>> And you have all these folks around the globe,
you were telling me a little bit about, when you and I talked,
you talk about this collection of people as like a hive mind.
>> Right >> What do you mean by a hive mind and
what can you do with that?
So the hive mind is often something that we refer collectively as to
IBO's community.
But in a everyday person's world it would basically be the people that you trust and
it'd give you back for anything.
Recommendations on places to go,
to recommendations on what is somebodies original tract.
I know radio is one of the easy way to tap into the hive mind,
it has 13 little offices.
So if you ask one question within two minutes you have,
maybe a collection of five to ten different emails responding to a question.
One example that I'm really fond of is a project that I just came off of,
and he asked, what is a sexual genera that kind of speaks to you
about current everyday sex?
And we asked everyone to kind of point to us their favorite sex scene.
>> Like in a movie?
>> Like in a movie, yes.
And so what we found was people in the States really felt
resonant with James Bond scenes.
That were really idealized kind of super hero, very dapper, light scenes.
But when you kind of heard from other parts of the world, like Peru,
they actually pointed at dialog less,
sort of sexual scenes that really focus on the intimacy of the woman and the man.
So, it's kind of a really nice easy way to tap into
a quick assessment of whatever you're thinking of and gut check.
>> So that's really cool.
If you think about something, especially something like sex that can be
difficult to talk about, your idea is that you're using things analogically,
that metaphor plays a large role in design.
I mean, that's kind of your previous story too, the bucket is not a bucket,
it becomes something else.
The shopping cart is exercise equipment.
The movie scene is a metaphor for
something else that's part of your values is what we think.
>> Totally and I'll say sorry, or what we really need to talk about this.
[LAUGH] >> It's what I love here in San Fransisco
because were in that ware house right at the bay it's a really beautiful space
that is also really functional When I come here I realize that the post it notes and
the markers and all of the elements of the space are very utilitarian,
so it's not just a beautiful space, it's really functional.
How do you apply your own design principles to the space that you got here?
>> Yeah, I think it's also the idea gives you room to make it your own space.
You have a budget to kind of utilize to make the space feel a lot more fun.
So specifically in the San Francisco office we created an urban gym.
That started with the passion of a really awesome designer who loved CrossFit,
and he said, I want to be able to take workout breaks.
So he decided to go on Craigslist and
get a whole bunch of free gym equipment that would have been thrown away.
And that he basically started to prototype a gym right outside our,
sort of our courtyard space, that's in walking distance from our office,
and started to work out there.
What he found was that it brought enough followers.
It started with five one week, and
then it turned into a group of 30 different designers that said, hey,
can you invite a CrossFit instructor to make this a more formalized thing.
Starting with really, over I guess,
thrown away furniture and urban gym equipment, to inviting an instructor
that's now sort of a popular event to do three times a week event.
>> That's also a great example of active,
using prototype thinking as an active strategy.
>> Right. >> You start small, and
the snowball builds.
So you don't have to have a whole conversation about
are we going to this thing three times a week from
the beginning, >> Mm-hm.
>> As kind of your design to think idea.
That, you try a little bit, and then the snowball rolls.
Let you know your headed in the right direct.
>> Right, and to reinforce that, one of our mantras is to basically not
seek permission, but to just do, and ask for permission later.
And that's sort of we did, and that's kind of a nice way to prototype an action,
whether or not there's a following, and those have been but I think the idea
that you really need your own space and you have the freedom, which is nice.
>> So can we talk a little bit more about how you use analogy and
metaphor design, both in this video and we talked a bunch.
That kind of comes up again and again do you have another example of something
that, where an analogy or metaphor played a role in your design process.
>> Yeah, I think the best example that I can think of is when we were asked
by our client Netflix to help them redesign their recommendation system.
That's a really tall task because one,
it's algorithmically heavy, and then the other is how do you really start?
And often, at idea, we start really simply by talking to experts.
So in particular, we wanted to learn how do people make recommendations,
who made the best recommendations, and
who made really good recommendations that we want to emulate.
And so we went to, in restaurants, Iron 74, that's local to San Francisco.
And we talked to one of the best wine sommeliers in the world.
And he basically started sort of took us through a process of
sharing us his knowledge,
to how his process in recommending a certain type of wine to you and me.
And what we found is really interesting, if anyone would have been
applying it to other signs of how they're actually built on that's like it's says,
harder prediction model.
Which was his suggestion of really taking all of your wealth of knowledge and
narrowing it down to two and helping the user choose one or the other.
And so it was a very interesting human framework to apply to a very
[INAUDIBLE] driven recommendation system that they currently use,
but kind of creating users to have option, a choice.
Even though it's being heavily recommended by [INAUDIBLE].
>> So the [INAUDIBLE] gives them you're saying gives them two choices and
that way they got to pick.
And so you take the open [INAUDIBLE] book and it's totally overwhelming.
Kind of like on Netflix you open the Netflix and it's totally overwhelming.
>> Right.
>> And if you give people a choice, they feel like it's theirs.
>> Totally.
>> That's cool. >> And
you said that it led to a lot more satisfaction, and
just a lot more contentment, in that the choice was a really good one.
>> And, in your introduction you mention that you've worked on retail,
you've worked on transportation, you've worked on beauty.
And you told me it started on one of your retail projects,
you ended up a Avant Garde Play in New York.
That's not normal when you think about checking out a supermarket.
>> Right, so that again was kind of leveraging our connections,
in terms of, if we were to help a client redefine a retail space.