#001

Eric Ho ·

ON CREATIVE PLACE-MAKING

For the first week of this 4-week mini-blog series, we want to introduce to you the concept of CREATIVE PLACE-MAKING, and for those of you that already know the term, we would like to suggest some ideas that could help you get started on your own project!

 

"In creative placemaking, partners from public, private, nonprofit and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, tribe, city or region around arts and cultural activities. Creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire and be inspired."
 
Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa Nicodemus for the National Endowment for Art
 

3 key factors of a successful creative place-making project include:

1. A LOCAL ORGANIZATION OR BUSINESS AS AN ANCHOR

2. COLLABORATION ACROSS SECTORS OF DIFFERENT STAKEHOLDERS

3. A CORE CIVIC VISION AND MISSION BEHIND THE PROJECT

The act of creating projects within the neighborhood and improving business viability is a mindset that is not only for the good of our neighborhood and city, it also allows new, emerging ideas to be cultivated and supported that would otherwise not be possible. There are numerous examples of creative place-making projects that had helped transform neighborhoods and create inclusive opportunities for art and businesses.

We have put together 10 creative place-making project categories that could be seed for action, but of course! There is no limit to anything creative so you can always make your own!

1. POP-UP STORES IN VACANT or UNDERUSED PROPERTIES

There have been many examples of how pop-up stores have turned vacant storefronts into creative short-term uses for long term benefits for entrepreneurs, creatives and the community. Renew Newcastle in Australia was one of the first examples about 15 years ago that transform the town of Newcastle into a hub for artist using vacant properties. Popup Hood in Oakland, California is another fine example of how they partnered with visionary landlords to incubate tenants and cultivated them into long term tenants. Detroit Economic Development Corporation also ran a popup incubator program to support small businesses that want to try in retail stores, and their program has extended into financing small businesses, providing technical assistance such as legal and architectural services to take on properties that need to be fixed up before occupying. There have also been a range of startups that have been able to utilize this phenomena to support creative uses, such as Storefront, This Open Space, Peerspace, among many other platforms. Landlords and property owners, while still reluctant to forgo long term leasing for short term uses, are more open than before to take short term projects as they are waiting for the right tenant. 

 

2. POP-UP MARKETS

Urban plazas, public spaces, and private places have been turned into fertile ground for markets catered for small businesses and creatives. Weekend green markets, holiday markets, food markets that pop-up only once a week are becoming norms in cities like New York, and also smaller towns. They become an opportunity for entrepreneurs and creatives that do not have a physical retail outlet to create exposure and new audiences for their products. Urbanspace, a special agency that converts public spaces into markets, now has a network of temporary pop-up markets available across New York City, Smorgasburg, a curated marketplace of food purveyors, creates food makers in unexpected places like parks, empty parking lots and they attracting thousands of food lovers to come visit.

 

3. POP-UP GARDEN / FARMS

Pop-up garden and farms are less common but has been around in many parts of the world from Berlin to Havana. There are some great examples, such as the pop-up summer gardens created by Pennsylvania Horticulture Society. With an original simple quest to promote horticulture in vacant lots within the city, PHS has prototyped a new and better version of the pop-up garden concept every year since 2011, bringing new energy into the city of Philadelphia each summer. In the most recent iterations, the gardens evolved into beer gardens, bringing in even more attention and influencing other pop-up garden projects across the city.

 

4. ART / DESIGN / CULTURAL FESTIVAL

Developers are sometimes a big factor in attracting creative projects. There are few examples such as Dumbo Art Festival in New York that was conceived by Two Trees Properties. Dumbo Art Festival was an annual festival that attracts more than 100,000 people to the neighborhood from 1997 - 2014. The collaboration between property developers, artists group and brands created unexpected project such as digital animations and movie projections onto buildings and infrastructure, or performances all over the neighborhood. The access to properties and the ability to activate underused property allow these projects to make use of special locations for creative projects that are unexpected.

 

5. CREATE AN ART / DESIGN / CULTURAL PROJECT WITH INFRASTRUCTURE

Existing infrastructure such as bridges, walkways, fences could be unexpected sites for creative projects. This project "Lego Bridge" is initiated by local artist Martin Heuwold in Germany, and was carried out in collaboration with city council of Wuppertal and the charitable organization Wuppertal Bewegung. Another unlikely partner in this project was Lego, which actually had to approve the project before it was executed. 

6. PAINT BUILDING(S)

Similar to infrastructure, buildings and properties could be beautified by art works with local artists. From murals to artworks on different building surfaces, every piece of surface could be a site for creative projects. The #100GatesProject is a collaboration by artists, property owners, local business improvement district to convert 100 rolling gates of storefronts in the Lower East Side of New York to be sites of art work over the course of 2 years from 2014 to 2016. Many examples of this exist in bigger formats and smaller formats, depending on the ambition of your team! 

 

7. GRAPHICS DESIGN or MARKETING CAMPAIGNS FOR CIVIC ACTION

Sometimes creative place-making project only requires a sticker or a poster! Such is the case with graphic designer Candy Chang's "I WISH THIS WAS", where underused properties are left with stickers for participants to fill in the blanks of what they want to see in them. It creates awareness of the community of what kind of things they want to see being created.

 

8. EDUCATIONAL TOOLS / MAPPING TOOLS TO UNCOVER POTENTIALS

At other times, creative place-making projects is about the creation of tools and resources that are made available for others to act on. Center for Urban Pedagogy provides pamphlets, legal information, and regulations as DIY toolkits for others to make their own projects that are legal, safe and with doses of creativity added by the creators.

 

9. CO-CREATE A PROJECT CONNECTING BUSINESSES AND ORGANIZATIONS THAT SUPPORT CIVIC ACTIONS 

If you are more serious and dedicated, a true creative place-making project takes in many participants and many years of cultivation. Such is the work of Fourth Arts Block, a local non-profit that helps create the first Cultural District near Fourth Street in East Village of New York. By being the liaison of over 50 local business and cultural organizations in the neighborhood, Fourth Arts Block initiated numerous civic projects, including The Lower East Side History Month in May each year, creating a month long of programming in multiple venues celebrating the culture of a place. The process of cultivating the working relationship of these different entities and organizations is the act of the creative place-making project and the heart of it.

 

10. START A DIALOGUE WITH DINNER TABLES / CIVIC WORKSHOPS

One of the most amazing creative place-making project is to start a dialogue with a group of like-minded people, and see where the common grounds are. You can start at your own dining table, or you can create a dialogue with local civic leaders, business owners, property owners and the like. The more diverse the group is the better! And also creating a work-plan or action-plan after the meeting to create actual tangible actions. See this long table discussion about the generative neighborhood as a partnership of New Museum and PS122. 

 

 

#002

Eric Ho ·

ON DESIGN THINKING

What is Design Thinking? There is not an easy, comprehensive definition of it.

Stanford D School defines it as “a methodology for innovation that combines creative and analytical approaches and requires collaboration across disciplines.”

The emphasis on Design Thinking is that it is a process where “Learning by Doing” is key.

The 5 key actions of Design Thinking includes:

1. EMPATHIZE

2. DEFINE

3. IDEATE

4. PROTOTYPE

5. TEST

There are 7 guiding mindsets behind these actions:

1. SHOW DON’T TELL

2. FOCUS ON HUMAN VALUES

3. CRAFT CLARITY

4. EMBRACE EXPERIMENTATION

5. BE MINDFUL OF PROCESS

6. BIAS TOWARD ACTION

7. RADICAL COLLABORATION

So why should we adopt the process of design thinking towards pop-up? Pop-ups are temporary, short projects that are usually in a more experimental stage. Because of this experimental stage, pop-ups are usually learning oriented to gain insights so as to better shape the next action. The insights could be many folds, including understanding needs, testing ideas, drawing market insights, building followers or customers, testing pricing, validating new experiences or services, and many more. The Design Thinking approach provides a well-tested process that is “human-centered”, i.e. all the learnings are aimed at delivering a better experience, idea, product, or service to people. The diversity of ideas that could be cultivated out of this framework ranges from art, design, civic, community or business ideas, because the value is about a “human-centered” design, and not necessarily a “profit-driven” design, even though the two are related.

Here are 10 ideas that could be a seed for what a human-centered approach towards a pop-up project could look like. Feel free to mix-and-match with these different approaches to make your own!

1. A CREATIVE LISTENING PROJECT

To fully empathize is to listen creatively. How best to create pop-up ideas that can truly understand the needs of your audience? One great example is the Strangers Project created by Brandon Doman where he goes around the city to collect anonymous stories from strangers.

 

2. AN OBSERVATION STATION

How can we use the pop-up to observe behaviours of your target audience? There could be many ways to it. Using the pop-up as a way to observe human actions, or in this case, using it to disseminate tools (in the form of portable camera), and exhibit the results of people's viewpoint of specific subjects that maybe hard to observe in the traditional sense. 

 

3. CROWDSOURCING IDEAS

How can we use the pop-up to gather the creativity of residents and the general public? There are numerous platforms that have started this quest to collect and categorize opinions given the locale and condition of a vacant lot, vacant building, or even a whole neighborhood, such as Hoodstarter, a digital platform that selects underused properties and allow the digital community to crowdsource and vote ideas. Other similar tools include Co-Urbanize and Neighborland.

 

4. WORKSHOP TO DRAW INSIGHTS

Pop-ups are incredible opportunities as an engagement opportunity to draw insights about what could be done to the problem or opportunity at hand. Both qualitative and quantitative responses could be generated such as post-it walls, chalk walls, video interviews, live surveys with stickers or post-its, and many more. 

 

5. INVITATION FOR COLLABORATIVE ACTIONS

A step towards a more progressive response is to use the pop-up opportunity to engage current or new collaborators for the next experiment, and invite them into your vision of how a collaborative project would create a win-win for all collaborators involved. This goes back to some of the key concepts of successful creative place-making projects. 

 

6. CREATING AN EXPERIMENTAL EXPERIENCE TO GAIN NEW FOLLOWERS / BUILD LOYALTY TO CURRENT FOLLOWERS

KiddieRider01.JPG

You already have an awesome idea... but it has never been manifested in a spatial setting where you can create an experience with people. The pop-up is an opportunity to convert your abstract thoughts / ideas / concepts into an interactive experience to communicate to your current followers, or new followers, of what that means and looks like. The process of planning the experience, crafting the message, and inviting your followers to come becomes as important, if not more important, than the product and experience itself as it becomes a trial-run to execute your idea in real life. 

 

7. A/B TESTING YOUR IDEA

Pop-ups can become live versions of your A/B testing, which is simply two versions of the same idea executed differently to see which receives a better response. When you have different directions of how your product or service can be crafted, use a pop-up A/B test to try variations, and better even, these are opportunities to get direct user feedback on these variations.  

 

8. A TRANSFORMABLE SPACE AS PROTOTYPE(S)

Got one idea but many ways to program it? Make your pop-up space transformable to different configurations so that you can test the best time of the day or day of the week for different concepts. An example include making financial engagement in the form of a Coffee Shop, Educational Workshop, Exhibition Space, One-on-One counseling, all within the same setting.

 

9. A MINIMUM VIABLE STORE

Pop-ups are opportunities to test a location or your concept before committing long-term lease. With the same concept of a Minimum Viable Product, a pop-up store is the minimum viable store with decors and products that do not necessarily need the expensive and perfection needed for your permanent store. Shipping crates? Ikea Furniture? Even paper stools? Yes, and yes. Make it barely functional to ensure that that you are spending the least amount for the maximum effect. 

 

10. A POP-UP MARKET OF [FILL IN YOUR BLANKS]

Pop-up markets can be used as opportunities to create collaborative action among like minded businesses and creatives. This could be a tremendous chance to present your ideas to government officials, business improvement districts, or even private corporations that are aligned with your vision and mission. It would also be a prototype to test how the public receive your idea (whether it is art focused or business focused). By involving multiple participants across different sectors (such as vendors, performers, artists, designers, business professionals) involved, it allows for more opportunity for different kinds of input through action. It is not uncommon that the process of making this happen is the first time it's been done, by involving different expertise, it allows for a quick litmus test of whether it is feasible, and if so, how to make this repeatable for the future.

 

NEXT SERIES: ON PROTOTYPES & TESTS

#003

Eric Ho ·

ON PROTOTYPING

“A prototype is nothing other than a single question, embodied”
- Diego Rodriquez, IDE 

The 3 key actions of prototyping includes:

1. DESIGN (EXPERIMENTS)

2. TEST (METRICS)

3. LEARN (ASSUMPTIONS)

Prototyping is a crucial step within your discovery process as it verifies assumption with real evidence to validate ideas and concepts. Instead of asking your users whether they would use your service or buy your product, you are presenting them with an experience that is like the actual product or experience that you currently may not have the resources, expertise, or time to produce. Instead of spending a lot of time, money and resources on this product, you are asking your customers or users with a beta version of your product or service.

Prototyping is not just a fun exercise for designers, but is applicable for all creative and business endeavors. You may have heard of concepts such as MVP (Minimum Viable Products) in the business world. In essence, MVP is a form of prototype, we will go into more about Lean Startup approaches and talking about MVPs in our next blog. 

Why prototype?

1. TO FAIL SAFELY
2. TO GET USER FEEDBACK
3. TO ENABLE USERS TO CO-DESIGN
4. TO COLLABORATE (WITH KEY STAKEHOLDERS or PARTNERS)
5. TO LEARN WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW. 

Types of prototypes include: 

We have categorized some types of prototype projects for you to consider, each maybe applicable in different stages of your discovery or validation process: 

1. "LOOKS LIKE" PROTOTYPES

"Looks-like" prototypes are ideas that appear like the product or service you are testing, without the actual functionality behind it. It assimilates the actual product without spending the time to build it. For example, a razor blade design that tests the ergonomic of the handle, without all the functionality or the actual materiality of the razor, is a "Looks-Like" prototype.

2. A "WORKS LIKE" PROTOTYPE

"Works-like" prototypes the opposite. They have all the functionality of the final product, without the UX or design that ties it together. An example is a hardware product that communicates with each other to test codes and functionality, but looks "naked" or "ugly" to the user. The point of "Works-like" prototypes are usually to test the functionality of products. 

3. DIGITAL PROTOTYPES

Digital prototypes are mock-ups of the actual physical counterpart, or simulation of the design as to save costs and time to produce the actual version, and to allow for multiple iterations. Website landing pages, wireframe apps are all digital mock-ups.

4. LIVE / SERVICE PROTOTYPES

Live or service prototypes are actual experiences that are delivered to users to learn from the user interactions from it. Examples include live apps that are performed rather than coded through an app. See this project UPLIFT by Berk Ilhan HERE

5. SPACE / ENVIRONMENTAL PROTOTYPES

Prototype_WorksLike.png

Space / environmental prototypes applies really well to retail. Sometimes, before we build out the full experience of a space, you can test the User Experience through the service concepts and innovate on the delivery experience. Foam, duck-tapes, printed food rather than actual food can all be props to get feedback on the design and flow of the space before spending time and money to build out the furniture.

6. EXPERIENCE PROTOTYPES

ExperiencePrototype.jpeg

Prototypes that focuses on the user experience through the product are called "Experience Prototypes". This could be a prototype of an app and capturing the user journey from the discovery, engagement, and servicing of the product, to documenting how users experience the banking experience and introducing props that make the service better or more efficient. 

7. BRAND PROTOTYPES

Brand prototypes test the messaging, graphic, and appeal fo the brand. This could include product design mock-ups, store mock-ups, fonts, messaging, and anything that relates to HOW you communicate the brand to your target users. 

8. VALUE PROPOSITION PROTOTYPES

Value proposition prototypes test the value of your product or service. This is best illustrated by A/B testing your website, with different messaging and value propositions presented to your audience, and gathering which produce a better traction or response rate. 

How to prototype:


There many methods and resources on how to prototype. We especially like the "Double Diamond" approach, where you diverge on exploration, and converge on validation, and repeat the process as much as you can to continue learning and testing, and hone in on specificities of your approach. 

One example might be: 

"HOW MIGHT WE create the ultimate snacking option for office workers?"

As you diverge on ideating on this problem, you are playing more of an exploration mode and prototypes that you generate are more open-ended:

- WHO ARE THESE OFFICE WORKERS?

- WHAT DO THEY CURRENT DO FOR SNACKS?

- WHERE DO THEY BUY THEM?

- HOW MUCH ARE THEY WILLING TO SPEND? 

As you converge on ideating on this problem, you are playing more of a validating role, and the prototypes that you come up with answer more specific questions that you already have developed insights and/or assumptions on:  

- WHICH ONE OF THESE 3 SNACKS : FRUITS, GRANOLA BARS, CHIPS DO THEY PREFER?

- WHICH ONE OF THESE PRICEPOINTS ARE OPTIMAL THIS OFFICE WORKER I'VE DEFINED: $1 - 3, $3 - 6, $6 - 9

- WHAT ARE THE THREE APPEALS THAT MAKE MY SNACK BETTER THAN THE CURRENT OPTIONS OUT THERE: PACKAGING, PRICING, CONVENIENCE?


Six Rules of Thumbs of prototyping: 


1. Think with your hands
2. Test Early
3. Collect User Feedback
4. Avoid Emotional Attachment
5. Rough, Rapid, Right
6. Iterate, Iterate, Iterate

Why is a prototyping framework important in pop-up projects? 

Prototyping is important in your pop-up journey, as it is the tool for you to test and learn from your users. Pop-ups are tremendous opportunities to test user response to your products and services, where your team, your products and your users all are at the same spot in the same time. 

Surveys, one-on-one interviews, focus groups sometimes are also effective, but having prototypes that can really probe into how people behave, instead of what people think they would do, or behave in a way that reinforces the social behavior of a group, are more direct and effective to understand user preferences and behaviors

A great framework to test prototypes in pop-ups is to think about the online and offline implication of all the things that you are doing in the pop-up. Some questions that you can consider with your pop-up prototypes include:

  • Would one form of coupon for your online shop yield better results?
  • Could you track engagement on your website via offline marketing efforts?
  • Would events and workshops yield longer engagement of your users?
  • Can I A/B test my branding schemes and get immediate user feedback?

Obviously a rigorous approach to getting metrics are important in all prototyping, but a lot of times simple qualitative observations could also bring you tremendous insights by just being there and interacting with customers, something invaluable and unavailable if you are only operating online. 

 

Resources 

https://labs.ideo.com/2012/04/02/ideomake/

http://productsofdesign.sva.edu/blog/masters-thesis-uplift-by-berk-ilhan

https://hbr.org/2014/04/prototype-your-product-protect-your-brand

https://hbr.org/2014/03/the-future-of-prototyping-is-now-live

NEXT SERIES: ON LEAN START-UP / LEAN RETAIL

#004

Eric Ho ·

ON LEAN START-UP

“The Lean Startup provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and get a desired product to customers' hands faster. The Lean Startup method teaches you how to drive a startup how to steer, when to turn, and when to persevere and grow a business with maximum acceleration. It is a principled approach to new product development.”


While Lean Start-up approaches are conceived for start-up companies, it very well applies to any businesses looking for a way to truly learn from customers with a validated approach. 


4 key components of lean start-up approach:


1. ELIMINATE UNCERTAINTY
2. WORK SMARTER AND NOT HARDER
3. DEVELOP AN MVP
4. VALIDATED LEARNING

Similar to prototyping, the lean start-up approach is to eliminate risk and uncertainty with a new product or service. How can we systematically test hypotheses and assumptions through action? The main questions to ask are "Do people need this product?" and "Is there a sustainable market for it"? Assuming that you can make and produce the product or service, the more important question is if people want and would buy it. 

An MVP (Minimal Viable Product) is the vehicle to start the discovery and learning journey of your customers, continually iterating your MVP allows you to ask questions to continue to learn about your customers. For lean start-up, progress is validated learning about your customers, and not the revenue that you earn from them at this early stage. By allowing the time to learn the most from your customer, you avoid building a product that nobody wants. 


What is an MVP?


"A Minimum Viable Product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort."

Some key factors that you need to figure out before even building an MVP include: who are you building the product for? You should be analyzing in details all the assumptions about this target audience. If you are building a consumer product, who is going to buy this? What is their income level? What is their demographics? How do they spend their time? Where to they spend their time? The more observations and insights you have about your audience, the better questions you can ask and test with your MVP. Once you have some good assumptions that you can start to validate, you can apply a lot of the prototyping methods in our last blog.


How to make an MVP for the retail environment? 


You may ask, how does an MVP manifest in the retail environment to learn about your potential customers? We have a step-by-step guide here, depending on where you are with your product, you can skip ahead:



Before you have your product / service: 


1. Start a Facebook Ad and Test Demographics

Use social media and resources such as Facebook to start testing your products' target audience. Try the same description of your description of your product to 3 - 5 different demographics and track their relative engagement. You would be able get insights right away. 


2. Analyze Google Adwords & Run Adwords Campaigns

Use SEO resources to test and discover what people are searching that test keywords that describes your products and services. Through this process, you should be able to discover what are best ways to describe your products and also what people actually are looking for.


3. Start a landing page of your product or service and gather emails

Start a simple landing page that describes your products & services, and use the number of emails that you gather as a traction and validation of people interested in your products and services. This is usually best when combined with Facebook Ads or Google Adwords. Some companies that are good resources for this include: 

Leadpages.net - Landing Page

Squarespace.com - Landing Page

Quickmvp.com - Landing Page + Google Adwords


4. Bring a prototype of your product or service and talk to strangers that don't know you - "GET OUT OF THE BUILDING"

Steve Blank has coined the term "GET OUT OF THE BUILDING", referring to the process of listening to your customers' need by getting out of the building and talking to them. Listening is key, and the process of finding "WHO" to talk to is also an art. Try to talk to people that are your target customers, and also extreme users that seem like are not your target users. The process will help you define who are really the audience that you are creating a product or service to solve.

http://www.inc.com/steve-blank/key-to-success-getting-out-of-building.html


5. Observe potential competitors & talk to their customers

Every product or service has their competitors. And most of the time, there are already similar competitors that are already in the market. Use the service, buy their products, learn from them, and talk to their customers. Your competitors' strength and weakness are real live examples of what is working and what is not. Learn from it and draw insights from it. Even better, talk to the customers that use their products or services and see if there are painpoints that you can solve.


Once you have a first version of your product or service:


6. Crowd-fund your product or service for pre-purchase

Once you have honed in on what your product is, who the target customer is, and confident that there is demand for it. You can validate them by running a crowdfunding campaign to fund your product before you go into making it for real. Many crowdfunding platforms are available now to allow for customers to pre-purchase your product, so that you can both VALIDATE your assumptions that people want it (i.e. buying it with money), and de-risk you of investing anything ahead of time and not having the cashflow to make the product. 


7. Attend a weekend market to talk to customers and get their feedback

If your product or service requires an experience (i.e. people tasting your food, or wearing your garments), weekend markets are great ways to test people's respond to your product, and gathering insights of what they would like and want. Be careful to treat these as learnings, and less focus on sales. Try to gather input about your product, pricing, and also gather emails for continual testing with these early adopters.


8. Run a pop-up shop to deliver your brand experience and get feedback

Pop-up shops are ideal MVPs for testing a few things about your brand, a few key learning aspects you should be aware of are:

- Storytelling and Brand Positioning

- Validating Target Audience

- Validating Value Proposition

- Feedback on Product Features & Pricepoint

- Quantitative metrics on performance (revenue generated, number people visited, press generated)

Make sure you have ways to measure and validate on each of those. A number of national brands are started with pop-ups (Warby Parker, Bucketfeet).  

 

TO SUMMARIZE KEY POINTS OF THIS SERIES:

  1. Test ideas often and don't be afraid to be creative  

  2. Identify your audience and be rigorous of learning from them

  3. Use prototypes as questions embedded for your audience

  4. Build digital and physical MVPs to validate learnings

  5. Use both quantitative and qualitative metrics to get feedback about your customers and continually to learn from them. 

I hope you have some amazing ideas and thoughts on how to move forward now with your ideas and good luck with your new retail idea! Now DO IT!