Recently, I've been coming back to the question of designing business. Who does it? How is it done? Do we design business through interactions?
A long time ago, what brought us the tools we now take for granted - the mighty mouse, the flat screens, the software and hardware - was the desire to design interactions with technology. Those stories are told in Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge.
The focus of design is the end user. The enjoyment that individuals - we - gain from using well-conceived products is the hallmark of good design. We design story, an experience, and then how that transfers and translates into our lives. The meaning we derive from it.
Digital technologies designed for interaction with simple interfaces - Twitter, IM, LinkedIn questions and answers, FriendFeed, email, text messaging, even Digg and StumbleUpon to a certain degree - allow us to shorten the distance between ideas and feedback. An outcome of that is in some cases a connection. Do interactions help shape business, too?
Maybe we can ask this one differently - why wouldn't they?
There was another book that was seminal in my thinking around Designing Business, written by Clement Mok. I had the pleasure of meeting Mok at a Fast Company Real Time event in Phoenix back in 2000. Funny how things we pick up along the way are like seeds that start growing us in new directions when properly nourished.
Many of the notions in Mok's book are starting to take hold today. Throw away the org chart and put in an information architecture - what do you see? What are the interdependencies? We all understand what identity design means. It is not the domain of logos and style guides in corporate environments alone anymore. We go back to the relevance of micro interactions to feed what that is and means from the outside in.
The word "interactivity" has become a computing buzz word, but it has a meaning that illuminates and ultimate goal: to create a totally immersive experience. I would add that it infers a correlation between things and carries the ultimate goal of human communication.
If interactions are designed to be transformative experiences, then the business where the interactions occur, will be transformed.
[image adapted from a 1991 HBS report diagram in Mok's book.]
Perhaps it's because I live in Massachusetts, where the city of Boston's road systems were made by cow paths, and then buildings showed up around those paths, and then we paved the paths - this is where I see interaction-based design blown up to the city-scale level.
Guess what? It's messy. And yet, it's necessary.
Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6, coined a phrase in front of me one day. "Listening at the point of need." I think this has a strong ramification to designing around interactions. If you can't sense, you don't know what comes next.
Think about the Wii. The Nintendo Wii knows more about me than my laptop. It knows I'm there. It knows I moved. It knows when I'm not paying attention to the screen.
You've hit on something interesting here, and I hope others extend your ideas even further.
Posted by: Chris Brogan... | July 30, 2008 at 11:31 AM
The idea of interactivity is terrifying in some business structures - is it because they're built with silos or walls?
Are our metahpors simply all wrong in the way we think about and design business?
What should they be built with instead?
The images interactivity spur are not so concrete or absolute (and thus harder to control, also terrifying to "business"), but much more functional because they're flexible, cooperative, moving. Like springs on a trampoline.
Posted by: Tiffany Monhollon | July 30, 2008 at 12:14 PM
Lots of people design and help redesign businesses.
I do and I know plenty of others who do, too. Some of my customers are big companies reworking their customer-engaging flows of information, products, services. Others are small companies just starting to grow out of control who need to tighten their focus on what matters to customers and, therefore, what matters to their businesses.
It takes years for many companies (large AND small, both) to "get" customer focus and engagement but for those who do, being in business is a very different experience. It's a partnership that grows with customers and markets, as they change.
Just one example of those who DON'T "get" it (and there are hundreds of examples in all industries): David Letterman was bantering with an audience member, a United stewardess, a few years ago. "Do you ever talk with the passengers?" he asked. "Oh, no! They're the ENEMY!" she said, horrified at his idea.
Thankfully, there are many people and businesses who do want to engage with customers, sooner or later. When they do? It is a very, very different experience on both sides of the equation.
Posted by: Jan Richards | July 30, 2008 at 12:51 PM
@Chris - I actually read an example in Herd (by Mark Earls) recently similar to the one you cite about putting the path where people walk vs. the other way around. I think it was for a university. Guess what? People are messy. Thank you for giving me further examples to chew on! I love Marcel's quote. Sensing is very important to insights.
@Tiffany - most language we use to talk about business comes from past ages - agricultural and industrial with a war undertone. Silos, low-hanging fruit, campaigns, targets, etc. Change the way you talk about things and you may change the way you see them altogether.
@Jan - With the addition of social media, interaction is now becoming more par for the course. The long version of my question was really whether we are now designing business through interactions. I have worked with OD consultants in the past. I do wonder if you are now incorporating the dynamics of engagement thanks to the new tools - faster feedback, people talking about your business, etc. - in you work.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | July 30, 2008 at 04:50 PM
@Valeria Maltoni and others - Thank you so much for your comment about language. I am in my second year of a program called Team Management Leadership Program. The entire program sits
atop a communication curriculum. The entire thing is built upon this basic distinction that your word creates the world as opposed to word describing world. This isn't just a simplified version of saying, hey I said it, it happened. It's more like saying the results we produce all exist inside of language. In business it is the same. The design of business and interactions today remind me of a baby trying to crawl up a staircase of needles. The needles are old distinctions. The baby is an American Dreamer. This old language limits results, and further limit the experience of interacting with others in the workplace. Well, what can we do?
What would it look like if every interaction inside of a business made a difference? Not like philanthropy. More like every interaction and conversation forwards something.
What does that mean?
And how do you measure if a conversation forwards something? And what is something? Well, this is where business converges with gaming. The entire two years of the Team Management Leadership Program are structured inside of multiple games being played at the same time while producing multiple outcomes in a single conversation. Boy, doesn't that sound nice? Well it is.
In this program, there is always something at stake, there is always a promise(s) and there is a scoreboard. These things have to be declared in language and put into existent structures. So, in the workplace it looks like this.
Tom works a desk job. He is playing a specific role in the company and the company, hopefully is playing one game. Is Tom playing only one game? Doubt it. Tom is always up to something more, something he is playing for.
What is at stake for Tom?
Stake usually is associated with loss. Of course, this is old business lingo. In a new model of communication, we could say stake is the potential to gain something. Let's say Tom's at stake is to pay for his sons college, or maybe he wants to write a book. This is Tom's context for work, which gives him the experience of accomplishment both in the workplace and outside of it. If Tom shares his other games with the work place, there is automatically a new level of relating to Tom, and now, conversations and interactions are building on his other games.
This is not how workplaces operate. Interactions are often kept on the surface of a bubble. This bubble shell is made of moderate to extreme passive aggressive humor, drama, small talk or gossip. Inside of the bubble is affinity, acknowledgment and full self expression. Current business design is afraid of popping that bubble, which provides and creates and environment of avoiding, protecting, manipulating and suing.
Am I rambling or is some of this being heard? If the future of work is a 20 hour week, we better be playing multiple games at once. If we are, our work environment better wake up and support the other things going on in a person's life. The basis of true interaction is getting into someone else's world and supporting it with the intention of greater network return.
Okay?
Posted by: Jimbob Peltaire | July 30, 2008 at 08:05 PM
Oddly, I met Mok at the same time but at the first IA Summit.
Hate to throw a wrench in all of this, but interactions and business design have such a HUGE gap between them that talking about them in the same conversation is like talking about water in the middle of the desert.
Not that they aren't or shouldn't be related, but there isn't even a sound practice in place yet for Business/Organizational Design.
Indeed, the only classic sponsorship for design in organizations historically has been in manufacturing. Certainly there are exceptions, but we have a LOT of ground to cover. And we're not going to get there any faster if we put up charts like shown, which is clearly just focused on the digital.
Jimbob offers an interesting perspective, but there are already words for some of that stuff Jimbob -- like Relationship Equity. And yes, businesses don't know how to embrace these things, but they no longer have a choice in the matter -- resistance is futile.
Look at the trends. Look at how businesses are coming to the conversations (Dell, etc.). The revolution has just begun.
Everything currently being taught in business schools is all out of date. We're inventing the future now. Don't blink -- you'll miss an entire phase.
Posted by: Paula Thornton | July 30, 2008 at 09:38 PM
@Jimbob - Nigerian writer Chris Abani says that “what we know about how to be who we are" comes from stories. There is a TED talk, if you are interested. Language makes the world we're in. You offer a very compelling case. "The basis of true interaction is getting into someone else's world and supporting it with the intention of greater network return." That was a money quote.
@Paula - can you point me to the right charts? I liked the simplicity of the chart I recreated and it took me through a certain process - a good start, I think. I must have been busily blinking. The point stands. Where interactions are shaping or starting to shape the design of business companies find a new kind of alignment and forward movement. There is a lot of ground to cover, yes. One step at a time.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | July 30, 2008 at 10:22 PM
Valeria, in my opinion a "totally immersive experience" should almost never be the goal. Most of our interactions are quotidian, and need-based: we just want what we want.
For example, last night I Googled the phone number of an Italian restaurant in my neighborhood.
"Total immersion" would have been a truly lousy experience; I just wanted to dip my finger in deep enough to get some food delivered fast.
Perhaps a better way to think about the goal: allow people to dive in as deep as they want.
Posted by: Tom Cunniff | July 31, 2008 at 09:48 AM
Right you are about being at different stages of interaction! The "totally immersive experience" quote was from Mok's book and a point of departure. We are so far from good experience with many businesses that I liked the idea of taking it all the way to the other extreme.
The broader conversation is more around how interactions are shaping the business, if at all.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | July 31, 2008 at 02:26 PM
Everything currently being taught in business schools is all out of date. We're inventing the future now. Don't blink -- you'll miss an entire phase.
Paula is very tuned into, sensitive to and insightful about all this stuff.
I'd like to add an opinion ... I think there are two parallel planes, of sorts, here. While much is out of date and much is moving fast, a large part of the business arena is carrying on (structurally and dynamically) as if not much has changed while another part (small, emerging, the "revolution just begun") is reinventing the rules one hyperlink, image and chat after the other.
As Paula said, lots of ground yet to cover.
Posted by: Jon Husband | July 31, 2008 at 07:40 PM
I have worked with OD consultants in the past. I do wonder if you are now incorporating the dynamics of engagement thanks to the new tools - faster feedback, people talking about your business, etc. - in you work.
I think that the OD field and its focus on engagement, non-manipulative motivation and learning offers many of the design principles for business architecture and the design of knowledge-based / knowledge-dependent work in an interconnected environment.
Posted by: Jon Husband | July 31, 2008 at 07:45 PM
Jon:
I have often referred to what you describe in emerging companies survival of the fastest. I like the expression survival of the busiest as well, but you can see how if you're busy doing all the "wrong" (as in non productive or conducive to forward movement) things, it does not help.
You just gave me an idea for a future conversation about OD. Glad to meet you, virtually.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | August 01, 2008 at 06:51 AM