While I was living in Vancouver last year The Vancouver Institue of the Arts hired me to help them define their brand, update their identity, and improve their website. It was a fantastic project from beginning to end – lasting into early 2010. I love talking brand, messaging, audience, strategy, and all that stuff. I feel so great about the collaborative process we went through and the final outcome we arrived at. The logo and new website structure gives them a new direction to run with, and is a solid set of communication tools they see themselves reflected in. I’ve since handed the design-baton off to local Vancouver designer Christina Lauer who is now doing a great job with business cards and more marketing materials.

Now that I’m back in San Francisco I’ve been focusing on local business and organizations that are making tomorrow better. I was so excited to get the chance to design a poster for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s annual Family Bike Day in Golden Gate Park. It was a dream project as my sole directive was “make it sophisticated and cute”. Awesome! And if that wasn’t enough, my first round of feedback included the words “ohmigosh *WE LOVE IT* Seriously…it is so awesome and perfect!”.

I <3 nice clients.

After The Deadline: a plugin for WordPress and TinyMCE with contextual Spell Checking, Advanced Style Checking, Intelligent Grammar Checking. The demo was great and I’m eager to try it out.

Minute Memes: reframing copyright restrictions one idea at a time, through a series of short, captivating, classroom-ready videos by award-winning artist and animator Nina Paley (Sita Sings The Blues). The back story of publishing Sita Sings The Blues was really fascinating too.

The Creator Endorsed Mark: a logo that a distributor can use to indicate that a work is distributed in a way that its creator endorses — typically, by the distributor sharing some of the profits with the creator.

Kloop: The founder Rinat Tuhvatshin talked about his harrowing experiences in taking great risks to present the truth in national news. The audience was clearly moved by his story…

“@alexbcnd: #wordcampsf #wcsf I think we just had the best presentation given at any Wordcamp, Rinat Tuhvatshin of Kloop.kg in Kyrgyzstan.”

GenGreen & 3rdWhale: Brand Advisor
Two green focused media companies, GenGreen of Colorado and 3rdWhale of Vancover BC, have recently merged into one mega green company. I’ve joined as a part time Brand Advisor to help them move to the next stage. I’m super excited to be involved in designing some really interesting things that are on the horizon.

AmericanCupcake: Brand, Website & Product Design
This project is tormenting me with amazing photos of delicious cupcakes. Good thing I have willpower. American Cupcake has been around as a cupcake caterer in San Francisco for several years, and the word is out that AC is expanding their cupcake empire with their first cafe set to open in early 2010. I’ve been hired to bring the essence of the best cupcake around, to all of you. AC is a small, local business, started from scratch (literally) by Devin Alper, and features locally sourced ingredients and sustainable business practices. Yums.

GreenCafeNetwork: Pro Bono Brand Advisor
GCN is a fantastic operation located in San Francisco. It is the only non-profit organization dedicated to reducing Americans’ environmental impacts by greening the coffeehouse industry and harnessing café culture for community and individual environmental education. I’m rooting for quick, mass expansion across all of North America!

It looks to be an eclectic mix of speakers, and a few familiar faces from previous TEDs:
Dean Kamen
Craig Venter
Sanjay Gupta
Martha Stewart
Annie Wojcicki
David Pogue
Tim Brown
Keith Black
Jill Sobule
Dave & Bill from Woods Hole
Donna Karan

view full list here

1) SunPod Greenhouses
Loved these mini greenhouses for your balcony or small space! After seeing these, my balcony looks so bare.

2) EatLocal.org
Vancouver Farmers Markets. “You are what you eat. Prepare to meet your maker.”

3) Fuel Vehicle Technologies
R&D company specializing in improving the automobile and its impact on the earth. Currently ranked 5th for the XPrize.

4) Dahlia Drive Clothing
Resurrecting the fashion wasteland. Super cool one-of-a-kind handmade silkscreened slip dresses.

5) “Goodies” Homemade by Themla
Local BC pickled veggies, and jellies and jams. “You’ll want to keep a lid on these, once tried the guests and kids won’t leave them alone.”  Yum! We loaded up with pickled asparagus and blackberry jam. We also really wanted the dills and beets.

6) Flora & Fauna
“Locally, ethically, and sustainably made fashion.” Cutest clothes ever. Want! Pauline also donates a portion of her sales to the Vancouver Aqauarium and Critter Care Wildlife Rescue.

7) AusPen, EcoSmartworld.com
Refillable, non-toxic whiteboard markers.

KaliWags
Healthy snacks for dogs. I bought some for Lucy and after having taste she sniffed through the kitchen until she found the drawer I had stored them in. She loves them.

It’s all too common for many designers to be brought into a project late into the schedule to make the product, website, presentation, widget, logo or whatever “look nice”. That can certainly be valuable but what’s missing is that while “form follows function”, you shouldn’t separate the two into distinct efforts (or ignore one side altogether). You’re more likely to position your brand and/or product for success if you allow for the necessary rigor of the design process to fully flesh out and craft the user experience aimed at achieving your goals… before development begins.

Based on my experience, the most successful product launches have followed the same basic recipe of: define, design, build, test, repeat. If not already established, enlist your team leads to define the process that will work for both the designers and the engineers working on the project. Take advantage of existing processes, but be careful not to impose a canned process on the team. For further reading on thoughtful advice on integrating Design Process with Agile software development please see, Clash of the Titans: Agile and UCD. Personally, I lean more towards Activity and Behavior Centered Design processes, rather than User Centered Design. A quick search online will reveal some controversy about blending the design and engineering processes. Ultimately, it’s up to your team to arrive at an agreed plan forward. You can’t avoid today’s reality of shorter release cycles and smaller teams. It will only help to meet this challenge head on.

There is nothing better than being part of a multidisciplinary team that is operating in a zone that transcends pesky task lists and status reports. It’s the feeling of momentum, synergy, creation and the age old saying ‘the sum of the whole is greater than the parts’. Once you’ve gotten a taste of it, you’ll never want to go back!

Another great resource for small and limited teams is The Five Sketches by Jerome Ryckborst. I saw his presentation on ‘ideation, design, and usability for development teams’ at the Vancouver User Experience group.

On the topic of “form follows function”, I recently read an article by Stephen P. Anderson: In Defense of Eye Candy. In a nutshell, he describes that our perception of why we like how something looks actually influences whether we think it functions well. He says a lot of other great stuff too, it’s really worth a read.

And finally, more reading on Redefining User-Centered Design.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your feedback and ideas on the role of design and how to empower design to solve the right problem.

Do you have a project that could use the help of design? Contact me to discuss how at jenny[at]missjenny[dot]com.

I was given an early copy of the book, The Think Big Manifesto, by Michael Port. I’m about half way through and it reminds me of two other books that I find myself referencing when I feel a little lost, overwhelmed or anxious about change: The Power of Now and The Four Agreements. All these books have something in common, which is basically… you are in charge of your happiness, satisfaction, career, life and you are your own worst critic.

I’ve arrived at the spot in the book that says to “Stand for something, and make that public”. So here goes:

I stand for a conscious effort to behave in a way that is kind to our planet, and my goal is to use my design expertise to educate people and design tools to achieve actual green living.

There, I said it. Now what?

My hope is to connect with people, organizations and companies that also stand for that. And through these connections I will bring the value of design to help solve the right problems.

Photo: Living Room by Miss Jenny on Flickr

O

Dieter Rams is most well known for his work as chief of design at Braun from  1961 – 1998. Many of his coffee makers, calculators, radios and consumer electronics have had a lasting impact on today’s product design including Jonathan Ive’s work at Apple. In the early 1980’s he published his design principles which then became known as the 10 Commandments of Design. These principles are themselves a wonderful example of good design – consise, thoughtful, clean. They have withstood the test of time and remain more relevant than ever. How are we designers doing, according to this list?

Good design is innovative

Good design makes a product useful

Good design is aesthetic

Good design makes a product understandable

Good design  is unobtrusive

Good design is honest

Good design has longevity

Good design is consistent down to the last detail

Good design is environmentally friendly

Good design is as little design as possible

I am sitting in my living room in Vancouver, BC right now and I see several products that fit most of what Rams defines as good design: Sig water bottle, eames chair, iphone, stainless steel dog bowl, bamboo coasters. Out my window I can see several ‘living roofs”. I think designers today can have the biggest positive impact when they aim to develop new products that acheive the 9th principle: Good design is environmentally friendly.

UPDATE 05/06/09: I just saw the Gary Hustwit film Objectified last night in Vancouver and was super stoked to see Dieter Rams and the commandments featured. The audience Q&A also seemed really focused on the eco responsibility of designers. I found a podcast of a Q&A session from another screening, listen here.

Saffo’s six rules to effective forecasting:

1. Define a Cone of Uncertainty
2. Look for the S Curve
3. Embrace the Things That Don’t Fit
4. Hold Strong Opinions Weakly
5. Look Back Twice as Far as You Look Forward
6. Know When Not to Make a Forecast

Long Now’s recap of his talk provides better detail to each of his rules and a few more thoughts. Didn’t seem right to just copy/paste here… so please take a read here on the Long Now Blog.

And here is video of Saffo’s talk, he’s a great presenter and worth watching (01:25:51)