Mine

Stickiness

Steve Gold gave us a wonderful talk about stickiness for Vital Ideation. He focused on a fundamentally different idea of what “sticky” meant than the book “Made to Stick” did, but Steve’s thoughts encompassed a whole new set of ideas than I had previously considered.

One of the key points that Steve made was asking whether ideas are sticky, or if it is their implementation that makes them so. Arguably, there are ways to package up things that will make them more attractive, no matter what they are.

Furthermore, Steven questions whether things stick to people, or people stick to things. In fact, the stickiness is bi-directional.

What makes them stick?

Steve argued that the thing that makes people and ideas stick together is a two-way flow of value. The thing you are stuck to is giving you value somehow (an iPod, for instance), and you are giving it value (a reason for being, money, time, etc). It is because of this two-way flow that there is this Velcro effect.

But what causes this two way flow? One of the most interesting concepts Steve mentioned is the idea of “mine”.

Mine

There are lots of objects we interact with every day. Cars, food, facebook profiles, rooms, water bottles, pens, shoes, shirts – the list is endless. However, some of these objects we think of specifically as “mine.”

Some things are obvious. These are my shoes and those are yours. This house is my house and that house is your house. Give me my pen back when you are done with it.

Still, some things possess greater degree of “mine”-ness as others. You probably wouldn’t feel weird if you lost your pen and had to borrow someone else’s, or ate at a restaurant instead of your house. You would probably start to feel weirder if you fell in a pool and had to borrow clothes from a friend. A sense of “not mine” would start to creep up on you. If you lost your iPod or your cell phone, someone else’s is almost an entirely useless replacement – you simply can’t do with someone else’s what you can with yours.

Irreplaceable

I feel as though the stronger this concept of “irreplaceable,” the stronger the feeling of ownership. When I use other people’s laptop, I am much less efficient than when I am using my own, because it is somehow foreign and uncomfortable despite being exactly the same. The programs aren’t in the same place and the keys feel a bit different. My laptop has the top row rearranged to spell “MARRA” and has stickers on it that I recognize it by. It goes with me almost everywhere, and finding a thirty minute block where I don’t need it so I can give it to IT to replace my speakers is difficult.

You can get a new stapler very easily. You won’t miss your old stapler. A stapler is a commodity good.

You can’t get a new iPod in the same way. It is not a drop-in replacement. The difference will be tangible.

People are more comfortable with and take care of things that are theirs. I would feel no remorse snapping my pencil, I can just get another. I will edit my Wiki page to say what it should, but I am afraid to edit other people’s pristinely marked up pages. When I have ownership I am not an outsider. Ownership is comfort. People care about and take care of things that they feel ownership of. No one wants to see their toy break, their idea get shot down, or their essay get an F.

But this feeling of ownership is not a permanent one. Toys that I cherished in my childhood I now donate to charity. My MySpace page went from being checked multiple times daily to being deleted. The laptop I carry around with me daily now will be replaced by another in a few years. It is something that comes and wanes, and perhaps something that can be harnessed.

Creating Ownership

So as budding entrepreneurs, designers, and engineers, the question is: how do I make you feel this powerful ownership over the things I make?

Customization creates ownership. My Build-a-Bear has a green shirt and cool hat. My iPod has gem rhinestones around the screen. My Webkins has a different name than yours. Your thing is no longer a commodity; it is its own unique entity. There is a book I intend to read called “FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop--From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication.” It is about how some time in the not-too-distant-future everyone will be able to customize products in the same way that we can print custom party invitations today. As technology enables more and more individualization of products, people will become more aware of the differences between mine and yours.

Ability to affect change creates ownership. If I let you comment on my blog, then maybe you feel like you are part of a discussion. But if I let you all the way on the inside and let you post to my blog, then you are now an insider with control over its direction. These sorts of small viral communities have popped up all over the internet, and there is no barrier of entry to joining. You simple can participate and become part of the crew of “regulars” and feel part of the place belongs to you.

These are just a few of the many ways to create ownership in the way that makes ideas and products “sticky.” More and more, we will see these trends of personalization and viral communities, among others, influence people’s perceptions.

Take Home Messages

You would care a lot more if someone erased your iPod than stole your stapler.

You would rather sleep in your own bed than a hotel bed.

Mine and yours aren’t interchangeable, and that is critical.

Three Reflections on Stickiness

For the stickiness deliverable, I’ve written three short reflections tangential to the aforementioned concept. The first, “Covered in Stickiness: A True Story of Tree Sap, Honey, and iPods,” has nothing to do with the sub-title. The second, “Me in Media,” wonders about the role of multimedia in perception of self. The third, “I Am What I Collect,” meanders through thoughts on sets as a description of a person. “But self! How can these be related to stickiness?” you might ask yourself in surprise. To me, stickiness is very strongly correlated to self-perception. The reason I keep something with me has a lot to do with the way I look at myself.

These contain obnoxious amounts of self-reference and opinion. They’re thoughts, not research papers, and are to start discussions, not end them, so it would be great to see a comment or two at the end! :)

Covered in Stickiness

A True Story of Tree Sap, Honey and iPods

Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick and undoubtedly society’s choice experts on the idea of stickiness, say that a sticky idea is something that stays with you really well. You remember it, and it influences the way you act, what you buy, etc. However, stickiness can also be viewed from a product sense, to which entrepreneur Steve Gold’s stickiness lecture for Vital Ideation was more akin. I’m going to investigate the case of the latter (or, more specifically, things that would relate to the latter more).

Sticky products are things that you want to buy, and why you buy them is anyone’s guess. My personal guess is that sticky products define who you want to be. My guess is also very much like a philosopher’s personal theory that is quite accurate in some cases, but overall can describe nowhere near the entire story. So in that sense, I’m annoyed with it. I will continue anyways.

I immediately sat down to define myself by my possessions—to see what I’ve bought that defines me. Trying to describe myself with my possessions was a slightly unnerving exercise, as it probably should be. But I started writing labels and making bubbles and arrows and dotted lines and boxes, and when I thought I had generated enough fluff, I took a close look and noticed some trends. Here’s what I found…

Me in Media

Defining the Digital Identity

Perhaps it’s a function of the fact I am a student of engineering growing up in the digital age, but I found that electronics and electronic media (which is the sole use of the term I will be using in this paper) strongly define who I am.

The largest theme on the paper that I was ideating on was a large cloud shooting off of “laptop” called “MEDIA” (yes, in engineering all-caps). Now this is a bit tangential to a product already, but I found that these things matter most to me. So I went with it. In MEDIA, I have my pictures, my music (and podcasts), my videos, my writing, and a few things I lumped in as “digital creativity”—my code, multimedia projects, music compositions, etc.

Again, these are not things I bought to define me. Instead, they are largely things I’ve created. The computer is a great way to store created things. Not all types of created things, of course. Paintings and classical music are orders of magnitude more satisfying live. But I don’t paint, do I? And yeah, I compose, but software transcribes the music. It gets played elsewhere.

But if I were to lose all that, it would mean a good deal more to me than losing my credit card, guitar, and (limited college) furniture. But the point remains. Most creation of any sort has some decent way of being stored in a digital format, and this collection of digital media defines me because what I create defines who I am.

I Am What I Collect

The Role of Collections in Self-Definition

On my page of self-defining fluff, I noticed another trend. This particular trend begins with an “l” and ends with “ists”. Congrats! It’s “lists”! My page was practically covered in lists! And the cool part about these lists is not the practical nature they served.

What I mean by that is that these lists of things were not grocery lists, task lists, homework lists, etc. They didn’t correspond to things that needed to get done. Instead, they were lists of things slowly accumulated, all belonging to a specific genre, and all describing me. These were lists that integrated over time to add up to this every-changing function of self.

What does that mean? It means that instead of checking all the items off, I added new ones with the expressed purpose of further defining myself with that collection. For instance, consider books. I have a bookshelf in my room, and I am dang proud of it. Whenever I go into a new room or house and see a bookshelf, I often ask permission to look at it. Why? Because I learn about you through your books (to those of you reading aloud at home, that last sentence can sound pretty creepy with the right inflection). My set of books define me—entrepreneurship, Catholic, history, outdoors, math and science, programming and reference books—with of course more than a few random ones here and there.

Another list I had was my media, but I already covered that in decent detail. The thing I did not mention is the fact that I wrote down “collection” a bunch—the right term to think of may be “synergy” (apologies, buzzword, I know… I don’t like them any more than you do). Synergy is the word correlated with the phrase “the whole is more than the sum of its parts,” and in this specific case, refers definitely to the fact that my music collection, for instance, is more than just a bunch of songs/albums. As a set, it defines me. If anyone had the same music collection as I did, well for one I would be surprised (considering the size of it), but second, I would probably freak out and start asking them a ton of questions. After all, anyone who has all my music has all my personality, right? Right??

Ask yourself if that’s a reasonable thought, because I’m not that it is. But I would naturally want to see if coincidences extend, and some part of me would love to see that they did. But I will take the safe road and assume they don’t, as the number and size of each of my collections is enough to statistically distinguish me from any other person on the map. Perhaps that’s why I say they define me…

Stickiness Charting

What really is stickiness?

The primary focus of Steve Gold's presentation for us, and our original discussion was more along the lines of sticky products and ways of making products stick through proximity (propinquity!) and customization. However, my initial thoughts on stickiness were much more along the lines of the book, which deals with how people remember different things, and how to make people remember. The criteria for success were exactly that:

Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credibility, Emotions, and Story.

So my thought was: what type of medium gets these things across the mostly clearly?

What's easy to remember?

I've been actively thinking about what I'm remembering, from a variety of forms of learning, including:

1) UOCD Readings (with diagrams)- Text and Figures
2) A play I saw this weekend- (August Osage County)- Dialogue
3) The food I ate this weekend- Text from the Menu, Taste/Smell
4) A musical I am stage managing (Into the Woods)- Lyrics and Music

Interestingly, I'm usually pretty good at remembering words. I think it's a lot easier than trying to replicate an image or a figure, and I'm completely tone deaf. Thus I figured I'd remember the things with verbal components more.

However, I've actually found that that really isn't the case. I'm going to work with the things that I remembered best from these things, and attempt to combine them into a "rememberability matrix."

I remember the food I ate extremely well, probably the best of any of these things. From this I've decided to create a matrix of memorability. Look for an update on how that came out soon!
nfro
For the record...
from UOCD I remember graphs showing how valuable things were, why personas are valuable, and Venn Diagrams.
I remember every detail of my meals.
I remember some of the play, particularly some interesting lines, and the general plot.
and I remember lots of Into the Woods, but possibly because I've seen it so much. It's more difficult to remember parts of the songs that are the same melody with different lyrics.

after awhile here's something i came up with:

i combined the concept of UOCD using a three-way grid to determine something and made a sticky grid based on: how you perceive it, what it is, adjectives that describe the information.

Carrying a Notebook is a Fad.

Well, isn't it? Maybe not a fad, but it is at least an idea that has caught on for one reason or another. For what it's worth, 'tis a "sticky" idea at the least. What is the value of a design notebook? Part of me feels that individuals walking around with a notebook feel better about the fact that they carry one than about how much usefulness they get out of carrying it. I mean, it can be a hassle. Get changed, get stuff for class, oh yeah! grab my design notebook :). What makes someone do that in the first place? Well, carrying a design notebook is a sticky idea. Hopefully by the end of this post I will have made a bit of sense out of why this is the case.

So, I decided last week that I would hold out on writing about design notebooks until I thought of something interesting to write about. The topic of the second Vital Ideation lecture was "Stickiness," and part of me feels that the act of carrying a design notebook is something that falls in line with many of the principles we discussed when talking about a product's stickiness.

The first things that come to mind...
First off. I think that the act of carrying a notebook around is the sticky part of this whole idea. The "design" modifier is really only a specific case of this phenomenon. The carrying of some sort of notebook, whether for ideas, doodling, sketching, tasks, or some combination thereof is what can be considered "sticky." The first things that come to mind when I think of a design notebook are the following:

1. Moleskine --

   "the legendary notebook used for the past two centuries by great artists and thinkers, including Van Gogh, Picasso, Hemingway and Chatwin. With an elastic closure and an expandable inner pocket made of cardboard and cloth, which contains the history, they are ideal for students"

   It is actually kind of ridiculous how many different types of notebooks they have on their website. There is something special about this personal notebook idea. Something that makes people pay lots more than they should for bound paper for your pocket. Notice the sketch-book of Vincent Van Gogh himself to the right. How it shimmers with knowledge, uniqueness, genius and who knows what else. Is this what makes personal notebooks so sticky? Here is one of Olin's very own on personalizing their Moleskine.

   "I just retired a Moleskine and got a new one that I have to set up - I figured I'd take you guys along for the ride. "

   So begins the blog post, which describes the act of setting up the notebook as a "ride" itself. From tables of contents to specialized lists and such, the customization that goes into this moleskine rivals that of a personal computer. Crazy huh? It's only a notebook you might say, but it seems to be more than just this.
2. Lifehacker. Oh lifehacker and other such "tech trick tips for getting things done" websites. If I actually listed all the posts on maintaining, purchasing, improving, creating, modifying, and streamlining personal notebooks, I would be spending hours compiling all the posts and linking to them all in this lowly blog post of mine. If you pass the lifehacker test* of being described in more than 3 or so blog articles, I think you qualify to internet and/or nerd sensation (see also: fad & obsession.) Well, maybe not. (*note this term has never been used before and will never be used again in any formal writing)
   
3. PDAs, the Internet, and all other Electronics. Funny that this is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of (personal) notebooks, but it is true. One of the intrinsic values of the personal notepad, whether for design or otherwise, is that it isn't a technical gadget, but it can be as personal and individualized as a computer, cell phone, misc. Apple product.

So, I started carrying a notebook myself. sort of.
I started carrying my own notebook mostly because I thought it was nice to be able to keep track of tasks, add tasks and then rip them out when I was done. It was also a convenient source of doodle space and paper during French class. But the real reason was that I had finally convinced myself that carrying a personal notebook wasn't completely a "hey they do it, I should do it too!" thing. Additionally, I found that carrying a notebook could be particularly useful personally as a way of keeping track of tasks from random things I am involved in which I sometimes forget to do/not put into outlook or any other-sort-of-reminder format.

The idea of carrying around a notebook to write down random thoughts on was one that I'veheard suggested for about a year now. ...Moleskine this, ideas notebook that... Maybe being at Olin has something to do with this....ok fine. It has a lot to do with this. I know my friends from back home would scoff at the idea of carrying a notepad around. "What the hell for?" they would surely tell me. Often times in this past year I have thought--"Wow that would be a really cool thing to keep track of, maybe in an ideas notebook!" Finally I have one, but I don't use it for ideas.

Most people don't use notebooks for idea generation.
That's odd. I don't actually use my notebook for idea generation. And I don't think many people do either. I supposed I am very biased in this, but I generally don't sit around by myself and come up with ideas. If I'm sitting around thinking about something that is interesting enough to warrant being copied down in a notebook of ideas, then I'll find people who I know would be interested and talk to them, who will not only potentially polish the idea if it isn't a horrible one, but the discussion that the idea will kick off will likely be of the variety that keeps me up for hours longer than I should instead of doing "coursework." Silly academics.

I suppose the only time that I have used my notebook to jot down random stuff has been during lectures from cool speakers, or while I was supposed to be doing other things, like during French class, when I sort of do other work I find more engaging in my notebook while i sort of interact with the rest of the class. I guess my notebook has been useful to me. And I guess in the end that's the point right?

A low-tech! personal ___(insert word of your choice)___ notebook is a sticky idea. For me, it allows me to _______ and also _______ wherever I am, sort of like a PDA or something. The best part is that when ____ happens, I can _____ using my notebook. How sweet is that?

My notebook represents who I am as a designer, engineer, over-committed student. Tis my PN. "Personal Notebook" :D :D :D


-Marco