Thoughtless Acts

I have a beautiful little book by Jane Fulton Suri, a designer at IDEO.

It's called 'Thoughtless Acts' and contains mostly a collection of photos . These pictures depict everyday situations in which people interact with, and adapt their environment to make things work better.

Here are some examples:


The tea bag string is flicked around the handle to keep the label from falling in.






A pencil is adapted to serve as a hairpin.

The idea is that all people are designers in the way that they use things. There are great ideas and solutions waiting to be discovered simply by observing the way that people interact with the world around them.

As designers, IDEO's team focus their attention on the 'Thoughtless Acts' of peoples' daily lives. The designers' observations then provide the insights that drive new design ideas. This method has come up with simple yet remarkable ideas such as:

• Better kids toothbrushes for Oral-B
  
• Better needles for diabetics
  
• Better Strollers for Even-Flo
  
• Better bathroom cleaning equipment for Proctor & Gamble
  

IDEO has also designed services as well as streamlined and humanized complex processes such as patient check-in at hospitals. They are one of the world's most renowned design companies and many of their brilliant solutions are based on the simple act of carefully observing people.

The lesson?

If you need new solutions; if you need to solve wicked problems, take a careful look around you. Pay attention to how people get things done, you will find clues to new and innovative solutions.
Be mindful. Notice the details. That's where you'll find the solutions.

Deadpool

Based on news that gets published, you would think that every startup raises millions in investment and inevitably goes on to be spectacularly successful. But for every Twitter and Facebook, there are many more failures. And these failures generate little attention.

Take a look at the Deadpool. TechCrunch has been tracking startup failures and it is a long, sad parade. These are, for the most part, very good ideas lead by brilliant people that have, for what ever reason, failed to thrive and been shut down.

Think of the destruction: laid-off employees, disappointed customers, exhausted founders and money down the drain.

In many ways there is more to be learned from failure than from success. What do I get out of this list in terms of strategy? There are three main points:

1. Get customers. We only have a business if we provide something that people will pay for. To quote Peter Drucker "The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer. "
   
2. Don't bet everything on a single idea. Investors have a portfolio approach to risk. For them, nine investments can fail so long as one is successful. We don't have a portfolio, we only have the one business. We won't be gambling.
   
3. Most ideas are not immediately successful. We have to be prepared to try many different things and we have to conduct these experiments cheaply enough so as not to risk the core business.
   

Our strategy seeks a balance. We innovate. We invest in new technology and ideas. But we don't do more than we can afford. We place business viability ahead of everything else.