Recently I was asked to give a talk at an internal BBC away day on the concept of Innovation Design. The word innovation is often overused, to the point where it has become almost meaningless to most people. In this talk I discuss how innovation is about influencing somekind of change no matter how big or small and how taking a grass roots approach is often the best way to approach innovation within a big organisation.
My aim in this presentation is to not come across like the man in this advert.
Innovation is a word that gets used a lot but what does it actually mean? In the dictionary it gives a very broad definition.
“Something new or different introduced.”
But I think its useful to think about innovation in terms of bringing about somekind of change no matter how big or small. This might be through introducing something completely new into the world or re-purposing something that already exists either way its about bringing ideas to life and the execution of these ideas may be a physical or a cultural thing.
There are plenty of examples throughout history of innovation and I’m sure many of us can think of several such as the internet, the camera, the bicycle and there contemporary examples that may not seem so obvious but are also valid such as Street Car, a service that changed the way people rent cars in London and the Dyson that changed the way people use and perceive vacuum cleaners.
Dyson picture by Robert Scarth
The problem with the word innovation is that when you use it, it instantly sets an expectation. If I said to you I’m going away to think about creating an innovative mobile experience. Your expectations are more than likely going to be quite high because of what you know of the iPhone. The iPhone is a fantastic user experience and instantly set the bar in terms of mobile product and interface design.
But I think this perception of innovation being this grand thing, this holy grail to attain is misleading. Innovation happens in lots of different contexts and on many different scales. Its borne out of a natural curiosity of observing the world around you, being inspired and then acting on it.
Take for example the wind up radio a small innovation that had a meaningful impact on peoples lives.
© All rights reserved, Ewan Bellamy.
Back in 1991 Trevor Baylis saw a TV programme about the spread of AIDS in Africa and was shocked at the lack of access to information that people had about the ways to halt the disease so he set out to develop the Wind Up Radio.
One aspect of the term ‘innovation’ that bothers me is that its a word that gets very overused it is. Its become part of business speak a buzzword among many where it almost becomes meaningless. This is a another one from IBM which sums up nicely what I mean.
There are hundreds of books that aim to teach you how to be innovative. There’s the art of innovation, ten faces of innovation, making innovation work: measure it and profit from it, the oxford handbook of innovation, managing innovation, innovation a short introduction. I’m sure a lot of these books do have some useful information to impart but if you look at many of the great innovations that have happened throughout history they have occurred through curiosity, experimentation, exploration, trial and error, accidents, passion these keywords for me are the characteristics needed to make innovation happen. I think a good example of this is the story behind the creation of the mountain bike (and I’m going to paraphrase Charles Leadbeater who uses this as an example in his TED talk).
The mountain bike came from young people who were frustrated with the bikes that were available during the late 60′s which consisted of traditional racing bikes or bikes that had big handlebars and were too heavy. So, they got the frames from these big bikes, put them together with the gears from the racing bikes, got the brakes from motorcycles, and sort of mixed and matched various ingredients. And for the first few years of their life, mountain bikes were known as “clunkers.” and they were just made in a community of bikers, mainly in Northern California.
© All rights reserved, Mr Yeti.
It was another 10 -15 years later before the big bike companies realized there was a market. In the present day mountain bike sales, and mountain bike equipment, account for over half bike sales in the world. This is a category entirely created by a group of passionate people, that would not have been created by the mainstream bike market because they couldn’t see the need or the opportunity and they didn’t have the incentive to innovate.
This grass roots approach that was taken to create the mountain bike is similar to the approach we need to take in a big organisation. Innovation needs to be part of the culture of day to day work and people need to be empowered to be able to act on ideas they feel are important to pursue.
Prototyping, workshops and hackdays are all methods that enable you to explore and create. And I want to give you an overview of three projects that I’ve worked on that illustrate this in practice.
Two or three years ago there was a lot of talk about visual radio but no-one really knew what it was or the opportunities that it could open up for radio. So a group of three of us kicked off a project to define what visual radio could be. What we ended up proposing was a prototype that became hugely successful and very influential within Audio and Music. The prototype we created led onto two visual radio trials during 2009 with Radio 1, Switch, Radio 4 and 5 live. The trial’s boosted traffic to these sites by 50% and on top of that it gained a lot of press in the media.
Visual radio player from the first trial
The entire process from ideation to execution was collaborative with editorial producers, ux, tech and DJ’s working together and it really opened up the eyes of the production teams to what is possible for radio on new platforms.
The technological innovation was that we created a console that brought together real time video, track info, text messages, studio updates and enabled the audience viewing the console to interact by sending messages and responding to calls to action.
The cultural innovation was that the production teams have started to think about their content in a much broader and interactive way.
And what is really exciting now is that we are starting work on a new project that will continue the evolution of using the web as a real time, interactive, broadcasting channel.
Another example is a workshop we did a few months ago exploring how we might evolve the Radio 1 chart online. The chart has been like it is for a long time now and doesn’t reflect how people interact with music these days. So seeing the potential of exploring another perspective on the Radio 1 chart we embarked on a two day workshop away from the office where we sketched ideas, talked to listeners of the chart show, went back to refine out initial ideas and developed three different audience experiences. This work then went onto inform a new beta Radio 1 chart application.
The Love 40
This chart is a radical departure from what has been on the site for many years and its the first attempt to integrate new functionality, and present the chart in a totally contemporary way.
The final example is a very recent hackday for Desert Island Discs. The programme has a rich heritage and recently we managed to aquire the rights to make the archive available online and we have lots of data about the programme such as such as castaway profiles, their music tastes, occupations, luxury items and favourite books. A group of us thought it would be a great idea to organise a hackday bringing together designers, csds and engineers to explore ideas and build prototypes that illustrate different ways of using the archive data.
The outcome of the hackday were a number of compelling ideas such as being to use your last lastfm profile, or manually entering your musical tastes, to connect you to Desert Island Discs castaways. Once these connections are made, other recommendations can be provided to you – programmes on the BBC, books to read and even luxury items.
Last Island Recommendation
Another idea involved analysing transcriptions to create a different way of navigating the programme content.
Rich audio interface
These prototypes and others that emerged from the workshop have really opened up new ways of thinking about how we might present Desert Island Discs online.
What I hope these projects illustrate is how innovation happens from spotting opportunities and being pro active. They also show how innovation can be created with simple ideas and how the way in which we collaborate with each other and our colleagues in other divisions also creates innovation on a cultural level.
Within user experience and design we have the remit not only to define a vision for compelling experiences across many products and services but also to propose and create new ones.
