Idea Log

Homaro Cantu + Ben Roche: Cooking as alchemy http://www.ted.com/talks/homaro_cantu_ben_roche_cooking_as_alchemy.html

The quote:
"I've bear in mind that the object being worked on is going to be ridden in, sat upon, looked at, talked into, activated, operated, or in some other way used by people individually or en masse.
When the point of contact between the product and the people become a point of frictionm then the industrial designer has failed.
On the other hand if people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more efficient - or just plain happier - by contact with the product, then the designer has succeeded."
~ Henry Dreyfuss, Designing For People

If you desire only beauty in your designs and have little regard for functionality - would it be more apt to title yourself an artist and not a designer?

To succeed, you need more than recipes. For one, you need to master illusions - to trick customers' minds into believing that they are putting more into their mouths although it is a lot less. There are different ways to achieve this, e.g., food presentation, swapping high cost with low cost ingredients, diluting... Another way is to be innovative with one's product (food) design. The excerpt below on how Petra Foods designed their Top Chocolate bar is a perfect example.

"To win over customers... (the founder of Petra Foods) came up with chocolate products that cost the equivalent of six or seven cents. The trick was to ... use vegetable fat instead of cacoa butter, and a wafer centre.

The Top wafer bar contains up to 12% cocoa powder, for instance, while an ordinary chocolate bar contains 30% cocoa powder. It is the high cocoa butter content that makes chocolate melt and releases the flavours... 'We add wafer and it's crunchy, and you can't tell what is melting. But you get the taste of chocolate.

Petra Foods also reduced the size of its Top wafer bars to bring the prices down. When the product was launched in the 1980s, it weighed 17g. Today, it is 11g. 'We have to think of ways to make a chocolate-tasting thing to sell at IDR500 (seven cents) until we can't do it anymore.' "
From: The Edge Singapore, 26 Dec 2011 on Petra Foods & CEO John Chuang

I like Top and I still do. But it is a lot clearer now that not all food merchants are giving you the real deal. Of course, if you develop a discernment for good food, you'll be hard to fool. But not everyone are discerning nor do many care being so. Like what I learnedin Wicked recently, "it is painless to be brainless." Willing buyer, willing seller.

Where lies the line of fooling customers and giving them the real deal? If you run a business, perhaps it comes from the heart of using only what one would use. For me and my wife, we only create items that we love and would use. I think that would be a great guide to avoid creating illusions that borders on making fools out of customers.

Cheers,
Andy

After 6 'brutal' months of contemplation, of going in to numerous Apple Stores, of holding the iPad2 and getting a feel of how it's like. I finally bought myself one. It was rather difficult since I already have sufficient access to computing power, both mobile & desktop. To add another device to the stable - I had to judge the prudence of this purchase. My other laughed at me, "it's a WANT, not a need!" And it's o so true.

What's the first major project I do with the iPad?

A digital sketch with Autodesk's awesome free app - the app should get a 5 star rating, if not more. I've grown weary of free apps on iOS, they either come loaded with mobile advertisements or irritating pop-ups for in-app purchase - both which disrupts your user experience. Not so for this app, "what's the deal Autodesk? Mindshare?"

After a few sleep-less nights of drawing with digital pencil and ink - here's what I got...

After a successful meeting with our consultancy client led by my mentor - I reflected. How would I approach it? These 3 keywords are a compass for my practice until the day they turn irrelevant. (Doubt they would ever be). Sharing this tripod of values with a good friend, I realized it made sense no matter how you pair the three words.  

1. Planning with the Purpose in mind.
2. Having a Precise Plan - a schedule by the minute or half-minute.
3. Attaining a Purpose that's Precise through involvement of the client.

I like what my mentor shared, "clients may just experience a half day workshop, but the preparation time that goes into the planning is usually the same, if not double the amount of contact time.

This infographic from HBR gives a glimpse on how innovations can be quantified in dollars and cents. Cost savings or increased revenue from some types of innovation are hard-coded, e.g., reducing man-hours from improved work processes, material savings from less wastage. You can measure these in your business, particularly in hindsight, the causal relationship between idea and $ is rather clear. 

However, certain causal effects of innovations are diffcult to prove and measure. What's the impact of stronger and better branding? If the business is a small business, where would it find resources to validate the link between increased revenue and stronger brand? In their eyes, it is probably the day-to-day business activities that adds to their revenue line rather than some ethereal concept. In the same note, it's no wonder why I've heard of brand consultants who find it difficult to convince some small businesses. And it is frustrating to face small businesses who view the view of brand development as graphic design (logo, website) or interior design.

A friend of mine has an example of how a small educational business embraced brand development and it is small no more.