This week we kicked off a brand identity project for a client. A pretty common occurrence, but this particular project comes with a twist. Continuum is partnering with Design Museum Boston to craft its brand identity. The twist? The museum is nomadic, existing mainly in a virtual space. Design Museum Boston creates pop-up exhibits throughout New England that educate the general public on the role of design in their lives.

Our challenge? How do you create an identity for an organization that is constantly changing? Fortunately for us, we’ll have your help to find the answer. For the next six weeks, we’re partnering with Core77 on a blog series that will reveal our process and progress as we take on the challenge. Think you know what the Design Museum Boston identity should be? Let us know, we look forward to working with you.

On February 19th, students from the Otis College of Art and Design visited our Los Angeles studio. The students are part of a multi-disciplinary class called “Design for Social Impact.” In the class, the students work with local non-profits to focus their designs on specific and relevant needs.

With this in mind, we tailored our presentations to give the students a feel for Continuum’s social innovation process. The morning started out with a tour of the space and its project-specific installations, led by the studio principal Alex Hennen. Then, design strategist Brian Wen led a presentation and discussion on design strategy and ethnography in emerging markets.

Below are some impressions from the students:

“I began to realize all the types of people, methods, and practices that go into social design. It is a complex system.”
Alexandra Cantle

“[I got] a chance to see more ways that design can create social impact. It also was good to see the importance of video interviews and what they can reveal.”
Stephanie Treinen

 ”Being in product design, I’ve come to the realization (or more left the state of denial) that you really need to get out there and talk to people when doing research. Not just sit and google things on a computer.”
Ryan Robinson

“[I got] a better understanding of the effectiveness of systems thinking, the process involved, and the importance of beginning with people’s values, and how to work with and understand people in a ethnographic design context.”
Julian Rood

Last week, Continuum was asked to lead a Design Thinking workshop with over 60 Harvard University students. Professor of Sociology, David Ager, brought us in to share the basics of design thinking with his Social Entrepreneurship students to help them approach their endeavors in a new way.

The students filed in, having been told by Professor Ager that the night’s session would be different. They settled in among a sea of Post-Its and Sharpies—the building blocks of great ideation.

The facilitators for the evening, Anna Muoio and Jon Campbell, kicked off the evening with a simple task—write down the steps that one would go through to pick up a rental car at the airport.  Bulleted lists were scrawled on paper at tables across the room.

 

The students, like most of our workshop attendees, were confident that they covered everything. Over the next few hours of the workshop, the students would come to view the same experience with very different eyes, and would realize that, in fact, there is much more to see.

After hearing about the basics of Design Thinking and Service Design—methodologies, principles, tools and ways of working effectively—the students learned how to use them. Encouraged by their facilitators and supporting cast from Continuum, including strategists, designers and engineers, the students explored the gamut of the rental car experience.

Armed with Post-Its, Sharpies and nimble minds, students used a tool called ‘Journey Mapping’ to examine the total experience and understand each step from the consumer’s point of view, along with accompanying needs, anxieties and emotional connections. This exercise enabled the students to view the entire picture of how the experience flows and the holistic implications of potential changes and improvements.

Students were then charged with defining the ideal rental car experience, and, in the spirit of using new tools along the way, teams were challenged to convey an individual brand attribute through the experience. One team, charged with creating the experience with the brand attribute “edgy,” decided that ideally the rental car experience should be like a fashion show. They designed individual touchpoints along the journey that would help to create an “edgy” rental care experience.

The workshop was lively, and the students were both engaged and interested. After the workshop, one student said he is always asked to learn linearly.  This workshop, however, took the “Atlas globe” off of his back and allowed him to think more freely. The students departed the workshop in love with their favorite new office supply and excited to apply what they had just learned to their work.

As the prolific pedagogue and founder of The Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India, Kiran Sethi has infused the city’s youth culture with spirit and empowerment. Launching aProCh (A Protagonist in Every Child) early last year, Kiran has set after making Ahmedabad a child-friendly city. “They (children) understand intuitively that the real curriculum is not what’s taught in schools, but what’s written on the face of the land.” At the heart of the organization’s ideology is the fulfillment of the child’s need need for joy, safety, play, and the opportunity to explore the wider world. Bridging the gap between children’s teachers, parents, and their larger community creates the foundation of The Riverside School, and poises children to effect needed change.

Kiran’s latest thinking on how to enact change is The Design for Giving Contest. Through this, an entire emerging generation is called to action. She’s continued to drive home the point “Do not let the teachers drive the project; let them just guide it.”

With over 1300 entries pouring in from children full of earnest thinking and concern the teams from Continuum, IDEO, and the Institute of Design at Stanford were sure to be overwhelmed. As any contest of this size our team was rigorously making sure every entry had fulfilled each category with a level of clarity and conviction. Though, we also admitted how each entry would be its own mystery whose impacts we couldn’t possibly fully grasp: the elderly they visited, the thirsty villagers they spoke with, or the water sanitation issues they researched. Qualifying the entries would be soft, but also hard and fast. Sixth senses were hard to trust on this one.

I will not forget one particular entry. As we were going through many dozens of entries we began to learn their rhythm, their formats, language and tactics. Shivesh Pandey’s entry was different. This 11 year-old dove into a problem we hadn’t seen in other entries. He started to envision a technology device for his local train station. He explained that his motivation was several deaths from people trying to cross the train tracks as unannounced trains wizzed through the terminal. Following his explanation he submitted his genius: a fully equipped, stacked device outlining each feature – in crayon and colored pencil. Without a flinch, he had the answer. He was simply calling for its production and installation.

Though the entry by standard was not as robust, it showed a kid ready to make it happen. This was his idea addressing a problem in his world – straight from the gut. I presume that no teacher held his hand while working through his sketch. I appreciated Shivesh’s entry not because it was a great design, or necessarily even the right solution – but his potential to realize and act on the problem. He thought to outline the opportunity it seemed nobody saw. After all, that attitude struck me as core to the contest. If we can be a part of activating this generation’s custom of giving and support their design thinking, that is a powerful thing.

We’ll look forward to staying involved in Kiran’s work as it surely evolves. Kiran recently shook things up at TEDIndia and her contagious thinking. It seems the contest already has a life of its own – in the best way.

For those of you who were never a Boy Scout, the Pinewood Derby is a competition in which contestants build a small wooden car to race on a 40 foot track against other cars of the same approximate size and weight. The goal is to work within the parameters of the rules to build the fastest car.

Several years ago, the IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America) decided to sponsor a derby car race for designers at their annual IDSA National Conference in Pasadena. The response was overwhelming as designers and engineers entered dozens of impressive cars that would lie, cheat and creatively steal their way to the finish line.

Since that first race in 2004, the competition has raged on, with designers from all over the country fielding extraordinary cars. For this years IBM Unlimited Derby held at the IDSA conference in Miami, Continuum approached their participation in the race in a new way. Rather than trying to create the fastest car, the team decided to create the most memorable car. To accomplish this, we started by brainstorming themes that would be relevant to what’s going on in the world.

The planet is currently going through a financial crisis that hasn’t been experienced in eighty years. We’re all being forced to pinch pennies and find creative ways to save money. At the same time, worldwide concern is high around health threats like the swine flu. Continuum took these themes and turned them into a statement of hope, a piggy bank car called Swine Flew.

Throughout the four-day conference, the attendees were encouraged to add their spare change to the piggy bank. This served two purposes. First, each coin made the car slightly heavier, and consequently, faster. Second, Continuum offered to multiply every contribution by 10 and donate the final amount to design education.

The Swine Flew pit crew members, Jung Tak, Damien Vizcarra, and Kevin Young (many thanks to the non-traveling crew of Jake Childs, Rich Ciccarelli and Bruce MacRae) have returned from the IDSA National Conference and are proud to bring home the award for Fastest Car in the Gravity Weight Class as well as the award for Most Fun.

We’re also proud to say that the generous contributions of the IDSA audience helped Swine Flew raise a total of $1,274.40 for design education.

 

We are facilitating a design thinking workshop as part of Boston AIGA’s 25th Anniversary Celebration on this upcoming Saturday, March 28th. The description is below. If you know anyone interested in learning more about Continuum’s approach to Design Thinking please forward along the link below.

Bridging Business & Design: The Power of Design Thinking
with Matt Carlson, Principal, Brand Experience
30 participants  |  9am – Noon

Design Thinking is a structured approach to the creative process, a powerful tool for communicating the value of design to clients through a collaborative process. In this half-day workshop Continuum will show how to apply the principles of Design Thinking to solve business problems big and small, creating lighthouse concepts that can guide design and galvanize organizations.

Matthew is a principal at Continuum, with a focus on brand strategy and experience design. For 15 years, he has helped companies to understand their customers, identify unmet needs and envision brands and products that meet those needs. He works with industrial designers and ethnographers, engineers and MBAs to make ideas real and bring them to the marketplace.

People can register for the event at the Boston AIGA Website.

We reached Continuum at 630pm (slightly behind schedule, in keeping with the IDDS style) and were delighted to find a huge array of food had been prepared for us. We were graciously received by all the Continuum staff and they even had the courtesy of providing name badges for those of us who had forgotten our IDDS versions! Continuum’s President, Gianfranco Zaccai, welcomed us with a short speech in which he stressed the importance of conferences such as IDDS for helping to foster new ideas and new ways of solving real life problems through design innovations. He pointed out that even though it was possible to send a man to the moon–using an almost unlimited amount of time and resources–the task of designing a simple, cheap, effective and implementable technology was in fact far more difficult and required far more innovation.

The participants and the Continuum employees then split into two groups, one of which went on a tour of the building, while the other listened to presentations given by IDDS participants. I was in the first group and we were treated to presentations from Mariela Molina, Bryce Butcher, Suprio Das and Bernard Kiwia. Mariela, of Universidad Rafael Landivar Guatemala and Bryce, of Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA), talked about two very different projects. Mariela told the group of the work she was doing on water purification through solar panels and then Bryce followed this with an interesting presentation on a latrine design project entitled “Eco Loo”. Bryce worked with fellow team members from the California Institute of Technology and her own college to attempt “to provide simple, efficient solutions to the latrine problem in developing countries”. Her team went on a field trip to Guatemala to discover more information and then developed a design that they believe could help to stop the spread of latrine caused disease. To find out more about Bryce’s project check out their website.

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This past weekend, Continuum hosted a sustainable design training program for clients and colleagues. The training was delivered by Dr. Benjamin Linder of Olin College. Ben has been giving this training to Continuum staff, in chunks of 15-20 people. We ask a lot of him: take what you teach over 2 or 3 courses, add a professional perspective, and then trim it down to fit in a total of about 12 hours. It’s not everything you need to know about sustainable design, just the first few things. As Ben says, “This program will change your head, but you need more training to teach your hands.”

The attendees ranged in seniority and spread across industries, from appliances to building materials to lighting. The best part of the sessions was the discussion among the attendees. Each brought a different perspective to the design exercises, and each had a story to share about the progress they made and challenges they faced bringing sustainability into their business activities. Late in the second day, it occurred to the group that Wal-Mart had provided the strongest impetus for change in the companies of several attendees. These companies had wanted to adopt more sustainable practices, but the demands of business always took precedence. As soon as Wal-Mart began making demands of suppliers, the intent to green up was galvanized into action.

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We were really pleased to hear that our friends over at Design Squad were the recipients of a Peabody Award for last year’s season. We had a great time hosting the finale in our studio last Summer. Great job guys!

Here’s the press release.

Also check out this time lapse video of our shop crew deconstructing the enormous grass hill we built in our lobby for the kids to test their designs on.

I spent the earlier part of the week at SCAD at a design charrette we helped them host. Design for the other 90% was the theme. Some 200 or so industrial design students are spending 4 1/2 days working in groups of 5 or 6. The groups were assigned regions and topics – South America, peace and stability for instance. Each day (and most of each night) the groups are getting first hand experience with a phase of our design strategy process – alignment, discovery, analysis and envisioning. Its inspiring to see these talented young designers applying their time and talents to understanding and proposing solutions to some of the worlds real problems.

I’m hoping this experience will inspire them. I think it will. Focusing 4 days on far off lands and how most of the people on this planet live must seem such quite a departure from designing cars of the future and jet skis!

Congrats to the folks at SCAD (and Continuum’s Beth Johnson) for all the work to set this up. But, most of all thanks to the students participating. Perhaps you can see that you can make a difference in this world.

Check out details on the event

http://scadcharrette.net/