designswarm thoughts

Last summer I reviewed Open Design Now and Leonard Reviews have just published it. If you’re into the same things I’m into, you should read it :)

As part of RIG, I worked closely with Phil, Andy and Amanda (an absolute pleasure, you should hire them, seriously) to launch FRSTEE a few weeks ago. The most interesting thing about this project for me was the opportunity to work with rapid prototyping in a way that made economic sense. To build a micro-business in the heart of the Silicon Roundabout. That’s what Tech City is about no? I was told in 2000, while at my BA, that those technologies were the future of manufacturing. 11 years later, that’s still the message, but I’d like to think our little contribution gets us closer to that objective. Realistically though, rapid prototyping is still incredibly expensive when you want something that is beautiful, of variable size and made quickly. Qualities that DIY solutions don’t cope well with so far. I’m sure that’s only a matter of time mind you.

The design of businesses and the business of design
Building businesses is the kind of design work I find myself doing. It is a design activity in a strange way and my design background along with the experience of running Tinker has been invaluable. The most important skills I think I’ve developed are predicting future problems and handling money. 2 things I wish they would teach in design school to make young people a little more ready for industry. So here are some quick things I learnt in helping build FRSTEE.

Things you need to remember when building a micro-business

1. You need someone to do the boring work
There’s a ton of boring work in a business. In this one, it’s about collecting the orders once they’ve been rapid prototyped (round the corner on Curtain Road at Inition), checking them, tying a festive piece of string through them, looking at orders, putting the right one in bubble wrap, in a box, printing out the address and stamp (using online stamps by Royal Mail) on a label and finally walking over to the post office to send them. Because each piece is unique, that pretty much prevents us from using smart fulfilment solutions like Amazon. All of this incredibly tedious work is done by Amanda. She is a star.

2. You need to worry about the smallest numbers.
Something to remember is that all of this costs money. Amanda’s time, packaging, stamps, boxes, bubble wrap, tape. Stuff you have to buy and cost out for every package you send out to make sure you’re still making some money somewhere down the line. Tricky when you can’t drive the cost of rapid prototyping much lower than it is, again because of how unique each is. Tricky also because charging too much for a bespoke product starts to feel like luxury and in these economically challenging times, that’s not a good idea. A glass ceiling in a way.

3. Never drop the ball
Not unlike launching a web service, you have to constantly be in touch with people. In our case that means our suppliers and customers. I live in a constant flow of emails, ordering supplies and keeping on top of everything. We send out orders every week so far and that feels good, a rhythm is setting in even if it’s a seasonal product.

4. Always work with awesome people who understand technology
Phil implemented a design that was initiated by Ben. He also built the connection between Andy’s ability to script designs in 3D and Paypal. Andy made the rendering easy and connecting it to Inition a breeze. Magic as far as I’m concerned. When you’re working with people who just understand the technologies they are working with and are willing to learn new things, things just get done much faster. After all these years I value a “yes maybe” much more than I value a “no but”. It’s an attitude that gets you through a lot in a business even a small one.

Just a little public note to announce that among the many various little and bigger projects I’m working on, I’m also helping Mozilla as Local Producer for their upcoming London-based Festival on November 4th-6th. It’s gonna be about media & freedom and in light of the recent public debate around the role of media in politics and society, there will be lots of good conversations to have. Ear-mark it people, you should come.

I am incredibly lucky, I’ve worked with fantastic people and had so much fun. I am also doubly lucky that Paola Antonelli, when she came to see me and Russell at Tinker last autumn, really liked the Homesense Kit and the Big Red Button because she’s decided to include them as part of the Talk to Me exhibition that opens tonight. If you’re interested in the “Internet of Things” go see it.

Homesense in general would never have been possible without the help of Edouard & Charles at EDF R&D who supported our efforts from the get go. The project would have been literally impossible without Georgina‘s strength and tenacity. The kit which is on display, was the work of so many people but I want to specially thank, Natasha and Richard both terrific designers who came down from Lancaster to try to package up technology tools into a fun toy-like kit. I’m incredibly proud of the work and results of the project. Please go and have a roam around.

The Big Red Button was the brain-child of Russell who came upstairs and said “what about it?”. We first had a bespoke version in mind, but in the end, it was Daniel who took up the baton and makes them on order. You should buy one. They’re fun.

So yes. If anyone goes to the opening, send me some pics!

Just a back of the envelope exercise, but here are 3 realistic scenarios.

The Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) for the Creative Industries ran a workshop where participants were invited to think about the barriers to SMEs to apply for TSB funding in their numerous calls. We also discussed and mapped out concerns around how to develop “internet of things” business and market opportunities in the UK. They invited me to come and speak and I decided to focus on looking at the different businesses that end up developing iot projects. I thought this might be useful in identifying their needs, motivations and hurdles.

2 things I jotted down during an event I spoke at 2 weeks ago.

1. Startups and VCs need to be near their customers.

2. VCs in the UK are like football season ticket holders, they always think they know best but have never actually tried playing professionally. Most VCs in the US in tech will have run their own business before, this makes them better investors for startups. They understand what matters and what doesn’t.

I’ve just launched Curious Scarves today and lots of people are commenting on the price. That’s good. People aren’t commenting on the idea.
This is the second thing I make for sale. The first one was Topoware. I learnt that there are a few ways to go about making things for the world and have learnt some hard lessons on the back of it.

1. Get things made and try to sell them in shops is hard.
When we designed Topoware, I put down £4K for 50 plates and bowls to be made at Caverswall in Stoke-on-Trent. It was a lot of money. I tried to sell them on Etsy but they shut down my shop because it wasn’t handmade. Eventually sold about 4 to 5 sets to friends through Folksy. At the time this wasn’t my day job or Karola’s. We didn’t push the retail side of this as we should have and I learnt that shops never answer email requests or any emails for that matter. You have to go see them with a sample, let them look at it for a while, and then bug them about it. Lack of total dedication to this sales activity hurt us on the long run of course and most of the collection is still sitting on my shelf.

2. Selling things for cheap doesn’t pay unless you’re in China.
I sold Arduinos for the first 6 months of Tinker, from Matt’s flat, putting things in envelopes, going to the post, etc. Selling a thing that cheap meant there was virtually no money to be made if I bothered to pay for my own time. I was running a business, not an expensive hobby which is why eventually we stopped. Living in London and selling things that don’t pay for my time is pretty much the dumbest thing I could have done.

3. Sell things locally and on demand: it’s the internet way.
Curious Scarves are made on demand for now as I don’t have the money to just pre-make a bunch. That’s what the internet is good for too. I didn’t want to waste Alexandra‘s time or mine, I wanted to get something right quickly and give people as much flexibility as possible. She made some beautiful prototypes which I used to tweak the dimensions and take some pictures. She lives 10 minutes away from RIG so I could have the conversations I needed with her and get her to respond quickly. For all those reasons and more, I prefered working with her. She also needs to be paid properly for her work, which is only fair as for a “large and wide” scarf, she spends 4.5h knitting on her machine. This is worth paying for. I prefer to encourage local production and young designers than going off to asia and get kids to be exploited. I think that’s also part of being a responsible designer. This might mean I get very little traction because it’s a little more expensive than your run-of-the-mill high street shop, but that’s ok, because it’s not a high street product.

Smart, local, global design. I think it’s worth thinking about.

A little self-indulgent but was quite cathartic, so there (all my notes are there, just click through to Slideshare).

I gave a talk last week which was a bit of a mess. It was my first talk based on new material since 2007 if you consider I’ve been banging on about ubicomp, internet of things and smart product design since 2004. It’s not that I’m no longer interested in those topics, but the luxury of a slower pace at RIG (ie my own really as we don’t exactly report to each other) and some big thinking post Tinker make me look at things differently.

I was approached by my friend Nik, co-founder of fo.am to help them out with Lirec over a year ago now. At first, it was more or less just website redesign, getting them a Twitter feed and a Facebook group and the usual digital comms stuff. As the months ticked by, it became obvious that they needed someone to look at what they were doing and see if it would be interesting for “industry”. They are funded by the EU, specifically byFP7, a call that went out in 2007. The project started in 2008 and is ending around the time of the Olympics. Lirec is basically 10 different organisations across Europe trying to work out how to work together to bring the future of emotional robots to life. It’s absolutely fascinating and not only because of the work. I don’t say that in jest and I’ll do a proper blog post about what they are trying to do later. What fascinates me is a little more meta than that.

Projects as timebombs
I remember having a chat with Tom about the idea of running businesses that had a set lifespan. Well that’s pretty much what an EU-funded project is. There is an end. You can propose an extension but the chances of the same partners all being part of that extension are low. So you treat it like a giant multi-national timebomb. There is one year and a bit to go on this one and people are already talking about what to do after, what project proposals to go for, etc. Considering I only ever looked 6 months in advance while running my business with the hope it would go on forever, this is strangely calming. A business as a project and a project as a business.

Soft geo-politics
The project includes academics from the fields of social science, ethology, software and hardware engineering as well as a private company. These people are from 6 different countries. These types of projects don’t just get money from the EU, they actually contribute to building an idea of what the EU is: a bunch of very different people who try to work together with a common goal. Just for that it’s worth it. When you work together you understand and respect each other.

All-seeing
The EU is incredibly strict about where the money goes and what is called a Project Officer oversees the project on a monthly basis. Every year a review is scheduled with selected reviewers from the field that the project addresses. During that review, that commitee gives advice, opinions, directions or can shut the project off if they feel it’s in danger. I suppose Steering Commitees are the corporate equivalent, but it doesn’t sound as paternal. I wish someone had cared about how I ran my business in that way. Having an infrastructure around you allows everyone to know where they stand and for the role of the founder to not be so isolating.

All in all it’s really interesting and I can’t wait to see how these guys do in the next year. There’s something to be learnt here that I’m sure will come in handy when I start my next company :)

So yeh, you might have read, Tinker closed. Unlike people who leave large corporate jobs and write a final farewell blogpost, I’m at loss for what would be appropriate to say here seeing as I co-founded the thing. I like What Jeff Bezos said:

” I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision. And, I think that’s very good. If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, “What will I think at that time?” it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion. You know, I left this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year. When you do that, you walk away from your annual bonus. That’s the kind of thing that in the short-term can confuse you, but if you think about the long-term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later.”

It’s been an incredible adventure, in ways I can only start to process. Maybe there’s a little book there. Maybe not. But for now, i’m back to freelancing, which is strange and enjoyable too, a plan at a human scale.

Spread the word!

Sometimes feels like this.

I realised I don’t write very often about my day job here, perhaps because this feels like a different space that I can use to talk about the meta-job of running a company. Last year, I wrote about running a business but I’m very interested in the dynamics of running a design studio at the moment since we’ve just finished moving for the 4th time in our London office and are part of London’s so-called Silicon Roundabout.

Once upon a time in Ivrea, I borrowed a bunch of DVDs on the Eames’ work and was totally fascinated by 901, their studio in Venice California. Through the years that studio and their work in general has actually been more and more of an influence and reference point. The big challenge in the 21st century activity of running a business is deciding what you are defined by. Are you defined by your work? If so, which part of your work will people hang on to as a mental hook? In our case it was Arduino even if we didn’t develop it, and don’t even sell it anymore. Are you defined by the people in the business? If so how do you give them a voice outside of the business? In our case, I push people to speak at conferences so that I’m not the only one people see. Are you defined by your approach? If so, how do you communicate that? Really hard but I suppose we’re slowly getting there.

One thing I’ve been really looking into lately is how to build culture internally and what that culture means. I’ve come to the conclusion that business culture comes from the types of habits that are formed. In our case, that habit is around sweets. Let me explain. Everytime someone goes somewhere for a conference or a holiday, they always come back with sweets from that place. Small thing, but that makes the office feel like a family which is important when some people are full time and others aren’t. Some people have office breakfasts, friday morning meetings, ours has weekly office emails, sweets, Bantam and Google docs.

It’s always scary and entertaining when a concept that comes from programming techniques kindof made me think of the way I run my company.

Instead, most of a program’s overall functionality is coded into a single “all-knowing” object, which maintains most of the information about the entire program and provides most of the methods for manipulating this data. Because this object holds so much data and requires so many methods, its role in the program becomes God-like (all-encompassing). Instead of program objects communicating amongst themselves directly, the other objects within the program rely on the God object for most of their information and interaction. Since the God object is referenced by so much of the other code, maintenance becomes more difficult than it otherwise would in a more evenly divided programming design. [...] While creating a God object is typically considered bad programming practice, this technique is occasionally used for tight programming environments (such as microcontrollers), where the slight performance increase and centralization of control is more important than maintainability and programming elegance.