bjbj< Brandon Schauer: [Audio in progress] Charles Warren of Google. He leads Google's
social UX team. Buzz, Picasa, Blogger, some of the new social search stuff you've seen
popping up probably in the last couple weeks from Google Search: That's Charles's UX team
working. He's a brilliant guy that makes things happen, so I think we should probably spend
five minutes on his three words on how we can make design better. Charles? Charles Warren:
Thank you so much, Brandon. [Applause] How's everybody doing? Five minutes. I thought Peter
had some really provocative things to say, and design thinking is really, really an important
part of this, and I'm gonna talk about a tiny piece of an entire design thinking process.
You won't be able to do it after I describe it in five minutes. This is actually a pitch
to have Brandon come back and have me do a whole day on this process of the "How might
we?" It's a kind of "STP in your tank" for your brainstorming efforts. It's something
that comes before brainstorming. And so these three words really do make design better.
And, again, you won't know how to do this. Hopefully this is just a provocation, right?
So as Brandon said, I lead social at Google. One of the cool things we just launched is
the new profile. Go have a look at that. I would love to hear your feedback on that product.
At Google, in our design team we use the "How might we?" process every day. How might we
predict whether a flu outbreak is going to happen based on search queries? Things of
that nature. But not just us; also IDEO. If you read Tim's new book, Change By Design
it's actually been out for a little while now he says every design challenge at IDEO
begins with "How might we?", those three words. So I'm gonna tell you how it works, and I've
done some research to try to find kind of the first example in the wild of a "How might
we?" group process. And it actually starts a little after this happens. [Video plays]
Male: You're a strong man, Brian. Male: Aye, am I too strong? Male: You can shower off
with Ivory Spring. Male: Ah, the double deodorant soup. Male: The very one, to get a strong
man fresh. Look, in these green and white stripes are two deodorants, to get a man fresh
and clean. What a fine, fresh scent. Female: That's why I use it too. Male: Irish Spring:
with two deodorants. [Video ends] Charles Warren: So who remembers that? Yes, everybody
of a certain age, right? [Laughter] So that was the iPod of soap, right? [Laughter] And
in the '70s, Colgate launched that, and within a year it was a billion-dollar business, right?
It was just unbelievable, and I think the margins, actually, as good as they are on
the iPod and the iPad and the iPhone, they're better on soap, right? It's one of those things
you can make for a penny, sell for a dollar, and is pretty much addictive or indispensable,
right? And they had this radical technological advance, much like the touch screen, which
was stripes. Right? [Laughter] And somehow that seized our imagination, and this found
its way into the bathrooms of Americans north and south, which led to a sort of panic at
P&G, right? And so they had to meet this market opportunity, much like Motorola and maybe
their Xoom. And at Procter & Gamble any P&G people here? Anyways, they have this really
wonderful rule that is, they won't launch a product unless it can beat the competitor
or their incumbent in a blind test, in sort of a focus group situation. And they had tried
six times, with all different shades of green, and had failed. And the team was losing confidence.
They were in one of these soul-destroying, vertical-oriented organizations Peter was
describing, so it makes sense. But they had hired this young industrial engineer, a guy
named Min Basadur, who was he didn't dress like one, but he was kind of an organizational
hippie, and he'd found all these books in the library about brainstorming process. And
he noticed that all brainstorms start with something like "How can we?" or "How should
we?" or "Let's brainstorm about..." And since he was Canadian, he put this word "might"
in the middle just because they're really polite: "How might we?" Right? How might we
do X or Y? And he asked the team to sort of describe what their goal was, and they said
that their goal was to make a better green-stripe bar. And he asked this one very simple question:
Why? When you ask the question "why" about something you're trying to do, it opens up
broader possibilities. So, wide is in the direction of the strategic, right? So they
said, "We wanna enter a new market"; "We wanna make more refreshing soap, grow our company,
make a better product, and beat Colgate." And he did that sort of with the same divergent-thinking
rules maybe some of the people in this room are skilled at using. And then they picked
kinda one they hadn't been paying attention to in the six previous tries, which was "making
more refreshing soap." And they took that forward into another round of how-might-we's,
right? So that then went to a new one, which is: "Okay, how might we make a more refreshing
soap?", a broader goal than a green-stripe bar. And then asked a new question to get
at more tactical opportunities, which is: "What is stopping us? What's in the way of
us making a more refreshing soap?" And, again, you do something that looks like a brainstorm.
We're not brainstorming yet. "Well, we don't know what refreshes people. We don't know
what imagery to use. And we really haven't thought about that." We've been focused on
green stripes, right? We haven't been thinking about this refreshment thing. So they take
that forward now "We don't know what refreshes people" and start the process again. This
is iterative, like the kindergarteners building the marshmallow tower, right? Try it again,
try it again, try it again. And so now we have this sort of logical chain going, and
he says, "Oh, let's make a list. Let's just sit together and make a list, without too
much judgment, of what refreshment means." Now we're brainstorming, 'cause there are
sort of specific answers to this, not more questions. And people say, "a cold drink,"
or "riding on a roller coaster," or "menthol cigarettes" this was the '70s, right? "The
beach," "Irish Spring that one's been taken, but let's do it anyways. Okay. A beach, that
looks pretty good." And they take that as their kind of organizing metaphor, and within
three hours they have the concept for Coast. So they try for eight months, six at baths;
don't get anywhere. In a few hours, just reframing the question from "green stripes" to "refreshment,"
bang on it, they get it. Coast never Coast did very well. It never unseated Irish Spring,
and they sold it to Dial about ten years ago. But it did lead to some money for the company.
So that was the original, at P&G and Min. And then he started a consulting company called
Simplex, which is still going and can train you in this. He taught it to this guy, Garry
Van Patter, who's been a speaker here, who was hired along with me back in 1996 at a
company called Scient. And Min and Garry taught me how to do it, and we did all sorts of workshops
and kind of refined the process and brought it into the world of design. I went to IDEO,
where we did all sorts of huge I think I have the record for the most: 700 people doing
how-might-we's at once, at Moscone. And then I taught it to Ilya and Peter and Sandy at
IDEO, and actually a bunch of people here at Adaptive Path. And Tim put it in his book,
on how to do it, with the quote that I started with. So that's "How might we?" again. A lot
to learn about this. This is just a little touch. But the way you do it is, write "How
might we?", all the things you might do, and then ask two questions: "Why?" to get at broader
concepts, and "What's stopping us?" to get at the more tactical. Thank you. [Applause]
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