Welcome, we're here today at the IBO of San Francisco office, as many of you know, IBO is a world leading design firm. And we're here with Sasha Tan, who is an alum of UC San Diego. She's a principal interaction designer here. And she's worked on projects ranging from retail, clients like Nike, to transportation, Mercedes, to stuff in the beauty sector with L'Oreal. And one of the things that I think is most impressive about IBO organizations is, you've got offices all over the globe, and you have this really wonderful humble low fidelity approach to prototyping. Can you tell us a little about how you go about, with the world as your oyster, how do you get these designer ideas? >> Yeah, so one example that comes to mind is, this one client project that asked us to redesign kind of the new exercise, this was maybe dated about five years ago. However, our design team felt like the best way to get inspired, whenever a client comes to us and asks us to find the future of x, was to actually get inspiration from a rogue. So we went to Home Depot, because many of our prototypers and designers knew that that's kind of where you start when you start building things, and they made everything in the Home Depot environment and exercise the full mem. So they took everything from dollies, to shopping cards, to crowbars that you can find In the hardware aisle, ways to basically come up with new exercises. And they took some of those things home, and took them to their shop and started to play with them. And so the idea of designing by interacting with random objects in the world, basically, allowed them to come through with some ideas around how you might want to use the body, or how you might interact with something that is as simple as a plank, piece of wood. And came together with a successful sort of machinery that's super low-fi, but a really fun way to do new ab workouts. >> So this is almost like when I played make believe as a kid. You take a bucket and pretend it's a hat. You've got these world class designers, and they are doing the same thing that we all did when we were five. >> Yeah, exactly. [LAUGH] >> I knew it was very, it's a place that has a lot of play, we're actually really silly and design, I think, is really one of our mantras, which basically means we take anything, anything with objects. To start designing you need to start from somewhere, as opposed to, always designing on paper. >> And you have all these folks around the globe, you were telling me a little bit about, when you and I talked, you talk about this collection of people as like a hive mind. >> Right >> What do you mean by a hive mind and what can you do with that? So the hive mind is often something that we refer collectively as to IBO's community. But in a everyday person's world it would basically be the people that you trust and it'd give you back for anything. Recommendations on places to go, to recommendations on what is somebodies original tract. I know radio is one of the easy way to tap into the hive mind, it has 13 little offices. So if you ask one question within two minutes you have, maybe a collection of five to ten different emails responding to a question. One example that I'm really fond of is a project that I just came off of, and he asked, what is a sexual genera that kind of speaks to you about current everyday sex? And we asked everyone to kind of point to us their favorite sex scene. >> Like in a movie? >> Like in a movie, yes. And so what we found was people in the States really felt resonant with James Bond scenes. That were really idealized kind of super hero, very dapper, light scenes. But when you kind of heard from other parts of the world, like Peru, they actually pointed at dialog less, sort of sexual scenes that really focus on the intimacy of the woman and the man. So, it's kind of a really nice easy way to tap into a quick assessment of whatever you're thinking of and gut check. >> So that's really cool. If you think about something, especially something like sex that can be difficult to talk about, your idea is that you're using things analogically, that metaphor plays a large role in design. I mean, that's kind of your previous story too, the bucket is not a bucket, it becomes something else. The shopping cart is exercise equipment. The movie scene is a metaphor for something else that's part of your values is what we think. >> Totally and I'll say sorry, or what we really need to talk about this. [LAUGH] >> It's what I love here in San Fransisco because were in that ware house right at the bay it's a really beautiful space that is also really functional When I come here I realize that the post it notes and the markers and all of the elements of the space are very utilitarian, so it's not just a beautiful space, it's really functional. How do you apply your own design principles to the space that you got here? >> Yeah, I think it's also the idea gives you room to make it your own space. You have a budget to kind of utilize to make the space feel a lot more fun. So specifically in the San Francisco office we created an urban gym. That started with the passion of a really awesome designer who loved CrossFit, and he said, I want to be able to take workout breaks. So he decided to go on Craigslist and get a whole bunch of free gym equipment that would have been thrown away. And that he basically started to prototype a gym right outside our, sort of our courtyard space, that's in walking distance from our office, and started to work out there. What he found was that it brought enough followers. It started with five one week, and then it turned into a group of 30 different designers that said, hey, can you invite a CrossFit instructor to make this a more formalized thing. Starting with really, over I guess, thrown away furniture and urban gym equipment, to inviting an instructor that's now sort of a popular event to do three times a week event. >> That's also a great example of active, using prototype thinking as an active strategy. >> Right. >> You start small, and the snowball builds. So you don't have to have a whole conversation about are we going to this thing three times a week from the beginning, >> Mm-hm. >> As kind of your design to think idea. That, you try a little bit, and then the snowball rolls. Let you know your headed in the right direct. >> Right, and to reinforce that, one of our mantras is to basically not seek permission, but to just do, and ask for permission later. And that's sort of we did, and that's kind of a nice way to prototype an action, whether or not there's a following, and those have been but I think the idea that you really need your own space and you have the freedom, which is nice. >> So can we talk a little bit more about how you use analogy and metaphor design, both in this video and we talked a bunch. That kind of comes up again and again do you have another example of something that, where an analogy or metaphor played a role in your design process. >> Yeah, I think the best example that I can think of is when we were asked by our client Netflix to help them redesign their recommendation system. That's a really tall task because one, it's algorithmically heavy, and then the other is how do you really start? And often, at idea, we start really simply by talking to experts. So in particular, we wanted to learn how do people make recommendations, who made the best recommendations, and who made really good recommendations that we want to emulate. And so we went to, in restaurants, Iron 74, that's local to San Francisco. And we talked to one of the best wine sommeliers in the world. And he basically started sort of took us through a process of sharing us his knowledge, to how his process in recommending a certain type of wine to you and me. And what we found is really interesting, if anyone would have been applying it to other signs of how they're actually built on that's like it's says, harder prediction model. Which was his suggestion of really taking all of your wealth of knowledge and narrowing it down to two and helping the user choose one or the other. And so it was a very interesting human framework to apply to a very [INAUDIBLE] driven recommendation system that they currently use, but kind of creating users to have option, a choice. Even though it's being heavily recommended by [INAUDIBLE]. >> So the [INAUDIBLE] gives them you're saying gives them two choices and that way they got to pick. And so you take the open [INAUDIBLE] book and it's totally overwhelming. Kind of like on Netflix you open the Netflix and it's totally overwhelming. >> Right. >> And if you give people a choice, they feel like it's theirs. >> Totally. >> That's cool. >> And you said that it led to a lot more satisfaction, and just a lot more contentment, in that the choice was a really good one. >> And, in your introduction you mention that you've worked on retail, you've worked on transportation, you've worked on beauty. And you told me it started on one of your retail projects, you ended up a Avant Garde Play in New York. That's not normal when you think about checking out a supermarket. >> Right, so that again was kind of leveraging our connections, in terms of, if we were to help a client redefine a retail space. Where do we go in the world for inspiration? And so that lead to a whole list of, excuse me, lead to a whole list of different suggestions on where to go for inspiration. And so one of the really interesting recommendations was to go to a playhouse called in New York. Which basically takes them out of the play and reenacts different parts of the scene to the different parts of the studio. And what you mentioned, having as an experiences every person enters this big house of many different rooms and many different scenes interacting within it. A very different experience. So one might experience scene one. Really well. Another might sort of see seeing 10 instead of 15. And so you get a very different experience even though there's a different destination or even if it's the same destination. And so what we learned from that was the idea that one idea was a great wall of knowledge or that you could leverage your connections to really identify the [INAUDIBLE] designs. But it even takes something that's completely not a retail space but an analogous example and experience and apply it to what retail could be. Which we took that and said, could you tell me a different destination, a different experience, for people, even though it's in the same location. >> Just to make sure we're still recording. I saw a light. Yeah, we are. Good. [SOUND] Finish that? >> [LAUGH] Yeah, it's a daily ritual One of the hardest things about getting feedback is that, it can be difficult to get the feedback that's most useful for where you're at, where you need to go. You and Heidi have done this so well. What advice do you have? For the students in this class to be able to steer the feedback into critique as well. >> Yeah, I think you could say that your environment for success. I think it's setting up the environment for success for you. As the feedback launcher and also as the feedback giver. So either role you play. It should always be really the same environment. Because it shouldn't be hostile at all. Intimidating. It should remain a safe place. I think everything that we do here is making sure that people feel comfortable to share their opinions, but when they do share their opinions, it should be something that we can build on top of. And that's resources. So you're leaving the designer with enough to know how to Stir in the right direction. So what we do often is tell our designers to set the right constraints when they're asking for feedback. So if you're asking for feedback for a particularly wild design, even if you haven't drawn the visual design, you can basically say hey I want to get feedback from you all for the functionality. And that way it eliminates people commenting on the visual design that's clearly not there and we allow them to focus on what you drew their attention to. And then the other thing is also helping people understand that when we do get feedback, that they should reinforce it with suggestions on how to An example would be, I don't like that font because I feel like it gives me a really bad reaction or it's illegible. How about fonts like And that way it allows people to take your feedback with enough consideration that they don't feel offensive or offended by that. And that's what the feedback giver. It is extremely important to make sure that they don't try to overwhelm you with too many thoughts as well. Often times I feel like we have a lot of people. Our opinions and that's what it for and that's great. However, sometimes you get into this paradox of choice and paradox of filtering for the feedback of the because they have too many ideas [INAUDIBLE] that we have so I think [INAUDIBLE] should also be considerate of do you have how much time with him, and also not giving too many suggestions to model their designs but keeping things super simple. >> So both people need to be aware of the resources, where you are, process, and what the constraints are. Well, thanks so much for taking time with us. It's really exciting for me to be here. >> Yeah. >> And we'll get to see all the students online, where their creativity takes them. So thank you. >> Yeah, thank you for having me.
