I watched this over a year ago when it first hit YouTube and I’m surprised the viewcount hasn’t grown much higher since. A ton of prescient knowledge and analysis of the major paradigm shifts in the media industry. The two guests are Peter Chernin, former COO of News Corps, and CEO of Fox Entertainment Group and media-investor Gordon Crawford. They discuss many of the shifts, growth areas, and future business opportunities as the industry continues to evolve. Even if you have no interest in the business of media, I think its a great video because it demonstrates some sharp thinking and good insights.

Crawford at 52:20: “‘Star Trek’ probably will make no money, and ‘Hangover’ is going to make a gazillion dollars.”

The word design is used to describe a lot of things, and the title of “designer” is used in a lot of professions. A designer could be an engineer, an artist, or anyone really, tasked with the problem of creating something new. But generally, the term design is most commonly associated with those professions that are in the practical arts – architecture, industrial design, web design, fashion design, etc. This is what most people think when you say the words “design” and “designer.”

But whenever the topic of design is discussed, comments generally devolve into a discussion of aesthetics. So much so, that design is now synonymous with “what it looks like.”  If you ask a random person down the street, “what do you think of that building’s design?” you’ll pretty much get a response that comes from a purely aesthetic point of view. It’s either ugly or good looking. You’ll get a subjective opinion. And while people’s opinions of aesthetics may be valid, its fundamentally wrong to analyze an object’s design in such a way.

In other words, you shouldn’t have an “opinion” on design. No more than you should have an opinion on physics. Now design does not follow any universal laws or have the rigor of the hard sciences, but it certainly has a performative function. It must serve some utility and work within some constraints. Otherwise it is just art. Design can and should be measured against those parameters (utility and constraints). And in my opinion, not a lot of effort goes into teaching or developing a process for how to evaluate designs. What makes a good design? What is bad design?

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. -Steve Jobs

What are some great objects of design? The iPhone/iPod, the McLaren F1 roadcar, the Seattle Central Library, the original Mini Cooper, the Dyson vacuum, Google’s homepage, and of course, many many others. These were just off the top of my head.

Why these in particular? What do many of these these objects have in common? If you google any of these, you can form your own opinions of their aesthetics. Some of them are beautiful while others are dull or painfully eccentric. Bottom line is that its a subjective opinion, and has no value in this discussion.

So lets talk about their utility and constraints. Here are some common themes:

1/. These designs re-think first principles. The Seattle Library was a complete re-conceptualization of the modern library. The stuffy atmosphere of most libraries caused people to flock to Barnes and Nobles and Starbucks. It re-introduced an important social function of free public space that most libraries had done away with.  Dyson borrowed the cyclonic system he saw at a sawmill, and was able to develop a vacuum without bags or filters. Google’s homepage never had ads, unlike yahoo, msn, excite, etc.

2/. These designs feature single elements perform multiple function. Perhaps the clearest example of this is the new iPhone 4 steel band. It locks together the two exterior faces of the phone, provides mounting points for the internal components, provides access to speakers, charging pins, volume controls, power button, lock, headphone jack, it functions as multiple antennae, AND is able to be finished in a manner that is consistent with Apple’s current brushed metal forms.

3/. They balance constraints effectively. These may not be the best products of all time, but they are excellent examples of achieving many of their key tasks. The Mini Cooper’s small wheels not only reduced rotating mass (better efficiency), but it also allowed much more room in the cabin as a result of smaller wheel arches. The Seattle Central Library was not only able to bring the project in under budget, but it also maximized its interior space, created an innovative spiral book stacking system, develop a new role for the library in the city, and more than doubled its expected traffic, spurring new local economic activity from travelers and traffic.

4/. They communicate clear and obvious functions. None of the above need a user manual. The functions are presented in a way as to make its use obvious.

5/. Function influenced form. A blueprint for all the criteria a product needed to solve was clearly laid out, and that influence the shape or aesthetic it took. I urge everyone to check out the Seattle Library to see this at work. No one can logically come up with its exterior form as a starting point – but if you understand its functions, its volumetric constraints and utilitarian purpose, then you can see the facade as a logical development. Its also brilliantly a structural system that bolsters the building and its floors. The McLaren F1 was developed technically first. The optimal road car would be a center-steering, mid engine V12, light-weight, and naturally aspirated. Once its functional components were fitted out, a form was draped over it, which created its simple and timeless lines.

Of course, there could be an endless set of patterns we can find. But my main point is that design, like many other practical professions, should be measured in terms of performance, and not aesthetics. What those performance criteria are depends on the goal. But I think its a worthy exercise to formalize a set of parameters against which you can measure a product/object’s design. How well a particular object meets those criteria is how good it is designed.

Amazing article by Steven Johnson in the WallStreetJournal. Great ideas are formed by bricolage. Sandals made from recycled automobile tires. Prenatal incubators created from car parts. Johnson explains the process as very similar to the one carried out by evolution.

I haven’t watched it yet, but there is a TED Talk from Johnson about the same idea here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html

Its been a month since I’ve started blogging. Its nothing serious, but I think its a good time to review and share my own observations on it.

1/. I’m a slow reader and even slower writer. I’ve been trying to balance writing and not taking up too much time away from my other pursuits. I’ve noticed previous posts are somewhat jumbled and don’t have a clear flow. Sometimes I ramble. Most of these posts have been on the fly, so I going to try to develop more structure, organization, and start to create drafts. This might bring down my post frequency, but I think it will help me address those things I wish to work on – having better insights, writing clear and concisely, developing ideas and arguments. Improving those things are important to me. Hopefully the better I get, the frequency will go back up.

2/. Original content has been pretty light, and topics relevant to the subtitle have been few. This is something I’m going to work on. Unfortunately, you can’t schedule in “having insights” every week. So I’ll have to balance in-depth post with some lighter posts, sometimes even a quote, picture, or something. Great insights are everywhere, and they all don’t have to be article-length posts. There are some cool examples of industrial design/architecture that can explain more in a picture than you could possibly do with words.

3/. My main goal is to highlight knowledge that can lead to becoming a better thinker. I think thats a broad enough topic that I can cover things over many disciplines that interest me. But the only way to do that is to become more organized with knowledge acquisition. I need to develop a better schedule for studying specifically what I wish to develop ideas on. History of technology, business, engineering. I want to cover design, art, history. Biographies of interesting people. All under the light of “examples of good models of thinking/great insights.”  Just as useful is to examine examples of bad thinking/tragic mistakes.

4/. My writing has definitely gone up! I always admire great writing by others, the diversity of their styles, and clarity of ideas.  Perhaps what I wish to learn is to become that articulate. I’m constantly frustrated by the trouble I have putting to words the ideas that are in my head. A good portion of ideas in my mind don’t make sense, and get flushed out when written down. I found that to be a great exercise within itself. But the other half of ideas in my head don’t get articulated that well. This is something that will get better with more writing, reading, and studying other’s styles. This site is a good way to track my progress too.

5/. I’d like to thank everyone who visits this site, even if its just for a moment. Its not a particular goal of mine to become very popular or anything, but knowing other people read this, I hope you find something of value.

Driver is DC Shoes co-founder Ken Block. I’m a fan of eccentric career paths and a car nut. Successful entrepreneur to race car driver has to be on my list of awesome career transitions. What an amazing display of control, technique, and power.

I found Scott Adams recent blog post on Future Jobs quite interesting. He believes technical competency will always have a secure foothold in the marketplace, but if you are not technically inclined – learning the art of human persuasion is a good asset to have. I agree with this, especially since his definition of human persuasion is broad enough to cover not only sales, psychology, and public speaking, but design, management theory and entertainment as well.

The post made the front page of HackerNews a few days ago, and one of the top posts is by ramit, who seems to have an ideal background for what Adams suggests:

My major was STS (Science, Technology, and Society) with a minor in psychology. Then I studied sociology in grad school.

What I focused on was social influence, persuasion, and behavioral change. I took courses on negotiation, deception, cults, magic, minority influence, organizational development, group dynamics, arbitration, personality/social psychology, persuasive technology, and a ton more. I was a researcher in the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab for years.

And I mixed it with practical applications of negotiations in the field.

The coursework has helped me dramatically in understanding the motivations, attitudes, and behaviors of others.

I still remember one of my Comm professors talking about how other technical disciplines tend to look down on areas like psych/comm. She said something I’ll never forget: “The value isn’t in the difficulty of the material, but the usefulness.”

Love the last quote. To expand on what Adams is proposing, I’m going to assume he agrees with me in that the point of education should be to ultimately provide skills and knowledge that will generate the most productive future output for individuals. In this light, its obvious that technical competency and human persuasion will be as relevant in 50 years as they are today. This is what most educational institutions mean when they claim they want to “teach you how to think.” Whether they teach that in earnest is up for debate, but the idea is correct. If you look at education as an investment, it will be hard to predict 10, 20, or 30 years out which particular sets of domain knowledge will be most critical to possess. What you want is to get good at the ability to acquire such knowledge if you need to, and to do that you need to become good at thinking. Teach a man to fish.

So why does Adams think science/engineering and human persuasion sit at the top? What they have in common is that they offer reliable models of reality. They have predicative power and contain insightful metaphors for a vast array of phenomena.

Here are some examples:

People generally behave in terms of their own self-interest. They also experience incentive-caused bias. When you separate those who take the risks from those who get the rewards, you will get excessive behavior. When persuading, appeal to a person’s interest, and not reason.

Systems Thinking is a problem solving methodology in engineering that treats cause and effect in cyclical manner rather than a linear one. You examine and focus on an entire system, rather than one specific pain point. One considers second- and third-order effects. A non-engineering application of this idea is to economics – the easing of long-term federal interest rates not to long ago. The subsequent effects, the shift in incentives, created disastrous second- and third-order effects.

Margin of Safety is a structural engineering concept. If you’re building a bridge, it makes sense to build it with extra capacity beyond the maximum loads you expect it to receive. Its a measure of robustness, able to handle unexpected loads, emergency situations, and any other random variable not accounted for. Value investor Ben Graham adopted this idea in his investing practice, buying securities priced below its intrinsic value. This minimized the risk of losing excess capital and factored in room for error in the inherently imprecise manner of evaluating a company’s intrinsic value.

In a sense, if you study these topics, you will be able to understand and explain a wide range of phenomena and actions. Obviously, the next question is, what are some other skills and knowledge one should spend the time to learn?  Here are some I have in mind:

Science/Engineering and Human Psychology/Persuasion, as stated above.

History/Biographies – I think this is incredibly important. Not only does it make learning specific topics more interesting (for example, I’m studying probability at the moment, and reading about the history, how it came to be, and the mathematicians who contributed to the field all paint a much vivid picture of the topic vs. the excessively distilled formal and rigorous proofs I’m shown in the first few chapters of my textbook), but its a gold mine for lessons of failure, wisdom, and success. Did you know Mozart spent his money like a drunken sailor?  That Carl Braun of the CF Braun Engineering company fired his accountants and had his engineers develop a system that eventually influenced the way modern accounting works?

Economics/Business/Financial History – History interpreted through the lens of finance is such an interesting topic. For anyone interested, I highly recommend the 4 hour PBS documentary, Ascent of Money as a entertaining and informative way to get started.

Philosophy/Rationality – Understanding the history of influential thinking that shape societal values, thoughts and sense of purpose. Studying philosophy as a way to manage temperament, and thinking systematically about one’s problems.

Would love to get feedback and more topics you think one should devote to studying.