Empathy in Design

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems

The Role of Empathy in Design Guest was Seung Chan Lim (Slim)

Related Podcast: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Seung Chan Lim, nicknamed Slim discusses his journey and finally his project, Realizing Empathy. Through this project Slim hopes to share ideas, tools, and other ways to facilitate a meaningful, sustainable, and constructive conversations between and among diverse perspectives whether that’s between people or between people and materials or between people and machines by using “making” as the shared metaphor.

Slim has created a Kickstarter Project to fund his book. This book is quite substantial at 400+ full-color pages, which makes it quite pricey to print at low volume. The proposed amount is actually the minimum needed to print enough books so that the cost per book falls below $50. Any profit made will go directly to taking the project to the next level of development.

This Kickstarter project is not merely a project to print a book. It is a project to build a community around the central thesis of the book that the act of making is analogous to the act of empathizing, that there is much value in moving away from our current infatuation with creativity, innovation, and transformation, and toward the goal of achieving a deeper understanding of who we are as human beings.

If you find what Slim says intriguing, please take a look at his websites: Website: http://realizingempathy.com/ Facebook: http://facebook.com/realizempathy/ Blog: http://realizingempathy.posterous.com/ An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Seung Chan Lim (Slim): Part of the thing I'm learning from this experience once I got this work out in public, the real huge benefit that I'm getting from this exchange is that it's challenging me to think of ways of expressing these ideas, such that they're actually understandable. Sort of I have to practice my own beliefs, trying to empathize with other people. Yes, there are certain things I want to say. But throwing out words I've chosen to use and stopping there isn't going to cut it. I have to figure out a way to use a shared language that makes sense to both of us.

Joe Dager: Welcome everyone. This is Joe Dager, the host of the Business 901 Podcast.

With me today is Seung Chang. Seung, nicknamed Slim, which I will call him the rest of the podcast, has engrossed himself into a special project that I want to discuss. The project name is "Realizing Empathy." In its simplest terms asks; what it means to make something, how it works as a process and why it matters to our lives. Before we start, Slim, could you give me a little background about yourself?

Slim: For nearly a decade, I worked at a design firm called Maya Design, in Pittsburgh, where I last served as the Assistant Director of engineering and Senior Software Design Engineer. Then, for the last three and a half years, I was in an art school, making a whole boat load of stuff, whether it's physical things, as in objects, or acting or dancing. And from that, grew this project called "Realizing Empathy."

Joe: What drove the thought process of it? How did you get started in that direction?

Slim: It's a combination of three major events in my life. One of them was the fact that I worked at that design firm I just mentioned. The second thing is the fact that I went this An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems art school. The third thing is an exchange I had with a really close friend from a long time ago. Basically, the first part is that this firm called Maya Design, in Pittsburgh... I would almost categorize it as a weird place, but in a fantastic way. What they do is they have almost two companies in one. One of them is the typical design, consulting firm side which is your IDEOs, your Frog Designs, your Smart Designs, where we practice human centered design. But the other side is almost like a... I don't know how to describe it.

It's like a future technology lab, but headed by a very, very clear vision that one person holds. So basically what was going on was, on one side you would do design consulting work with a lot of corporations like Fortune 500 companies where we do the typical ethnographic research and all that stuff. But on the other, we would do none of that.

We would have one person who has a single minded vision in mind and group of us would sit down and argue a lot and, basically, figure out a way to design something that we all believe is beautiful. The only thing I can think of that comes to mind when comparing this to something most people are familiar to is my cartoon of how Apple would be run.

Where Steve Jobs is like a single-minded person and he's got a group of people like Jonathan Ive, who's a designer, that they argue a lot about, "What's the most beautiful thing we can possibly do?" So it was kind of an interesting experience because this happened under one roof. So on certain days, I would follow the human centered design process and do ethnographic research, user testing and all these great things.

The next day, I would be in a room saying, "Forget all those things." And really just make something we all believe is excruciatingly beautiful. It was a great thing for me in terms of An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems learning two different ways of thinking about design. I think there's no other way to thank that experience for that. But on the other hand it was very confusing for me, because I was constantly shifting back and forth between two different points of views.

It was basically the desire, I guess, to want to resolve the tension between these two conflicting views that lead me to, almost like an identity crisis. I was asking my mentors and my colleagues, "How do you actually fuse these two different approaches to design? Is it even possible?" A lot of them said "Don't think too much about it and do something completely different." Especially one mentor said, "The only way to understand what you have right now, which is that tension, is to leave it behind and do something completely different from what you're used to so you actually have a perspective on what it is that you actually have."

At the end of the day, one person said, "That different thing might be going to an art school." Which, at the time, sounded like a crazy idea? But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. I basically went off to art school to study what is it that fine artists and crafts people have done for years and years and years that I have no real insight into.

Throughout that whole experience, basically making physical things, it changed my perspective on everything from design to making to life. Synthesizing all of these things together lead me down the path of this new way of thinking which backs the project of "Realizing Empathy."

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe: I always thought art school to me, in the classes that I've taken, drove my ability to see.

Slim: Oh, absolutely. In the fundamental way, the idea of drawing; I used to think that drawing was like, "Why would you do that?" It seems like an artsy-fartsy thing to do.

Whereas something I used to do, which is like information graphics, is supposed to be nobler or it's a very practical and pragmatic thing to do. What I quickly learned in art school is that that can't be further from the truth because drawing is actually a way of mapping information. And not just mapping information in a logical way, but also in a visceral way. Because what you're doing is you're training yourself to see and object that's right in front of you for what they really are, instead of for what you think they are. Which is like, if you asked somebody to draw a cup, they would draw these oval shapes and these other stuff. Like a symbol of a cup.

But when you ask them to see the cup as what they are and draw it, they have a very difficult time of doing it because they can't let go of their preconceived notion of what a couple looks like. Drawing basically teaches you how to let go of that bias and to let these signals in, in a very visceral way so that you can see them for what they are. And also translate them through your body and use a medium like a charcoal or a pencil to be able to express it back into the world, what it is that you actually see.

Joe: I think that's a great description. Was there a certain moment during this time that you sat back in your chair and you start pondering what empathy really meant?

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Slim: It wasn't actually until maybe two thirds of the way into school. In the beginning, empathy was not at all a word that I was interested in. It sounds kind of funny in retrospect, but it wasn't until I took an acting class that the word came into play. Have you ever taken an acting class?

Joe: No, I haven't. I think that's a great idea, just as much as what drawing would be. I'm following your line here. I'm buying into it. Go ahead.

Slim: What's really funny is... Basically, I would almost categorize myself as an empirical researcher. Because as much as I love books and if you come to my place you'll see so many books, I don't really read them as much as I probably should. I'm much more of an experiential person. So taking classes and acting is like another way of understanding, what does it mean to act instead of reading a book about it. I decided to just do it.

Basically, what I learned in acting class is that it broke my preconceived notion of the idea that acting is pretending. To a certain degree, yes; there is a pretend in it. But by and large, what actors do is they try to bring in their own experiences and bring it into the moment when they're on stage. But they do it under a frame. They do it under the name of some other character that's inside a play.

They do it in a situation that is not their own. But what they're really doing is they're accessing their own personal experience, triggering them in the moment. So when the audience sees it, they may think it's the character doing it, but they feel that what they're doing is real because it is real. They're trying their very best to be true to themselves.

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems That's a very different way of thinking about acting. Because what they're doing is they're empathizing both in real time with what the character's going through, and also before, during rehearsals, they're constantly trying to understand what it is that this character, this writer has written, is really trying to do because the words don't really tell you enough.

You have to have gestures. You have to have facial expressions. All these other nuances have to be coincided with the words for it to really work as a remarkable piece of artwork that moves the audience and gets them to think about things differently. It wasn't until I took that acting class that the word empathy entered into my equation.

It also triggered my own experience with my friend, who is bipolar. I don't know if you watched that video on my website.

Joe: Yes, I did.

Slim: So basically the story is, I had a really close friend with a bipolar disorder. In my effort to help that friend, what I learned was that the psychiatrists in the industry... First of all, they warned me that I shouldn't be doing this, which is to help my friend on a personal level. Because they're afraid that it might affect me. There are cases when somebody who tries to help somebody who's bipolar also gets depressed themselves. But beyond that, just being a guy that wants to solve problems, coming from my computer science background, I just kept asking, "There's gotta be something I could do." And what they suggested was I try to empathize with her. That's probably the second time in my entire life where I heard that word. So I was like, "What does that even mean, to empathize with somebody? How do I do that?"

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems They actually had a very rigorous process behind it, which was to figure out a way to engage in a conversation with that person. Such that when you express back, in your own words, how they're feeling and how they're thinking, or why it is that they're behaving the way they're behaving... If they resonate with that story I tell her, they will feel that they have been understood, or they have been empathized with.

That will actually help them feel better. It will help resolve the tension that often arises in a situation where you're arguing with somebody who's depressed or lives with bipolar disorder. This sounds extremely simple in principle. But when you actually try to do it, it's very difficult. Just because you're trying to understand that other person, doesn't mean the other person's going to cooperate. That person might not even help you understand that other person.

That person might just yell at you and scream at you. So it took almost like an hour, I think, of trying to figure out what's going on. And at the end of the day, what really happens is that it isn't that... Basically what happens at the end is that everything you thought the person was going through, everything you thought was what the person was thinking is basically wrong. Because it's really difficult to understand what the other person is really feeling or really thinking.

Because all you see are these superficial cues on the surface. You're making your own assumptions, based on your own biases and your own desire to protect yourself from being all involved in that other person being depressed. Like after an hour, you realize that the story that resonates with her has to be extremely honest.

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems In the sense that you have to admit that you had something to do with her being depressed this is a very different way of thinking about the process of empathizing in a typical context. People think of empathy as just being nice to somebody or just saying, "I'm sorry." Or something like that.

No, the way psychiatrists and clinical psychologists think about empathizing is this entire process of really trying to be honest with yourself. So that you can understand what that other person is going through. It's very difficult. That's probably why there are professionals who do it and they don't recommend normal people to try and do.

But nonetheless, it's a process that resonated when I took that acting class because actors do the exact same thing. It's just that they do it with an imaginary character that's on a script.

Joe: I get the feel good approach. But what does it mean to design?

Slim: Basically, what it means to design is that... I look at design process as a whole, as an empathic conversation on a multiple dimension. Basically, what you're doing when you're designing is you're having these exchanges that I call empathic conversation, with basically everything that is involved in the design process. For example, if you're industrial designing, making a piece of furniture, you not only have an empathic conversation with the person who might be sitting on that piece of chair. Trying to figure out the ergonomics, what is their preference, what kind of colors they like, where is this going to go in. Is it inside a building? Is it inside a small warehouse? Is it in their home?

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems You're also empathizing with the material. Because you can't just, in a vacuum, say, "I'll make this amazing chair with absolutely no understanding of raw materials." Wood, metal, plastic. All these things have their own sense of integrity. As a designer, you have to engage in an empathic conversation with those materials just as much as you do with that other person.

Because wood will not do what you will it to do. It will do what it wants to do. If you really want to make this chair out of wood, you better figure out a way to empathize with that.

So there's basically empathizing going on in many dimensions in the entire design process.

Joe: I think of interaction design, I think of IDEO and Frog that you mentioned. With empathy, as you describe it here, why is it a new direction? Hasn't it been part of it?

Slim: I think empathy, as a word, at this moment in time; it's almost entered into the popular mainstream because there are several books being written about it, recently. It's not that empathy, in and of itself is new. I think what's new is... What does it mean to empathize and to what extent does that become a core part of the design process? If you look at something like human centered design... This is me being very critical. I would normally not be as critical. The idea of empathy is, to me, very superficial. Because how it's used is, in the context of things like ethnographic research, or if you go a little deeper into it, things like contextual inquiry, user testing, things like that, the domain of usability.

You use empathizing or empathy as a way of getting the other person to talk about what they're really going through. You do interviews. You write down those notes and use them as part of your design process, which is great. But I think it's insufficient because it stops An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems short of really getting to the heart of what empathizing is about which is the conversation that on goes until you get to the core of it, the honesty of it, or the truth, if you really want to talk about it that way.

Because most design consulting ways of working is, you have this year long or two yearlong project and that's it. You stop and say, "All right, I'm going to move on to the next project." The idea of keeping that conversation going on and then sustaining that relationship is, often times, lost.

I think the depth to which we think about empathy and the importance of empathy in the entire design process, as well as the maintenance process or the ongoing relationship, or sustaining that relationship is something that hasn't been fully addressed yet.

Joe: How would you design for that type of conversation?

Slim: There are two criteria, I guess. You need to be able to design a space that is imbued with several principles that facilitate that empathic conversation. That alone isn't sufficient. You also need people with the kind of attitude that is required for them to be willing to engage in this kind of empathic conversation. So the space designed for empathic conversation basically has five principles underlying it. One is the idea that the space has to give you the qualities of safety and comfort. Meaning, people who are immersed in the space have to feel that they can trust it enough that they're willing to do something potentially risky. The second thing is, you also have to have a shared language or I use the word "shared metaphor," because it's more visceral in my mind.

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems You can actually exchange with people who are in this space, such that you're not talking past one another. So you're using something that both parties really understand the meaning of. Then, once you have that, you have to engage in a conversation such that there's a goal of trying to get to the honesty of both parties. Just like I talked about in the context of that exchange I had with my friend.

Then you also have to respect the other person's integrity. It's not simply trying to convince the other person that you're right or your perspective is the right perspective. It's really just flowing and saying, "I see that the way you think about this is this and I really acknowledge that." And that other person also does the same.

So all these different senses of integrity bubble up and rise to the surface. Everybody can see it. What this does, as a side effect, is it actually allows people, both parties, to be able to express what it is they want and to be able to exchange that story together.

Joe: Is this really the secret sauce for collaboration and co-creation?

Slim: I think so. I don't know exactly what a secret sauce is. But I think these are... The way I would call it is the necessary and sufficient conditions for collaboration. Because if you look at the word "collaboration" it's kind of interesting because in a lot of contexts that I've heard that word, collaboration doesn't really jive with me as what I would consider collaboration. For example, there's a lot of talk in the art and science community these days. They're saying, "We're interdisciplinary, we're collaborating." What they really mean is, there's a group of scientists that does a bunch of research and they need this to be

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems visualized. They find artists and designers and say, "All right, can you visualize this for me?"

The artists and designers go, "Sure, let's do it." Then somebody gets to present this to an audience and says, "Look at this amazing science and artist collaboration." That's good and has its values on its own. But I think there's a different kind of collaboration that I would categorize as being much more intimate, where you're really trying to understand how the artist looks at the problem the scientists are looking at.

The scientists are looking at the same problems artists are looking at. Both of them trying to see: "Is this the same problem that we're looking at, or is it different?" What are the similarities, what are the differences? And really attacking or addressing the problem as equals and saying, "What are the different ways of addressing this" and coming up with a coherent way of thinking about it.

Instead of it being one side of argument for the science perspective and another side of perspective from the artist side of things.

Joe: I come from a perspective of sales and marketing and one of the things, coming to the forefront is the fact that it's no longer your job to get a message out. It's your job to get the message in. I think empathy has got to play a big role in that, on both sides of the coin. Listening to the customer and listening to operations. I think sales and marketing has to combine the message. That's what will be at the forefront of co-creation and maybe the key component. I can't see how it can be done without a strong degree of empathy.

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Slim: Absolutely. Empathy is so crucial to basically everything. I subscribe to the idea that empathy is a necessary capacity. Actually, let me define it first, so I know that we know what we're talking about. When I say the word "empathy" what I mean by it... It's an ability to viscerally imagine both the current physical and mental state of another. And, as an extension, predict their future actions as well. This other may be another human being, a piece of wood, some figment of your imagination, or even your own body. So, in a business context, without empathy, you can't really learn anything about other people or processes or other machines. You really have to train this in a variety of contexts, if you want to be able to work effectively and efficiently with one another.

Joe: How do you suggest someone get started? I guess the other question, are some people just born with more empathy than others. Is it something that can be learned?

Slim: I think there's a lot of argument in the scientific community, whether this is innate, this is nurtured and all that kind of stuff. Actually, I talked about this in my book with a child psychologist at Brown. But I think, to a degree, it can be learned. Because what I've experienced is that people who are both humble and courageous... And I mean something very specific by those two words. When I say humble, meaning people who are willing to proactively assume that whatever they encounter is infinitely more interesting and infinitely more nuanced then whatever they can imagine at that point in time. They are much more likely to empathize or increase their capacity to empathize over time because they're experiencing the differences over and over again.

After a while you realize, there's an infinite amount of stuff you could learn if you have that attitude and you're going to be proactively increasing your ability to empathize because An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems you see value in doing so. As a matter of fact, the top child psychologist I interviewed talked about how babies learn. This is directly related to what I talk about, empathy.

For example, imagine a baby knowing nothing but their parents, when they're born because it's their world. Then they hear sounds that you hear in the world, like footsteps, in a narrow sense. Like, "I hear footsteps and mother appears." Or something like that.

They make that association. But there will be a moment where they hear a footstep and somebody else besides his dad or mother appears.

And the baby's surprised, like, "Whoa! What is this? I have never seen this before." At that moment, the baby realizes, "Maybe that sound is not the same as the sound I heard before." But it was similar. There was something very similar about the footstep.

But yet, in retrospect, there was something also different about it. So there's sufficient amount of shared-ness in that sound that the baby isn't completed jarred or bewildered and gone crazy. But there's a little bit of nuance that the baby picks up at that moment and goes, "Huh, interesting. Another human being that has the sound of footsteps, that's similar but different from my parents."

What they can do with this new information is, they can actually extend all the knowledge they've gathered from their interaction with their parents... Like the feeling of cuddling or the feeling of love. Most things they've felt and translate it to other people. This is a remarkable moment because the psychologists define this as the very definition of maturity.

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems The meaning behind what it means to mature is that you start noticing these differences in things, situations, people, everything. You're able to embrace them more and more. If that's not empathy, I don't know what is. So, basically, it's at the core of how everything new is learned by somebody.

Joe: A good salesperson does the same thing.

Slim: Yes, absolutely.

Joe: You're writing a book. Tell me a little bit about it.

Slim: Sure. I've actually written most of it. The little bit I have to write is more the preface that I want to write as a way to summarize the whole thing. But the book is basically my way of spreading the idea, that the act of making is analogous to the act of empathizing. To think about the idea, look at the whole design process as empathic conversation that happened in multiple dimensions. I think it'll change the mush with which to design. Because it'll provide us with this impetus to move away from our current infatuation with things like creativity, innovation and transformation and toward the goal of achieving a much deeper understanding of who we are as human beings. Because at the end of the day, whatever you design, ultimately, also helps you, as the designer, a deeper knowledge of the entire design process, the materials you've interacted with, the people you've interacted with, the organizations you've interacted with.

The same thing holds for basically what artists do or actors do. Everybody does when they interact with other people. I think the book is my way of synthesizing all of those things together and putting it out into the world.

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe: What is the timeline for your book?

Slim: Right now, there's a Kick-starter project going that ends on March 12. If I can raise the necessary funding to print and distribute the book by then, I'll be able to go ahead and finish it, and work with the printing press to figure out a way to print it and distribute it.

Joe: So you're self-publishing the book?

Slim: Yes. That's my current agenda.

Joe: It's interesting. How can someone find out more about it?

Slim: You can go to the website, realizingempathy.com, where there's more information on it. You can also go to kickstarter.com and search for "Realizing Empathy."

Joe: You did a collaboration project on this book, which we talked a about before the podcast. Many books are becoming more like that; they're becoming more of a collaboration project. Rather than just sitting in a corner and writing a book while, hiding away in some cabin in Connecticut.

Slim: You mean the process with which I wrote the book itself?

Joe: Yes. Slim: Yes. It's an idea that popped up into my head while I was writing the book. Because basically the book revolves around a group of stories of my experiences I've had and how they changed my perspective. What I did after I wrote one story is I posted on a private An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems blog. I started with posting other stories on Facebook, actually. It was really for myself, as a way to keep track of these pieces of writings I've done. But I've made it public to my friends, in case they're interested in commenting on it or something. But what I quickly realized was that it got a lot of comments from people. They were very interested in talking more about my experiences and sharing their own experiences or what they got out of the story. There were a core group of people who kept commenting in really invigorating exchanges on Facebook, no less.

I would post a little, sentence-long, status update about the experience and it would evolve into this multi-page discussion on Facebook. So I was like, "Wow. There's something here that I want to expand upon and really get this process to be more structured, I guess." I made a private blog where I post the stories. This core group of people who kept commenting on it was invited to come.

We had several more of these invigorating exchanges in that private blog. I put every single one of those conversations into the book because what they said about the story I wrote is just as much, if not even more, interesting than what I had to say about the stuff.

Joe: Is there something that maybe I didn't ask that you would like to add to this conversation?

Slim: In the context of computer devices and mobile devices and things like that, one of the interesting things I noticed is... Computer is probably both the best and the worst example of empathy. In the sense that if you're a programmer and you're given these devices like the iPad or the Macbook or something like that, you have a very good chance An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems of having a very intimate connection to the computer. Being able to do just about what you want. For example, open source; a group of programmers doing open innovation in the wild. They have the right kind of skills and right kind of understanding and the right kind of ability to empathize with computers. They're able to do something quite remarkable at a large scale. Down the road, where I would love for this to go, is to go beyond this elite group of people who are called programmers.

Because like you said, the idea of open innovation, it almost permeates into the culture itself. It's not merely something that ends with a business and then everything else is on the other side of the fence or something like that. If it really integrates into the society and the culture as a whole, what has to happen is... Normal people, like my mother, for example...

When she has the most difficult time using the computer, whether it's the iPad or whatnot... When she is finally able to say, "Oh, I need this one thing done on my computer and I have sufficient understanding of the computer to be able to do that." and without having to know the ins and outs of every single detail of hardware and software.

If she can do that, if the designer of the computer treats the computer not as simply a thing, but a platform that integrates into our lives, where we can actually have this empathic conversation with it, I think the climate of technology will be a very different one; instead of thinking about technology as this amazing, crazy thing that's all about innovation.

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems It'll be valued as something that allows or empowers us to do something for ourselves or solve our own problems, without having to wait for some large corporation somewhere to release the next version or to take our input into consideration.

Joe: I completely agree with you. I look at the fact that 60, 70 percent of the things we buy, there's intelligence built into them now. When people think computers, notepads, iPads and iPhones, I don't even think about that anymore. I think about 60 percent of the things I pick up in my hand. You look at how we've transformed from that because it was only 10-15 years ago... Maybe a little longer. Let's say 15 years ago, that 80 percent of VCRs had blinking lights when you walked into people's houses.

Slim: Yes, exactly.

Joe: Now, it's become something that we use and is an expected part of our life with a remote control. I call them the Mario Generation. They grew up with Luigi beating against a blank wall until he found a hole. He eventually found the hole. They learned a pattern.

They learned by doing. When's the last time you bought anything that came with an instruction manual? It's a different way of learning that we're used to. I think, in that, was driven, unbeknownst to all of us, was the empathy. Nobody wants to open up an instruction manual. Nobody wants to read directions. We're able to manipulate things on our own and learn ourselves. Because we're not afraid of learning, we just want to do it our way.

Slim: Exactly. I have a video on my website called "Physics as Freedom." This is actually one of the animations that started off the halfway point in my research. It's funny because An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems in the software world, I've always been told by the elders of the computer science industry that freedom is what we're fighting for. That's a lot of the beliefs of computer scientists.

But I didn't understand what freedom meant until much later in my career, after I got to art school. I started realizing, when you make physical things, without having to learn much, you learn about the material through empathy and you go through that process of trying to understand what a wood does or what a piece of metal does. Rather quickly you can do some amazing things with it, because a lot of it is already in our evolutionary biology.

Also the fact that learnability is almost inherent because of the way we utilize our capacity to empathize with stuff. The idea that physics, already, is a great model of how we can interact with something, and realizing that we need to figure out a way to translate the qualities afforded by this physics, into the world of computers.

Allowing more and more people to be able to have the freedom to be more self-sufficient and make things on their own. It seems to me like an extremely crucial motivation for the technology industry in the future as well.

Joe: How much of this understanding has come from the fact that you worked in the art school with your hands and you modeled and you did things by physically working and the feel of it?

Slim: A good majority of it. Before I went to art school, I've never made anything with my hands. I'd never drawn. So it was all very new. If I look at the speed at which I was able to pick things up and the kind of feelings I had that I felt was different from what I was used An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems to, which is like computer programming. Without that stark contrast, I don't think I would have ever thought of this project at all.

Joe: It seemed that you had some strong bonding to that because of the pictures in the video that I saw incorporated that.

Thank you very much, Slim, for the opportunity here. This podcast will be available in the Business 901 iTunes Store and also the Business 901 website.

An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Business901

Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joseph T. Dager Lean Marketing Systems Ph: 260-438-0411 Fax: 260-818-2022 Email: jtdager@business901.com Web/Blog: http://www.business901.com Twitter: @business901 What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe's ability to combine his expertise with "out of the box" thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with." James R. Joe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive company providing direction in areas such as Lean Marketing, Product Marketing, Product Launches and Re-Launches. As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Business901 provides and implements marketing, project and performance planning methodologies in small businesses. The simplicity of a single flexible model will create clarity for your staff and as a result better execution. My goal is to allow you spend your time on the need versus the plan.

An example of how we may work: Business901 could start with a consulting style utilizing an individual from your organization or a virtual assistance that is well versed in our principles. We have capabilities to plug virtually any marketing function into your process immediately. As proficiencies develop, Business901 moves into a coach’s role supporting the process as needed. The goal of implementing a system is that the processes will become a habit and not an event.

Business901

Podcast Opportunity An Inquiry into the Meaning of Making Copyright Business901

Expert Status