On the heels of our post celebrating 4,383 days online (that’s 12 internet years!), I want to let everyone know that we’ll be importing key posts into Dachis Group’s Collaboratory blog, and we’ll continue publishing our thoughts and work on visual thinking there. In fact, my first post went up yesterday and other XPLANE alumnus have started blogging there as well.

We won’t be transferring all 8,333 xBlog posts. So many of them are outdated and linkrotted. But we will make sure key posts redirect to their new homes on the Collaboratory and all other posts don’t 404.

It has been a wonderful, amazing, enlightening ride here at xBlog, from hand-coding it starting in 1999, to embracing the first release of WordPress .7 in 2003, to today — a world where blogs are more than commonplace — they are ubiquitous. I don’t know that I could give a better rundown than I did for last year’s 11th anniversary, so if you want a trip down xBlog’s memory lane you can read it here.

Blogging has been core to me and XPLANE for a long time and we’re not going to stop. I truly hope XPLANE’s fans and xBlog’s readers will continue to follow our work as Dachis Group. We’ll still be doing that visual thinking thing, just as we have been for all these years, only now we’ll be bringing to it many more people and businesses.

So on behalf of xBlog… so long, and thanks for all the links.

See you at the Collaboratory.

Cheers,
Bill Keaggy
November 19, 2011

The demand for water will increase 5 times by 2050 but the amount of fresh drinkable water on Earth always stays the same. Xylem finds ways to efficiently save, protect and control water. It’s what we do every day. It’s why we share a goal of solving the world’s water challenges…one drop at a time.

What’s a Social Business? It’s a business alive with energy and big ideas. It’s collaborative, authentic, customer-centric, trusted, open and real-time.

Click to download the PDF.

And it’s about time. After decades of mechanistic, process-oriented management dogma, progressive organizations are waking up to the disturbing truth that they’ve squeezed all the creativity out of their business. But when companies embrace organic, passionate, socially-savvy initiatives, they blossom. That’s Social Business.

This XPLANATiON was produced in association with our colleagues at Dachis Group’s Social Business Council, a collection of practitioners from large businesses who are charting the course for Social Business. We interviewed Council members and turned their knowledge into a clean, clear visual that quickly helps everyone understand the benefits of Social Business.

You can view the XPLANATiON on Dachis Group’s Collaboratory blog or download a PDF here.

October 19, 2011: We posted a newer version today with updated artwork.

The fear of undertaking a project beyond your abilities is enough to stop you in your tracks while concepting. And it’s especially frustrating because the idea you have may be great. It may be inspired. You can see it, right there, clear as day in your head. But getting it out in the real world? That isn’t your forté. And that’s a bummer.

Knowing your limitations is important. I suppose it comes down to understanding why it’s important. Conventional wisdom would have us think it’s so our grasp doesn’t extend beyond our reach. There’s a reason you don’t hear the phrase “amateur tightrope walker” thrown around a lot. If we didn’t stay aware of our limitations the world’s population would most likely plummet.

But there’s an aspect to this we’re forgetting. Knowing your limits is another way of knowing where you can improve. A list of things you can’t do, conversely, is a list of things you can learn to do. Exploring ideas outside of your skill set may encourage you to acquire that skill set. And, okay, I know that doesn’t help you in the moment, but it’s a box you can tick for later. And you aren’t beaten just yet.

For the things just beyond your abilities, it doesn’t hurt to learn on the job. If your idea is only just outside of what you’re normally capable of, I say take it on. There’s nothing like a little pressure to get you going. And there are plenty of resources on the web that can point you in the right direction for whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish. Once you’ve completed it, BAM, now you’ve done that thing. And the next time you’re concepting, you have some experience with it. As with everything, you’ll get better with each subsequent attempt.

Now, about the things that fall outside of your usual arsenal.

“I’m a cartoonist but boy would this thing look great in sculpture.” Okay, I may not want to take that client work on as a “learning project.” But, hey, I know a few sculptors. I’ve got the brains, they’ve got the hands. Let’s make this work!

Combining forces with a fellow creative is always an option. And if you have the opportunity to work closely with them, odds are you’re going to learn something along the way. You’ll see your concept executed to its fullest potential and you’ll understand what did and didn’t work for the next time you try to tackle a project in the same arena.

Exploring ideas when you doubt your ability isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can give you greater insight into what you CAN accomplish and what it will take to do so. It may lead you down a path you didn’t expect, into areas heretofore unknown to you. And once those areas become familiar, you can move on to the next thing you’re no good at. ;)

This change prompted us at XPLANE | Dachis Group to take a look at a few other long-standing charts, graphics and diagrams and ask whether they could use a bit of sprucing up.

So, as we are wont to do, we turned to our monthly Visual Thinking School (VTS for short) and the public to see what kinds of new design thinking could be applied to some old standards.

To start with, we sought to explore the food plate further. Due to its simplicity, the new diagram doesn’t indicate which foods fall under what categories. To remedy this, we did some rapid concepting on a mobile app that would dig deeper into each food group. The group was broken into teams and each team chose a food group.

One team chose the Fruit food group and came up with an app called “Shoot the Fruit.” The app encouraged the user to take photos of fruit. Using the photo, the app would then generate tons of information on that specific fruit: info like preparation, food pairing, recipes, and nutritional information.

See more app concepts on our Flickr stream!
 

So, having gotten our hands dirty with the food plate it was time to take on something from scratch. Again, in groups, we looked at three different, existing graphics: airplane safety guides, food nutrition information labels and the periodic table.

Airplane Safety Guides
The group that worked on this graphic decided that a lot of the information on current safety guides is no longer relevant. This was most evident in the list of devices that are and aren’t allowed during flight. To remedy this, the group designed a new list, both updating the devices as well as distinguishing what is allowed before, during and after the flight.

Food Nutrition Information Labels
As the Food Nutrition Group concepted their design, they came to the decision that the current design doesn’t generate recognition of what the food consists of quickly enough. They set out to create visuals that would be recognizable, at a glance, and would indicate how much of particular component was in the food, and whether that amount was good or bad. An overall assessment of whether the food was healthy or unhealthy would also be given through color-coding on the right. (Think terror alerts, but for food)

Periodic Table
Two groups took on the Periodic Table and both came to the realization that it’s already a very functional design. The main issue was found to be its approachability. Each group tried to make the periodic table a little less imposing by focusing on specific aspects of the information.

One group created a prototype for a rotating periodic wheel, below (I stress the word prototype). The wheel is meant to reveal the information about the elements through an explorative experience. By choosing random attributes of elements, the wheel would eventually reveal what element you’re looking at.

The second group tried visualizing the elements in a comparative fashion, below. Their concept shows the each element represented by a circle the size of which represented its atomic mass.

One member of the group, Alex, went the extra mile after VTS and took the concept even further. Check it out:
The Periodic Table of the Solar System.

Overall, it was an interesting exercise. Reworking familiar design structures can be illuminating in different ways. You’re forced to decide what information seems superfluous and what is vital. A decision that is often informed by what current-day society deems important. Many of the decisions around information for the graphics we were redesigning were most likely made many years ago, when they were originally designed. But over time, the context around them has changed, and the need to reassess becomes evident when you take a good look at them in light of modern day values.
 

Special bonus do-overs:

• Take a look at this sales receipt redesign XPLANEr Susanne LeBlanc found: http://flowingdata.com/2011/07/05/sales-receipt-redesign/
• And Tara Pham of Eleven Magazine sent us a link to a food nutrition label redesign that is a lot like the one our group came up with: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664668/infographic-of-the-day-a-food-label-that-actually-teaches-you-about-food.

Intended as a forceful wake-up call for Iowa educators, the video stresses the importance of an educational approach that moves away from “low-level mental work” and towards stronger development in critical thinking and problem solving.

We knew we needed the look of “Iowa, Did You Know? to respect the serious tone of the content — and also create a sense of urgency. To do this, we minimized the color palette and illustrated in a simple, flat style. We found ourselves inspired by letterpress and silkscreen posters — they always seem to convey such personality and immediacy. This is true for both modern band posters and things like historic FSA and political posters.

To help strike a contrast between Iowa and the world, the Iowa scenes have an earth-toned color palette as well as a burlap texture. This makes them feel somewhat analog and vintage. Anything related to the outside world or new technologies received a brighter, cleaner color palette that is more vivid and energized. We used Thirstype’s Apex typeface to bring an academic feel and a look that meshes with IowaFuture.org’s branding.

XPLANE previously worked with Dr. McLeod and Karl Fisch on the educational “Did You Know? 2.0” video in 2007. We collaborated again in 2009, this time including The Economist, on “Did You Know? 4.0” which focused on media convergence and technology. These videos have more than 7 million views on YouTube.

The “Iowa, Did You Know” content was developed by Dr. McLeod, with all storyboarding, design, and animation by XPLANE | Dachis Group.

Tell us what you think!

Update, August 5, 2011: Here’s Scott McLeod’s blog post with more info about the piece and the series.

As a history professor, I work with words. Pages and pages of them, in fact. Words to write, words to read, words to speak. I use pictures and images too, but they usually play second fiddle to the words. So it was challenging and humbling to visit XPLANE | Dachis Group for a recent Visual Thinking School (VTS) because it forced me to think deeply about using visual thinking to communicate history. It was also enlightening, as I came away convinced that history instructors should incorporate more visual thinking tools into our classrooms.

We started by creating empathy maps for students and teachers to help us get into their heads regarding what they’re seeing, hearing, thinking and doing while in class.

The idea for a history-themed VTS came from discussions at home (full disclosure: I’m married to an XPLANE designer) about how I was — and was not — using the chalkboard in my classroom. Chalkboards and whiteboards are ubiquitous in education, yet there’s precious little attention to how college educators like myself should use them. I never thought much about what I was capturing on the board until a colleague pointed out that a student writing only what was on the board would have a poor grasp of that day’s rich discussion. The board was basically a list of nouns in no particular order with a few pathetic arrows. Clearly, there was room for improvement. But I went into history because I loved stories and words, not drawing. And I’ve always been a little self-conscious of my stickman presidents and maps of the United States with Maine the size of South America. And with PowerPoint or Keynote slides available to present pre-planned material, there are even fewer opportunities to capture ideas visually in real time in front of a classroom.

Enter VTS. During the session, we divided into two groups and everyone live-sketched while my colleague Buddy Paulett and I discussed a tricky historical topic. I explained why St. Louis lost so much population in the twentieth century and Buddy covered the origins of the French and Indian War. The resulting visuals were great. When presented with a brief lecture by the person who sketched, they quickly tell a complex historical story.

Here’s one of the sketches describing St. Louis’ 20th century population loss. See more sketches of this and the French and Indian War in our Flickr VTS set. Each of these was drawn live over the course of 20-30 minutes while listening to guest historians speak.

The takeaway for me was that live sketching, cartooning, and creative doodling are all useful tools to communicate complex stories. I’m not going to stop using words, but I’d like to add more visual skills to my toolkit. So I’m going to try to implement a few new things this year:

1. Develop a small icon set that I can draw quickly and effectively in real time during class. For a modern U.S. historian teaching in the St. Louis region, this might include the outline of the U.S., outlines of Illinois and Missouri, the St. Louis skyline (thank you, Arch!), a two-dimensional factory, a car or truck, a person holding a picket sign, etc
2. Spend a few minutes planning how the board will evolve during a class session. As a writer, I tend to start at the left and move to the right but live sketching seems to work better if I start in the middle and grow from there.
3. Encourage students to capture class notes via drawing. I’m still not sure how this could work, but I like the idea that artistically-inclined students could sketch their notes and somehow share them with the class. Doing this might encourage more creative students to see history as stories to be communicated rather than lists of names and dates.

Baby steps for now, but we’ll see where they lead.

At XPLANE | Dachis Group we have some of those fun perks you often hear about at great workplaces — wine every Friday, free M&Ms, a pool table, and a duck pond to name a few. But we think the reason our workplace is so great runs a little deeper than that. For us, building a great workplace is a big commitment, and it’s all about building trust, pride, and camaraderie. We wanted to share a few of our practices with the hope that it might inspire you to think about how you could build a better workplace — wherever you work.

Our beloved X.

Building trust

At the core of every great workplace there are strong relationships built on trust between employees and managers, most often developed through open, two-way communication.

Open studios | At XPLANE, there are no doors, so we have the ultimate open-door policy. Every single one of our employees works out in the open. We have conference rooms if people need to have private meetings, but no one has a private office. In fact, our President’s and our Founder’s desk spaces are the exact same size as others and mixed right in with the rest of the team. This workspace plan sets the tone that everyone is equal and privy to essentially the same information.

Monday Morning Meetings | We know that lack of information can cause suspicion and assumption, so we maintain a culture of transparency in order to build trust. So each Monday, teams in every studio gather together to share news we want everyone to hear — business updates, project successes or challenges, company-wide changes, as well as personal news. The minutes from each meeting are posted on our intranet so that people in other studios can also read about what is happening across the company.

Recognition cards | What better way to build a trusting relationship than to recognize employees for their efforts? We have a very simple way that any Xplaner can give a co-worker a shout out. One of our designers created 3×5 cards that say, “Exceeding expectations, thanks for going above and beyond.” The cards include blank spots to fill in who it’s for, who it’s from, and the purpose of the recognition. We have a corkboard where people post these cards. Then once a month we take them all down and draw out one person in each studio who receives a $25 gift certificate to their favorite store.

The PDX studio.

Building pride

When people love their jobs, it shows. They’re more loyal, productive, and creative. XPLANE takes measures to ensure the relationship between the employee and the workplace is strong because if they feel pride in their work, they’ll share that sentiment with others.

Inspiration walls | One way to build pride is through inspiration. In our industry, being observant of our world is necessary, and being inspired by what we see every day is even more critical. So each studio has dedicated wall space for employees to display what inspires them. Inspiration Walls have evolved over time and currently in the Portland studio, the responsibility to inspire rotates amongst the employees. One person has a two-week period to post on the wall anything that s/he finds inspirational and could inspire others. At any given time, the Inspiration Walls could feature photos, sketches, illustrations, designs, books, newspaper clippings, web sites, you name it.

Annual Vizzie Awards | We also want people to take pride in what they produce. In order to do so, our Creative Directors organize an annual award program to recognize our very best work from the year. They ask all employees to nominate the best work — their own or others — from the past year. The CDs then decide on the best 3-4 pieces for the categories of Innovator, Client Impact, and Best in Show. All employees can cast votes to determine the winners. At our January All-Hands meeting, we show all the final contestants and announce the winners. Each winning team is given a trophy for their desk and a cash award to use however the team wishes.

Breakfast at the all-hands meeting in STL.

Building camaraderie

A great workplace is one in which the employees feel like they are part of a greater whole but are also free to be individuals.

Visual directory | The first step in building a team is ensuring everyone knows each other, so one of our designers helped create a visual directory that includes photos and a few fun facts about each of our team members. As our team grows across different locations, this is just one of the little ways we can help people get to know their team members and ensure they can put a face with a name.

Ministry of Fun | To inspire camaraderie amongst employees, we have a team-building committee at XPLANE known as the Ministry of Fun in which we plan and prepare activities to create more cultural alignment and build a great work environment. Led by our Employee Experience Assistant, the Ministry of Fun is a committee of employees from all locations who gather in the interest of planning fun events and activities in efforts to make our workplaces even more enjoyable.

Because of our focus on building a great workplace, XPLANE has established a strong culture. We recognize that each workplace culture is unique, so we offer these ideas as inspiration. As we continue to grow and transform, our efforts to maintain a great workplace will also shift and morph, but we’ll never lose sight of the goal to build trust, pride, and camaraderie.

This is from a PDF you can download on their site:

This is a program at a level on par with graduate studies. The intensive offers advanced students and working professionals a unique opportunity to study with faculty composed of leading designers and social entrepreneurs. In addition, weekly lectures and field trips will allow students to directly interact with a dynamic range of innovators in the field.

This is a rapidly growing area of design. This program will instill in participants the confidence, self-motivation and collaborative spirit which will be needed as they continue on to work as design activists.

Professionals, educators and advanced students in the following disciplines are invited to participate: advertising, graphic design, product design, information design, interactive design, fashion design, photography and illustration. The program is oriented towards these design disciplines but we have had architects and social entrepreneurs participate

XPLANE teamed with Kronos, a global leader in workforce management, to create new video to celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. It’s a visual homage to women and how their role in the workforce has changed throughout history, making all of our lives exponentially easier, safer and more productive.

Do you know who Melitta Bentz was? Or Ida Forbes? Or Ruth Wakefield? No? Then watch and learn.

This four and a half minute video is the third in an ongoing series. View the first two at the links below and learn more about the day here.

• How will you manage?
• How will your week work?