Reflections on a Hybrid Career

It’s not news to anyone who’s looked for a job recently that the days of a monolithic career spent at one company or in one well-defined field are over. Many of us have had to — willingly or out of necessity — rethink our career paths. It’s not always easy, but I firmly believe that the hybrid mentality and expertise this process creates is valuable to today’s fast-moving companies.

In her HBR article, “Disrupt Yourself,” Whitney Johnson discussed how Clayton Christensen’s theories of disruptive innovation can be applied to changing one’s career path in a competitive job market. Successful disruption depends on being clear about one’s strengths, but sometimes your real strengths can get buried once you start to follow a conventionally established career path. As Whitney noted in her piece, my own career is rather unconventional, and in my case, I found that what I’m really good at — research — got lost as I pursued an education and career as a designer.

Continue reading at Harvard Business Review >

The Fanatical ABCs of Apple's Genius Training

Via Gizmodo

From Disney to Ritz Carlton to Apple - great customer experiences don’t happen by accident. As I’ve said before, every brand, especially every service brand, has a customer experience. The question is just how well thought out it is, and whether it meets both the needs of customers and the company. For too many companies, their customer experience is incompletely thought through and too much is left to chance. Or too often it’s believed that great customer experiences just happen without reason or control, or just stem from a company’s particular DNA. None of which are true.

Leave it to Apple to go to great lengths to work on the “how well thought out it is” part. As with most other things Apple, this Genius training exhibits fanatical attention to detail.

Gizmodo has gotten its hands on a training manual for Genius staff, and it’s 100 or so pages to cover a 14 day course, including everything from diagnostic protocols to mild social engineering.  (It has to be said, the cover of the manual is not up to Apple design snuff. Not at all.)

The point of this bootcamp is to fill you up with Genius Actions and Characteristics, listed conveniently on a “What” and “How” list on page seven of the manual. What does a Genius do? Educates. How? “Gracefully.” He also “Takes Ownership” “Empathetically,” “Recommends” “Persuasively,” and “Gets to ‘Yes’” “Respectfully.” The basic idea here, despite all the verbiage, is simple: Become strong while appearing compassionate; persuade while seeming passive, and empathize your way to a sale.

No need to mince words: This is psychological training. There’s no doubt the typical trip to the Apple store is on another echelon compared to big box retail torture; Apple’s staff is bar none the most helpful and knowledgable of any large retail operation. A fundamental part of their job—sans sales quotas of any kind—is simply to make you happy. But you’re not at a spa. You’re at a store, where things are bought and sold. Your happiness is just a means to the cash register, and the manual reminds trainees of that: “Everyone in the Apple Store is in the business of selling.” Period.

Ah, the old adage, ABC - “Always Be Closing”.

Read much more at Gizmodo.

Olivetti Divisumma 18: A Design Classic

I have lusted after the Olivetti Divisumma 18 since I first laid eyes on one in a book while I was in design school, some 20 years ago. Aside from in a museum I have never seen one in person…until now. After years of searching, I was able to score one on eBay that is in mint condition, and complete with all packaging, manual, even extra rolls of the foil tape used for printing the calculations (since it has no digital display).

This photo gallery will take you through the whole out of box experience, and show off the calculator from various angles.

The Divisumma 18 was designed in 1972 by the famous designer/architect Mario Bellini, who did a number of designs for Olivetti. It was pioneering in its form, use of color, and use of a rubber membrane that covers the keys to create a seamless, sleek look. This design of “volcano buttons” has since been mimicked on numerous products to the present day. Bellini used this style of button on a couple of other calculators and also typewriters. The keys have a pleasant mechanical click to them - they don’t feel at all like the mushy rubber keys we expect on calculators today. The extruded profile approach to form is also again back in style today.

The 18 is surprisingly large - you’ll see one photo in the slideshow with a pen sitting on top of it. It feels great in the hand, but it’s not a handheld calculator. More of a stylish desk calculator.

Here’s a page with more details (including photos of the internals), and a page about the calculator from the Museum of Modern Art, which has it in its permanent collection.

Craft, Creativity and Constraints

A few favorite films on the topics of craft, creativity, and constraints. All should be available at your favorite online video purveyor (well, iTunes, Google Play or Amazon, Netflix streaming is unlikely for the second two films).

Note by Note 

A documentary about the making of a single Steinway piano, a process that takes a year. A Steinway is probably the most complicated “mass”-produced product still made entirely by hand, and largely by people in Brooklyn. Beautifully told story of how great things can come from humble efforts. What I also find fascinating is that they don’t want to automate the process partly because they don’t really know why it works, or how it would create a different sound, since the people who originated the design and manufacturing process for Steinways are long dead/retired.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

A terrific documentary about the only 3 Michelin star sushi chef, and his restaurant with 10 seats in a subway station in Tokyo. He’s been making sushi since he was 9 years old, and is now 85 and still working. Lessons: Keep the highest standards, never be satisfied, always stay learning, pay attention to the details even if the customers don’t notice them.

It Might Get Loud

This movie features Jack White (of the White Stripes), U2’s Edge, and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Paige. This clip pulls together the various points in the movie Jack talks about how he purposefully makes his life hard as a way of pushing himself to new ideas. “Ease of use [for the creator] is the disease to fight in any creative field”. The White Stripes were purposely a high constrained band: 2 people, 2 instruments, 2 colors (red and white).

Self Portrait from Mars

Congratulations to Curiosity and the whole NASA team for the smooth, audacious landing on Mars.

This is the second picture that Curiosity took, of its own shadow on the Martian landscape. Not quite as momentus as the photo of Neil Armstrong’s footprint on the moon, or the famous earthrise photo, but touching in its own way, and reinforcing the anthropomorphic qualities we collectively give to the plucky robot.