i like to take pictures of signs

I like to take pictures of signs.

The Hinman Research Building at Georgia Tech. Love the typeface, and the brick, and the lighting...

One of the things that I’ve been working on for the past few weeks is some artwork for a product that we are readying for launch. The product itself will be printed with this design and associated words, and although I have no formal training as a graphic designer, my team is taking a chance on me for my own professional benefit.

I’ve said before that part of my process of professional self-discovery was learning that I am lyrically creative. I am moved by words. I have to watch myself - it’s tempting to fill this 1-in x 1.5-in space with words. But nurses don’t like words. Patients don’t need words. And so, I have to find a better way to communicate what needs to be communicated for patients to have the best possible outcome.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am insecure in my abilities. As an engineer, I want to be good at mechanical design. Engineers aren’t typically known for their diction or writing skills. They’re known for their ability to take things apart and put things back together. As a young engineer, it’s been hard for me to accept that I do not have to be good at everything, or that being good at one thing does not precludes me from being good at another.

Engineering is a fancy term for problem solving, and problems aren’t always solved by fixing broken components. It takes more than just a knack for tinkering to be able to solve problems. It takes vision. It takes an ability to look at a system... and also its components. It takes empathy, and an understanding of who it is we’re designing for, and what it is they actually need.

Part of the way we design our lives is aspirational. I carry around a camera and Play-doh not because I take amazing pictures or build intricate clay models on a regular basis. I carry them around because those are things that, when I make the conscious effort to use them, make me a better designer. To me, if photographs capture the stimuli in the world as it is, and sketching and prototype provide the response, then writing about our experiences in our world fills the gap between.

Back to sign-loving. I’m currently in New Orleans, which is proving to be sign haven. It’s given me some new insights on how to communicate with people the way that people need to be communicated with.

The capital of Luisiana.

Had to do it.

A personal favorite from sign-spotting today.

creativity & silence

There is a composition by John Cage called 4' 33" (listen here) in which he instructs the entire orchestra to not play a thing during each of the three movements. He came up with the idea when he visited an anechoic chamber, and instead of hearing silence, he heard two sounds: "when I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation."

He expected silence, but his brain and body filled the space.

The idea here is there is no such thing as the absence of art. Where art is silent, our science finds a way to fill in the blanks and create sounds to plug the silences. Silence gives us room to breathe, to think.

White space is liberating. It creates a gap in which we can think before we respond to the stimulus. It gives us a chance to be creative.

If you want to foster your own creativity, give yourself white space, and see what your mind does with the silence. While it's true that creativity loves constraints, it also needs room to breathe.

The storefront at Victory Sandwich in Inman Park. Love the use of white space in an otherwise "noisy" neighborhood.

Also, a little bragging - major, major kudos to the Vascular Interventions team at Bard Medical - we had our first annual Franchise Awards gig Wednesday, and out of five individual awards and five franchise awards, we took HALF of the total. That's a lot of hardware, and a big deal for a new team. Props!

why i still can't work our tv remote (hint: it's not because i'm stupid)

I’m in the middle of reading a pretty interesting book called The Design of Everyday Things. Donald Norman opens the book by talking about devices that seem impossibly complex to use, and reassuring the reader that their difficulties with such objects are the fault of bad design (and not their own ineptitude). Reading that, I couldn’t help but laugh and think about my constant battles with our tv remote.

(image courtesy of my iPhone)

I’ve never been a tv watcher, so I don’t hold tv remotes in any high regard, but this one really takes things to a new level.

The actions we perform in any given day are motivated by a goal and (hopefully) result in a desired outcome. Things that are designed simply, with the user’s perspective in mind, have a clear map from goal to outcome. If I want to type a particular letter on the keyboard (goal), I would look for a key that matches the symbol I wanted to recreate, and then I would push it (action). Pushing is intuitive – buttons are meant to be pushed. Then, I would get clear feedback (outcome) that the letter had been typed because I can see it on the screen. This is a simple action map.

Sometimes, a designer can anticipate a single goal that might be so critical that multiple actions will lead to the same goal. Usually, when an inexperienced person is learning to use such technology, they’re confused about the redundancy of action, but can figure out the conceptual model in a relatively short time frame.

Where we really get into trouble, though, is when multiple outcomes can result from one goal. This can happen as the result of one action (which is incredibly frustrating… just think of being a guy using a voice-dialing system in which your phone can’t decipher “Call Mom” from “Car Horn”).

The case of our remote is a little something like this:

I’m not sure what kind of design choice leads to a tv “PWR” button next to an “ON” button. I can't, despite my training in design and my own career in user-centered product design, figure out which action actually turns off the tv (and I have a feeling I'm not the only one... although I could just be stupid).

I realize that many of you aren't designers, at least not in the literal sense. But mental models of goals and outcomes are applicable to people as well as things. In fact, the place between a goal and an outcome is the gap between stimulus and response. Unfortunately for us, our mental models and possible actions to reach our desired goals look less like the first concept map I showed and more like the last, with multiple courses of action and relatively uncertain outcomes. Effective communication comes from a clear goal and a good understanding of the outcome, with somewhat variable action. Let's hope that we learn what buttons to push on people faster than we learn on our televisions.

what is the gap between stimulus and response?

Buried in the back of Stephen Covey’s book, in the last chapter, he writes about an experience he had while on sabbatical of walking into a library, opening a book, and reading one sentence that changed his life. The sentence essentially reads (and here I quote Covey): “There is a gap between stimulus and response, and the key to both our growth and happiness is how we utilize that space.”

(image courtesy of...)

Essentially, we are confronted with many stimuli in our lives. Some are obvious – temperature, sound, light, actions. Others are more subtle – emotions, interactions, wayward blog postings. But each of these stimuli changes our course in some way, and the mindfulness of our actions in shaping what our response is, makes all the difference in who we become. Crafting appropriate responses to the events, people, and other stimuli in our lives is the essence of maturity.

It’s this thought that spurred my idea for a blog. There are always gaps between the stimulus and the response, and being able to capture the thoughts that fill that space is challenging. For example, there is a gap between consumption (of say, a blog post) and creation (a comment... so think about what’s happening in your gap). But consumption always leads to smarter consumption, and if I do my job well, better creation.

Great design means that you give the appropriate stimuli to elicit the desired response. Great designers, then, can anticipate the space between stimulus and response, and can assess what will happen in that space to guide a user to that outcome. When we design medical technology, we’re mindful of how patient care is affected. A good design is a device that improves the health or reduces the injury of the patient. But a great design has to be one that is also easy and intuitive for a clinician, nurse, assistant, or caregiver to use. Which isn’t an easy order to fill.

So there you have it - the gap between stimulus and response.