Movies have without a doubt been the most profound and constant source of inspiration to me as a designer - to me, nothing beats an immersive, layered narrative with beautifully art-directed visuals and wonderful composition.
Here is a list, in neither chronological or favorite order, of the movies that have inspired me, challenged me, changed me and moved me the most.
A couple of months ago I had a persistent cough and had to go into hospital for an MRI to have my lungs examined. I am 49 years old and pride myself on being emotionally resilient, but the second I entered the MRI tunnel, I became a total child, claustrophobia overcoming me and rendering me in a complete state of panic. I made such a fuss the doctor had to stop the process. After three attempts, the nurse gave up and I was sent, at massive personal expense, to an open MRI in another part of town.
Bob Schwartz is the General Manager of Global Design at GE Healthcare. Schwartz tells a story of a similar epiphany that has driven their design philosophy and revolutionized their business at the same time.
As I witnessed first hand, for adults, getting an MRI can be an incredibly intimidating experience. For children, it can be downright scary - with many having to be sedated before they receive diagnostic imaging. Schwartz and his team watched children and their parents go into intense panic, taking longer time for nurses and radiologists to administer treatment, not to mention the fact that many required potentially dangerous sedation to enter the closed MRI tunnel. They decided to reframe the challenge, to look at this constraint as an opportunity: to see if, metaphorically, they could turn lemons into lemonade.
To inspire themselves, the team looked at children’s museums, theme park and playgrounds, and talked to daycare and childhood development experts to understand the needs and perspectives of young patients.
“We did simple things that get overlooked,” says Schwartz. “I mean, some of the most effective insights we got came from kneeling down and looking at rooms from the height of a child.”
He pushed his team to think in terms of what kids see and how they relate to the world.
“Our first design session was actually in a daycare,” he said. “We knew we had to come at this from a different perspective.”
Kathleen Kapsin, director of the Pediatric Radiology Department at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, agrees: “All of our equipment is very high-tech,” she says. “We can get you great images, but we can’t get them if the child isn’t lying still and feeling well enough to go through the scan.”
The final solution is best described on GE’s website:
“Aaaarrrr ye ready?” the hospital technologist growls, handing the patient a black-felt pirate hat. “Yer pirate ship awaits, Cap’n.”
The child draws the hat to his head. Skull-and-crossbones sneer through the waiting room, as if proclaiming, “I’m not just a patient. I’m a pirate.” The 7-year-old’s mother holds his hand as they walk to the CT (Computed Tomography) room. She assures him that he’s going to have a great adventure. They’ve come to the Children’s Hospital—to have his sinus cavities scanned.
As the mini-swashbuckler nears the room, a set of brown planks extend into the hallway, leading to his ship. Soon there is crisp blue water beneath and the subtle smell of coconut in the air.
“Welcome to Pirate Island,” a nurse says, as the boy enters the room.
On this day, 7-year old Duncan Auer is a pirate. Duncan’s boat is actually a specially decorated CT machine. The exam bed has been made to look like a hull. The CT tube: a wooden steering wheel. The water and planks below: brown and blue decals on the floor. The coconut smell: an aromatherapy scent—piña colada—churning from a black vaporizer in the corner.
There are seven other rooms besides Pirate Island, whose themes include a jungle, a campground and an underwater fantasy. They are part of a pilot GE Healthcare program called the GE Adventure Series™, developed in partnership with Children’s Hospital, to help reduce stress in children undergoing imaging scans.
“Children are very cooperative,” says Duncan’s mother, Liz Auer, who works as a preschool teacher. “If you can use your imagination and encourage kids to use theirs, you can make any experience into something that can be fun or, at the very least, relaxing and not stressful,” she says.
The results speak for themselves: an article published in the Journal of Pediatric Nursing, in 2008, describes in detail the dramatic drop in the need for use of sedation after the room was decorated.”
Why am I telling you this? I’ve said several times in this column that design is the overlap between two things – a mindset and a skillset. The mindset is one of optimism, of believing in the possibility of change, of turning problems on their head and looking for solutions. Not seeing lemons, but the ingredients of lemonade.
The skillset is taking these ideas and making them tangible, to help connect to people in ways that matter – taking technology that scares people and making it into an adventure, of creating a powerful and delightful experience when before there was only a disjointed set of potential negative outcomes. In GE’s case, turning the act of looking inside your body into an act of looking inside your mind to something powerful, human and exciting.
To making lemonade.
几个月前，我一直咳嗽不断，不得不去医院做一个肺部的核磁共振检查。我49岁，自认情感控制力还不错，可没想到就在被推进扫瞄隧道的那一刻，我完全像个孩子似的害怕起来，一种幽闭恐怖的感觉瞬间笼罩我的全身，让我彻底惊慌失措。由于我的慌张，医生不得不暂停检查。试了三次后，护士决定放弃，把我送往城镇的另一个地方，接受费用不菲的、开放式的核磁共振检查。
通用电气医疗集团全球设计部的总经理Bob Schwartz曾讲过一个类似的故事，这个故事令他们顿然领悟，不仅驱动了设计理念，而且从根本上转变了他们的业务模式。
就如我亲身经历的一样，核磁共振会让成年人感到极为害怕，对于孩子来说更是无法承受的恐惧，况且很多孩子在影像诊断前还必须靠注射镇静剂。Schwartz和他的团队观察到，整个过程中孩子及其父母变得极度恐慌，这对护士和放射科医生造成了时间上的拖延，更何况很多人在被推进那个封闭隧道前还得接受注射有潜在危害的镇静药物。对此，团队决定重新审视挑战，化危机为转机，打个比喻来说就是，看看有没有可能把酸酸的柠檬做成香甜的柠檬汁。
为了寻求启发，团队特别到儿童博物馆、主题公园和游乐场开展观察，并采访了幼儿及儿童成长专家，了解小患者的需求和想法。
“我们做的事很简单，不过往往被忽视，”Schwartz说道，“我是说，一些最有效的洞察发现，恰恰是我们通过跪下来、从一个孩子的高度去看待治疗室的过程中得来的。”
他要求团队去思考孩子们眼中的世界，以及他们与世界的联系。
匹兹堡大学医学中心附属儿童医院的小儿放射科主任Kathleen Kapsin对此表示认同：“我们所有的设备和技术都非常高端，”她说道，“图像的质量不是问题，关键是如果孩子不能安静地躺在那里轻松地接受扫描，那么就根本没法获得图像。”
最终解决方案在通用电气官网上可以找到最形象的描述：
“你……准备好了吗？”医院技术人员边用低沉的声音说道，边递给患者一顶黑色的海盗毡帽。“海盗船一切就绪，船长。”
孩子将帽子扣在头上，只见帽上的“骷髅图案”仿佛在移动中轻蔑地扫了一眼候诊室，扬言道：“我可不仅仅是患者。我还是一名海盗。”在走向CT（电脑断层）扫描室的路上，这位7岁孩子的母亲一直握着儿子的手，安慰着告诉他，等待他的将是一段奇妙的探险旅程。他们是来儿童医院接受鼻窦扫描检查的。
就在这位“小海盗”走近检查室的同时，走道中延伸出了一排棕色的“登船木板”。很快，下方出现了湛蓝的“海水”，空气中弥漫着淡淡的“椰子香味”。
“欢迎来到海盗岛。”在男孩进入房间的时候，传来一名护士的声音。
这天，7岁的Duncan Auer是名“海盗”。Duncan的“船”实际上是一部经过特别装饰的电脑断层扫描机。检查床看起来就像是“船”的外壳，而CT隧道就是一个“木质的方向盘”。下面还有“水”和“木板”，其实是贴在地上的棕色和蓝色的贴花纸。“椰子香味”则是房间一角的黑色蒸馏器里发出的凤椰汁的熏香。
“海盗岛”旁边还有其他7个检查室，主题包括热带丛林、露营地和海底幻想。这些都隶属于通用电气“GE Adventure Series™”这个医疗试点项目，这个项目是与儿童医院共同开发，旨在帮助减缓儿童接受成像扫描时的压力。
“孩子们都很配合，”Duncan的母亲Liz Auer这样说道，她同时也是一名幼儿教师。“如果你能运用你的想象力，并鼓励孩子们发挥他们的想象力，那么任何体验都可以变得非常有趣，至少不会有压力，比较放松。”她说道。
我为什么要写这些呢？正如我之前在专栏中多次提到的，设计是双重因素影响的结果：即心态和技能。心态就是一种乐观的表现，要相信可以带来转变，问题总会有转机和解决方案。也就是说，不是眼睁睁地看着酸溜溜的柠檬，而是要看到柠檬汁里的香甜成分。
而技能是指具体呈现这些创意和方案，用必要的方式与人们建立起联系：利用让人们感到害怕的技术，将其转化成为一场冒险经历，创建一种强大的、令人愉悦的体验，而不是像过去那样带来各种零散的潜在负面影响。在通用电气的这个例子中，就是将扫描人体内部的这种行为，转变为深入人们的内心世界，并辅以一种强大的、人性化的、振奋人心的体验作为支撑。
Curious Inspiration.
At the behest of my dear friend and colleague Soraya Haas, I am presenting a selection of my own Instagram images. It’s impossible not to be overwhelmingly excited by Singapore’s crazy, brave, beautiful, eccentric and often futuristic architecture, so much so that I’ve started to look at the whole country as if it were another planet. My college Ingrid Fetell asked me, in response to one of these pictures: “Are you in the future?”
So here is an intergalactic montage of some of my snapshots recently taken on Tatooine, Dune, Arrakis, Pandora, Gattaca, and of course, Planet Singaporia.
Enjoy.
I’ve always been obsessed with smell. I’m blessed in that I have both a strong sense of smell (I can smell things a mile off) and also a vivid scent-sense memory - walking out of the doors at Changi airport in Singapore evokes such strong memories - the rain, durian, fish, drains and orchids make me giddy with the nostalgia of my childhood. Smells are a part of all of us, so here are a few that have anchored key moments in my life, pivotal scent-events if you like.
I’m often asked: Why did you become a designer? What inspired you? One of the most constant threads in my life has been my unequivocal love of music and in particular a love of great album art, a love that moved me from the geeky kid who did creepy Goth paintings in art class to one that went to art school to become a “commercial artist,” that turned into a degree in graphic design…and well, here I am.
So, in no particular order, here are some of my favorite album covers, sleeves that have inspired me at various phases of my career, music that has accompanied the journey, and made memories along the way.
OK, I’ve shown you mine. What are yours?
(From my Chinese Column, as usual, presented in its original Mandarin and English.)
Years ago I read an article in a magazine about flying. I have no idea why as I am not remotely interested at all in aviation, but this piece really spoke to me. In it, a pilot was interviewed and asked how an airplane stayed in the air. His answer was pretty shocking. “The reason why an airplane stays in the sky has absolutely nothing at all to do with mechanics, hydraulics or engineering,” he said, “the reason an airplane stays in the sky is because everyone flying in it believes that it can. Flying is merely the collective suspension of disbelief.” He went on: “The second someone sitting in the plane, usually in Business Class, questions: ‘How come this thing is up here?’ it crashes to the ground.”
I have thought long and hard about that story and have quoted it often. The pilot is right on a metaphorical level, and this provides a powerful backbone for the work that my colleagues and I do.
I am in Australia right now on a business trip, and am always amazed by the overwhelming sentiment in the air down here - call it a uniquely Antipodean mindset - but Australians and New Zealanders are so…incredibly optimistic. They clearly believe in their ability to create great futures for their countries, and are collectively suspending any disbelief that that future will not be better, more vibrant, better for them all, and that they will transcend any threat of recession and move forward and onward. It is very inspiring and empowering to be around people like this. To use my pilot’s metaphor, nobody in Business Class is sitting thinking “How come this thing is up here?” and nobody is attempting anything other than ebullient, vibrant optimism.
Much of what IDEO does requires mental shifts like this. We are asked by our clients to help them conceive bold new futures for them and to help bring those futures to life. We are, without a doubt, in the Leap-of-Faith business. There is often trepidation in our clients’ minds and hearts when we start working together – we can often see the thoughts rising from their heads in our initial conversations - “These people are expensive…Am I going to get value for my money…Are they for real…Are we going to get what was promised…Will my boss think I’m nuts…Will I get fired if this fails…” The list goes on and on, and I don’t blame them at all for feeling this way. But what we get them to very quickly do is move past their fear, to suspend their disbelief, and to flip to the optimistic and generative aspects of themselves, to start building towards a common goal - nothing alleviates fear like realizing that you are not in it alone, and that your teammates are going to support you on your journey.
As the theme of this piece is flying, let me end with a story about an aviation client. Air New Zealand came to us a few years ago with the bold goal of “transforming long-haul travel,” to rethink the entire experience - from the cabin layout and equipment (such as the seating in economy and business class) to the in-flight service and entertainment. We also took a look at the customer experience inside and beyond the terminal.
Drawing on our human-centered design expertise, we quickly determined that any service provided by a national carrier should reflect the culture of the country it represents. The team spent a month in the North and South Islands, where it gained a deep appreciation for New Zealand-style customer service, which is generous, humble, thoroughly democratic, and above all, optimistic and open to new ideas.
This research and its findings led to a series of collaborative workshops, the construction of full-scale seating prototypes, and the creation of a video outlining new service scenarios and opportunities. In the design workshops, we explored some pretty crazy seating scenarios, from stacked bunk beds to revolving chairs, but we eventually settled on a configuration of three economy seats that collapse into one long sofa-like structure, called “The Sky Couch.” To engineer it required technical leaps of faith, emotional sustenance on both sides and a collective sense that we were going to launch this thing, no matter what it took.
Two years later, Sky Couch is out in the market, highly successful, has many fans, including the Hollywood star and frequent traveller, Gwyneth Paltrow, and won every award possible. But most importantly, it transformed a small airline into an industry leader, one that has both repositioned them and their country as brave innovators. We are all equally proud of the work, but more proud of the leaps of faith that we made to get us where we all needed to go.
So for me, it has come full-circle: finally, I have a real flying story to tell about the power of collectively suspending one’s disbelief.
To optimism.
关于集体抛弃怀疑的好奇心
多年前，我读了杂志上的一篇关于飞行的文章。虽然我对飞行没有半点兴趣，可不知怎的，这篇文章却很吸引我。文章里一位飞行员在接受采访时被问道说，为什么飞机可以维持在空中前行。飞行员的回答很是令人震惊。“飞机之所以可以维持在空中前行，这和力学、水力学或工程学完全没有关系，”他说道，“关键是机上的每一位乘客相信它可以做到。所有人都抛开疑虑，这就是飞行的全部。”他接着说：“一旦坐在飞机上的某个人，通常是商务舱的乘客，怀疑地问，‘这个玩意儿是怎么飞上来的？’那么飞机肯定会坠落失事。”
这个故事我仔细想了很久，而且常常拿它作为例子引用。飞行员打的这个比方是对的，而这恰恰也为我和我的同事所做的工作提供了有力支持。
目前我正在澳大利亚出差，这里人们的那种极富感染力的情绪无时不令我折服，这就是澳新人特有的心态吧，不过澳大利亚及新西兰人民的乐观精神真是叫人难以置信。他们坚信自己有能力为祖国创造美好的未来，所有人都抛开了一切怀疑，坚定地认为未来只会变得越来越好，越来越有生机，每个人的未来都是如此，他们将会战胜任何萧条，勇往无前。和这样的人们在一起，真是无比地鼓舞人心，令人意气风发。用那位飞行员的比喻来讲，就是坐在商务舱的乘客中，没有人会去想“这玩意儿是怎么飞上来的？”，每个人有的只是洋溢着热情与乐观的精神面貌。
IDEO的大部分工作同样要求这种观念的转变。因为很多时候，客户会让我们帮助大胆构想新的未来并付诸实现。毫无疑问，我们所处的行业离不开“信念的飞跃”。当然一开始合作的时候，客户难免流露出种种不安，这在我们初步沟通的过程中往往显露无疑。“这些人太贵了……我能不能值回票价……他们是说真的吗……结果是不是能像承诺的那样……老板不会认为我是怪胎吧……要是失败了会不会解雇我……”等等，当然他们有这样的感觉并没有错。而我们的任务就是让他们很快将担忧抛在脑后，停止怀疑，开始用乐观的态度和更有成效的方式来看待自己，朝着一个共同的目标努力。没什么好担心的，因为你会发现自己不是一个人，队友们会一路支持你。
鉴于我开篇讲的是飞行，那结束时也分享个航空客户的故事吧。几年前，新西兰航空公司带着“革新长途飞行体验”这个雄伟的目标找到我们，希望我们帮助重新思考和打造从客舱布局及设备（如：经济舱和商务舱的座位排列）到机上服务和娱乐的整体体验。此外，我们还将视角延伸到了航站楼内外的顾客体验之中。
我们利用以人为本的设计方法，很快确立了这样一个认识，即本土航空公司提供的任何服务，都应该体现本国的文化特色。在北岛和南岛进行的一个月的调研活动中，团队深深地为新西兰式的顾客服务所叹服：慷慨、谦逊、彻头彻尾的民主，最重要的是他们的乐观精神，还有对新创意的包容态度。
在这些调研和洞察的基础上，我们开展了一系列协作工作坊，制作实体尺寸的座位模型，并用视频模拟了全新的服务场景和机会点。在设计工作坊上，我们探索了一些非常疯狂的座位设置的场景，从双层卧铺到旋转座椅，并最终选定了“空中睡椅”这个创意，就是将经济舱并排的三个座位展开放平，形成一个长长的、类似于沙发的结构。当然，要具体落实设计，还离不开技术上的信念飞跃、双方精神上的支持，以及所有人义无反顾推出这个创意的决心。
两年后，“空中睡椅”成功面世，市场反响热烈，受到了包括好莱坞巨星格温妮丝·帕特洛这位常旅客在内的众多粉丝的青睐，获奖不计其数。但最为重要的是，它让新西兰航空完成了从一家小公司到行业领袖的华丽转身，不仅让公司，而且让整个国家找到了“勇敢的创新者”这一全新的自我定位。合作取得了傲人的成绩，我们同样十分自豪，但更令我们自豪的是我们能够依赖信念上的飞跃，实现我们所有人的共同目标。
因此对于我来说，这是一个圆满的结局：终于我有了一个真实的飞行故事，可以用来说明集体抛弃怀疑的巨大作用。
