The Innovation Diaries

People don’t set out to make bad products. It’s a truism, but that doesn’t make it any less impactful. Over at Wired they have an inteview with Ted Castranova, a social scientist at Indiana University, on the pitfalls he encountered whilst trying to create a video game based on the works of Shakespeare (although as a gamer myself, I can how see that this was doomed from the start!)

Ted lists 5 learnings on “Making Games That Don’t Suck”, and these should be instantly recognisable for anyone who has worked in product innovation before …

Don’t Be Overly Ambitious
This isn’t like Marge Simpson telling her kids to “aim so low you can’t possibly fail”, but it simply sprinkles in a healthy sense of realism. Remember: don’t automatically assume everyone else around you shares your earth-shattering ambition – start from where people are, rather then where you want them to end up. Thomas Merton once said “When ambition ends, Happiness begins”.

Go Low Tech
In a ?What If! session we’re rightly seen as the anti-PowerPoint brigade, with flip charts, blu-tack and coloured paper far more important than a projector & LCD. There’s something in the kinaesthetic approach to creating products, allowing you to get your hands messy and appreciate the creation process more.

Think About Your Audience
What comes with a price tag will require an audience willing to part with their money. “Make friends to sell” is a blistering quote to take to heart in this context. But more than just putting yourself in their shoes, nowadays we need to turn it up a notch. Thinking about your audience really means answering a fundamental question: Why will what we do matter to them?

Get a Full-Time Staff
A project can’t get off the ground without a committed team driving it, both on the side of the client and agency. Flakey members only detract from the momentum behind innovation, and can lead to apathy spreading to others.

Concede Screwups
There’s a famous Samuel Beckett quote you’ll have heard before; “Try again. Fail again. Fail better”. Accepting the process of making mistakes is part of the innovation cycle.

Oh and the picture? It’s a broken vacuum cleaner. You know, as in “things that don’t suck” …