Thoughts on a new technology? Little Printer

I’d love to see gender statistics on the first round of people to buy one of BERG’s Little Printers. Mostly because I’d like to find out if there’s any sort of early gendered difference in the way people are using (and appreciating) the device; but perhaps with early adopters it doesn’t matter as much. A typical hypothesis might be something along the lines of: female brains will typically use the device to connect with other people whereas male brains will typically use the device to do stuff (ie. puzzles, read the news, get the weather forecast, find out how many people are in space). 

Until that first delivery of a loving message from my friend Ruth, “Collyn smells!” came whirring and flashing out, I didn’t realise how much I’ve been craving tangible keepsakes of my friendships and conversations. Only once in a blue moon do I ever receive post that’s not a bill, bank statement or something I’ve ordered, so the idea of a regular dose of tangible friendship carries a lot of weight with me. 

Already my refrigerator door is heaving with little smiling-faced notes, and I’m trying to figure out a logical system for deciding which messages to keep and which to turn into make-shift post-its before throwing them away. 

To me, little printer is a social object. It has more in common with a friendship bracelet than the big laserjet nestled about two feet below. To me, Little Printer has already come to represent friendship. I couldn’t care less about the day’s forecast or news headlines. This thing is how my mom can write me a daily lunchbox message from the other side of the planet. It’s how my boyfriend can tell me he loves me and ask why my skype isn’t turned on. 

Little Printer is truly liminal, in the space between the online and offline. But its online-ness is not what’s interesting because, its online-ness is a hygiene factor. Of course it’s always on. What’s interesting is its offline-ness. LP is pretty much defined by its ability to leave traces of itself… but itself is almost invisible: I don’t see little printed messages, I see my friendships, scattered around my home, my wallet, my books…. I’m not looking at a device. 

And it’s the first social media I’ve experienced which isn’t governed by fear and anxiety but instead by wonder and love. I’m not afraid of missing something. There is no ‘refresh’ button. There is no constant stream of ads and updates and hashtags. Every single message delivered feels like a gift. 

Little Printer is humble. It knows it’s less important than the messages it carries. In a world of smartphone bravado, that’s a tremendously refreshing proposition. 

I see the gadgety “subscriptions” of the device as less about doing stuff and more about rationalising that you can do stuff. But the true social value (perhaps ever the only true value), is always going to be in how it connects people in interesting new ways. But perhaps what’s so neat is that it’s actually quite an old form of exchange. Telegrams never stopped feeling special. But as their usefulness and ubiquity waned, that special feeling disappeared too. 

The instantaneousness of email, messaging, texting all just seems so tedious. I’m more afraid of missing out than I am excited by receiving something. Perhaps this is the demise of a generation defined by moments, instants, pop-ups, temporaries and lots of here-today, gone-tomorrow cultural activity. Give us permanence. Give us slow. Give us tactile and forever. Give us generational hand-me-downs. Give us a way of being offline without feeling disconnected. 

For decades our mobile phones got smaller and smaller. And then, with the advent of the iPhone, seemed to pop back to an appropriate size for the average human hand, a size which is now roughly the de facto size of all smartphones on the market. 

I wonder… if the physical size of the iPhone was about proportional appropriateness, is Little Printer a pop back to connected appropriateness? 

A gap in the culture

Don’t look for gaps in the market. They don’t exist, never really have. (Yeah, that old thing about markets sometimes not existing in gaps…) Look instead for gaps in the culture. But this means you have to first find the culture.

I spend most of my working days finding and articulating cultures. Little cultures. Behaviours and ideas that stick and spread, ever-evolving and shifting and morphing at indecipherably small increments.

Product design should definitely look to find a gap in the culture. But so too should marketing and comms and even retail for that matter. We should be fostering and building cultures not markets. Clearly we *all know this*, but I still find this language is greeted with novelty every time I explain it.

Each time a brand goes out to say something or do something or make something, they should know exactly what kind of cultural legacy they’re leaving behind; something future archaeologists can look back on and puzzle over. What culture did you create? You didn’t make pies. You didn’t make shoes. You didn’t fly planes or sell cars… you either invented or fostered a culture. Chances are, it was a culture that already existed, but there was something missing. Some galvanising piece that articulated exactly what that culture could be… or better yet, could stand for.

The problem with cultures is even the smallest thing that is slightly off-culture (and hell, we’re talking about a moving target here), won’t appeal. The trick seems to be anticipating where the culture is going and be there right on time. Not before, not after… the culture will have moved.

So please stop talking about gaps in markets and behaviour being off-brand. If it’s a gap in the culture, sure. If it’s off-culture, will it be on-culture soon? Or has the moment passed? Is there a cultural legacy you’re planning to leave behind… or is it just stuff?

Image via Trendtablet

Typologies of storytelling in design

“Storytelling” must take the prize for most over-used strategic-creative bullshit. But the fact is, lots of us use it, and it works. Our brains like stories. 

Interviewing Tony Dunne a couple nights ago, we inevitably fell onto the topic of storytelling in design and it got me thinking about different types of storytelling. Or perhaps different purposes of storytelling. 

1 The first type uses design to tell a story. We see this all the time in branding, packaging and retail in particular. The design implies there is a story out there which is communicated thus through colour, through a specific graphic style, through imagery, through shapes, etc. It would be quite difficult to pick out any sort of ‘narrative’ from this, but an overarching ‘story’ seems to permeate the stuff that gets made. 

2 A nuanced variation on the first type, the second is when design uses narrative to create an experience. Much more visible in say, architecture, retail, exhibition and interior (the world of big things you can move around in), because people more literally can become characters, actors, agents - and their movements, motions and emotions can be choreographed through the dynamic space. It’s in these experiences one might find explicitly designed “events” or cinematic qualities (suspense, pacing, surprise, etc), treating one’s existence in the space like a story that needs plotting out. Turn a corner and WOW! This approach sort of argues that narratives are the best way of communicating a complex idea in an emplaced context like a historical event in a museum or a brand in a store. 

You don’t need narrative tools to tell a story, but if what you’re designing is an emplaced experience, these tools become pretty important.

3 The third type uses story to create a design. Here we can invent possible worlds, with different sets of assumptions about human existence, different laws of physics, different biologies. It’s from these worlds we’ve written that some of the most inventive design emerges - because it’s been designed for a world that doesn’t exist. (Or perhaps in the case of scenario planning, is a world that doesn’t exist, YET.) Once the design is created, the story can then fall away like scaffolding. 

4 The fourth type tells a design through a story. The world of design fiction and site writing designs us impossible objects. Things that cannot exist physically are manifested through written stories. These story-things are not real nor fake, but likeable untruths which we conjure in our minds. 

This list is incomplete, as it should be…

Image by Raquel Kelmanzon