In this post I’ll avoid the deep pool that is the discussion about design in general, but let me put forward one facet of design – design as a manifestation of empathy for users. Putting oneself into the perspective of the users of your product is a powerful thing, and can quickly illuminate usability, product, messaging, tone, and a host of other issues. We design Kindling with great empathy for our users. We’re critical of every proposed feature that we’re considering adding to the product, and ask ourselves if the new feature will present a barrier for the user. If it does, it has to deliver immense value to compensate for that loss. Features that complicate the experience without sufficient payoff will never make the cut.

A result of great empathy

Take a look at our idea page (click the image above for a larger view) – hours of design thinking, prototyping and tweaking went into this single page. Everything from what features and options are present (and importantly which are not), to the language used, to the URL structure, to the interactions has been designed with the user in mind. There are no mysteries on this page – no cognitive load for the user to overcome. We often hear how well-designed and simple Kindling is, and that’s no accident.

As mentioned above, another aspect of design as empathy is being critical of features that make it into the product. Many of our competitors market their product as a vast collection of features. Blog? check. Wikis? check. Tag clouds? check. Stock market for idea valuation? check. Voting, rating, and reviewing? check. Social media sharing? check. Insert other Web 2.0 buzzword here? check! But a well-designed product is not a collection of features – it’s a specific set of capabilities meant to achieve a planned purpose – a goal. Features are a handy sales tool, but often get in the way of real usage.

A result of great empathy?

Here’s a screen shot from one of our well-regarded competitors. It’s the same type of page as the one you just looked at above – an idea view. But try launching both of our idea views into your browser. Now put yourself into the perspective of a user of this system, maybe a nurse in a hospital or a marketing manager. Can you see the difference?

I’ll leave the majority of this exercise to you. Obviously there are many differences between the two products, but I’d like to point to a small detail – in Kindling an idea has a description. I’m sure you had no problem locating it, as it’s been designed to be part and parcel of the idea itself. In this competing tool, their ideas have descriptions too. Can you find it? Keep looking – it’s called “StockSummary”. What a powerful example of how verbiage can be just as important as aesthetics in design. And what an example of the power of empathy in design – for one would never call an idea description anything but that if you are actively considering how your product will be used.

This process of imagining yourself as the user – a nurse or marketing manager – is a process of design, and more broadly a process of empathy. It’s a wonderful tool – one that can differentiate your product from the competition.

this is not to say that one idea is “better” than another

but rather more good

and it’s hard to argue with more compared with less

unless it’s more of something bad

as for example more oil spills

whereas less oil spills would be a good idea

and though it may be a brief inconvenience to accept

that less oil spills would be more good

spilling itself is indifferent to good or bad

as spilled milk for example is nothing to cry over

unless perhaps it is on the order of over 60,000 barrels of milk spilled per day

for 91 days.

I’m highly suspicious of any technique, methodology or seminar that promises to transform you into an Good-Idea-Generating-Machine. What I believe we can do is create an environment that allows for the possibility of good ideas to arise. Each of our minds is indelibly shaped by the social and physical environment we occupy. If you’re not getting water and sunshine, it’s incredibly difficult to flourish.

Free to Roam

Ideas aren’t produced. They happen organically. An idea is, by definition, a departure. It’s a step away from the norm. To find new ideas (and by “find” I literally mean stumble upon an idea that you would otherwise never discover) you have to be willing to drift off and think in a divergent way. Pre-conceived notions of how the world works have to be brought into question and doubt. It’s almost a child-like reversion to questioning and doubting just about everything around you.

For most of us in the modern world, divergent thinking isn’t encouraged. It’s written off as “daydreaming” or “not grounded in reality.” Both labels, while bearing negative connotations, are true. A prerequisite for a good idea is that it not be grounded in reality. Reality is the status quo. It’s the sum total of past ideas and nothing more.

He was not grounded in reality. Or bound by it.

This all leads to an important question about work and life environment: do you allow yourself or others to roam? Do you provide the encouragement, time and opportunities for people to stray off the well-worn trails? Does your company or organization have the proper mechanisms to give people the necessary comfort and encouragement to walk away from the day-to-day and just play around?

Bring it Home

Divergent thinking is one half of a good idea. The other key ingredient is taking that thought and bringing it back to reality. We all want flying cars, but such an idea without some breakthrough on safety, feasibility and cost effectiveness, isn’t a good idea. It’s just fantasy. Good ideas materialize from the synthesis of out-of-the-box divergent thinking and a thoughtful and rigorous application in reality. Eventually, the constraints and pitfalls of the real world have to come into play. Otherwise, they’re just ideas living in a vacuum.

The Secret Formula?

I started this essay by deriding the quick fix books on innovation and the ill-conceived attempts at shrinking thoughts down into a snack-sized methodology or “process.” Yet if you read the above, it appears that I’ve done exactly that: shared a “formula for success.” That wasn’t the intention. The above are key prerequisites and not much more. Good ideas come from smart people who aren’t afraid to roam. Unfortunately in most of today’s work environments, roaming isn’t encouraged. The bigger the organization, the weaker the stomach for roaming.

This is why most of the disruption comes from the small and nimble. They don’t bear the weight of the organizational maze and fear of risk. Formulas and methodologies are great if there is truly an arena to play. The question of “what makes an idea good?” is misleading in my view. Good and bad ideas abound everywhere. Humans are hard-wired to aspire to something beyond what exists today. We just need to encourage people to wander off and come back home – ideas in hand.

As a designer and concept developer, I thrive on open-ended thinking and constant “what if?” scenarios. Constraints should be tested, assumptions should be challenged and no idea is a dumb idea, right?

There are countless approaches to innovation, but the most successful involve some level of process. Most start with a broad idea, question or problem and work through open-ended but very specifically focused exercises to discover key insights. These insights are then methodically tested, combined and edited to produce new solutions and/or opportunities.

A room full of creative people with an undefined process is fairly good for providing lots of ideas. I would argue that there is a place in the process for this type of event. However, a room full of creative people working through a well-planned process with a well-defined question or task is very good at providing solutions.

What is the intent of your company’s “Idea Management” program? Are you looking for ideas or are you looking for solutions?

An idea is only valuable to your organization if it can create an opportunity for results of some kind. Be it adding to your pipeline of new ideas or creating a better corporate culture, you need to be consistently conscious of the results you’re looking for and how efficiently you approach your gathering and analysis process.

Well-defined rules and processes can help keep your idea management system running on all cylinders. These guidelines can be applied at several levels to promote the most effective process for your specific application.

Focus on Solutions

The people in your organization will have ideas about everything. Though you want them to feel comfortable and trust the process, guidelines help keep the ideas and process focused on solutions. Another critical application of rules at the front end is to filter out unwanted idea submissions. When your employees grow to trust your program, they tend to feel more comfortable submitting ideas that may be more appropriate for HR or Facilities or may actually be just be inappropriate. The last thing you may want is an open conversation about HR policies (unless that’s what you’re focusing your Program around). Creating a set of rules gives you a foundation to assess and approve ideas. But perhaps even more importantly, they can give you a foundation to base decisions to decline or remove an idea without it appearing to be personal or unfair. If guidelines are established ahead of time, it helps to build increased understanding of the process and stronger trust in the system. Trust and understanding in the system = happy users. Happy users = more engagement. More engagement = better solutions.

Examples of Front End Guidelines:

• Does the idea address or create a consumer/customer need?
• Does the idea support our current corporate strategy?
• Does the idea expand our current market?
• Is the idea feasible, given market constraints/conditions?

Focus on Communication

Clear communication of an idea gives it more likelihood of moving forward, but also helps make the administrator’s job easy. Consider providing guidelines for effective idea communication. These may seem obvious, but people are busy and tend to take very little time to consider how they explain their concept.

Examples of Communication Guidelines:

• Is it Unique? – Search the system for similar ideas. Is it unique? If so, share it. If not, add your take on the idea and join in the conversation.
• Is it on Strategy? – Make sure your ideas meet the guidelines for a successful idea.
• Is it Ready? – Write a rough draft of your idea to make sure your thinking and communication is clear. Share it with friends, get feedback (on clarity, NOT THE IDEA!) and revise before submitting.

The Last Word…

Having said all this, I have to redeem my designer soul by strongly suggesting you provide an opportunity for people to share off the wall, fun ideas. “Fun” is as critical as “trust” to building an engaging program. Work to create these opportunities, build them into the texture of your program and shout the successes from the rooftops!

Context Is Everything.

You better believe his ideas are fit

What do I mean by fitness? In these conversations, I often tell a story based on a metaphor with biological evolution in order to describe fitness and how it’s relevant to idea selection. In an evolutionary system, change is introduced through a gene mutation. The random mutation then affects the individual organism in some way. If you were to then observe this mutation in isolation it would be difficult, and quite often impossible, to determine whether it was good or bad. Only in conjunction with the environment can the change be subjectively valued. This is fitness. So if a baby squirrel has a random mutation making its fur much darker than other related squirrels, only by considering its environment can the fitness of that change be judged. Maybe the dark color will make it more visible to predators. Or maybe the color change will make it more efficient at regulating its body heat or have an effect on its metabolism. Roll all of this up, throw some random luck in the pot, and that squirrel may have more or less offspring than average, and thus the evolutionary race is on.

One very large step for Arc90

An idea is much like a mutation. In the context of an organization, with finite resources and time, the goodness of an idea is a function of its fitness for its environment. Take this example – Arc90, our web design consultancy, is comprised of about 35 innovative technologists. We’re a small private firm based in New York City with lots of experience designing and building web applications, but have exactly no experience with manned space flight. So imagine one of us has an idea to build a rocket and execute a manned mission to Mars. Is that a good idea for us? No, it’s a terrible idea for Arc90 – it would certainly drive us to bankruptcy in a matter of months. But consider that very same idea in the context of NASA or the Indian Space Research Organization – the same idea is now better because it’s a better fit for these environments.

Time May Change Me.

There’s another axis which can effect fitness: time. The squirrels’ mutation to darker fur might have been advantageous if it occurred last decade, when the average temperature was two degrees less than today. Or maybe 10000 years from now when its key predator’s vision is effected by some other change. Similarly, an idea within an organization might be not be a good fit today, but might be a great fit next year. Or in 10 years. One of the ideas percolating around Arc90 is to unify the often inaccessible Flash-ridden restaurant web sites into a single mobile-accessible standard. That’s not a great fit for us right now, as we’re really busy with our consulting work, Kindling and Readability. But it might be a perfect fit next spring. Or maybe someone else will solve it by then (please do!). So the same idea might be better at a different time – a time where the organization’s constraints, resources and timing are more favorable for this idea.

Lightening Occasionally Strikes.

Here’s another interesting thing about mutations – most turn out to be bad. This fact evokes the famous Richard Dawkins quote, “however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive.” For if life found its way successfully to the present, chances are that a random mutation will be harmful to its ongoing chances. Change is generally bad; stasis is preferred.

Every once in a while...

But occasionally something magical happens, and a mutation is helpful. Every once in a while, the giraffe baby’s neck is longer or the bat’s ability to distinguish its own frequency is improved. For whatever source you want to attribute that, it’s truly wonderful and magical. If you do believe in God, this is a great place in which to find Him. Another great place to find Him is in the those moments where an idea mutates in the mind. Great ideas, those truly inspired moments that strike the person in the right position at the right time, are magic. They’re also rare. I’d venture a guess that they rival positive random mutations in a biological evolutionary system in their inherent rareness. It’s amazing that either ever occur at all, but we should all be thankful that they both do.

So back to my demos, people often appreciate this metaphor – as they recognize that their organization has constraints. There’s a limited amount of resource for bringing new products to market or forming teams to explore a new process or implementing a customer service initiative. There will be plenty of good ideas and lots of popular ideas and then there will be those that are hand-in-glove with the organization’s goals. Those fit ideas are those decision-makers and management should be after, as those are the ideas that stand the best chance of being turned into action. For the best ideas are those that become real.

The giraffe’s neck and that iPhone you hold in your hand – perhaps they are more related than you ever imagined.

What I want to write about here is not what makes an idea good, but what makes an idea better. Because even though you can never collect 100% good ideas, you can rely on the fact that Kindling makes 100% of ideas better.

I took a fiction writing class this summer and the teacher suggested reading our piece out loud to someone. I must have spent 12 hours in front of my computer, writing and re-writing that story. But it wasn’t until I called a friend and read it over the phone that gaping holes and awkward phrases made themselves known.

Ideas are a lot like stories; you can only get so far on your own. At a certain point, it’s the sharing and the telling of the idea that allows you a different perspective. So my first point about how to make an idea better is pretty simple:

Share it.

This is the most basic functionality of Kindling, so there’s no surprise there. By the simple action of typing out an idea, tagging it with a couple of relevant words and attaching something to demonstrate your point, the idea is already better… because it’s OUT THERE! And the mere fact that you wondered what Suzy in Accounting or John in R&D might think made your idea better because you accounted for their perspectives. Which brings me to…

Throw it to the lions.

Imagine that your idea for a new product is approved. It’s built and is soon sold in stores across the country. But when it comes out, the reviewers come out of the woodwork and rip it apart. How are you going to prepare yourself for that kind of external critique (not to mention business disaster) if you haven’t gone through a trial run first?

Soliciting criticism helps your idea grow a tougher shell. Criticism can be useful, especially if it suggests a nuance that you never thought of or a marketing strategy that you wouldn’t have produced yourself. Use this internal challenge  to chip off the rough edges and give your initial thought some polish. And though others are important to the growth of the idea, you’re not so replaceable either…

Fuel it yourself.

An idea by itself loses steam, but an idea with an advocate rolls on. Some ideas simply seem more compelling because the person behind them is a force to be reckoned with. Call it charisma, call it passion, call it what you will; enthusiasm is not an insignificant factor when it comes to good ideas.

Is it such a novel thought that you make your idea better? Everything that inspired the initial seed and the eventual public idea came from your nourishment. The tenacity with which you defend it shines through when competing against the other ideas out there.

So what makes an idea better? How about collaboration, a healthy dose of criticism and a strong advocate. You might not belong to an organization of perfect people who always produce perfect ideas, but it’s nice to know there’s a back-up plan.

After a year-long hiatus from this Blog, I’m happy to announce that we’re back and better than ever. Why the hiatus, and more importantly, why the return?

Well it’s been said so many times at this point that assigning authorship to this idea would be nearly impossible, but I’ll credit Seth Godin when he said “post only when you have something to say”.

And we’ve got a lot to say! Here’s a general breakdown of the kinds of stories we plan to tell through this Blog, so please use this as a guide in order to gauge your possible interest in following.

Our Philosophy.

We’ve been working for three years now to help organizations realize their innovative potential, and while we don’t profess to know everything about innovation, we listen and have learned a lot. We’ve crafted a compelling story about how we view the process of innovation – what works and what doesn’t – and want to share. If you’re spoken with one of our team members, you’ve heard us talk through these points, but we want to more widely disperse our thinking.

Our Product.

Kindling is a kick-ass product, and we want to describe it’s design, features and capabilities. We also know that everyone thinks their kids are the most special, so you’ll hear this from others as well: clients of ours, analysts and the press. We’ll also use this Blog as the vehicle to announce and describe new features and capabilities as they launch.

Story Time!

Everyone loves a good story – and our client’s have some great ones. Some of our Accounts have been actively using Kindling for nearly two years, while others are just getting off the ground. Here we’ll tell stories about new products, cost-cutting measures, offerings, employee retention strategies and other ideas that went from a conversation in Kindling to reality. Also, we’ll share interesting vignettes about how Kindling has changed or become an integral part of a company’s culture, and how it’s altered people’s roles within a organization.

So gather around…

I played the violin for 10 years while I was growing up. I wasn’t very good; I never aspired to be the next soloist or Julliard applicant. But I often think about the things we learned in that class, life lessons that have stuck with me. For example, our Hungarian director once told us about the phenomenon of the perfect note. “If all of the instruments in the room are tuned and you strike a perfect note, they will all vibrate that note in agreement,” he said.

It was just creepy enough to fascinate me.

I had a similar moment during my first week at Muhlenberg when I was sitting in my Freshman seminar discussing the ethics of cloning. Suddenly something I’d learned in Philosophy class that morning came to mind, as did a conversation I’d had with my French professor, as did a late night talk with a friend down the hall about literature. “I just feel like everything is coming together,” I told my adviser after class. “It’s as if the college has crafted a curriculum specifically for me and I keep tripping over the same ideas in such different contexts.” I spent the next four years amazed by this string phenomenon of education.

Several years later, I now find myself reading a book about the scientist Joseph Priestley, called The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. I read a passage this morning in the subway that struck me as relevant to this blog. Johnson writes about Priestley’s innumerable inventions and successes:

Intellectual historians have long wrestled with the strangeness of this kind of streak. The thinker plods along… and then, suddenly- the floodgates open and a thousand interesting ideas seem to pour out. It’s no mystery that there are geniuses in the world, who come into life with innate cognitive skills that are nurtured and provoked by cultural environments over time… the mystery is why, every now and again, one of these people seems to get a hot hand.

When something big happens in the culture… that event is rarely the exclusive result of a single layer: one man’s genius, say, or the rise of a new economic class. Epic breakthroughs happen when the layers align: when energy flows and settlement patterns and scientific paradigms and individual human lives come into some kind of mutually reinforcing synchrony that helps the new ideas both emerge and circulate through the wider society.

Bingo! Breakthrough inventions not only thrive in a crossroads of media, disciplines and perspectives, but are born of them.

What better argument could there be for hiring a diverse group, people who come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences? The energy that comes from finding similarities across disciplines is like fuel for the fire. Whether it’s discovering that designers and writers tackle similar challenges or deriving metaphors from a developer’s journey writing code, working with people who are different provides a constant source of inspiration and perspective.

The thing is, you’ve got to actually start that fire though for things to get good, don’t you? It seems like getting messy and inviting conversation is the only way to break open the innovating. Johnson mentions a group of thinkers in his book that called themselves the Honest Whigs. The group included a certain Benjamin Franklin and met in London coffeehouses to share ideas and debate theories. Sounds like idea collaboration systems happened live and in person back in the mid-1700′s.

Can you imagine? Shooting the breeze with Ben Franklin, coming up with theories about religion and science and math at a time when the world was ripe for discovery? It struck me this morning that the world today seems so figured out, so explored, so… solved.

What’s inspiring to me is imagining that the world is just as fertile for discovery today as it was back then. And if it is, how can you organize your company to achieve “mutually reinforcable synchrony”? Who should be involved? And what can you do to sound that perfect, vibrating note?

The reason there is little change is that idea inputs were never the problem. The bottleneck was further upstream. Crowdsourcing, brainstorming, mindmapping, and the dozens of other techniques people obsess about help create early idea volume, but do little to help the curators, the people who winnow down the hundreds of ideas down to dozens, and dozens down to a handful.

Great reminder.

When Rich presented Kindling to about 700 people at the NY Tech Meet-up on Monday evening, we had a group of about 10 Arc-ers representing a cheering section. Seeing our app on the big screen (aside several other talented technologists’ work) was as exciting and nerve-wracking as one might expect. Perhaps the best thing about these opportunities is the ability to tell audiences directly about our product, to show the features we think are useful and important. After the presentation we hung around the lobby where we chatted about Kindling with other members of the Meet-up crowd. Honestly, these are some of my favorite moments along the journey of marketing a product. The verbiage we carefully craft, the perfect icons that we carefully design, the interactions that we develop: they are all tucked away along with the workday. Finally, it’s the time for storytelling.

I get such a kick out of telling the story of Kindling to someone in person.

Maybe what I like the most is the luxury of sharing some of the ideas that Arc has adopted from our own instance and the freedom to talk about those that we’ve flat-out rejected. “Here’s why it’s useful for us,” I can say. “Here’s why we made it like this and not like that.” The conversation, the back-and-forth: it’s a welcome moment of connection with the people I spend my days thinking about and for.

It’s not like I never have the chance to speak with Kindling customers. In fact, a large part of my job is answering emails and speaking with potential customers on the phone. But there’s something to be said for face-to-face interaction, particularly one that’s as open-ended as networking.

This process of sharing stories and gathering feedback, however, also happens to reside near a slippery slope. One of the most difficult aspects of working with a product like Kindling is maintaining a balance between two extremes: what do YOU want for your product and what does THE MARKET want for your product? Are we shaping the market or living within it? And how is the strategy affected when others apply their own labels and qualifications?

I doubt anyone can escape a healthy dose of both perspectives, but as the Client Relations guru for Kindling, I particularly find myself square in the crossroads. On the one hand, I’m the person on the phone with the users, answering questions about Central Authentication, storytelling in the lobby outside the auditorium at F.I.T. On the other hand, I’m aware of the various business and developmental road maps we’ve planned and our need to capitalize on clear direction.

In truth, none of these questions are particularly shocking for a company exploring product development. Building and marketing a product is a lot like forming a personality; some people and experiences form you along the way, despite the fact that you have natural tendencies at the core. Staying flexible enough to respond to things we don’t yet know about seems to be a requirement for our process.  In a recent meeting, Rich lobbied for keeping the next release minimalist.

“We don’t know enough about this feature yet,” he said. “Let’s let them tell us what else they need because we won’t be able to nail it on our own.”

He was right. And so we inch along, making instinctual guesses but also relying on a variety of sources to show us how Kindling acts and reacts in the Real World. We’ll present Kindling again at the Web2NY Meetup in April and hopefully have some more storytelling opportunities. In the meantime, stop me on the street, at the grocery store, on the subway. HAVE I GOT A STORY FOR YOU…