Cases

Teaching design to high school students

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DML_Martin Linder

Martin Linder, Industrial Design Professor at San Francisco State University, gave a speech at Yonsei University on his unique program called iDo. iDo started in 1993 with 6 mentors; now it runs with more than 25 mentors for 40 weeks of five-weekly classes. According to the webpage:

Industrial Design Outreach (iDo) promotes the field of industrial design and uses its methodologies to enhance the education of both high school and university students. Through hands-on interdisciplinary design projects, iDo provides high school students with experiences that foster curiosity, promote creativity, and build self-confidence. By developing and delivering design curriculum to high school students, university students gain experiences that promote teamwork; enhance communication, organization, and improve presentation skills; and provide a forum for participants to give back to their community.

The Industrial Design Outreach institute is an educational enrichment program that introduces students to a number of educational opportunities in areas of industrial and graphic design, computer software tools, and traditional and modern manufacturing systems. The mission of iDo is to promote the field of industrial design and use its methodologies to enhance education. iDo provides high school participants with a no-cost introduction to design. Participants and San Francisco State University (SF State) students majoring in design collaborate on developing and delivering hands-on interdisciplinary design projects. These experiences foster curiosity in youth participants, promote creativity, build self-confidence, and allow participants to develop valuable vocational and college skills. In turn, college students learn to build and deliver curriculum, which enhances their communication, organization, presentation, team building, and design skills.

University students involved in this project visit high schools and teach design basics such as tools and materials and design process such as research, ideation, and prototyping. In most cases, they work together with high school students and create tangible products such as pencil boxes, clocks, and even kites.

DML_Martin Linder

Courses

New product project: Tumbler with a sugar indicator / Sticky toilet seat cover

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Two groups of the students who took the course, Design Marketing 2013 Fall, made their interesting presentations.

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1. SugaVoid (made By Geon Lee, Minhyeong Park, Minji Hwang, Donggyu Jung, and Jiyun Kim)

https://youtu.be/KnbNxjo576g

Sugavoid

Problem: WHO(world health organization) suggests that sugar intake should be less than 50g for adults and less than 35g for kids. However, since students drink about 2 cans of soft drinks a day, consuming 50g of sugar, and then intake additional sugar from other foods, they usually go beyond the recommended amount of sugar per day.  The students took research of 25 randomly selected people and found that people are willing to adjust the amount of sugar that they take when they recognize that they are taking too much sugar. How do they help people notice how much sugar they take a day?

Solution: They propose a tumbler called SugaVoid which measures and indicates how much sugar is included in the liquid. In particular, it indicates the amount of sugar visually (sugar cubes) rather than verbally (grams) and communicates this information with other applications to help consumers keep track of and their sugar consumption.

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2. Sticover (made by By Jihwan Hong, Seorin Jeong, Jaemyun Park, Ikhwan Kim, and Seunghye Ryu)

https://youtu.be/Itwr6B1iIhE

Sticover

Problem: People desire to use clean toilets in public spaces. However, the market does not satisfy rapidly growing customer needs of hygiene.

Solution: They propose a sticky toilet seat cover called Sticover. In the present, competitors focus on either price or comfortableness. For example, Hyzen and Cleancover are relatively easy to use but expensive, whereas Sanicool is cheap but uncomfortable. Their proposed Sticover is not only comfortable but also reasonably priced. It specifically targets the business owners who want to provide clean experience to their customers. They consider conducting a cost leadership strategy with other 4p marketing mix, and position sticover as a mandatory item.

Cases

Ground level traffic lights help pedestrians be safe

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Tactile paving is a system of textured ground surface indicators. It aims to assist pedestrians who are blind or visually impaired (see Wikipedia) and is also called truncated domes, detectable warnings, Tactile Ground Surface Indicators, or detectable warning surface. In Seoul, Korea, some of the tactile pavings light up at night. Interestingly, its color turns the same color with the traffic light; it turns red when the traffic light is red, and it is green when the traffic light is green.

DML_tactitle paving 01   DML_tactitle paving 02   DML_tactitle paving 03

This lighting system will not only benefit visually impaired pedestrians; it will also enhance the safety of the pedestrians who are distracted by their own tasks (e.g., listening music by earphones or sending text messages by their smart phones)!

Cases

How can we learn and acquire skills?

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20131014_Stellan Ohlsson @ SKKU_Skill acquisition (2)

Stellan Ohlsson, Professor in Psychology at University of Illinois at Chicago visited COGENG (Cognitive Engineering Lab) at SKKU and gave a speech on skill acquisition. He introduced his own work of learning from errors in which he argues that, in order to acquire or specializes in a certain skill (e.g., changing a lane to the left while driving), people should not only perform a certain task (e.g., turning the steering wheel to the left) but also detect and correct errors (e.g., turning the steering wheel to the left only when a car behind approaches). According to his constraint based approach, a skill is acquired only when a certain action with a negative outcome is unlearned (e.g., turning the steering wheel to the left slowly so that being hit by the car behind).

Certainly, there are many more ways to acquire skills. According to his review paper published in 2008, there are at least nine different ways of how people acquire skills.

1. Internalize direct instructions

2. Generalize from specific examples

3. Analogize to prior skill knowledge

4. Reason from prior declarative knowledge

5. Encode results of heuristic search

6. Strengthen positive outcomes

7. Unlearn actions with negative outcomes

8. Discover short cuts in execution histories

9. Accumulate statistical information

Publications

Preference reversal of environmental friendly product

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Joo @ PHBS

  • “Preference Reversal of Environmental Friendly Product,” Presented at the HSBC Business School, Peking University, ShenZhen: China, October 30, 2013.

Do consumers like the environmental friendly products they buy? My colleague, Bohee, and I borrow the literature from the Behavioral Decision Theory and argue this is not always the case; consumers often choose the green product even though it does not work well. This suggests that, in some cases, environmental friendliness could be merely a marketing gimmick.

 PHBS

Cases

Behavior change requires time

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Changing behavior is important but challenging. Thus, it attracts huge attention among practitioners as well as researchers. For instance, Charles Duhigg introduced various examples in his book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Professor BJ Fogg at Stanford University proposed a behavior change model at the Persuasive Technology Lab. Designers graduating from the ID, Illinois Institute of Technology summarized the mechanisms and tools on their website, Brains Behavior and Design Group. Most recently, Professor Dilip Soman at University of Toronto teaches Behavioral Economics in Action at his online course.

DesignMarketingLab_Behavioral Economics in Action

For me, I have long wished to be ambidextrous. In Asia, however, using left hand to do something (e.g., eating, writing, pointing, etc.) is not viewed appropriate and I had no chance to practice my left hand. Therefore, I have experimented myself since when I left for Canada whether I can practice my left hand so that it performs as well as my right hand does.

Brushing teeth with my left hand was relatively easy at night. However, doing so in the morning was extremely challenging. Although I have brushed teeth with my left hand for the past 10 years, I often find myself brushing teeth with my right hand when I am sleepy or tired, which is often the case in the morning. Indeed, ten-year is not sufficient to master brushing teeth with my left hand probably because I did not stop brushing teeth with my right hand.

I had different experience regarding controlling the computer mouse. Certainly, using mouse with my left hand was very challenging in the first couple of years. However, 3-year of intensive practice paid me off. I could click, drag, and drop icons using my left hand without noticing that I did so with my left hand. This habit relieves the shoulder pain and I can work longer than before. Three-year was sufficient to master using the mouse with my left hand probably because I completely stopped using the mouse with my right hand.

DesignMarketingLab_Left handed mouse

I plan to start sketching/drawing with my left hand this year. Different from brushing teeth or controlling computer mouse, I have not drawn before. In other words, I have no habit to unlearn but need to develop a new habit only. I hope skipping the unlearning stage takes me less time/effort to master sketching with my left hand.

*Event

Jan Chipchase @ Seoul

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Jan Chipchase

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Hidden in plain sightSpeech at Seoul by Jan Chipchase (Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at Frog, Author of Hidden in Plain Sight)

Title: “Leap of Faith”

Synopsis:  “Drawing on over a decade working for Fortune 500 and Korean clients Jan’s talk will explore the use of real-world insights to inform and inspire design, strategy, challenge minds and flutter hearts. The talk will cover a sample project all the way through to cutting edge techniques in obtaining insight and discuss why sometimes, against the better judgement of the organization it requires a leap of faith.”

Time: October 28, 2013 (Mon) 4-6PM

Place: Conference Hall, Administration Building, Kookmin University

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관찰의 힘얀 칩체이스 서울 강연 (프로그 디자인, 크리에이티브 디렉터 / 관찰의 힘, 저자)

제목: 믿음의 도약

시놉시스: 얀 칩체이스는 지난 10년동안 포춘 500대 기업과 한국 기업들을 대상으로 프로젝트를 수행하면서, 현실 세계에서 발굴한 인사이트가 디자인과 전략을 개선하고, 틀에 갇힌 사람들의 생각에 도전하며, 심지어는 사람의 마음을 움직일 수도 있다는 점을 보여주었습니다. 본 강연에서는, 기존에 수행한 프로젝트 뿐만 아니라 인사이트 발굴에 사용되는 기법들도 함께 선보일 예정이며, 다양한 사례와 기법들을 통하여 언제, 왜 데이터에 기반한 판단보다 믿음이 조직의 발전에 도움이 되는지 논의하려고 합니다.

시간: 2013년 10월 28일 (월) 오후 4-6시

장소: 국민대학교 본부관 학술대회장

참고 1) 동아비즈니스리뷰 인터뷰 (201308): “르완디 시장조사때 밀수꾼 인터뷰… 극단적 아웃라이어는 통찰의 보고”

참고 2) 조선일보 인터뷰 (20131008): “제품 기능에만 치중하면 실패… 소비자 깊숙한 내면적 욕망 읽어야”

 

 

Welcome Jan! On Oct 28, 2013, he gave a speech at Kookmin University, Seoul. He shared with the attendants his unique perspective and rich insights as an Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at Frog and author of Hidden in Plain Sight. In total, 280 people showed up. This event was run by Ran Yoon who is working at the product development team, SK Telecom, and used to work at the marketing team, Samsung Electronics Canada. One of the attendants, Jaeyong Yi, the president of PXD, a Korean design consulting agency, wrote his review in Korean language.

 

Jan Chipchase @ Kookmin University

Jan Chipchase

Publications

Apple and Samsung took different approaches toward design thinking

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The article presents research focusing on the development of design thinking in business context. It utilizes balancing intuitive and analytical thinking to determine the exploitation of design thinking in organizations. It explores the decision making processes of two electronic corporations including Apple Inc., and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to offer practical implications to executives who are interested in implementing design thinking in their organizations.

… Samsung is a good example of a “technology push” firm. Samsung has been a late mover in the electronics market. Responding to unparalleled business challenges, the company first expanded its design team from 200 designers in the late 1990s to 1000 designers in 2012. Samsung has made noticeable debuts in winning several international design awards. However, the company’s intuitive and analytic teams needed to work closely before they were able to deeply understand and appreciate each other’s way of working. The forced collaboration produced challenging decision-making conflicts—the types of conflicts that are difficult to resolve without a moderator. Instead, decisions were made exclusively by the intuitive team or exclusively by the analytic team. This issue explains why Samsung has performed well in design awards, but has not yet introduced an iconic product like the iPhone…

… Apple approaches design thinking differently from Samsung. Its design team does not communicate with its manufacturing team. Instead, an independent team (consisting of Steve Jobs and his supporters) made most of the firm’s business decisions. In the process, Jobs limited the decision-making power of the analytic teams in order for them to be comparable with the power of the intuitive team. Note that although Steve Jobs was often criticized for his assertive decisions, he did free the intuitive team from the analytic team. As a result, Apple products are welcomed by a massive number of consumers—even though their individual features do not necessarily outperform the products manufactured by their competitors …

Cases

Hand print for escalator safety

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Jenny Xie wrote A Potentially Brilliant Idea to Keep Escalator Obstructors to the Right at the Atlantic Cities. In her article, a London-based designer called Yoni Alter made an interesting proposal to signal “stand on right, walk on left.” Although his idea has not been implemented yet, he proposed to paint two different foot prints on the escalator so that people standing in the right side stay and those standing in the left side walk.

Jenny Xie @ The Atlantic Cities_20130917
By Jenny Xie, The Atlantic Cities, September 17, 2013

Recently, I have met another brilliant idea about escalator. Escalator users are supposed to hold the handrail while using the escalator because, although rarely happens, it might go in reverse, injuring them seriously. This safety instruction, however, is often ignored.

Warning

As escalator accidents increase recently, someone who is not identified but works at the Seoul subway system came up with a brilliant idea: painting hand prints on the handrail. These visible cues nudge people to, at least, place their hands on the handrail.

DesignMarketingLab_Hand print @ Seoul_20130921

Besides improving the safety for public transit, visual cues are used for improving store traffic. When a store is crowded, store visitors are often recommended to enter and leave in a specific way. One store manager painted foot prints to nudge the visitors follow them.

DesignMarketingLab_Foot print @ Seoul_20130921

Jaewoo Joo | design thinking, behavioral economics, field experiment, customer experience