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger” Anthony de Mello.

The principle feels religious, an idea that will guide the whole process. If you want to accomplish things in a deeper level, everyone should share it. Because everyone is sharing it and being guided by it you get consistency, passion and you might achieve it.

With the examples you can understand better. At Sony, I don’t remember being under a clear corporate Global Vision Statement. At VAIO we had one, direct to Amaze the customer and give him a premium feeling. That was more than enough. Now all my new ideas and work should give people a premium feeling when they use it. Imagine the Industrial Designers, he should make designs that feel expensive, feel premium and special. In the way we sell it, the way we teach people how to use it, it should ALWAYS feel premium, expensive, even for the cheaper models.

Once I had an even more easy to understand class with the Ritz Carlton Tokyo manager in 2009 Ricco DeBlank. He would get to his staff with just one message: Inside your scope, do what you think is best for the customer, what will make the customer feel special. End of the story. When somebody came to him to ask if they could change the way they made the beds, his answer would be something like: if you think it makes the customer feels more special, do it. Somebody had the idea to add to mint candy in the pillow when the customer enters the room and they were allowed to do it right away. Such a cheap way to make the customer feel more special. And the list goes on and on.

If you make it in words is better, but if you don’t, this is not a problem unless it is a shared feeling. Smaller companies are easier to handle, big companies or big teams you might need something written down.

How to Create that Vision? One way is to go back to that brainstorming way in the chapters before. Do a brainstorm about the Values of your company, your own values and the values that you want to give the customer. Then create the clusters and create a sentence that involves those words. Always remember to have a big stock of post its and GO!

6 – Clustering

Cluster of Ideas

Remember that 100 ideas? What to do with them? Here is an idea. Separate them into clusters, groups. When you do it, you are going to notice some some patterns.

I remember once I did a brainstorm in Brazil about their problems with PCs. After all the ideas, we organized in clusters and saw their problems in a deeper level. Their ideas were about having videos that don’t run natively on the PC or having a way to search their PC from everywhere. When we saw the clusters we notice that their ideas were symptoms of greater problems like Piracy (they download illegal content and it comes in different formats) and Security (PC is a item valued by the thieves in Brazil).

If we were doing a promotion or we had to focus in a feature, I would go for Security first (since it is legal) and try to promote the openness of our system to any content (Since Promoting piracy is unethical).

Next: Vision. Guiding the whole team.

5 – 100 ideas

100 ideas

As many of the posts here, I cannot get credit for it. This philosophy was taught to me by Naohito Okude when teaching me about Design Thinking.

It is as simple as it is written there. 100 ideas is what a group normally needs to start anything going. So you want to create a name for your company or decide the user target you are going to, 100 ideas might be able to help.

Remember that if you have only 5 to 10 ideas, there is a big chance that they are just on the surface of your creativity, in the common place of ideas. This means that there is a big chance that other people have the same ideas as you. But when you force yourself or your team to get to 100, you probably had to go deeper into your thoughts to bring them.

The MOST IMPORTANT part of this is actually the INPUT you have before the brainstorm. If you are talking about markets, read a lot about several markets, analyze them and you brainstorm about your target user you get a good chance to have better ideas. If you already know the target and you are going to brainstorm solutions or features, visit the user target, interview them, read books and articles about their habits, understand the country they live in. Try to be as prepared as possible for a brainstorm.

Don’t imagine that the final decision will come in one of the 100 ideas, they might but they probably won’t. They will come probably from the clusters created by organizing those ideas. Topic for our next post.

 

 

4 – The Open-Analyze-Close Process

Open-Analyze-Close

Every process can be handle this way in a macro and micro  level. Imagine you are going to start a game. First you brainstorm scenarios, then you analyze, then choose which scenarios are going to be in the final scheme.

In a micro level, each one of the steps of the game should follow the same approach. Characters: Open [Man? Woman? Cat? Robot? Alien?] Analyze [man is too common; woman is good because you can make it sexy; cats don’t match the idea; robots can be a complement to the woman; aliens can be the enemy] Close [Sexy Woman controlling giant robots to fight Aliens] It’s going to be a hit!

Scenario: Open [Present; CyberPunk; Dictatorial Alternative Future; Historical Past; Medieval Fantasy] Analyze [Present is too common; CyberPunk sounds nice but the Aliens don’t match; Dictatorial Alternative Future also don’t match aliens at first; Historical Past can be interesting, like robots made of wood, but their movement would be too limited; Medieval Fantasy can have robots made of magic] Close [Medieval Fantasy in which Aliens arrive to control earth and the only hope is robots controlled by Magic.] Wow, you sold me already.

Now you try yourself with whatever project you are in. This normally will take several days and even years depending of what you are creating. Most of the time is the mix of bad ideas that create a good one. So don’t be shy and start making lists!

Next: 100 ideas

3 – The Design Cycle

Cycle of the Design Process

This chart is a short version of the whole process. Why is this chart important? Don’t close yourself to new ideas too early in the process. Come up with concepts after you ideate and tried some prototypes, the concept is probably going to be a mix of a few ideas, not just one.

Keep prototyping and showing to your team, your mom, whoever you believe can give feedback. Then act on it. Be open to re-do your concept and your prototype as you move on. Be as iterative as possible.

From now on I am going step by step with you. Trying to explain what to do in each stage. Documenting as much as possible. As said in Myth Busters, “The only difference between science and screwing around, is writing it down.”

Next: the Open-Analyse-Close process

2 – Technology Approach vs User Centric Approach

2 – User Centric vs Technology Based (page 1)

2 – User Centric vs Technology Based (page 2)

2 – User Centric vs Technology Based (page 3)

Tried a different way to write. Notice the grammar errors too late to fix for this post. Next post: 3 – The Design Cycle