Adaptive Path Blog

It’s eerie when the Miriam-Webster word of the day feels more like a horoscope than a vocabulary lesson.

Yesterday in the Adaptive Path Newsletter I published an article called Embrace your Page Rage. And later in the day I got this:

The Word of the Day for February 24 is:

logomachy \loh-GAH-muh-kee\   noun

1. : a dispute over or about words
2. : a controversy marked by verbiage

Etymology: Greek logomachia, from log- + machesthai to fight; Date: 1569

Republished from Adaptive Path Newsletter (2/24/2010)

Embrace Your Page Rage

I have a confession to make. I’ve fallen sway to Page Rage. About three months ago I made a choice to stop using the term “Web Page” altogether. It’s been an interesting time. The term is harder to banish than you may think. It started out as a cavalier move, yet it had some meaningful consequences.

In this post, I share thoughts on Page Rage, my “search and replace” experiment, and how it shifted my thinking. I leave you with three simple steps to begin your own experiment and see how it opens new vistas for digital experience design.

In the beginning, there was the Page

I’ve spent the last 15+ years designing digital experiences for the Web, so there are a lot of Web Pages in my past.  I’ve grown to loathe the term Web Page. Why? It’s blatantly misleading. It stinks of “horseless carriage.” Yet it’s so deeply hooked into the terminology of interactive experiences and the world of Web interfaces that it takes serious effort to dislodge it.

I honestly feel that in order to create engaging digital experiences, we need to continuously evolve how we think about them. And this means we need to change the words we use to design them. What we need are new metaphors to play around with…words and terms that unleash fresh thinking appropriate to experiences in the Web and beyond. A language of experiences that can prism through different devices, objects and spaces.

So for the past few design projects, I’ve been playing with new language with the goal of opening up new approaches to design.

Page Rage 101

Here’s the skinny on what I call Page Rage. Page Rage is the emotion that overwhelms you when you realize that continuing to use the term Web Page curdles opportunities for evolving user experiences. Why? Because the word is an artifact of the woefully outdated book metaphor — a metaphor that limits thinking.

The word “page” means paper and books. And although it never made literal sense, it was a helpful metaphor when the digital stuff on the web was mostly about static content…when it behaved more like books. But the capabilities and possibilities for digital interfaces have shifted dramatically.

Now the Web is a teeming landscape of content and services, product platforms, and social streams. It’s an ecology of software applications, gaming, multimedia, small-device displays, multi-user displays, displays on the sides of buildings that can be controlled using mobile devices…you name it, if it’s not already hooked into the Web, it’s going to be. Anyone designing stuff for today’s Web needs to be thinking way beyond sites and pages.

In Metaphors We Live By (G. Lakoff and M. Johnson) Lakoff says:

“The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. […] Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. [...] But our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of. In most of the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more of less automatically along certain lines.”

Which means that the book metaphor has the power to frame our thinking and define the opportunity space for design, all without our being aware it’s happening. In short, we’ve become shackled by the book.

What’s the nature of these shackles? Here are the elements of a book experience that I feel are deadly for interactive experiences:

• physicality (made of paper)
• singleness (a unit of “a page”)
• similarity/conformity (pages have the same size and shape…bound together into sets)
• sequence (turn page 1, then 2, then 3)
• linearity (turn page 1 first, then 2 next, then 3 after that
• succession (beginning, middle, end, sequel)
• single entry point (cover page)
• limited space (physical constraint)
• word-orientation (visuals as supports, not main content)
• implies reading and focused attention

All these associations are specific to the form of a book. They’re not limitations of the technologies we’re using today. Think this is bunk? The definition doesn’t give a lot of wiggle room: “page” is all about the paper.

Page – noun

1. one side of a leaf of something printed or written, as a book, manuscript, or letter.
2. the entire leaf of such a printed or written thing: He tore out one of the pages.
3. a single sheet of paper for writing.
4. a noteworthy or distinctive event or period: a reign that formed a gloomy page in English history.
5. Printing. The type set and arranged for a page.
6. Computers.
   a. a relatively small block of main or secondary storage, up to about 1024 words.
   b. a block of program instructions or data stored in main or secondary storage.
   c. (in word processing) a portion of a document.
   d. Web page.

Yeah. Web gets a sad little shoutout in definition 6d, and it’s own puny definition. Not a lot of love for the interactive nature of the Web.

So why get all enraged about a word? It’s not the word’s fault. Nope, it’s how we, as people, act (or don’t act) as a result. Lackoff goes on to say:

“It is reasonable enough to assume that words alone don’t change reality. But changes in our conceptual system do change what is real for us and how we perceive the world and act upon those perceptions.”

I decided to banish “page” to unmoor the conceptual associations of the book metaphor. I wanted to force myself into a new conceptual system to be able to think about the interface behavior in a new way. So I blacklisted a word. And it felt awkward and weird, just like any new habit should.

Learnings from the Search & Replace experiment

In the past months, I’ve tasted a bunch of terms as a replacement for Web Page.

• The ones that were easiest to simply swap out: interface (or shortened to just “face”), screen, panel, pane, window, layer, display, frame, template.
• I also played around with: surface, folio, leaf, slip, section, tile, card, lens, slice, wafer, patch. Those were weirder, but still interesting.

Things I learned (and am still learning) by doing this.

1. When it works, no one notices.

If the replacement term makes sense, no one will notice you no longer say “page.” Some words just made sense to the team. Even though it was effort to avoid using the P-word, no one else seemed to care, as long as the term used was clear and appropriate. It was like gender-neutral language. No one notices if you say mail carrier instead of mailman. It just works.

2. Awareness takes time.

You have to take more care with your language. Which means you have to think more about what you say. This is a good thing. I also had to think more about “if it’s not a page, then what is it? A view? A lens? A folio? A stem? What does that allude to? Does it make sense? It’s an exercise in thoughtful design to consider things at this level.

3. Out with the old means in with the new.

You have to find new words to play with. I was encouraged to intentionally explore new metaphors. Was the experience like a performance? Was it more like an environment? An ecosystem? What set of terms would make sense?

I found I had better ideas more tied to the quality of the experience, based on the term and the associations. Cards hinted at interactions like shuffling, randomness, layouts and flipping. Frames showcased a central hero or focal point.

Understanding the qualities of the experience made it easier to think through how the service or information would behave in contexts beyond “sit-down-in-front-of-a-screen.” What would this product be like on an iPhone? On a Nabatag? On a billboard? In a restaurant?

It sharpened the realization that I was not a web designer. I was a designer creating an experience for the Web. And that’s a powerful shift in perspective. It’s one thing to say “I’m an experience designer.” It’s another thing to really think like one.

DIY : Your own experiment

Want to give this a try? Here are three simple steps:

1. Unseat the book metaphor.

Simply replace “Web Page” with something else.

You’ll notice that it feels awkward and uncomfortable, kinda like a new yoga move. That’s okay, it’s part of the process. But you’ll also notice a new awareness for when and how you rely on the term. Try out some different words. Some will work, some will sound bizarre. (Some won’t make sense at all.) But you’ll be playing around with new possibilities.

This step is like sorbet: it clears your palette to taste the next course.

2. Start dating new metaphors

Once you’ve gotten used to using alternate terms, work on swapping in a new metaphor. Move outside your comfort zone and get experimental. Think about the context of the design and the experience. What does a new metaphor push you to think about?

• a movie: play with words like reel, scene, shot, clip, sequence, serried, frame, screen, episode
• a play: play with words like theater, stage, setting, set, proscenium, skene, scene
• artwork: play with words like frame, figure, ground, composition, aspect, face, tableau, vista
• pieces and parts for building with: play with words like tile, block, brick, plate, pane, panel, chip, section, plan, foundation, bracket, skin

Silly? Maybe. But honestly, no sillier than Web Page.

3. Keep your eyes and ears open for new terms to love.

Stay alert for new conceptual metaphors that evoke qualities of a rich interactive experience. One that can bridge multiple channels. Find a couple that have words that carry the attributes you want to design for. Keep your eye out for keepers: words and metaphors that support:

• context-sensitivity
• unboundedness
• fluidity
• glance-ability
• distinctiveness / variation
• series & multiples
• temporality
• media-inclusive
• multifaceted
• no single entry point
• interconnected
• shuffle-able, re-orderable
• multivariate

These are the attributes that we need our metaphors to evoke when designing products and platforms that radiate through many channels.

Think about how the words scale. Can they be used to describe interfaces for any channel? Mobile, micro interfaces on devices, large-scale devices, multi-touch, immersive and ambient interfaces?

Feel the Rage

The payoff of Page Rage is that it’s a helpful wedge to break the book metaphor and to invite fresh thinking that’s inclusive to multiple product forms. At the start of the Web, many of our approaches were limited by the technology. Now we run the risk of being limited by our metaphors.

Companies are already investing in this broader thinking. The BBC recently posted about their new global visual language for the BBC’s digital services. This comprehensive effort was primarily to unify two channels: the web and mobile experiences. It’s clear that creating channel-agnostic design foundations is the next step of evolution for digital experiences. And to get there, we can’t keep designing by the book.

We won’t get there all at once, but we can start by unshackling ourselves from the book metaphor. Embrace the Rage.

Recently, Adaptive Path was asked to take part in the Urban Forest project. Worldstudio has partnered with organizations such as AIGA and The Academy of Art University to bring this community-based, public arts and environmental initiative to San Francisco. Mayor Newsom announced this collaboration at the Compostmodern 09 design conference in February.

The Urban Forest Project is described as an unprecedented outdoor exhibition, taking root in cities all across the globe. This public art initiative challenges designers employ the idea or form of the tree to make powerful visual statement about the environment. This artowrk will be placed on light pole banners in the local community.

The tree is a metaphor for sustainability, and in that spirit the banners from the exhibition will then be recycled into totebags or some other re-usable product which can be sold. Proceeds from the sale of these unique products will raise money for a local non-profit organization in our community.

Christian and I were excited to take part in this project for two reasons. First, this wasn’t a just a design contest or an opportunity to see our fancy designs up on a banner. The AIGA SF has built a mentoring program for at-risk high school students from San Francisco youth programs such as BAVC, SF Cameraworks: First Exposures, San Francisco Youth Commission, Southern Exposure and Young Artists at Work/Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. We’ve been working with a great student who has a tremendous amount of raw energy that is inspiring us to think about how to express her unique vision.

Twenty five of the 100 banners will be designed by the mentoring teams. So, this gives Adaptive Path a unique opportunity to fulfill on our primary mission of helping improve people’s lives through great design experiences. While that mission is often made real through consulting and design projects, we look for places to further education and idea sharing. It’s important to us to share our methods with other designers to improve the conversation around design. Working with a young design student is an exciting chance to positively affect the future of design.

For years, I’ve found creative inspiration in slime mold. The elegance of this lifeform is extraordinary: when times are good, it’s a colony of individuals. When times are bad, the whole colony forms a single organism and makes a getaway. I use slime mold as a metaphor and learning inspiration for how organizations behave, adapt and how they can better embrace collective work.

In April, I shared my thinking about slime mold and organizational culture at the IA Summit in Memphis. There I met Stacy Surla, who invited me to write an article on the topic for the  August/September 2009 issue of The Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

The article went live this week, so you can read the full story on learning from slime mold. Thanks to the great editorial team at the Bulletin for the guidance and editing work. We’re also excited that this article debuted video examples for the first time in Bulletin content.

Article in the August/September 2009 issue of The Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

You can read the full article here:

• Web version (html)
• Print version (pdf)
• Current Bulletin issue (html, not a permalink)
• Complete Bulletin issue, August/September 2009 (pdf)

And to whet your appetite, check out this marvelous slime mold video by Thomas Gregor in Princeton University’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics. It shows the first 2 stages of the lifecycle.

Today is Ada Lovelace day…a day to celebrate women in technology. Earlier this year, I joined 1000+ people in a pledge sponsored by Suw Charman-Anderson: “I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.”

I’m writing my Ada Day post listening to a CD of music written in the 11th century. More specifically liturgical music written by a mystic German nun and Abbess. It’s riveting. Over 1000 years later, the tonal transitions and Latin phrases touch a deep chord and inspire with their mesmerizing shifts up and down the musical scale.

In honor of Ada Lovelace Day, I’m reaching into the ‘way back machine to a time where technology was not about systems (technología, 1605 : systematic treatment of an art or craft) or machines (technology, 1859 : science of the mechanical and industrial arts) or code and bits & bytes (high technology, 1964.) I’m talking about a time when technology was truly about the roots of creativity: the Greek tékne meaning “art, skill, craft or method.”

The music I’m referring to was written by Hildegard von Bingen…a mystic, a visionary (literally) and a woman who shook the conventions of her time and society to contribute works on religion, philosophy, art and the natural world. She was a Renaissance woman a few hundred years before the Renaissance.

Hildegarde used her mental prowess to explore the natural world, to devise new systems of thinking, to publish her philosophies and learnings to share them publicly. She worked around the political structures that limited womens voices by using alternative rhetorical arts. She was able to transcend the banns on womens social participation and interpretation of scripture to share her message via preaching, letter writing, poetry, illuminated manuscripts and music.

She was the author of many works, including Physica and Causae et Curae. In these texts Hildegard describes the natural world around her, including the cosmos, animals, plants, stones, and minerals. Clearly, Hildegard was amongst the first Information Architects, or perhaps more accurately, a User Experience Designer who used illuminations, writing and music to deliver holistic, transformative experiences.

As a leader, a thinker and a maker, Hildegard qualifies as a tekne-ologist of the finest sort: a woman who saw visions of possibility and dedicated her life to making knowledge known to others, using whatever means available: speech, writing, illustration and scientific inquiry.

Hildegard, you rock.

About the pledge:
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. The pledge is an opportunity to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

Who was Ada?
Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software. Learn more at FindingAda.com.

In December, a blind man led me into darkness. I had a cane, but it only partially helped. I felt around with my hands. I listened to the voices of the people around me, gauging their distance by their loudness, shifting so I didn’t bump into them. The smell of grass helped me understand I was in a park. When I put my hands into a basket, I touched oranges and knew it from the feel of their skin, not their smell.

I was in an exhibition called, “Dialogue in the Dark.” As the organizers explain, “In completely darkened rooms, blind people lead small groups of guests through an exhibition in which everyday situations are experienced altogether differently, without eyesight.” Prior to this, I’d never experienced blindness. Actually, I’d never experienced the loss of any sense before.

At first, my eyes strained to see, which was distracting. But when I focused, instead, upon my other senses, it was…fun, an adventure. I was experiencing the world in a fascinating way I wouldn’t have known, had I stuck to sight.

Of course, you don’t have to go into a dark room to grasp the difference between blindness and sight. But, like all good exhibits, it got me thinking…about assumptions and how often we assume that others experience the world in the same way we do. We make these assumptions everywhere: In conversation, design, and judgment.

Imagine:

You and I are sitting across a table talking to each other. I assume you hear me, and that my words mean to you what they mean to me. I assume you see the expressions on my face and understand their implications. I assume you are enjoying the hint of caramel in tea we share. When I shake your hand goodbye, I assume you feel my warm hand and know that I am calm.

Meanwhile, you can’t hear me well over the furnace, and you forgot to put your contacts in this morning, so my face is a blur. You burn your tongue on the tea so it tastes like nothing, and you only notice how cold and sweaty your own hands are when we shake goodbye. You feel guilty because you were distracted throughout the conversation; I reminded you of a childhood friend and your mind kept traveling back to old stories.

Therein lies one of the ironies of human experience: You and I are NEVER really having the same conversation. Never. Assumptions are dangerous because they keep us from listening and paying attention. Granted, we’ll never gain total understanding of one another. But, we can do a better job of understanding more. In the next few weeks, Adaptive Path will make an announcement on this blog about a research and development project that touches upon the impact of assumption in design. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll contemplate the power of assumption in your own life and work, looking for places to assume less and observe more.

I admit it: living and breathing the Internet, I sometimes forget where we were and how far we’ve come.

And then there are times when I look back and gasp. This KRON news story from 1981 does this.

Really, the coverage speaks for itself:

So the only question remaining is…if we can come this far in about 28 years, then where’s my jet pack?

This past week Adaptive Path hosted a few graduate students from CCA, one of our local art and design schools. While it was a challenge getting even a few AP folks to take the time away from their consulting work, we managed to give a tour, share a project room, have an interesting discussion on “what is experience design” and (the best part for me) check out the students’ current projects in progress.

I found their use of Bill Verplank’s framework (recommended by their professors) a useful tool in thinking through their ideas. I had forgotten about this framework and thought it would be worth sharing again. Ambidextrous‘ second issue has a great article on the topic.

The CCA student visit gave soon-to-be-design-professionals an inside glimpse of a design studio and was also fun for AP staff to see what’s up with the next generation of designers. The visit was only about 3 hours of our time, a little coordination with the professor and some quick slide prep (thanks Andrew!). Not a lot to ask and well worth the effort. While we have a robust and active Summer Associate Program at Adaptive Path (AKA internship), this brief visit was another chance to expose more design students to life after college.

From this positive experience, I am posting a challenge to other design studios – internal and consultancies: (if you haven’t already) get in contact with a local design program and set up your own studio tour & student project critique! It doesn’t take much and it’s a win/win for all!

This will be my second recession in a design consultancy.

My first was in the early 2000’s, and while some argue that one was mild, the combination of tech crash, general recession, and a generation of business leaders who had spent most of their professional lives in a long run of wild exuberance made things pretty unpleasant for those of us in design and product development. Interestingly, this time around the business response is qualitatively different. Over the past few months, and even in the last couple of weeks as the emotional trauma of the financial meltdown has subsided, the response feels more measured, as if people had learned from the time before.

Unfortunately, the instinctive reaction to cut costs across the board is still around. Some companies are doing that and others are tempted, even though there is plenty of evidence telling us this is not actually the right thing to do. Bruce Nussbaum gave even us a prescient reminder of the mistakes we shouldn’t make right now – mistakes that essentially amount to walking away from providing great products and experiences, mistakes that are a voluntary dive into commoditization.

But what is the evidence supporting this advice, and is there a layer of subtlety that helps us understand exactly how and where to spend our precious cash reserves?

The Great Depression was actually the birthplace of many companies that became market leaders, precisely through this sort of investment. Henry Luce, who co-founded Time magazine in the boom times of the 20’s, launched Fortune magazine in 1930, the beginning of the depression. He recognized that people wanted to experience business news in a way very different than the dry, black and white, facts and figures journals of the day. He gave them insight to the people, thought and issues behind business, and delivered it as a sensual, visual, literary experience. And he commanded a price premium – one dollar an issue.

A few years later, in 1936, the middle of the depression, Luce began publishing Life. The beginning of photojournalism in the United States, Life drew together reporting and publishing tools that already existed, but by using them in a different manner, crafted an entirely new and compelling way to experience the news.

This sort of success is not merely anecdotal, and not limited to the Great Depression. In a study of the early 90’s recession, McKinsey & Co discovered that successful leaders (businesses that started and remained in the top quartile of their industries) did so in part by increasing their R&D spending dramatically – more than double their pre-recession spend. Successful challengers followed similarly contrarian strategies, and displaced former leaders who did not, taking their places in the top quartile. In fact, the challengers grew their businesses by 10.4%, while their former peers declined by 15.0%.

Of course, simply being contrarian and spending your way aimlessly through a recession is not the recipe for success. The McKinsey study gives us some guidance, and Kellogg Professor Andrew Razeghi puts greater detail to it with data from the PIMS study, which tells us that bearing the costs of innovation and meeting user need generally ends up benefiting the business, while the cost of fixed capital tends to hurt the business.

So how can we give people new and better things that they want, without significant investments in new equipment? Experience design, and a coherent Experience Strategy.

In fact, that was one of the main insights on our recent project with a big-box retailer; not that they needed to make new investments, but that they needed to choreograph and orchestrate their current components in such a fashion as to extract new and greater value from them. The magic, of course, is in the details of that orchestration.

If the value of getting experience design right is magnified in a recession, then the cost of getting it wrong can be catastrophic.

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz recognized exactly this problem when he wrote, “Stores no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store.” Excessive expansion and unfocused innovation had stripped Starbucks of the third-space experience that their customers valued, placed them in competition with McDonalds and Burger King, and set them up for costs of around $330 million as they try to regain what they lost.

So what are we seeing that makes me say that this recession feels different than the previous?

Companies are still looking to engage in experience design projects – good projects, properly funded and with realistic goals. Reflecting the nature of the times, they are being careful with their money. They’re spending the time to understand exactly what the project plan entails, they want to know that they are picking the right partner to work with, and they are lining up the internal commitments and connections that they will need to make the project successful.

The companies that are doing this are investing wisely, and I think they will be the ones that come out ahead when this recession ends, just as the other 21 since 1900 have ended.

In the daytime, I work on creating experiences, building models of abstract concepts, making interfaces, feeling deluged by email and navigating the myriad of human contacts that make work and life play nice together.

But when I get home, I sketch, hum and play with math.

I’ll make one thing clear: I’m terrible at computation. I still count of my fingers on occasion. I thank the heavens for the little digital calculator on my computer. But conceptual math? I’m all over it…Archimedes, Fermat, Bernoulli, Babbage, Lovelace, Mersenne, Fourier, Turing, Pascal, Fibonacci, Mobius, Descartes, Erdos, Polya…yum, yum.

There’s something elemental and patternist about math. The principles are ripe with metaphor and opportunities to apply to everyday life. Looking for transformation over time? Have a ball with combinatorics. Wondering why your inbox always approaches zero but never gets there? Hello, calculus! Yearning to think outside the box? Welcome to Abbot’s Flatland.

So today, when I picked up George Polya’s 1945 classic How to Solve It I was again inspired by the beauty, the simplicity, the utter power of math as a system to better understand life. Starting with the basics of thinking through a problem, Polya’s approach is applicable to a wide range of problems well outside the realm of numbers.

For example, I’m about to head into a series of field research interviews with people in their homes. I’ve been working to center my brain to prepare for the interview sessions. And here is what Polya says about Getting Acquainted with a problem:

Q: Where should I start?
A: Start from the statement of the problem.

Q: What can I do?
A: Visualize the problem as a whole as clearly and as vividly as you can. Do not concern yourself with details at the moment.

Q: What can I gain by doing so?
A: You should understand the problem, familiarize yourself with it, impress its purpose on your mind. The attention bestowed on the problem may also stimulate your memory and prepare for the recollection of relevant points.

That’s a clear, concise message with direct applicability:

• Know the problems and questions: What are we trying to accomplish with this research? What do we need to learn?
• Prepare yourself to wear the experience: Be vivid…what issues exist for people? What are their experiences in day-to-day life?
• Open your mind to seeing the right things: Be in tune with the problem so that your brain is primed to receive the most relevant, potent learnings from the experience.

Math, like design, is best when the concepts are so simple they become obvious. And design work, like math, is best when it’s clearly focused on solving important problems. That’s good stuff.

Thanks, Polya. You’re the best.

I recently returned from LIFT Asia 2008 in South Korea (and my first trip to the country from which I was adopted), and I’ve been looking forward to sharing about it. My colleague Rachel Hinman already posted her detailed notes, so I simply wanted to share some bite-sized ideas that were memorable to me.

LIFT is an ideas conference, not a tactics conference — it was less about learning and more about inspiration. What I liked most about LIFT was its emphasis on the social implications of technology: The real power of the possibilities “beyond the browser” isn’t making our middle/upper-class lives a little cooler, but about empowering the powerless, rebuilding societies and equipping disadvantaged people to succeed. Although it could be construed as one of those “technology can save the world” things, the call to consider those beyond ourselves when we think about the future of technology was relevant and powerful.

Especially notable was Bruce Sterling’s reminder that WE aren’t the ones who need these new technologies — like electronic money — the urban poor are the biggest stakeholders. He sternly challenged South Koreans to be prepared for North Korea’s collapse and to start developing systems and solutions now.

Here are a few more interesting ideas from LIFT (summaries, not direct quotes):

ON SOCIAL NETWORKS: Today’s social network business is a hotel business, not a housing business. There are too many hotels — Facebook, MySpace, Cyworld — and people’s data is scattered everywhere. But what people really want is a home. (Chung Kim)

ON VISUALIZATION: By capturing and visualizing multiple streams of real-time data, we are able to show what IS happening rather than what WAS happening, prompting questions we didn’t know we had. (Stamen)

ON THE PROBLEMS WITH CASH: With cash-based systems, it’s the poorest people, those who take little bits from the ATM at the time, who bear the highest transaction costs. (David Birch)

ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: (After demoing an eclectic collection of gadgets like solar-powered water bottles) Gadgets aren’t meant to save the world… they are symbols of what is possible. (Dan Dubno)

ON NETWORKED CITIES: Visions of cities are often technology-based but duck the real questions: What will all of this feel like? By observing current behaviors, we can start to understand. (Adam Greenfield)

ON HARNESSING LOST IDEAS: Citizens and civil servants encounter problems and think of creative solutions to urban issues but have no channel for making these ideas known. We can use technology to harness these ideas, make voices heard, and bring about action and policy changes. (Soo Hin Yong)

ON SUSTAINABILITY: What if devices were made to be worn IN not out, feel like an investment that’s made to last, age gracefully and have timeless features? (Raphael Grignani)

ON THE KITCHEN OF THE FUTURE: I want my kitchen in the future to look a lot like my kitchen today. People are future-overwhelmed; change should be invisible and internal. (Andrea Bianchi)

ON VIRTUAL WORLDS: Everyone says we only live once, we only have one chance at life. But gaming gives people the chance to have a new life. (Joonmo Kwon)

ON ROBOTS: If we have a limited vision of what robots should be, our ability to create robots will be limited. The debate about humanoid vs. non-humanoid robots is moot — there’s room in the taxonomy for all kinds of robots. The most evolutionary robots will be “Homo Robotus:” Robots that are a part of a person, amplifying the person’s body and mind. (Bruno Bonnell)

ON ENVISIONING THE FUTURE: The ability to create unconstrained visions of the future lives within us all. To tap into it, we must escape from the fetters of legacies, assumptions and technology-driven innovation. We must return to the wonderful world of make believe. (From my talk on “Experiencing the Future Through Make Believe” during the Open Afternoon)

I’m thankful to LIFT’s organizers for creating a conference of ideas — almost like a TED — that is accessible and affordable to a broad audience, and I feel privileged to have been a part of it!