That’s a big difference

The difference in design is stark. The shape of traditional milk jugs require that they be stored in crates for transportation and storage. These crates have to be shipped back to the dairy to be cleaned and reused. The new jug design does away with the conical top of the old design and is completely rectangular to allow for tight stacking and easy transport. The increased efficiency means a savings of 10 to 20 cents a gallon and we save at the register too.

This makes great sense for the dairy and the grocer, but how does it far with consumers?

It spills everywhere. [NY Times]

It’s very hard for kids to pour. [NY Times]

I’ve never spilled so much milk after opening a jug. [Via Flickr]

It’s seems to me that Creative Edge, the design firm spun off of Superior Diary that came up with the new design, came up with a design that works great for the manufacturer, but horribly for the user. How do you miss this as a product designer?

Consider your audience

One of the most common themes in the education and training of a designer, writer, or any person who makes things is to consider your audience. Consider who you intend to be using your product and how they will be using it.

Although Creative Edge did a great job solving problems with the old jug design that had to do with how milk is shipped and stored, they failed to consider how a consumer of milk uses the jug. The result is a milk jug that is difficult for the biggest majority of milk drinks to use (kids) and spills everywhere until the jug is half full.

Their solution? Teach people how to use their new jugs. To pour milk from these new jugs you have to ‘rock and pour’ rather than ‘lift and tilt.’

Reeducation is doesn’t work

“Joe and Mary need to be able to reliably get milk from the jug to the cereal bowl

If your product’s success depends on the reeducation of the basic way a consumer uses your product (i.e., it is not intuitive), then you’ve got an uphill battle to fight. This is not like the iPod’s click wheel, which is easy and intuitive. This is a designer trying to change the way I pour milk.

Change isn’t always good.

When I expect to be able to use an item a certain way but, in the act of using it, end up with spilled milk, that is not a good thing. In psychology, it’s called cognitive dissonance. We tend reject things that cause cognitive dissonance, things that violate our mental models of how our world should work.

The designers violated our mental models about how we should pour liquids. They overlooked a fundamental behavior: we lift up containers to pour their contents out. This is true for all sorts of containers and all sorts of liquids. It is only when the containers are big and heavy that we use the ‘rock and pour’ method.

Crying over spilled milk

As designers, it is our job to consider the product as a whole, not just one aspect of it. It’s great that dairies can use 70 percent less water and that grocers can save 20 cents per gallon over weekly volumes in the millions, but Joe and Mary need to be able to reliably get milk from the jug to the cereal bowl. The new milk jugs save dairies and grocers plenty of money but routinely leaves a puddle of milk on our breakfast tables.

Craigslist is one of the phenomenons of internet publishing in recent memory. They’re part of what’s putting newspapers on their heels by providing classified ads for free or a minimal charge, an area where most newspapers make their money. But that’s a separate discussion.

While Craigslist does have its uses (my girlfriend just bought a decent road bike for just $50 and I’m on the lookout for a beach cruiser with hand brakes for under $60), the jobs section is filled with spam or mediocre listings. It takes a lot of digging around to find a gem in that pile. That’s usually not worth my time.

Designers, creatives, and commercial artists of all types are better off looking elsewhere. Businesses looking to buy these services are better off asking friends for recommendations. If you’ve got nowhere to go, then you damn well better write a good ad. The quality of people responding to your ads is directly related to the quality of your ad.

A case study in idiocy

There are few other places as convenient as Craigslist where a creative can get such a focused study on exactly the kinds of work offers to refuse. Below is a recent listing in Craigslist Santa Barbara that illustrates this point exactly.

PhotoShop Wiz Needed for Project (must be LOCAL )
————————————————-
I need someone who is quick and efficient with PHOTOSHOP to help me create my business cards and company brochure. This will only take 10-20 hours max! I need you to be available during the week days and work hours 8-5pm.

I would like us to work together - and create my business card and brochure. I need to “see it” as it’s being created in order to know if it’s what I want! I know this may be crazy…but I know what I want, I just don’t know photoshop.

I am not interested in using any other software, only PhotoShop!

All you need to have is at least 2+ years of recent experience using PhotoShop.

Must be a local person only!

Location: must be LOCAL
Compensation: $15 hour
This is a part-time job.
This is a contract job.
Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

These are exactly the kind of people you should never work with.

It’s clear that this person has never bought design before, does not value the skills and expertise of a professional designer, and has not the slightest idea about the process involved in designing a brand identity. What this person is looking for is a monkey to implement their murky ideas.

He’s not crazy, he’s stupid. That’s right folks, give him an 8th grader with a pirated copy of Photoshop and he too can be an art director.

You get what you pay for

Choose to buy design as a commodity, then that’s what you get. Choose to sell design as a commodity, and that’s what you’ll produce.

The outcomes of listings like these follow predictable patterns. At best, this person will get crap work that they’ll be happy with. Often, however, the work will take longer than the 10-20 hours spec’d because the “he’ll know what he wants when he sees it, and he’s just not seeing it” and the poor kid will get shafted with no pay after 25 hours of work because he “couldn’t deliver.”

We’ll see this ad reposted in a month or so.

How’s this for a mission statement?

The Company’s primary objective is to maximize long-term stockholder value, while adhering to the laws of the jurisdictions in which it operates and at all times observing the highest ethical standards.

If you’ve ever had a beer with me, you’ll know that I would never (1) write such an atrocity or (2) even pretend to believe such a load of crap would be useful. The mission statement above comes from Dean Foods, a Fortune 500 diary and soy manufacturer with $12 billion in annual revenue.

Maybe their mission statement is more effective than I thought.

A simple definition

I wrote enough business plans in my classes at UCSB to be able to knock out a mission statement like that standing on my head while synthesizing solid-state oxygen sensors with porphyrin complexes (Yay for higher education!). So why do companies waste valuable time and tens of thousands of dollars on retreats to come up with this stuff?

Merriam-Webster’s definition of a mission statement is “a preestablished and often self-imposed objective or purpose.” Wikipedia explains that mission statements are written “to keep members and users aware of the organization’s purpose” and that they are sometimes used as an advertising slogan (fire your marketing department!). OK, not hard.

In Writing a Convincing Business Plan (2nd Ed., Barron’s, 2001), the authors explain that the mission statement “should explain the firm’s primary purpose or reason for existence, the direction the entrepreneur expects to take the firm, and what he or she expects the firm to accomplish.” Simple, right?

What’s taught is pretty straight forward. But looking at these definitions, how does a concise statement of purpose become useless blabber like this?

We fashion low-risk high-yield leadership skills and collaboratively promote corporate materials to exceed customer expectations.

The source, if you must know, is the Dilbert Mission Statment Generator.

I can only hope that my friend’s mission statement is better than that.

My alternative

Instead of a mission statement, what I’m really putting some effort in doing is coming up with an elevator pitch. I’m working on explaining better, in a nutshell (in less than one minute to be precise), what it is that I do. I’ve found that “I make web sites and web applications,” doesn’t work all too well. Most people will still think I’m a decorator or ask me to fix their computer.

I understand that the audience might be different, but if your pitch is about what you do and what you offer, what is your mission statement? At the very least, shouldn’t they be related? If someone were to ask you what your company does, would you repeat your mission statement word for word?

Of course not. So why even bother spending the time to come up with one? If you want to look like you’re part of the old guard of business, like you’re aging and impersonal, then go ahead and spend $30,000 on a company retreat with walls full of post-its and a crack-head consultant to come up with a mission statement that will only be distributed on your business plan and financial reports. Good luck getting anyone else to care about it.

It’s a gut feeling…

What it comes down to, and this is probably a theme in most of my opinions, is that I do things that make the most sense to me and not because it’s an established practice or “conventional wisdom.” The foundations are shifting beneath us. I just don’t believe that the way things have been done in the past is necessarily the way they should be done today.

I can’t prove at what point a company or organization devolves from a conversational statement of purpose to an useless, unfocused, and generic mission statement. My best guess is that businesses that have made it or businesses that are trying too hard to make it reach a tipping point where they feel like it’s time to act “big.” Eventually, what made the company special is scraped away; more directors, managers, and bean-counters are hired; and the business plan is rewritten with a mission statement like these (answers provided in illegibly small text at the bottom):

Our mission at [company name comically omitted] always will be to serve our customers better than anyone else could serve them. We will provide our customers with value through our products and services, committing ourselves to providing the quality, variety and convenience they expect.¹

[Company name comically omitted] is the vital link in the supply chain, adding value with efficient and cost-effective service and solutions for our customers and our suppliers.²

1. SUPERVALU (They own Albertsons now).
2. Graybar Electric, they acquire, store, and distribute electrical, data, and communication components.

“Core Values” cartoon by Hugh MacLeod at gapingvoid.com.

They are two of the best (and my favorite) tango dancers and instructors ever and are wonderful performers.

I drew this on the same night I drew the Naked Tree… very late at night or very early in the morning, depending on how you look at it. I finished this drawing at 4:30AM and went to bed somewhere around 5:30AM.

I hadn’t the slightest idea why this isn’t all over the news. It’s about god damned time. No apologies.

I started this one at about 1:30AM last night. Sometimes I don’t sleep just for the hell of it. On those nights, I try to focus on producing work: another direction for a design, another part of an application, or another drawing. Rarely is any of it client work unless there’s a deadline looming the next day.

I got a pack of these in the mail yesterday from Amazon and drew this gold leaf flourish on it tonight. I love using and carrying around the the regular black journals but decided to get some of these so I can always have something to write or draw on with me.

These fit perfectly in my back pocket. I love their feel and look. And can’t wait to see their character develop as they are worn down from use and travel. Journals can tell as many stories from their covers as their pages.

…journals are a way for me to force myself to be a better observer, to really see, and to see things differently

I’ve been using my journals more often than I used to, both for drawing and writing—which is a very, very good thing. The simple act of writing my thoughts down sharpens them. When that bright idea or thought of mine is transferred to ink on paper, it’s much easier to distinguish between what’s good, what’s bad, and to refer back to it later for improvements.

The only time I’ve really ever seen anything is when I draw it. I, like everyone else, look at things all the time, but seldom see them. It’s only when I sit down to capture the nuances of a tube of paint or the contours of a shoe on paper that my brain switches off and I can really see.

All told, journals are a way for me to force myself to be a better observer, to really see, and to see things differently. I believe most of us don’t make any conscious effort to do this. I don’t think I’m particularly good at it either, but I’m trying to get better. With any hope, these journals will be a record of that.

Time has been going by unbelievably fast. Just a little over a month ago, I only knew where I wanted to be and hadn’t the slightest idea about where I’ll end up. After six weeks, I’ve got client work scheduled through August. Heading looks good. Course still uncharted, but who cares? Who would have known?

I’m learning new things along the way too. Which is the reason I’m doing this in the first place. They’re little lessons that come from my constant examination of everything I do: interacting with clients, making the pitch, closing the sale, gleaning what’s really needed for a project, and refining process. I don’t have any groundbreaking revelations and, I’m sure, anything I’ve got to learn on that level someone has already written down somewhere as a piece of advice for us all.

Motivation

I’m so much more motivated now that I’m out on my own than I ever was in school or in full time employment. I wish I would have done this sooner. I don’t think I was born to work for anyone other than myself.

Sure, client work can be seen has just having a rotating set of employers, but guess what: I choose who I work with. Simple as that.

To be honest, I have no regrets whatsoever about having worked for 8 months in a big company environment. I learned a lot about who I am, what I want to do, and–just as important–what I don’t want to do.

Business is good

A good friend/ex-coworker of mine asked me last Friday how business is going for me. I hadn’t really given it much thought until then, but I checked my calendar so I could give her an honest approximation and the answer: good. I turns out that I can’t accept anymore work for the next three months.

To be straight, I’m not rolling in cash now or anything. I’ve talked to a few people who seem to think that I’ve got quite a bit of cash since I’m not schticking the 9-5 for The Man anymore. Not true. I’m just your regular guy being compensated an appropriate amount. I just get to choose.

I drew this while on a flight back from Sacramento after Memorial Day weekend. We took an ExpressJet flight that goes from Santa Barbara direct to Sacramento for cheap. The seats were leather and surprisingly comfortable.

They serve beer for just a dollar! I should have had one during my 8AM flight.

Her hair is brown with some pink in it, by the way.

When I started working for myself, I decided I’m going to work only four days a week: Monday through Thursday. It hasn’t actually panned out that way; I’ve been working Monday through Thursday, of course, and any other time during the weekend when I feel like it. I don’t obligate myself to work on Fridays, but I do if I feel like it or if there’s a fire I need to tend to.

What I’ve found is that I’m just as productive in my 4-day week as in my 5-day week. By keeping Fridays optional, it also makes the Fridays I do work much more productive.

With Santa Barbara’s summer here in full force now, I’m going to make sure I take my Fridays off so I can spend my days running about town or at the beach, days like the Friday in May above. I’ll be drawing, sailing, reading, and enjoying life.