Posted on Jun 14, 2016 on Create Hub, here. Developing apps and websites in an Agile Manner
Developing apps and websites with teams of creatives can be a challenge, Samuel Fry explains some of the potential pitfalls. My day job involves working with teams of developers, designers and analysts to build digital experiences. These are usually in the form of an app or a website and they’re often used for internal purposes. For example, one week I might be working on a search tool and the next week its booking tool. At the beginning of these projects it is hard to know everything. Most of the time it is impossible. Despite this, it is at the beginning of projects like these that teams are asked a lot of questions. What will you build? What do you need to build it? Who do you need to build it? Then finally, how much will it cost? You can make assumptions about the project, of course. Typically you will remember that last time a project was done like this the user wanted X, it took Y many days and Z many people to do it. Your assumptions might be sensible, they might be close, but they are unlikely to be 100% correct. You know this and the company that is paying you probably knows this too. However, it does mean the project is full of many wrong assumptions from the beginning. So, how do you run a project based on assumptions? Waterfall Methodology Steps The traditional way of developing software is in a “Waterfall” method. The concept behind this is that every step is done in sequence. You start with a concept, analyse the problem, design a solution, build that solution, test that it works, release it to your users and maintain it. The term “Waterfall” is widely used as it refers to diagrams where one step leads to another. The term is sometimes credited to Winston Royce who published an article called “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems” in 1970. Royce describes six stages to the process:
The benefit of developing software in this way is that you have very clear milestones in the project and you can document decisions against where they were made in this process. The problem with this process is that it is not very flexible. What if you design a solution and then find out that something has changed? Perhaps the users need something different, or another system that your solution relies on has gone. Agile Project Methodology For this reason, many teams are starting to work in an agile manner. They accept that they do not know everything at the beginning of a project and that things are likely to change while they are developing a solution. There is a whole manifesto behind agile which focuses on enabling the team to be empowered to make decisions, working closely with customers, building software quickly and responding to change. The idea is simple. Rather than designing the full solution up front, you work on one part at a time with the aim to release fully working and tested software on a regular basis. When you work closely with your end users to test ideas quickly, this is ideal. Being “Agile” won’t fix everythingI’m a big fan of agile, but it does have its challenges too – especially when it is not fully adopted. Often teams say that they are going to work in an agile way but, when you look at how they are working more closely, they are still fully designing their solution up front. Similarly, some teams will say that they are “user-focused”. Yet, there is very little sign of them observing user behaviours and testing ideas with users regularly. Also, often teams are not working with users but with people who interact with those users. User Centred Design without users Let’s use an example. Our user works at a ticket office and we are building a new application to help them. The problem for the business is that it is taking too long for each ticket booth to serve an individual customer and many customers are walking away without buying anything. The users themselves are too busy interacting with customers and making money for the business to help the design team. So, instead, some of the managers who allocate the ticket office shifts join to help. These managers speak to the users every day, so they are used to represent the users in a couple of workshops. The difficulty is that, yes, these managers may know the users pretty well – but they are bound to make assumptions about what the users actually do. They can’t be 100% sure about the pains that the users go through or when they have a “work-around” to complete a task. They might be pretty sure, but you need actual users to really know. What if that user has told their manager that they are able to record the email address of every customer as and when the customer purchases a ticket. The manager might believe this as they have records of each customer that bought a ticket. But, in reality, the user could be making a note of each customer’s email address on a piece of paper and manually inputting them all at the end of the shift. Quite frankly, it’s hard for that manager to know for sure. Is Agile faster? Being an agile team does not automatically mean that a team can complete the work faster. All it means is that a team can respond to change and re-prioritise. Building one feature, such as a login screen, may take just as long, but working in an agile manner means that the team can decide not to build a login screen if it is suddenly decided that it is no longer necessary. The challenge is to make sure that everyone around the project understands the way of working, so that the team is empowered to work as effectively as possible.
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Posted on Apr 22, 2016 on Create Hub, here. Creating a Twitter Housemate
Having learned to create his first TwitterBot, Samuel Fry explains how it felt to create a TwitterBot version of his housemate. A couple of weeks ago I learned how to create a TwitterBot. I was enjoying a day at The Art of Bots exhibition at Somerset House: a small showcase of art works created by the bot making community. One of the exhibitors was George Buckenham. He was providing a free bot making workshop, inspired by his Cheap Bots, Done Quick! project. Essentially, Cheap Bots, Done Quick! is a free and extremely accessible bot-making tool. Like many other people visiting the exhibition, I sat in the space and was given a quick run through of how to create a Bot by George. The Bot that I made at the time was called @ArtTechBot. The concept behind him was a simple one: he would tweet fairly banal comments about technology. Sometimes positive and sometimes not. I created @ArtTechBot in around 30 minutes (including setting up a new email address and Twitter account). How are TwitterBots created? I was surprised at how easy it was to create a TwitterBot. They are written in code, but you don’t need any prior coding skills to get started. The Bot that I created, using the “Cheap Bots, Done Quick!” site, was written in Tracery, a generative grammar specified as a JSON (a self-describing form of JavaScript) string. All I had to do was write some basic logic to tweet a number of potential phrases. I did not over-think the phrases that I wanted @ArtTechBot to say. If you look him up you will see that every 30 minutes he tweets a fairly generic comment about technology, such as: “What’s the big deal with #Wearables?”, “Anyone got any fun #ArtficialIntelligence ideas?” or even “I’m bored of #AllTechnology. ZZZZZZzzzzzz”. Roughly speaking, the bot can tweet around 300 combinations of the same set of standard phrases. What if a TwitterBot was more real? As I left Somerset House I was still thinking about the potential of TwitterBots. I should say at this point that I regularly use Twitter and, like many other Twitter users, the presence of TwitterBots has always been an annoyance to me. It’s the same with the #TeamFollowBack hashtag where Twitter users agree to follow each other for the sake of numbers of followers. However, when you know how to build a Bot it becomes very tempting to experiment. With great power comes great responsibility, right? The experiment that I had in mind was to create a TwitterBot which actually came across as real. Unlike my @ArtTechBot, the tweets should not feel like that have been automatically generated. The TwitterBot should seem like it actually has opinions. Creating my Twitter Bot HousemateI decided that I needed to create a TwitterBot based on a real personality – or at least a version of one. Who better to base the Bot on than my housemate, Tobias. I told Tobias that I was going to do this. However, it’s hard to prepare anyone for the prospect of having a digital clone. I started by thinking about his interests. He is an Arsenal fan, so the first phrases were all focused on that. “The trouble with Arsenal is they are always trying to walk it in”, was my first thought – the phrase made famous in Graham Linehan’s The IT Crowd, where Moss (the nerdy computer geek) learns the phrase as a way of proving his manliness. The theme of Arsenal was a good way for me to enable the @TobiasPBot to generate his own thoughts – rather than mine. I used the sentence, “I have to say that {insert player} is my favourite #Arsenal player right now” as a basis. I then replaced the “insert player” text randomly with different current Arsenal players. That way the Bot could decide for himself who his current favourite player is. This is how I built up the personality of the @TobiasPBot. I would have to create the format of his sentences, but he would decide on the content. At what point does a Bot become separate from his maker?When I explain the process of creating a TwitterBot, I think of my role as something like a Dr Frankenstein. I had something in mind for the Bot that I was creating; however, I am as surprised as anyone else what he decides to write. Sure, there are constraints to his writing but the choices are always a suprise. Who knows what my housemate thinks about the whole thing. Perhaps I’ll ask him at some point. Maybe his Bot will ask him too. Posted on Sep 26, 2017 on Create Hub, here. Why we Need More Artists Talking about their Process
Samuel Fry Artists have always spoken and written publicly about their work. To some extent, the arts have thrived on the publicity from artists speaking about art; whether at showcases of their own work, or in talks about art history or artistic movements. Sometimes, artists take the time to speak openly about their process and how they create their work. I believe that we need more talks about people’s creative processes, especially given the increasing number of examples of artists experimenting and creating artworks with technology. We also need to work together to share information about when and where people can hear artists talking in such a way. Community Groups of Artists So, where are artists currently talking about their creative process? Well, this happens in a number of places, in different ways. For instance, there is an increasing number of groups and spaces which host and connect people in the arts as well as accommodating other special interest groups. Right now, across the UK, there are many community work spaces for artists. Some of these call themselves ‘studios’, others ‘incubators’ and some just ‘a space’. Each has its own purpose and brings together artists working in similar fields or geographies. These communities are incredibly powerful as artists share knowledge with each other and often collaborate. Cockpit Arts, for instance, is a fantastic business incubator for designer-makers in London, offering studio space and business support. Elsewhere, the Pervasive Media Studio at Bristol’s Watershed provides a space for a community of artists, creative companies, technologists and academics that are exploring experience design and creative technology. Somerset House have now opened their own studios, to support artists and makers that are engaging with urgent issues and pioneering technologies. The list goes on. Finding these Communities However, the problem with this increased number of different groups is making sense of what is available. How do artists, curators, experimenters, collectors and fans of the arts find these communities? Do we need to rely on word of mouth, or even a quick Google? How do artists learn about how others create their work? I’m trying to do my bit here. I’m currently running a series of podcasts with Richard Adams, called TECHnique, where artists talk about their artistic process and how they work with technology. Alongside this, I’m running the occasional event for artists to talk about their practice under the same name. These are two ways people might learn more. However, I know I’m not the only one involved in events like this. Artful Spark, for instance, is another great event series getting artists to talk practically about their use of technology. Somerset House is also hosting a bunch of talks about artists using technology in music. Meanwhile, the V&A have a series of talks from artists talking about digital too. But what else is going on? What am I missing? As, from a technological standpoint, the world progresses, like all industries the arts need to progress with it and find the best ways to collaborate and share information about what events are taking place. My request of you reading this is that you help by sharing what you know is happening. ‘Connectors’ in the Arts For a little while now, I have been thinking about the concept of ‘connectors’. Connectors are people that want to have a general awareness of current projects and programmes in an industry, so that they are in a great position to help others find what they need. It is a term coined by Malcolm Gladwell. In his article called ‘Are you a Connector?’, Gladwell describes connectors as ‘the kinds of people who know everyone. All of us know someone like this. But I don’t think that we spend a lot of time thinking about the importance of these kinds of people’. I believe that I have met a few people in my life that would fit into this concept of a connector. Each of these people have been formidable in their knowledge of their industry and they always seem to be full of enthusiasm about current projects. Connectors seem to be all around the arts world, building relationships between people. In fact, this was one of the discussion points during my recent podcast with Martin Franklin, who was the Digital Projects Manager at the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the time. During the episode we talked about artists as hosts of events. Martin described his view, that ‘there is a long history of artists as catalysts, as hosts of events and as connectors of people’. Some people, Martin explained, would not consider these as artists in their own right; at best, they might think of them as curators. Yet, there is a creative skill in finding ways to connect people where you can see a mutual benefit. I completely agree with Martin’s viewpoint on this. There is absolutely a role for people in the creative industries to act as connectors and curators. What is more, this is an artistic and creative role in itself. Perhaps they could be, in part, the missing link in connecting the public to artists speaking about their process. A Simpler Solution Yet, you don’t need to be a connector to connect people. You don’t need to know everyone, or about every project; you simply need to share what you do know with people that might be interested. We all do this, but perhaps we can be better at it and be more focussed in who we share it with. Perhaps we should ask ourselves: how can we share what we find interesting to an audience that might benefit from it? Images from TECHnique at Campus London (courtesy of Sara Bianchetti). Posted on Mar 28, 2017 on Create Hub, here. Bringing Ideas Alive Early Samuel Fry You may have heard of the concept of a “Minimum Viable Product” before. The idea is that teams should release a product, website or app as early as possible, rather than waiting to release a fully-fledged product at a much later point, at which time it may no longer be valuable to those that need it. In my own projects, I have found this to be a useful way to think about getting quick feedback on a new product. I have found that teams often love the idea of creating a Minimum Viable Product, and can see how it has worked for projects in the past; however, they find it difficult to decide what this means for their own project. So, I thought I would share a few of my own thoughts on the subject here. Where did the idea of an MVP come from? The concept of a ‘Minimum Viable Product’ (MVP) originally comes from a movement called ‘Lean’. The ‘Lean’ approach started in the manufacturing industry, and is made up of 7 principles, including the need to eliminate waste, build quality and deliver fast. It’s been applied to many industries since, and is also used by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs took to the idea after Eric Ries created a book called ‘The Lean Startup’. Ries has claimed ‘Lean’ is “the movement that is transforming how new products are built and launched.” So, that’s where the idea of an MVP came from. But what happened next? Skateboards, Cars and the Minimal Viable Product A few years ago, a consultant called Henrik Kniberg demonstrated the idea of an MVP through the metaphor of building a car. Essentially, if you were building a car and wanted to define the ‘minimum’ product able to be tested with users, you would have to ask the question: why do the users need a car anyway? Kniberg explained that, in this case, the users want to get from A to B. So, to test whether a vehicle (such as a car) helps them get from A to B, it is not very useful to test an individual part, such as a wheel. For the users, a wheel does not help them with the overall outcome that they need. Instead, you need to test a minimal viable product, such as a skateboard. It’s not quite a car yet, but it helps test if a vehicle that can get you from A to B is useful at all. Kniberg demonstrates this through an image, comparing the two approaches: As Kniberg’s image shows, creating a MVP means that at no stage is an incomplete or unworkable product released. Instead, whatever is released should always serve the core purpose (helping users get from A to B). Kniberg’s explanation is a good one; however, it is just a metaphor. In reality, a car is pretty unlikely to be built in this way. The point is to show that by releasing a product early, you can quickly understand whether it’s worth building at all. The example reminds me, when I am working on my own projects, that it is important to test whether what has been created is a success. We need to test whether the new product gives the user the outcome that they need. Plus, it’s important to test whether this new product will drive other benefits to the business. For instance, will it provide another source of income? Or, will this new product improve customer perceptions of the business that is providing it? It’s for this reason that some people prefer the phrase ‘Earliest Testable Product’ rather than ‘Minimal Viable Product’ – as it helps them focus on the need to test what is being created, early and often. Deciding on your Minimal Viable Product For a lot of teams, the challenge is deciding what the minimal product is. I’ve worked on developing several different websites and apps. In my view, the only way to be able to plan an effective Minimal Viable Product is to understand the following:
User Story Mapping If you think about it, the less that is needed to be built, the quicker it can be built. However, many businesses find it difficult to decide what the minimum amount needed in a product is. Naturally, they want everything. Who can blame them? If you were paying for a new product to be built, wouldn’t you? Yet building everything is rarely the right thing to do. It’s expensive and, without any user feedback, that money could be completely wasted. Instead, if we know all three of the things listed above, then we can conduct several exercises to explore options for the Minimal Viable Product itself. My favourite exercise is one that I first discovered by reading a book called ‘User Story Mapping‘, by Jeff Patton. In one chapter of this book, Patton uses the metaphor of designing the experience of leaving the house in the morning, to demonstrate how to decide what is needed in your MVP and what is not. In theory, there are lots of things you could do in the morning: you could have breakfast, prepare your lunch, check the weather report. However, if you woke up just 5 minutes before you needed to leave, you probably could still leave, right? So, what do you have to do to leave the house? What do you have to have in your product to achieve your ends? In this case, when planning the MVP, we would measure whether the ‘user’ can leave the house in 5 minutes while completing the tasks at hand. This is a great example, and one I liked so much that I created the video below to show the metaphor in full: In my view, thinking about the Minimal Viable Product is a good way to prioritise what is needed and what is not. Plus, the concept also helps teams to focus on what needs to be tested with users. It might not work for every project, but if you can apply it to your work, then I find it to be a good way of getting early feedback.
The Story Map above is just one exercise to help decide on a Minimal Viable Product. I would love to hear about other exercises or processes that people use to create their MVPs. Let me know by tweeting me: @samueljfry Different Ways to Bring Collaborators Closer
Samuel Fry Day to day I work with teams of designers, developers and business analysts to create websites, apps and other pieces of software. My role is to help these teams to work closely with each other, to communicate well and to agree on a common vision for what they are developing. This can be a challenge with any team. Yet, it is even more challenging when the team is distributed across different locations. Right now, my team is based in the UK (where I am), in various countries in Europe and in India. So, if my role is to get them to work closely with each other – when they are geographically far apart – how do I do that? Well, here are a few tips that I have for working with distributed teams… Don’t Do It The first tip is simple: don’t do it. At least don’t do it if you don’t need to. Now, I am a realist. I understand that there are situations where teams need to be distributed. It might be that it’s the only way for a project to pay for the variety of skills needed while adhering to their budget; or, a team in one location might be looking to slowly hand over to a team in another location. Yet I stand by the view that if you can avoid working in different locations then you will really benefit from it. In fact, the stats say that teams that are situated together typically deliver twice as much; so, it’s better to have a small co-located team of five than it is to have a distributed team of nine. You should really think about whether you need to have a distributed team. If you can avoid it then so many communication issues will be avoided. Simulate Co-location If you find that you need to have a distributed team, then the next best thing is to simulate the experience of being located together. The worst thing that could happen is that your team operates in a way where there are just various handovers of work between people in different locations with no other interaction. It would be very difficult in that situation for any individual in the team to have a good understanding of what everyone is doing and why. There is a difference when teams are located together, as they can see what other team members are working on and they have informal conversations that help them understand each other better. This is really important for building relationships. If you can find ways of replicating this then you will create better team relationships. Can you find a way for all team members to see and speak to each other throughout the day? Can you create a video link that stays connected all day? Or, can you re-create the experience of going for a quick coffee with the team? If you can simulate these types of interactions, then the team will become closer and learn to trust each other better. Come Together as a Team as Often as You Can You might not be able to be co-located the whole time, but that’s not to say that you can’t come together every now and then. If you can I would recommend having regular periods where you work together in the same location. Doing this at the beginning of the project is ideal, as you can discuss the vision for the project and what everyone does and does not know at that point. But don’t think of meeting in person as a one-off activity – it should ideally be done on a regular basis throughout the time that you work together. Invest in Tools and Environments There are a huge number of fantastic digital tools that can help you collaborate virtually. It would be hard to give a definitive list of the best ones to use, as my own preference of tools changes every six months. However, I suspect that it would be useful to list a few of these here. These are some of my favourite digital tools to help with digital collaboration, at the time of writing this article: Box, Google Drive and Dropbox No one wants there to be lots of versions of the same file on various people’s computers. Instead, it’s useful to use one of these file repositories to store the ‘master’ version of a file. Each of these tools has ‘version management’ too, which means that you can make sure that all versions of a file are kept, in case someone accidently overwrites the correct one. JIRA and Trello Teams typically have a number of things on their ‘to do’ list. Tools like JIRA and Trello allow everyone to see how these tasks are progressing. Gotomeeting There are lots of video conferencing tools available, but often they are temperamental and often they stop working. Gotomeeting is one of the more reliable of these and includes features such as the ability to share screens and record meetings. Slack Of all the tools listed here, Slack is probably my favourite. Slack is essentially an instant messenger tool that works well on mobile and desktop devices. What makes it great is that it allows you to create channels for your team, your programme of work or just for fun groups or activities. MuralThis tool allows you to share whiteboards and use post-it notes online. It’s a good way to run workshops between distributed teams. Establish Standards and Agreements Different cultures have different expectations of how to work in a professional environment. Because of this, the final thing that I would suggest for teams that are distributed, is to run a session for everyone to agree how they want to work. Some call this a ‘social contract’ and it can be created by running a workshop with everyone in the team. Together they create a list of what they want the team to be, what they expect from each other and – importantly – what they won’t accept. If you do choose to run a session like this, I would suggest that you make sure that those that are quiet definitely contribute to this session, so that they can add their points too. Posted on Aug 2, 2017 on Create Hub, here. Data can be helpful to teams, but it can also be harmful
Samuel Fry Have you ever heard the phrase, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”? Some say the “inventor of modern management,” Peter Drucker, originally said this and others say it was the management consultant W. Edwards Deming. Of course, it doesn’t really matter who said it – the idea is that data allows people to know more and therefore make better decisions. This statement makes sense, right? If you can capture data then you can see what’s happening in any situation. There are lots of quotes like this. W. Edwards Deming, one of those attributed with the first quote, also famously said that in “God we Trust, for Everything Else There’s Data”. Data is clearly very important. It’s the only thing you can trust …aside from God, of course. Data and its use in the workplace In my day job, I work with designers and developers to create apps and websites. In the process, we create a lot of data that’s really useful in helping us to make decisions. Every task we do is captured and tracked. We set ourselves goals for each week and track whether we are on target to achieve them. This helps us to work out the best methods to progress with our project, or to get new functionality to users as quickly as possible. The data has helped us. However, the data only shows part of the picture. We know that sometimes we achieve less because of other reasons. People get ill, or take holiday, or something we are working on turned out to be a much bigger challenge than we expected. This is not captured in our data but we know that happened and that it had an impact on what we achieved. Managing using data Data is useful, but this kind of data can also be misused. Management can use the same data to help them make decisions too. They could use this data to predict whether we are on target to deliver our project by when it was originally planned. They could use it to measure whether we are achieving enough. They might use it to question whether we are working effectively and, if they don’t feel that we are, they can tell us to up our game. They an use this data however they feel it is best to – with or without its context. Of course, if managers use this data out of context, a number of other quotes come to our team’s mind. Like the one in Braveheart, where Mel Gibson’s character says: “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!” Data can be helpful to teams, but it can also be harmful. Computers can only give you answers In my experience, managers and people at executive level in organisations are not quite as bad as that when it comes to using data. However, it is true that often people have data and they don’t understand how to work with it. Data is useful, but only if you know the right questions to ask. For instance: Where did this data come from? How confident are we in this data? What factors affected the data? As Pablo Picasso once said, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” Well, data can only give you insights. People will make the decisions. Business Executives and Data There is an article from 2012 in the Harvard Business Review called “Big Data: The Management Revolution”. In that article, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson explain that “we believe that throughout the business world today, people rely too much on experience and intuition and not enough on data.” They go on to expain that, at executive level, people need to “allow themselves to be overruled by the data; few things are more powerful for changing a decision-making culture than seeing a senior executive concede when data have disproved a hunch.” Maybe McAfee and Brynjolfsson overstated the value of data over experience, or maybe the world has changed since 2012 – but I believe that data is only of use if you understand the context surrounding it. Gathering data, so that you can use it is always going to be helpful – but we need to make sure that we are gathering useful data, that we understand it and know how we are going to use it. There are more and more opportunities to gather data, so at every level we need to learn what questions to ask and where the opportunities are when gathering and using data. Posted on Apr 8, 2018 on Create Hub, here. Technologists and artists collaborating Samuel Fry explains how more innovative and beneficial experiences are created when technology companies and artists collaborate. It is my strong opinion that when technologists and artists challenge each other they build more innovative experiences. In this article, I explain the benefits of artists and technology companies working together, I give some examples of where collaborations have taken place and explain my hopes for the future. Benefits of artists and tech companies collaborating When the arts and tech industries explore ideas together, artists and tech companies naturally challenge each other as they bring their own expertise. Typically, artists will challenge the tech companies on their vision for society, the ethics behind their work, plus they will interrogate notions of trust and transparency. While the technology companies bring an understanding of how businesses operate, how to make sure ideas are commercially sustainable, they bring technological experience and their own methodologies (such as Design Thinking) to understand and solve problems. IBM and creatives Eero Saarinen, Ray and Charles EamesOf course, artists and technology companies have often worked together. It’s happened in some form or another for a long time. A great example of this took place at IBM in 1964. IBM were due to take part in the New York World Fair. Their aim at that time was to show the wider public that computers were nothing to be scared of. To demonstrate this, they decided to work with designers, architects and filmmakers Charles and Ray Eames, plus with designer and architect Eero Saarinen. Together they created an exhibit at the World Fair that was groundbreaking, futuristic and thought-provoking. Their creation – the IBM pavilion – featured at its centre an exhibit where 400 guests at a time were lifted into the air into a gigantic Ovoid Theater where they were shown a presentation called Think on 22 multi-sized, multi-shaped screens. The presentation explained how computers, like humans, approach problem-solving. Then below the theatre were various stands, showing an exhibition titled Mathematica: A World of Numbers… and Beyond which demonstrated how computers could be an integral part of our future. The video below showcases the work of Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen and IBM: Steve Jobs, Apple and the liberal artsOf course, IBM are not the only ones to have seen the benefits of collaborating with artists.
Steve Jobs often attributed the success of Apple’s early work to the ‘liberal arts mindset’ of its employees. In an interview in 1995, which has now been produced as a standalone feature called ‘Steve Jobs – The Lost Interview’, Jobs explains that ‘Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, artists, zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.’ For Steve Jobs, Apple were successful with building the Macintosh because those working on it were not just trying to build a better computer, they were trying to build a better society. Examples of artists collaborating with technology companies There are various other examples of technology companies working with artists. Google Cultural Institute are creating technologies that make the worlds cultural heritage accessible online to everyone while building new technologies with artists, for many years Intel Labs have worked with artists around their research ideas plus companies like Cisco and BT have begun working with academics at University of Manchester and artistic organisations like Future Everything to build city-wide technologically-driven artistic experiences. There are also a huge number of examples of technologists working with artists. Hello Lampost, for example is city-wide system that lets you talk to street furniture, WearAQ gets schoolchildren to signal the air pollution levels using wearable technology and there’s an artificial intelligence called FRANK that gives personal guidance on your existential dilemmas. In my work at IBM there are a host of activities that we are involved in, including an art exhibition co-created by an artificial intelligence based on the hidden personalities of famous people – called Hidden Portraits, events where artists and technologists come together to explore the future of technologies and a fully funded arts PhD at Royal College of Art exploring ‘how we approach the design of human and machine conversations in the near future?’. Each of these, in their own way act as proof that when technologists and artists challenge each other they build more innovative experiences. How can tech companies work with artists So, how can technology companies work with artists (and visa verse)? Well, I think there are a few clear ways to do this. Firstly, we need to run inspiring events where artists, technologists and tech companies exhibit and share their experiences. These can’t just be done in silos. Instead, there needs to be an effort on both sides to encourage this sharing. We need to inspire each other and encourage one another to innovate. Secondly, we need to get artists and tech companies discussing ideas around technology together. Technology topics are increasingly becoming social topics, so it’s important to talk about the impacts of technology on the world. In my mind, this is best done when technologists, tech companies, artists, academics, philosophers and other creative minds explore ideas together. We should create combined visions for how we use technology and how it is adopted by society. When we work together, we create stronger, more meaningful and better experiences. Finally, we need to work together on actual projects. Whether they have a financial benefit or not, we need to come together to challenge one another. When we do this, what we create will be more interesting and innovative. Posted on May 7, 2018 on Create Hub, here. Innovation, design thinking and agile approaches to working at scale
Samuel Fry describes how companies need to approach digital transformation using innovation, design thinking and agile principles. All companies, whether small or large, are attempting t0 adapt to our increasingly digital world. This means that they are creating digital products, changing their internal processes and continually looking to keep up with their customer’s shifting needs. What’s more, companies can’t afford to stay still. They must respond quickly to customers needs, new offerings that their competitors provide and changes made in the wider industry. Let’s face it though, this is hard. People are finding that they have to learn new skills, work longer hours and battle to keep up with the vision of the company itself. So, how do they approach this? Understanding customer needs through Design ThinkingIt is important to understand how to design experiences that provide customers with what they need. Ideally, you want to go beyond that and delight them. A popular approach for exploring these concepts is through Design Thinking, a framework used by designers to understand customer pain points, explore possibilities and to create outcomes that benefit them. Practically speaking Design Thinking is simply a toolkit of exercises that, when done properly, can help those completing them understand customer experiences better and align on the opportunities to improve them. When creating new digital processes, you can also use Design Thinking to better understand how scenarios impact the experiences of different users by looking at that experience from their perspective. As a result, you can decide how to communicate your design choices to users with different needs. Ensuring that innovation takes place in all areasCompanies are investing huge amounts of time and money to ensure that they innovate. Yet, often these plans are reactive to industry changes, rather than the result of a pro-active strategy. This leads to innovation feeling like a frustrating process that is done in relatively short periods of time and which looks for instant fixes. Instead, what would help is to create an innovation strategy to ensure that changes are made over the long term. An innovation strategy is a commitment to achieving a competitive goal, usually heavily linked to the overall business strategy. What is key is that each company should look to innovate their core business while also innovating in adjacent and transformational areas.
Collaborating towards a shared visionAn innovation strategy and the Design Thinking framework might help you understand how to explore ideas; yet, how do you make sure that you can execute on them? In my mind, it’s all about finding ways to help people collaborate towards a shared vision and being able to respond to feedback you receive along the way. Companies everywhere are aligning themselves to this mindset, whether by referring to the Agile principles, the lean principles, the concepts behind Systems Thinking or combinations of these like the Lean-Agile Mindset. Whatever definition you give this, it’s important that teams understand the vision that they are working towards and that they are self-empowered to progress towards that vision. As part of this, it’s important to prototype ideas early so that you can test them to see whether there is any value behind them. If you find that there is value, it’s also important to align as teams on what the Minimal Viable Product that you could release is – so that you get something in the hands of customers as soon as possible. It is also important to fully adopt these principles, not simply to say that your teams are ‘agile’. Sometimes I have seen teams say that they embrace ‘agile’ or ‘lean’ principles but in reality they have a very clear pre-defined idea of what they want to build, they don’t respond to customer’s feedback and the team is told exactly what to by their managers, without the ability to react to change. Similarly, there are teams that say they are ‘user-focused’; yet, they have no mechanism for testing ideas with users regularly. All of which can be more harmful than good as the outcomes they deliver are not those that are really needed. Approaching agile at scaleSo, delivering innovative products might be fairly clear when working on one idea with a small, self-empowered team. Yet, how do you approach delivering multiple projects with large distributed teams? How do you use data and other insights to make decisions? How do you deliver these experiences at scale without a ‘command and control’ approach? Well, really you just need to focus on the same things. If you concentrate on finding methods to align people towards a vision, collaborate with each other, share insights with one another, regularly work with your customers and stay reactive to their feedback then you will be fine. Of course, none of this is easy – but it’s certainly better than the alternative of having a fixed plan which may not deliver useful outcomes and that takes a long time to implement. To help address the challenge of delivering collaboratively at scale, a number of methods have been created which enable teams to work in a structure that does not lose sight of these principles. Structures like the Scaled Agile Framework and Large-Scale Scrum help organisations get started with delivering complex projects at scale; however, naturally each company and challenge that they work on is different – so these may be adapted over time. In fact, the methods themselves are changing based on the feedback that different companies give them when they put the methods into practice. So, none of this is easy; however, the ideas and principles should be. So, as long as you keep the basic principles of innovating, Design Thinking and delivering collaboratively with each other then you are progressing in the right way. Posted on Aug 13, 2018 on Create Hub, here. How to setup an innovation programme
Samuel Fry shares the lessons that he has learned when setting up a lab of innovation. When I work with companies on their digital strategy, I find that they often want to innovate like a startup while being able to scale at an enterprise level. One way of approaching this is to create teams, spaces and programmes that support innovation. Recently, I was asked to help a company setup an Innovation Lab to explore new ideas and test whether they are viable. I thought that I would share some of my experiences here, for those that are looking to do the same. Why innovation is important for large companiesDigital technologies are changing every industry. This is not just impacting the tools that they have but also their business model. Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles; AirBnB, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate; Facebook, the world’s most popular content provider, creates no content; and Instagram, the world’s most valuable photo company, sells no cameras. Companies don’t operate in the way that they used to. Large companies face intense competition from startups and internet companies, who bring with them new business models, agile processes and the ability to release products rapidly. In response, these companies are looking to learn from the creative skills of startups and combine that with their strengths as an enterprise. One method of doing this is to create innovation programmes, tasked to explore new ideas quickly. The value of creating Labs, Hubs or Factories of InnovationAn effective method of generating innovation projects in large companies is to create teams dedicated to exploring new ideas. This is usually a combination of establishing a space, with a team who have a process of quickly exploring and testing ideas. These spaces have many names, often with the word ‘Lab’, ‘Hub’ or ‘Factory’ as part of it – usually to symbolise the hands-on attitude of the team. These innovation spaces look to combine agile methods with a view on what it takes to deliver projects like this at an enterprise level. They set out a framework for exploring and developing ideas, plus often a view on how to take the proven ideas and turn them into finished products. Creating an innovation spaceIf you are setting out to create an innovation programme, often the first step is to create a space for the team to operate in. The focus here is to create a space where people feel comfortable, inspired and safe to generate ideas – no matter how silly they might sound. In my opinion, this can only be acheived by finding a space that can be dedicated to the innovation team, rather than a few desks or an area within the usual environment. You want people to come into the space and to visually recognise that this is different to the ‘standard’ ways of working. A technique that I have found to help here is also to create a ‘charter’ or a ‘manifesto’ for how those working in the space should behave too. Perhaps you want them to ‘be open’, ‘to allow everyone to speak’, ‘to not block ideas’ or even just ‘to take photos’. Whatever you want people to do in the space, if you can find a way to show that on a poster or in writing on the wall then that helps to address the usual challenges of the organisation from the moment people enter. Alongside this are the practicalities of what you need the space to do. Maybe you need lots of whiteboards, a space for snacks, a social calendar, bright colours, windows or even just good air conditioning. You want to create a space where people feel comfortable so that they can freely explore new ideas. Creating an innovation teamIn terms of the team itself, like any agile team, you want a dedicated, cross-functional team. It is difficult to make any real changes if the team itself is not dedicated to focusing on exploring innovation ideas. If they have other commitments as part of the company’s business-as-usual activities then when push comes to shove they will be asked to focus on those activities. However, I have found that innovation does not happen over night; instead, innovation is usually the result of a continual exploration of new ideas and through teams continually challenging the norms. In addition, you need a mixture of people with different skills in the team. In IT organisations, we often talk about cross-functional teams being a mixture of designers, software developers, software testers and business analysts. These roles are useful but it’s also good to consider having people from different departments or with a strong network in the organisation. One of the aims of my current innovation team is to help connect different parts of the organisation around new ideas, which wouldn’t be possible without these considerations. Finally, it’s also worth making links with other teams in the organisation that will help you accelerate ideas further. Often the IT, legal and marketing teams can all help in this way; yet, there might be others too. Defining your framework and toolsSo, you have an awesome team and a great space but how do you actually explore the ideas? Well, clearly you need a framework to work within. There are plenty of different frameworks that might help, many of which take a phased approach (even if those phases are quite fluid), embrace concepts like Design Thinking or DevOps and they encourage you to work towards creating and testing a Minimal Viable Product. What is important is to pick a framework (or adapt one) based on the goals of your innovation programme. The factor to think about, especially in a technology environment, is to choose platforms that allow you to quickly setup projects so that you can test ideas quickly but which also allow you to iterate and scale projects. Some factors to consider are:
So, if you want to create a successful innovation programme you need to do all of the above. All of this will allow teams to feel able to come up with new ideas and feel safe to fail. After all, if you don’t then your company will never be able to adapt. If you are creating a new innovation programme, then I am keen to hear about it. Tweet me @samueljfry and let me know what you’ve learned in the process. Posted on Feb 15, 2016 on Create Hub, here. Using Prototypes to Test Ideas
What is prototyping and why is it so important in software development? Samuel Fry explains why he feels that prototyping is key to the success of many projects. My day job involves creating software. This might be in the form of a website, an app or another digital experience. The problem with designing software is that everyone has a different idea of what is needed. You might have a designer that is cemented to one idea or various people within the business that have different priorities. Then there are your users who, after all, are the reason that you are creating the thing in the first place. Let’s run through a scenario… What happens when you don’t test your ideas earlyUser A says to a software development team that they want this “awesome new technology” for people to use. The software development team agrees and says, “Sounds great! we’ll start building it!” A couple of months later, having worked tirelessly to create this technology, the software development team goes back to User A and says, “Here is that awesome new technology that you asked for!” Yet, it’s not quite right. User A says, “It looks pretty ugly. How do you even use this?” The software development team agree, it could have been designed better, but that’s no problem. “Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll design some better icons and add them to the design”, they say. After a couple of weeks, the software development team return with their technology, full of newly designed icons. User A is still not sure about it. They say, “Do you know what you need? You should add a widget for Y, then I can do Z.” The software development team agree, that would help. “Okay, we’ll make that widget”. The software development team create the widget and User A is pretty happy. “But first, I should ask a few other users in to give their opinion”, says User A. Along comes User B, who says, “Actually, what I need is a function for W, plus widget X”. User C then arrives and says, “I need widget X too, plus widget U and a function for V”. User D comes along and says, “I really don’t need widget X, but a widget for T would be great!”. The software development team take notes and say, “Okay, let’s do those. It will take us a few months”. This goes on and on… Developing Rapid Prototypes to Test New SoftwareWithout prototyping, your project is much more susceptible to failing as you cannot test your idea early on. The purpose of prototyping, plus processes such as Design Thinking, is to allow the software development team to make mistakes early and cheaply. Everyone wants to get their new product to market quickly and in an inexpensive way. Rapid prototyping is a method which take just days, or weeks, rather than months. It is a way of see the technology at an early stage of the process, rather than months into the development. Plus, this process has become easier. Over the last few years, a number of great digital prototyping tools have been created to help with this. Tools such as Axure, InVision, Proto.io and Pop are just a few that come to mind. In fact, in my research for this article I came across a great post by the design agency Cooper, where you can filter prototyping tools based on your needs. So, if you don’t already – definitely prototype. It’s fun too! |