This work reminds me of an installation by Celeste Boursier-Mougenot I saw at the Barbican in London back in 2010.

I like that these works are an exploration of creating additional emotional connections between human and natural realms. I see them as an attempt to ‘give voice’ to nature, so that it might speak to people who might otherwise just see a goldfish, or a finch. In a way, these installations enable the practice of VuJa De -the ‘oppostie’ of Déjà vu- the ability to see familiar things with new eyes.

I also like the intentionally openendedness of the work. They are a structure and a scaffolding that require participation to be activated. And in this way, they are constantly in motion; never the same. By inviting a kind of randomness into their artwork, these artists are implicitly trusting that whatever happens will be interesting and informative. There is intrigue in the not-knowing what will come next -a performative quality as well- that draws the viewer in.

I wanted to let you know about an interesting conversation that is happening at Cooper Design on Thursday, May 23rd. It’s an exploration of futurist ecology and design. Come help us push the conversation in some interesting, far out directions. At the Parlor, we intend to pair biologists and ecologists with designers, technologists, futurists, and illustrators in order to produce the most innovative, visually interesting and evolutionarily-grounded explorations. I hope you’ll be a part of the conversation.

Cooper Parlor -
WTF, Evolution? Designing for Unnatural Selection
Moderator: Zak Brazen, Creative Strategist, Brazenworks
Cost: $10
When: Thursday, May 23rd from 6:30-8:30 (doors open at 6)
Where: Cooper Offices, 85 2nd St, 8th Floor, San Francisco, CA
Get your tickets here.

The Cooper Parlor is a gathering of designers and design-minded people to exchange ideas around a specific topic. It aims to cultivate conversation that instigates, surprises, entertains, and most importantly, broadens our community’s collective knowledge and perspective about the potential for design.

Like it or not, the sixth wave of extinction is upon us. By the end of the century nearly 50% of all species on the planet may be gone. Most will perish simply because they do not have enough time to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions. But what if there were gadgets (or services) that would help plants and animals transcend time and make the evolutionary leap? What if there was a Whole Earth Catalog for the non- human among us (eat your heart out, Stewart Brand)?

In this seriously tongue-in-cheek Parlor, Creative Strategist Zak Brazen, of Brazenworks Design and Ingenuity Lab, will explore design opportunities for the near future, when plants and animals are your clients. Parlor participants will imagine, prototype and design tools, gadgets and services that give plants and animals the resources they need to cope with climate change in real time.

Disruptive? To say the least.
Save your spot now, before these seats become extinct.

Music: Dave Brubeck – “Unsquare Dance”

Clearly an inspiration for Tarantino, this South Korean spaghetti western is an intriguing campy gem. The outlandish yet familiar narrative, the iconic characters, cinematography, aesthetic -and at times, over the top violence- make this film by Jee-woon Kim and Min-suk Kim an instant cult classic.

In the vain of another great Eastern-produced action comedy, Kung Fu Hustle, you can see glimmers of The GB&W influence in the predictably unpredictable 7 psychopaths. Any other glam tales of adventure and treachery that I’m missing?

Manifold is a 3 year old creative agency that imagines and produces compelling on-line and off-line ideas. In 2012 they were named Advertising Age’s Small Agency of the Year.

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with Brian Mullin and Sean Florio, both founding partners.

We met in the San Francisco office, which has two main rooms; one open space work environment and one private meeting room. Large windows looking out onto Bryant Street create a sort of human fish bowl effect for pedestrians walking past Manifold’s office. The office’s personality and creativity embrace every surface of their space.

Some of my favorite artifacts were the claymation avitars that lived on everyone’s desk. These were created for Manifold’s holiday campaign for Lytro and really captured the playful, experimental spirit of the office.

As an entity, Manifold is distributed between New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. This gives them a kind of bi-coastal consciousness and larger than the sum of their parts professional presence.

I immediately appreciated how amiable everyone was toward me and one another. There was a palpable familiarity in the air that fostered an open, collaborative work vibe. This is evidenced in Manifold’s Open Desk experiment.

As a way of inviting new energy, ideas and perspectives into their office, they have dedicated a desk for “outsiders” to populate. This could be a staffer visiting from another office, or a local photographer who calls Manifold home for several weeks. Where some companies might be concerned to open their doors to strangers, I thought this was a great way to invite social serendipity into the office, as well as build relationships with local professionals. You never know where that next project is going to come from. This practice is reminiscent of the brown bag lunch discussion concept, but takes it a meaningful step further. More, Manifold offers this opportunity to the right person, free of charge.

In the course of our conversation it became apparent that there’s a culture of confidence in their ideas. For example, standing behind their convictions, Manifold co-created a Bike-in Theater with Brooklyn-based food blog and supper club, Forking Tasty, to create a modern twist on the classic American Drive-In experience.

One week prior to our interview, the office received some Designing Culture probes designed by Brazenworks. The dice determined that they would explore the path of the IdeaLib. They came up with some great Idea Metaphors.

In what ways do you reward staff for generating new leads and clients?
Employees who instigate relationships that lead to new work receive a bonus. Nothing new. But the header image for this post shows you how they let the employee know about their bonus. Fun! and demonstrative of the spirit of the company’s work.

How do you share great ideas internally?
Everyone is encouraged to maintain a list of websites, articles, photographs and projects that they are trending and/or find inspiring. At the weekly Manifold Inspiration Hour all offices conference together to share what people are currently curating.

Do you have practices for empowering employee productivity?
Manifold gives people a lot of autonomy. The result is that people own their autonomy, productivity and decision making with honesty and above average communication skills. This is very much in step with what thought leader Professor Gary Hamel preaches. Morning Star is another good example of a company doing employee empowerment, management and operations a little differently.

Other cultural practices that encourage new ways of problem solving?
They used to have a sign in their meeting room that read -
“Rules for Brainstorming: If you mention Scavenger Hunt you’re fired.”
This was not literal, but served as a reminder to keep digging for more compelling, leading edge solutions.

Thanks to Brian, Sean and everyone at Manifold for spending some time with me to talk shop!

So of course I’m pleased to have found the following from foodtechconnect.com.

I’m not sure that the business model will play out, but the idea of a customizable, bespoke box of cereal is intriguing; even for the average cereal eaters among us. More, the UX/IX they’re working on is clean, intuitive and a rewarding experience in and of itself.

Details –
Cerealize, a new subscription website that allows consumers to design custom blended, organic breakfast cereal and have a box of it shipped to their home, took first prize for this year’s Startup Bus competition. Startup Bus is a mobile hackathon, where developers and entrepreneurs spend four days developing minimum viable web apps while traveling by bus to SXSWi in Austin.

Cerealize peaked our interest for a couple of reasons, most significantly for their fun and easy approach to tackling industry consolidation.

According to the Startup Bus website:

“More than a hundred years after its popularization, cereal remains a staple of the American diet, eaten by more than 80MM Americans every day. Yet, the cereal industry is highly consolidated with four large companies — Kellogg, General Mills, Post, and Quaker Oats — claiming the vast majority of market share (87%). Disrupting these incumbents presents a real challenge: barriers to competing successfully at retail include the need for extensive distribution networks and expensive demand-generation campaigns, both of which may be out of reach for most startup companies. But with Cerealize, we are leveraging the power of just-in-time production, direct-to-consumer sales, and a uniquely social business model that practically advertises itself to break into the category with less working capital than it would take to successfully launch a traditional in-store brand.”

Only time will tell if Cerealize will move from prototype to a business with mainstream traction. Still, their focus on customization, convenience and simplicity of design offer interesting lessons for organic food advocates looking for new ways to garner support for organic food.

Smart materials -things such as ink that conducts electricity; a window that turns from clear to opaque at the flip of a switch; metals and plastics whose shapes are temperature dependent; a jelly that makes music- are exciting and inspiring fodder for innovation.

Catarina Mota has created an open source platform of DIY projects that experiment with smart materials. It’s called Open Materials and it will get your brain moving.

What are their habits for creating truly great teams?
How do they empower individual and organizational ingenuity?
What are their practices for cultivating communication and collaboration both internally and with their clients?

To this end, Brazenworks is talking to some of the best and brightest in the business.

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting with Alanna Fincke, Communications Director, at Continuum Boston, a veteran global design and innovation consultancy. From innovations in banking, health care, customer experience, product design and more, Continuum’s work touches most of our lives on a daily basis. I’m particularly excited about one of their new spin-off products called Two Hands,* a lightweight adjustable stand for tablets. It puts my current ipad stand to shame.

Designing Culture

When I asked Alanna where Continuum’s cultural practices come from, she said it’s fairly “organic”, meaning that the cultural practices that stick are usually not prescribed from the top down, but rather bubble up democratically. I’m guessing that’s how the tradition of a decades-long standing meeting up at the local pub got started. 

In terms of organizational support, there’s “100% encouragement to totally be yourself” and bring your whole-self to work. One way they support this is by giving employees time to run and bike during the work day. Alanna shared with pride that two Continuum (and one former) staffers are also in a band that was recently on the cover of local Boston culture guide, The Phoenix. Having a house band must make for great staff parties!

When talking about the working process, Alanna pointed out that teams are multidisciplinary by design, and every project has a project room, or “home”, meaning a dedicated space for multiple perspectives to spread out, intermingle and evolve. This practice keeps people from feeling isolated and recognizes that the important work doesn’t typically happen behind any one person’s desk.

While Alanna and I were appreciating the old bowling-alley-cum-kitchen-table-top, we ran into Ed Milano, Managing Vice President. I asked Ed about how Continuum cultivates organizational ingenuity.  He said that, “creativity comes from the addiction of understanding users.” When trying to comprehend and solve a problem for their clients, they’re out in the field, “in people’s business,” experiencing the problem space first hand. Which explains why Continuum’s solutions, like Swiffer, seem to stick. They solve real problems for real people.

Are there practices that cultivate communication?
Bi-monthly all-staff meetings allow teams to report to the entire company how their projects are evolving. This is a great time for people to publicly recognize specific individuals for a job well done. They call these acknowledgments, “Shout Outs”.


Making Space
I was duly impressed with Continuum’s lobby which doubled as a showcase for several of their more high-profile projects. Given the quality of the displays, it was not surprising to learn that they have a Lobby Experience Team that curates and manages the space.
 I also liked that the lobby display continued into the bathroom experience. I think that bathrooms are under utilized spaces for creativity and content dissemination. Just because we do unspeakable things in the bathroom, doesn’t mean that bathrooms shouldn’t have a voice. In the men’s room there were intriguing NXT posters and take-away cards that point you to a cool, futurist discussion board and twitter feed.

They have a great yellow wall filled with clip boards and pictures of people. Apparently it was created by a couple of their designers one night after work. The photos are of actual people that Continuum has interviewed and observed as part of the research phase for various projects. The designers wanted to remind everyone in the office who they are designing for. I’d say it’s pretty effective.

In addition to dedicated project rooms, there are several small breakout areas where small groups can congregate to work. Keeping things consistent, Continuum’s corporate orange color palette is tastefully woven throughout the company, right down to my coffee cup.

They have a fantastic workshop space where prototyping takes place. On one wall hung many early iterations of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) laptop. It was cool for me to see these prototypes as Yves Behar (one of the project’s late-stage designers) was one of my mentors at CCA, and I happened to be at the Entertainment Gathering conference in LA where Nicholas Negroponte first announced the OLPC project.

Continuum also does a great job of utilizing immersive mock-environments to develop ideas, products and service experiences. These environments help them effectively communicate their concepts to their clients. Nothing like building a real-fake hospital room to understand all of the complexity and nuanced interactions that such a space embodies.

One of the “organic” things about the office was that despite not having a Vibe Manager (like Salesforce has at one of its offices) people throughout the Boston office were in a good mood and seemed to genuinely like one another. That’s actually quite an achievement. I have a sense that one of the ingredients of Continuum’s secret sauce is in who and how they hire. They value diversity and understand that multiple perspectives are vital in revealing what matters most to users. From this fertile ground come solutions and services that make a difference in people’s lives. Plus, having a diverse team of experts keeps conversation around the bowling alley table interesting.

* Two Hands is produced by a company called Felix, headed by Continuum’s former Chief Operating Officer, Chris Michaud.