Cooking with Fire

Stories, Lessons and Ideas From a Year Spent Building a Culture of Design

Cooking With Fire

Who’s cooking?

Business Bromancehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/sunsetgirl_creations/3005640482/

On Today’s Show: Chef Alex!

1. Talk About Akoha

2. Talk About Design

3. Talk About Learning Design

4. Talk About What We Learned

5. Talk About How Painful Fun it Was

Being Akohan

Being Akohan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tojosan/3270422401/

Being Akohan

Being Akohan

Discovering Design

Designing for TED

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedconference/3259314585

TED Time Constraints

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianwallace/365651675

Breaking Some Eggs

How Exactly Is This Useful To Me?

The Big Underpants

A Dash of Design

Cooking Isn’t Easy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wink/344716250

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wink/344716250

Realization: Design Isn’t Easy

Gaining Some Design Direction

Cooks, or Cooking?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joebenjamin/1449932179

Cooks, or Cooking?http://www.flickr.com/photos/87612113@N00/2974427/

Hypothesis: Anyone Can Cook

Cooking the Akohan Way

Do We Need a Cookbook or a Menu?

Building a common language for the team

Building a common language for the team

Survival of your coffee?

You Need Two Things: Training & Recipes

Show picture of Dubberly PDF here and talk about all the different descriptions of design - 1 min

99+ Ways To Look At Design

http://www.dubberly.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/ddo_designprocess.pdf

Sketching Out a Model

The Double Diamond

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/About-Design/managingdesign/The-Study-of-the-Design-Process/

Akoha Design PlatformHow we think about doing design

What is our design platform?

• Our design platform articulates the way that Akoha thinks about and manages design activities

What is the Akoha design vision?

• Our design vision is to “improve the world by improving people”

• All of the design and implementation activities we undertake are focused on achieving this goal.

What are our design criteria?

• Everything we design must:

1. Be measurable

2. Solve tangible problems

3. Help people to feel better about themselves.

Why the vision and criteria?

1. Our vision communicates what we do as a business. This is our value proposition.

2. Our criteria communicate how we make things. This is how we create our value.

What is the Akoha design process?

• Our design process is customer centered, evidence based and focused on learning from our actions.

• It is inclusive, collaborative and accountable.

• Everything we do is focused on achieving our vision, and grounded in our core criteria.

What is the Akoha design process?

• Our process, and everything we design is situated within the frame of a playful experience.

• Our product is a playful experience, and it is produced through a playful experience.

• Our work is the product of how we work.

What does our design process look like?

1. Explore

What does our design process look like?

1. Explore 2. Understand

What does our design process look like?

1. Explore 2. Understand 3. Ideate

What does our design process look like?

1. Explore 2. Understand 3. Ideate 4. Prototype

What does our design process look like?

1. Explore 2. Understand 3. Ideate 4. Prototype

Our process is continuous.

Our process can be parallel.

Our process can be asynchronous.

What is a divergent activity?

To “diverge” means to head in different

directions. Divergent activities allow us

explore options

Our process is based on two types of activities

ConvergentDivergent

What is a divergent activity?

Divergent activities allow us generate

possibilities

What are some examples of divergent activities?

Backcasting

Brainstorming

Sketching (sometimes!)

What is a convergent activity?

To “converge” means to bring together.

Convergent activities allow us to focus our

thinking

What is a convergent activity?

Convergent activities allow us integrate

perspectives

What are examples of convergent activities?

Mental models

Sketching (sometimes!)

Creating personas

How does divergence help our thinking?

Divergent thinking helps us understand our

customers from many different perspectives

How does convergence help our thinking?

Convergent thinking helps us develop

insights that we can use to understand the needs

of our customers

How does divergence help our making?

Divergent creativity helps us generate a wide range of ideas.

How does convergence help our making?

Convergent creativity helps us integrate the best elements of our ideas into a focused

solution

What does our design process look like?

1. Explore 2. Understand 3. Ideate 4. Prototype

Our process is simple and adaptable.

1. Explore 2. Understand 3. Ideate 4. Prototype

ConvergentDivergent ConvergentDivergent

Framing the process

Our process helps us to work on answering the challenge laid out in our design vision:

How do we improve the world by improving people?

Framing the process

Our entire team may participate in a set of design activities.

Framing the process

Different parts of our team may participate in different design activities.

Framing the process

In all cases, we’re collaborating to work towards attaining our design vision.

Cooking as a Team

Theory: Get the Right Environment

Making a Space For Design

Recommendation: Use Healthy Ingredients

Going Deeper

Lesson: The Devil’s in the Details

http://www.flickr.com/photos/abbyladybug/3627947764

Insight: Sometimes the best cooking is fusion

It’s Just a Design Problem

One Year Later

Reflecting on Design

Fact: You’ll Probably Burn Dinner a Few Times

http://www.flickr.com/photos/abbyladybug/3627947764

Anyone Can Cook. Not Everyone Wants To.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/phdstudent/115127171

Lesson: Participatory Design is Tough

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26071225@N04/3038922759/

Fact: Design is a Hard Sell, Even in a Startup

Facilitate or Die!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/criminalintent/3172180022

Opinion: You Can Only Have One Head Chef

http://www.flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/2885960896

Design is Conversation

Divergent thinking is easier than convergent thinking

Tip: It Helps to Use Wholesome Ingredients

Suggestion: Use Everything in Your Kitchen

Good Design Doesn’t Have To Be Expensive

Experience: You Learn to Cook by Cooking

Don’t be afraid to play with the recipe

Thanks!

alex@akoha.com matthew@normativedesign.com