Adaptive Path Blog

I pulled together a slidecast, with audio, of “10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment.” Bryan Mason and I gave this talk at SXSW 2008 Interactive. I’ve already described the talk here (we gave a version of it at Web 2.0 Expo SF in April) but the SXSW folks recently made the audio available.

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Bryan Mason and I gave a talk last Thursday at Web 2.0 Expo ‘08 San Francisco called “10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment.” As we promised attendees of that talk, we have posted the slides here. We will soon be posting a slidecast of the same talk with audio from SXSW.

For the talk, Bryan and I talked with several creative groups, including the Neo-Futurists, the writers of Avenue Q, a writing collective called The Job Factory, and Ryan Freitas about his experiences working at Aqua, a San Francisco restaurant. We also drew on our own experiences in stage management and classical music. We chose these groups primarily because they, like design teams, create as groups, are schedule-focused, and are trying to do something different with the creative process.

From the research, we looked for common problems and techniques the groups used to deal with those problems. During the presentation, we share the stories and techniques we found.

I’ve been trying to explain to my new zen meditation advisor what exactly I do. And today he got it:

“Ok. Here’s something for you and your people to work on. I just want one device. Wireless is critical so I can take it everywhere with me. And there has to be just one login for everything. All those passwords are the bane of my existence. And everything should just work together. It would be great if you guys could do that.”

Consider it done. Happy holidays.

At Adaptive Path, many of us speak regularly at conferences. I’ve found that it is critical to understand the conference’s context, the organizer’s expectations, and any other constraints. Arming ourselves in advance with this information helps me prepare, tailor my message for the audience, and feel confident in my presentation.

When I first started speaking, I was just happy to be accepted. I didn’t ask too many questions. However, I’ve learned through experience (been burned once or twice) to ask some important questions of conference organizers before I agree to speak. Both the conference organizer and I need to make sure that my presentation will be interesting and useful to the audience.

Initially, I ask probing questions to determine if the conference is a good fit. Then, if I decide that I would like to speak there (and the conference organizer is still interested), I move on to more detailed questions.

I have compiled a checklist of questions I typically ask below. I hope this will be a useful reference to you. If you think of others I should add, please let me know.

The Basics

Some conference organizers are super busy or, for a variety of reasons, unable to share a lot of information. So, at the least, make sure you get these questions answered:

• Where, what, and when is the conference?
• What is my session about, how long is it, when is it?
• Who is the audience?
• How are you compensating me? (not necessarily $$$)

The Details

If you can have a full conversation with a program chair, you can ask a lot more:

First things first:

• Where is the conference? When?
• What is the conference about (generally)? Tech, design, something else?
• Who is putting it on? An academic group, professional org, or private group?
  This affects both what they expect of you and what you can expect compensation-wise.
• What is the topic you would like me to speak on?
• What is the topic *I* would like to speak on?
• Am I interested and available?

Then…

Audience

• Who is the audience?
  demographics, experience, interests, skills, level in organization, work context
• What are their motivations for attending?
• What is their experience level with my material? Familiarity with my topic?
• Are they the type to ask questions or sit back and listen?

Conference

• How many people will attend the conference?
• What are the themes of the conference?
• What other kinds of speakers will there be?
• Is this inspirational, academic or a hands-on conference?
• How long is the conference?

My session

• How long is my session?
• How many sessions will compete with mine?
• How many people do you anticipate in my session?
• When in the day will my session be?
• What sessions will happen before and after mine?
• What will the AV set up be like?
  they may not be able to tell you, so allow time to scout it out when you arrive
• What kind of room? How will it be set?
  they may not be able to tell you, so allow time to scout it out when you arrive

Logistics

• How will I be compensated (travel, hotel, meals, per diems, honorarium)?
• Who will book my hotel and flight?
• How many nights at the hotel will you cover?
  Most won’t cover more than two nights. Many will try to just cover one but you should definitely push for two nights - get rest before and recovery after.
• Will I receive a pass to the conference?
• When will you need my materials (abstract, bio, photos, etc)?

Good luck! Speak well!

Before our first MX event, I spoke with Scott Berkun on what was then his upcoming book, The Myths of Innovation. We didn’t publish the interview before the conference, so it didn’t make the impact it should have. Well, Scott’s speaking at MX East (Oct 21-23, Philadelphia), the book is published (and excellent), and the interview is as relevant as ever, so we’re sharing it here.

Sarah Nelson: I have Scott Berkun here with me today, and we’re going to talk about his upcoming book. But first: Scott, could you give us a little bit of a background and tell us about yourself?

Scott Berkun: Sure. So, my background’s in computer science and design. I went to Carnegie Mellon University. I was a computer science major there, but I also learned very quickly that I was not going to be a great programmer, so I studied user interface design before I left. I got hired at Microsoft in ‘94, and I worked as a usability engineer and as a program manager on Internet Explorer. I did that for maybe five or six years. I did all kinds of management stuff: Led software development, wrote specs, made decisions, treated all its bugs. I left Microsoft in about 2003 to write books, and my first book was called The Art of Project Management, which was published by O’Reilly in 2005. That book did really well, so well that they were willing to let me write another book, called The Myths of Innovation, which is what I’m talking to you about today.

SN: So, what would you say is the biggest myth about innovation?

SB: Well, there are so many to choose from. The first chapter of the book is all about one of the biggest ones: The myth of epiphany, which is the idea that when all the great thinkers and all the great creative minds get new ideas, they just come from beyond with no explanation as to why that happens or who it’s going to happen to. If I had to pick the biggest of the innovation myths, that’d be it: The myth of epiphany.

SN: So, why do you think that this myth is so pervasive?

SB: It’s nice to think that we can just say, “Maybe I’ll be creative today and maybe I won’t; it just depends on what the gods decide. And I’ll be okay if I’m not creative, but if it happens, it’s not in my control.” I think that’s a big part of many of the myths, that they distance us from having to take responsibility for whether we are creative or not.

SN: Creativity and the processes of business sometimes seem like strange bedfellows. Creativity often involves a lot of risk and ambiguity, whereas business seems to value efficiency and guarantees. In your experience, how can you bridge the gap between those two different approaches?

SB: Well, even if you are doing something that you’ve done before, something that you think is super predictable and reliable, it’s still not guaranteed. There are always uncertainties that factor into any decisions you make or any processes you put in place. So it’s an illusion that managers have complete control over their businesses, or complete control over how things are done. Someone has to stand up and say, “We don’t have that much control over the simple things. There’s always uncertainty. There’s always some kind of risk. There’s always some kind of chaos.” And once you get people to acknowledge that they don’t have as much control as they think they do, then the conversation starts to be about how do you introduce new ideas? How do you have processes that support change? How do you have processes that allow us to see what the process is missing? All those questions start to come up, and then you can reach a point where people recognize, “Okay, in order for us to grow as much as we want to grow, we have to change, and change demands risk, so we have to be okay with taking a risk on this project.” I think it always starts with someone having the guts to reflect back on the illusion of control. We always think we have control over everything, yet if you look at what’s really going on, we don’t.

SN: One of the things I’ve been wondering about is the idea of “source of innovation” within a company. Do you think it’s actually possible to create an environment in which innovation occurs?

SB: Oh, that’s a really good question. I think that you can create an environment, and it’s very simple. I think that whoever has power over a budget, and whoever has power over what features are included in a product or go up on the website, they enable innovation by saying “yes.” That’s really the fundamental thing that they have to be willing to do. When someone shows up with an idea — “Hey, why don’t we change the navigation system from this older design to this new design I’ve been thinking of? Can I get some money to go and prototype this?”— all that has to happen is the person with power says, “Yes, I will give you a week to go and prototype that and we will review it when you have the prototype, and then we’ll consider actually making those changes.” And once everyone witnesses the person in power saying “yes” to a new idea, then they’ll be comfortable bringing another idea, or a third idea. And then all of a sudden, you have an environment that is very receptive to new ideas and innovations, as opposed to the more common complaints about environments, where new ideas are like wanted men: They’re shot down pretty quickly.
(more…)

For many people, brainstorming seems to be a largely useless pursuit—meandering sessions, filled with bad ideas, rammed down your throat by a loud mouth who should have stayed in his cubicle. Brainstorming also seemed to be used during times of panic: the “what the heck are we going to do, the deadline is tomorrow” kind of brainstorming. Painful.

I, too, used to be in the anti-brainstorming camp. I now know that those frustrating, unproductive sessions were just poorly conceived and poorly run. Unfortunately, this is the experience some people have with brainstorming. This makes me sad.

Marc Andreeson, in his post Why brainstorming is a bad idea posted a nice quote from the Medici Effect demonstrating that teams using brainstorming techniques were often less effective at generating ideas than people working on the same problem in different rooms. The quoted study looked at both quality and quantity of ideas.

I’m with Scott Berkun (In defense of brainstorming) on this, though. While it may be true that many times—even the vast majority of times—group brainstorming sessions fail to produce useful results, poor facilitation, lack of focus, inappropriate choice of method, and poor team dynamics lead to most of those failures. (This is why we have sessions at UX Week on facilitation, team building, and collective creativity…)

At Adaptive Path, we use a variety of idea generation methods. From loose and fast brainstorming to highly structured idea generation sessions with clients to impromptu problem solving sessions, we sometimes get great ideas out of the group and sometimes not. The key, though, is that we regularly use these techniques — we practice, we learn, we fail, we try it again.

Brandon tells this story:

“When Domino’s Pizza did research to find out why customers ordered pizza, they expected to find data points like ‘to spend more time with my family’ or ‘convenience.’ Instead they found ‘because I’m hungry.’ “

Sometimes you just want a slice of pizza.

The other night, NPR had a piece on the iPhone, features and simplicity. The jist? People think music players, fancy touchscreens, and syncable address books on phones are cool and all but wouldn’t it be nice if, when you need to call someone, no matter where you are, you just can?

I missed Stephen Anderson’s talk at this year’s IA Summit. Every time I think about it, I kick myself. Where the heck was I? Wandering lost in the serpentine halls of the Flamingo Hotel, no doubt. Regardless, I hear I missed something special so we booked Stephen for UX Week.

What would happen if you not only designed for users but you designed with them? Would outcomes be more relevant to users? Would you increase the odds of adoption? What role does the designer then play?

Participatory Design, like User-Centered Design, keeps users at the center of design activities. However, rather than treating users as test subjects, Participatory Design explicitly involves users in the design process with generative techniques like games, collage, role-playing, etc. that help users articulate ideas, thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

Many of the techniques used in participatory design can also be used when working with stakeholders, clients, or team members who have interest in design but are not necessarily trained in its techniques. At Adaptive Path, hands-on workshops are a fundamental component of our project work, from defining scope and direction, to visioning and concepting. We find them to be a highly efficient way to collaborate and build alignment.

We are bringing several speakers to UX Week to discuss tools, techniques, and issues associated with participatory design. Liz Sanders, founder of maketools.com, is a pioneer in generative tools and collective creativity. We are excited to have her give a double session, both giving a talk on theory and practice, then taking us through a hands-on workshop. It promises to be an engaging session. Other speakers who incorporate participatory design activities into their work include Jess McMullin from nForm, Marty Gage from Lextant, and Kate Rutter from Adaptive Path. The full schedule (almost complete!) can be found here.

We are in for a treat tonight—Scott Berkun, author of The Art of Project Management, will be stopping by to share insights and ideas from his new book The Myths of Innovation. Scott gave a great talk at MX this year and we are really looking forward to having him here.

When: Tonight, Wednesday, May 16; 6pm social hour, 7pm talk

Where: 363 Brannan St, upstairs (look for the signs)

Adaptive Path will be providing soft drinks and snacks. Feel free to bring your own beverages.

Full details are available at upcoming.org.