Gran parte de las dificultades por las que atraviesa el mundo se debe a que los ignorantes están completamente seguros, y los inteligentes llenos de dudas.
The lessons for making a country (like the U.S.) more happy are quite simple.
While Europe may not be the best economically these days, it
remains the happiest region in the world. Surveys of national happiness
routinely place countries like Norway and Sweden at the head of the global well-being stakes. And it's a similar story with the latest World Happiness Report, published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
The index is based on a global Gallup poll that asks people to think
of themselves on a ladder journeying either upwards towards complete
happiness (a 10 score) or down towards misery (a possible 0 score).
Gallup surveyed up to 3,000 people in each country over three years,
with resulting scores averaging between 7.5 at the top of the rankings
to less than 3 at the bottom end.
Switzerland comes out on top followed by Iceland, Denmark and Norway
(all have scores between 7.5 and 7.6). Next comes Canada, Finland,
Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, and Australia, all with average scores
of at least 7.28. The United States is 15th, behind Mexico in 14th.
Nine of the top 10 nations in the latest ranking were in the top 10 in 2013.
There's more movement at the bottom, which tends towards sub-Saharan
African countries, plus Middle East war-zones like Afghanistan and
Syria. Burundi and Togo come last.
The ranking is only part of the report which is written by John
Helliwell, Lord Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs, three leading lights
in the field of happiness economics. The academics run the surveys
through a model that shows the importance of factors such as levels of
gross domestic product, life expectancy, generosity, social support,
freedom, and lack of corruption, which make up the colored bars in the
charts. The first three factors—social support, incomes, and healthy
life expectancy—are the most important in explaining the differences
between countries, the academics say.
The rankings show the effect of the global recession on happiness.
When the researchers compared numbers for the 2005-7 period with
2012-14, they found that Nicaragua, Zimbabwe and Ecuador were the
greatest positive movers, while Greece, Egypt and Italy were the biggest
negative movers. The U.S. was also a relatively strong negative mover,
with its average score dropping 0.2 points over that time.
In general, across the world, women's evaluations of happiness are
higher than for men, and younger people tend to be happier than
middle-aged people (which is perhaps not surprising). Happiness tends to
improve as people get through middle-life.
The larger goal of the research is to provide an alternative to
purely economic measures of national performance like GDP. And, indeed,
the authors are confident that a shift is taking place, with governments
in Britain, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere all embracing
happiness metrics. "Happiness is increasingly considered a proper
measure of social progress and a goal of public policy," the authors
say.
We all know that we should probably be getting more sleep. And
we've learned that sleep improves your mood, helps you to learn, clears
your brain of toxins, and helps you concentrate. As if that weren’t
enough, sleep has another benefit: It can help make you more creative.
To understand how, it is helpful to know a bit more about creativity.
When you are trying to develop a creative solution to a difficult
problem, you need to find some knowledge that you already have that will
help you take a new approach. That means that a big part of creativity
is allowing the problem to remind you of things you know about that
probably come from another area of your expertise and that are relevant
to your current problem. In short, you are seeking a good analogy.
For example, imagine a company that is trying to come up with a novel
approach to ridding farm fields of weeds. One way to look for a new
approach is to think of other industries that have tried to solve a
similar problem. That is hard to do, because you are most often reminded
of things that seem more directly relevant to the problem you’re
solving. If you are thinking about weeds and plants, roots, and soil,
then you will be reminded of other things you know about agriculture.
Generating creative ideas requires moving beyond the surface of the
problem and finding an essence to the problem that deemphasizes the
specific details. For example, you might characterize the central
problem with killing weeds as a problem of avoiding collateral damage.
After all, it isn’t hard to kill a weed. The difficulty is in killing
weeds without killing the desirable plants around it.
In order for this strategy to succeed, you need to find the right
description of the problem that will remind you of other things you know
that are like the problem you want to solve. It turns out that sleep
can help with that.
Your brain is active when you sleep. One of the things that happens
during sleep is that memories consolidate. That is, the things you were
exposed to during the day are solidified in memory. But not all aspects
of the events you experienced are retained. Often, many of the
extraneous details of a situation will be lost.
That means that after you sleep, your memory of the problem you are
solving will contain fewer surface elements and more essential elements
than it did when you first started thinking about it. When you return to
the problem after sleeping, your description of the problem will
retrieve different information from memory than it did before you slept.
In particular, you are much more likely to be able to find an analogy
after you have slept on a problem than you were before.
Just another benefit of getting a good night’s sleep.
For serving staples in the most underserved neighborhoods. When Jose Manuel Moller
moved as a student to a poor neighborhood in the outskirts of Santiago,
Chile, a few years ago, he found himself having to buy food staples
from tiny local shops. These came in small quantities, which is
affordable on a daily basis but works out to cost much more than larger
supermarket sizes in the long run. He calls this the "poverty tax," in
that low-income families are ultimately forced to pay more for less. His
solution: Algramo,
a vending machine that dispenses bulk staples including detergents,
rice, beans, and lentils. His company fills the vending machines and
installs them for free in small neighborhood stores, splitting profit
50-50 with shopkeepers, who can then compete with supermarkets. The
shorter supply chain cuts out the excess packaging, labeling, and
middleman, and products cost 40% less than the packaged versions on shop
shelves. Moller has installed 125 vending machines in Santiago in six
months, reaching an estimated 15,000 people. Algramo will soon expand to
Colombia, with plans to expand to all of Latin America within a decade. READ MORE
For growing a banking system in an under-the-mattress economy.
In Argentina, where spiraling inflation and widespread distrust in
banks means many people keep cash under their mattresses, the bank Banco
Galicia is bringing a new generation into the financial system. Its new
product, Galicia MOVE, launched in April for university students, and
counts 35,000 clients across Argentina so far. In a first for the
country, Banco Galicia is offering the product and all related services
100% digitally, which means users never have to go to a physical bank. A
mobile app allows users to send and receive money, administer spending,
save for special occasions, geolocate ATMs, and more. And customer
service is available through social networks. MOVE clients automatically
register with the Netherlands-based International Student Identity Card, which offers international student benefits for cardholders, such as travel and educational discounts.
For reaching out to the previously unreachable. As
Colombia works toward peace from a half-century of armed conflict, Lowe
SSP3 Colombia is helping lead Colombian guerrillas home from the jungle.
In 2014, the well-known ad agency launched an unprecedented campaign to
share hopeful stories of demobilized FARC fighters and the lives they
now lead after deserting. The campaign, which featured print, radio, and
video spots intended to reach active revolutionaries, was launched in
December in Algeciras, Huila, a small village that has historically been
a breeding ground for FARC fighters. In previous years, Lowe SSP3’s
campaigns brought Christmas to the FARC by placing holiday trees in the
jungle, and offered a path home by sending glowing plastic balls, filled
with gifts and messages from family, down rivers that the
revolutionaries typically travel. Meanwhile, the agency also handles
large global consumer clients like Unilever.
For being global brands’ Latin American translator.
This Mexico City-based consultant is a risk evangelist—a much-needed
perspective in Latin America, where many large brands are still
marketing traditionalists. And the message has caught on. Last year,
Insitum grew 30% and opened a new office in Spain—its first in Europe
and its seventh overall. And it completed over 180 innovation projects
for more than 50 companies across Latin America, in both the public and
private sectors. Rather than introducing shiny new products for clients,
Insitum invests heavily in research and training. Months spent inside
the government of the city of Buenos Aires, for example, led to the
production of a comprehensive innovation training toolkit for city
officials, spotlighting where design thinking and improved processes
could better impact citizen experience.
For going its own way and encouraging everyone to do the same.
This clothing brand, which has 36 stores across Brazil, has a history
of brazenly turning bad PR to its advantage. When, for example, a
notorious drug trafficker was photographed wearing one of its shirts,
the company hired the guy for a campaign. And when one of its stores was
burglarized, it used the footage in ads. It has pulled out of Fashion
Week events, announcing that its clothing is made for real people. In
September, it unveiled a different kind of rebellious attitude: Its
campaign Rebels With Causes highlighted "rebels"—heads of NGOs,
transformational social organizations, and so forth—who helped their
community. And the celebration helped Reserva bring in an estimated
revenue of $79 million.
For providing safe rides in unsafe cities. It’s
dangerous to hail a taxi on the streets of many Latin American capitals,
so Tappsi was built to deliver safety as the paramount feature. It
developed its own protocols and security filters to screen every driver,
created a secure chat function so that drivers and passengers can
coordinate without exchanging phone numbers, and enables users’ family
and friends to track their taxis. The company launched in Bogotá in
2012, and now has more than 1 million users. Last year it expanded to
Peru and Ecuador.
For a natural solution to a natural problem. Chile
was hit by an 8.8 earthquake in 2010. A tsunami followed, destroying the
city of Constitución. Architecture firm Elemental was given just 100
days to come up with a master plan for the city’s reconstruction, which
would also provide protection against future natural disasters—not only
tsunamis, but also seasonal flooding. Elemental has become known in
Chile for the design of flexible and beautiful low-cost housing for
low-income families, under the idea that "the city is a shortcut to
equality." The firm works on housing, public space, transportation, and
infrastructure projects. Elemental delivered a natural solution:
planting a forest that would protect the city from future floods. The
forest would require overtaking private land along the city’s riverbank,
which created a host of political problems, but they’ve since been
resolved: Today, four years after the earthquake, the master plan is
being implemented, and Constitución will hopefully be safer for it.
For helping mom and pop run their store. Every time a
chain convenience store opens in Latin America, 35 mom-and-pop shops
disappear. That isn’t necessarily because shoppers prefer the chains,
though. As Mexico-based Virtual Market has discovered, it’s often
because small shops simply aren’t set up to compete. Virtual Market
offers these stores a free tablet-register combination that helps manage
their daily business, including features that take stock of items, make
direct product orders, process bill payments, and even process
customers’ credit and debit card purchases. In return, Virtual Market
earns commission from product companies, like Coca-Cola and Unilever,
for coordinated bulk sales. So far, 1,000 terminals have been installed;
85% of stores kept them. This year, Virtual Market hopes to expand
throughout Latin America and into Asia.
For helping even the most disconnected farmers connect with their land.
Tambero is the first free, web-based global system for dairy cattle
farming, beef cattle, and agriculture, and is used in over 150
countries. (It was developed in rural Argentina; tambero means
"dairy farmer" in some countries in the Southern Cone, including
Argentina and Uruguay.) The software helps farmers around the globe,
even in very isolated places, use technology to improve production
yields. Users can manage animals directly from the field with a phone,
tablet, or notebook, and see comparative reports, plus use QR codes to
manage land parcels and display them with satellite images. In 2014,
Tambero launched an API that allows other agritech startups to integrate
with the Tambero platform and offer a wider suite of products. Late
last year, Facebook invited Tambero to be part of its Internet.org program in Colombia, giving Colombians free and easy access to the app, even without a data plan.
For bringing a rare sustainable approach to mining.
This 60-year-old Chilean mining and steel holding company is being
lauded for its pioneering sustainability in, of all places, a new mine.
Its new iron-ore mining site, Cerro Negro Norte, launched in December,
and uses 100% desalinated seawater to help preserve fresh water in the
notoriously dry Atacama Desert region. It also uses solar energy for
certain hours of the day. Ore and water are transported from the mine to
the port via a concentrated pipeline instead of on roads, which means
less impact on infrastructure and the surrounding environment. According
to the company, the solar-powered plant, which will produce 4 million
metric tons of iron per year, will prevent more than 135,000 tons of
carbon-dioxide emissions annually, equivalent to removing more than
30,000 cars from the road.
"In most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again."
That quote was made famous by Harvard psychologist William James in his 1890 book The Principles of Psychology,
and is believed to be the first time modern psychology introduced the
idea that one’s personality becomes fixed after a certain age.
More than a century since James’s influential text, we know that,
unfortunately, our brains start to solidify by the age of 25, but that,
fortunately, change is still possible after. The key is continuously
creating new pathways and connections to break apart stuck neural
patterns in the brain.
"It turns out that we, as human beings, develop neural pathways, and
the more we use those neural pathways over years and years and years,
they become very stuck and deeply embedded, moving into deeper portions
of the brain," she tells Fast Company. By the time we get to
the age of 25, we just have so many existing pathways that our brain
relies on, it’s hard to break free of them.
One reason why is because our brain is "inherently lazy" and will
always "choose the most energy efficient path" if we let it, writes Tara Swart, a senior lecturer at MIT, in her book Neuroscience for Leadership.
While you’ll never learn and change as quickly and easily as you once
could, you’re also not stuck with your thought patterns from your
childhood. In a recent class
taught to senior management and executives, Ancona and Swart discussed
ways in which people can keep their brain agile—and become a better
leader. Below are the steps required to create new connections between
neurons.
If you want to keep your brain agile, you’re going to have to home in
on parts of the brain that you use less frequently, says Swart. And
this new task has to be so challenging that you’ll feel mentally and
physically exhausted after practicing the task because you’re forcing
your brain to work in ways it's unaccustomed to. This is the only way
you’ll actually grow new neurons strong enough to connect with existing
neurons, forming new pathways.
For those who want to stimulate their brain, Swart recommends
learning a new language or musical instrument. Or any "energy intensive"
challenge that requires "conscious processing of inputs, conscious
decision making, complex problem solving, memorizing complex concepts,
planning, strategizing, self-reflection, regulating our emotions and
channeling energy from them, exercising self-control and willpower,"
Swart says.
You can’t just learn a new language or musical instrument and never
think about it again; you’ll forget what you learned. New connections
and pathways are fragile, says Swart, and only through repetition and
practice can those connections be established enough to become habitual
or default behaviors.
She writes in Neuroscience:
"Depending on the complexity of the activity, [experiments have
required] four and a half months, 144 days or even three months for a
new brain map, equal in complexity to an old one, to be created in the
motor cortex."
During this time, motivation, willpower, and self-control are necessary to achieve your goal.
Without the right environment to enable change, your brain won’t be
able to focus on what’s needed to create new neurons. Instead, your
brain will be stuck in survival mode, meaning it will choose to travel
along pathways it’s already familiar with to mitigate risk.
"[The brain’s] need [to survive] focuses attention on the sources of
danger and on trying to predict where the next threat will appear, on
escape or full frontal battle rather than on an innovative or creative
solution, on avoiding risk rather than managing it towards a new suite
of products, market or way of doing business," Swart writes. "And of
course, the most important part of our environment is other people and
our relationship with them."
To have the energy to keep your brain flexible and "plastic," Ancona
and Swart say your physical health needs to be in good shape, especially
since your brain sucks up such a massive amount of your body’s
nutrients. The hydration, nutrients, and rest you need are even more
important as your brain learns, unlearns, and relearns behavioral
patterns.
"Your brain will send its resources through the blood supply to areas
that it can tell that you’re focusing attention and concentration on,"
Swart tells Fast Company, "or areas that you have a desire to put more energy into."
Car-hailing apps are ubiquitous in the U.S., but big data and the sharing economy have yet to catch on in Latin America. Andrés Gutierrez—cofounder of the popular taxi-hailing app Tappsi—says
change isn't far down the road. Since it can still be dangerous to hail
a taxi in many capital cities in Latin America, safety will be key.
"Brands that already have consumer trust will start making inroads into
this new transportation feature," says Gutierrez. Tappsi screens every
driver and provides a secure chat interface that allows drivers and
passengers to communicate without sharing phone numbers, and lets users'
family and friends track their taxis. And by analyzing user data,
Tappsi can recognize which passengers have similar destinations—allowing
them to pair up and improve efficiency in an industry where cabs are
only utilized for 60 percent of the time they spend on the road.
Plus, Gutierrez says that the varied cultural landscape of Latin
America means that successful travel apps will have to think locally
rather than globally. "While a passenger hailing a cab in São Paolo
might be looking to find the quickest cab, a passenger in Lima is surely
hustling the price with the driver—not to mention how a passenger in
Quito is not looking for price or quickness, but just that the driver is
legit and he is not going to be robbed," says Gutierrez. "That's how
diverse the consumer needs are from market to market."
Due to spiraling inflation and widespread distrust in banks, many
people in Argentina still keep cash under their mattress. Add to this
the stiff financial regulations in Latin America and the huge amount of
paper money still in circulation there, and Latin America may seem like
the last place for a financial innovation boom.
But Banco Galicia
is trying to give consumer finance in the region a digital makeover.
"Millennials have new ways of socializing and relating to banks," says
Emiliano Porciani, a marketing manager at Banco Galicia. "They think
that banking is one of the sectors with more disruption opportunities.
In order to acquire and retain these customers, banks will constantly
have to innovate through new technologies."
Take, for example, Galicia MOVE—Argentina's first all-digital banking
services suite that's targeted to university students. Launched last
spring, the service counts 35,000 clients across Argentina, and allows
users to send and receive money, track their spending, and more.
Porciani predicts that mobile payment systems already permeating the
North American financial space, like Square and Apple Pay, will
accelerate innovation in Latin America, forcing big banks to finally
adapt.
Luis Arnal's Mexico City-based consultancy Insitum
has worked magic for more than 50 public and private-sector companies
across Latin America, spotlighting where design thinking and improved
processes could better impact citizen experience. (Insitum is
responsible for nearly 200 innovation projects in the region.) From that
unique vantage point, Arnal sees an opportunity for the private sector
to correct some of Latin American's governmental shortcomings.
"Due to lousy, bureaucratic, and corrupt governments, private
companies and entrepreneurs will take over a lot of government
functions, sparking huge opportunities to profit from a vast population
that won't mind paying to get the service they deserve—mostly in health
care, education, energy, and finance," he says.
Arnal also predicts Latin American governments will finally take
steps toward forming a single trade bloc that includes Venezuela and
Cuba, allowing Latin America to compete with other regions. This
includes a pan-legalization of marijuana to reduce criminal activity and
provide better conditions for medium-sized businesses to prosper, he
says.
Latin America has the fastest rate of smartphone adoption in the
world, and the first computer many in the region will ever have access
to will be a smartphone. As the suburbs of megacities like Mexico City
and Buenos Aires continue to grow, Tambero
founder and CEO Eddie Rodríguez von der Becke says a newfound access to
technology and the Internet could cause the popularity of local apps to
skyrocket.
"These new suburbanites will have access to technology and Internet
through mobile but will not be accustomed to the formal economy or
traditional financial systems," he says. "[Streaming services] PopCorn
Time and Cuevana were local piracy inventions which became massive
because the majority of the population does not have credit cards to pay
for Netflix or iTunes, or they were considered expensive in relation to
the local incomes." Plus, a new generation of mobile users could create
an ideal environment for a new digital currency, he says.
Meanwhile, smartphones will help even the most remote farmers connect
with their land. Developed in rural Argentina, Tambero is the first
free, web-based global system for agriculture. Used in more than 150
countries, it helps farmers everywhere improve yields by enabling them
to manage animals and see comparative reports through a phone or tablet.
While farms in Brazil and Argentina act as "massive production
machines," von der Becke says poor, small-scale farmers in Bolivia and
Ecuador will be able to harness new ideas and techniques from the
Internet as well as access a new market for delivering their goods.
Latin America is ready for its own Occupy movement, says Jose Manuel Moller—the founder of Algramo,
a startup that makes affordable staples like rice and detergent
available to poor, remote communities in Chile via vending machines. A
large millennial population and a trend toward consumer empowerment in
the region are about to create fireworks for Latin America, he says.
Millions of Latin American families live on less than $5 a day, which
has contributed to a culture of intense effort and resilience. That
combined with the momentum created by a new startup mentality in the
region will lead to thousands of local solutions to everyday challenges
that are able to scale up, predicts Moller.
"Because LatAm is one of the most unequal places in the world, we
have stopped believing in the solutions that only look for economic
growth, and we are aware that it's time to find solutions to the
inequality problems," he says. "This will change the idea that the
maximization of shareholder utilities is the priority, and will put
first the solution of social and environmental problems." As a result,
Moller sees plenty of B corporations and social-good companies cropping
up in the region's near future.
What do buying coffee beans, making an investment, and choosing a
doctor have in common? They’re all forms of shopping. In each case,
customers follow predictable processes for finding, evaluating, and
narrowing options. If you understand your customer's shopping journey,
you can design your product with the right messages in the right place.
And that can guide customers towards selecting your product over
competitors, and more importantly, guide you to building a product
that’s a perfect fit for your customer.
At Google Ventures, shopping funnels have become a secret weapon in our design work. We’ve used them with startups as varied as Blue Bottle Coffee, One Medical, and CircleUp.
Once we know the questions that customers ask and in what order, we
design the messaging and functionality to match. Here’s how creating a
shopping funnel that syncs with your business can serve as a roadmap for
great design.
How People Really Shop
Right after the dotcom bust, I took a job as a researcher at
Walmart.com. Over the next several years, it was my responsibility to
study how people shopped for everything, from electronics to apparel,
from furniture to engagement rings. I began to see what I call "shopping
funnels" everywhere. Now at Google Ventures, I often conduct research sprints prior to our design sprints. It turns out that the most efficient and effective way to organize the results is often in the form of a shopping funnel.
Purchase funnels, customer journeys, and decision trees
aren’t new ideas. But at Google Ventures we apply them to things that
people don’t usually think of as "shopping" (such as finding a physician
or choosing an API). Any kind of shopping is really about a series of
choices. And I’ve found that most shopping funnels are very simple,
often no more than five steps.
Depending on the product or service, the details of shopping funnels
vary considerably, but I’ve noticed a general pattern in consumer
decision-making, and it goes something like this (if you think back to
your last big shopping decision, this may sound familiar):
1. Discover: Gather options and establish criteria
Customers first encounter your product when they’re still looking at
competitors. They’re asking questions like "What’s available? What are
my requirements and criteria? What sites are credible sources for
information?" Unless they have a lot of previous experience with
products like yours, customers first have to get the lay of the land and
learn the lingo. And if you’re targeting newbies rather than experts,
you may need to help them get over that hump. Bringing important details
to the forefront that help them determine their evaluation criteria.
Then understand how customers perceive your product compared to your
competitors. You can see how customers look at your and competitor sites
by doing quick and dirty user research. For your domain, figure out
what kinds of images, tone, messaging, and visual design signal the
appropriate level of expertise, reliability, and trust.
. 2. Select: Make a short list
Next, customers choose a set of options that meet their initial
screening. With the pool refined, they start looking more closely.
3. Dig in: Drill into each product
Once customers consider your product worthy of consideration, they’ll
drill into the details. "Does the product or service meet my criteria?"
Make it easy for customers to filter and compare options based on the
criteria that matter most to them. Your job is to figure out which
details help them narrow their options, and then make those details dead
simple to find.
4. Validate: What are people saying?
When customers are close to a purchase decision, they look for outside
confirmation or red flags. "What do the reviewers say? What do my
friends say?" Search for reviews of your own product to see what your
customers are seeing. Adding customers’ logos or third-party reviews,
ratings, and testimonials to your own marketing can be a huge
credibility boost. iTunes shows Rotten Tomatoes
reviews (good or bad) right on each movie page. For some products,
fostering an active community on your site or on related forums (such as
Reddit or Stack Overflow) reassures potential customers that they’ll be
in good company.
5. Try: What’s it really like?
In many instances, customers want to try a product or service before
they really commit. By kicking the tires, they can decide whether it
makes sense for them—"Does it fit my habits, lifestyle, or the way I do
my work?"—and whether it’s any good. If it’s not feasible for your
customers to try it themselves, explore ways to give them an accurate
preview of how it looks and works in real life.
Design by Shopping Funnel
We’ve used shopping funnels to design the websites of all types of companies. For example, Blue Bottle Coffee
wanted to improve their online store and make it better match the
excellent hospitality of their cafes. Their shopping funnel revealed
exactly how a customer makes online coffee bean purchase decisions:
taste is more important than origin.
Now on their website, Blue Bottle now describes the coffee’s taste upfront and in language that conveys their nuanced expertise.
We applied the same logic to a very different kind of company. One Medical
is a network of primary care doctors’ offices in several cities across
the US. They wanted to sign up more patients who came to their web site
looking for new doctors. To inform our design sprint, I studied how
people find and choose their physicians. The resulting shopping funnel
revealed that the first questions related to whether the doctor a)
accepted new patients and this shopper’s insurance, b) was in a
convenient location, c) and was of the preferred gender. For the
website design, One Medical put that detailed criteria front and center, so patients wouldn’t have to dig across multiple pages.
In some cases, seemingly minor shopping decisions can have a big ripple effect. CircleUp
is a marketplace where investors can find small, fast-growing consumer
goods companies (think vitamin makers who just scored a distribution
deal with a national drugstore chain). Faced with a long list of
potential investments, those investors want to quickly identify the
companies that merit further diligence. By using a shopping funnel,
CircleUp was able to match their design to the investors’ shopping
process. Because the investors care so much about the product itself,
CircleUp decided to make actual product photos the most prominent
feature of their browse page rather than just the companies’ logos. And they surfaced three key facts that investors might care most about on each company.
Make a
Funnel in 5 Steps:
1.Find
people with recent "shopping" experience (who have made a purchase or decision) in
your category.
2.Listen to
their stories. Ask them to
tell you the story of their shopping process. What did they like and dislike
about past experiences? How did they figure out what’s available?
3.Watch them
shop. After you’ve heard their
stories, watch participants shop online for the service (while thinking aloud).
What information is most important? What’s missing? What content, imagery, and
messaging resonate most? Why?
4.Compare
and contrast. Ask your
participant to compare and contrast several products describing the pros and
cons of each.
5.Sketch
your funnel. Make your
shopping funnel something that’s easy for your own team to understand, sketch a
simple diagram.
Click through to these websites and in each design, you’ll see the
shopping funnel at work, helping prospective customers answer their
questions quickly—and in the right order.
Most good shopping funnels start with customer interviews. Running
interviews isn’t that hard, and it doesn’t have to take a long time. I
recommend using our Google Ventures recipe for a four-day research sprint.
Your shopping funnel should evoke a story of how visitors will interact
with your product. Where are they coming from? What comparisons are
they making? How will they judge whether you have what they want? What
info will they look for first? Second? And so on.
After you’ve outlined your shopping funnel, it’s time to put it to
work. Structure your design and organize your information to match the
questions customers will naturally have. Knowing what people are looking
for as they make decisions and designing to match is a recipe for a
happy customer.
Have you used shopping funnels for product design? We'd love to hear about it. Tweet us at @GVDesignTeam or @mmargolis.
Being in green
spaces makes you physically and mentally healthier. But how long do you
have to stay out there? And what even counts as nature, anyway?
Doctors and researchers are now realizing that getting outside
is more and more important to our physical, mental, and emotional
health. It’s why we flock to beaches, mountains, and forests for
vacations—and feel better after (the not working may also help). There
is now even an informal term—"nature deficit disorder"—that describes the growing absence of nature in our lives and the damage it does.
But how much nature access do we really need to gain the positive
benefits, which include improved mood, reduced allergies, and even lower
rates of diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease? And what is
nature really? Will a few manicured athletic fields do, or do we need
forests, birds singing, and dew falling? li Inay via Unspash
This isn’t an abstract question. In the next 30 years, more than 70%
of the world’s populations will live in cities, and so humanity’s access
to green space may be inherently more confined. City planners and
public health officials are working somewhat blind. They know green
space is good, but with limited budgets, space, and competing interests,
it’s hard to make the case without hard numbers about the extent of
public health improvements they might expect from creating a new park,
for example.
The problem is that despite more than 30 years of research,
scientists don’t know exactly what sort of "dose" of nature we need.
Now, some researchers are encouraging the field to shift gears and focus
on making practical recommendations. Mr. Marco via Unspash
"We think it’s time for a new phase of research that really starts to
unpick how often, how long for, and what types of nature we need to
experience to help improve our health and well-being," says Danielle Shanahan, a postdoctoral research fellow at Australia’s University of Queensland who published a new paper in the journal BioScience on the issue. Amanda Sandlin via Unsplash
"This kind of information will, of course, help us plan healthier,
happier cities. However, it will also help us understand whether ‘nature
prescriptions’ could provide an effective treatment for a range of
health issues."
These kinds of prescriptions could range from a visit to a secluded
forest or simply a view of greenery outside an office window. They could
include "green exercise," such as a jog or walk in a park. But how long
would you have to exercise to get nature-based improvements? One study
done in 2010 showed the greatest mood improvements from green exercise
occurred within very short, five-minute periods. So, good news, maybe we
only need a short jaunt. Few other studies have been done to answer
questions like these.
Shanahan envisions that one day national governments might have
guidelines for nature, just like the USDA offers dietary guidelines to
improve nutrition today. A doctor, she says, might prescribe a certain
number of park visits a week to treat depression or high blood pressure.
To get to this point, however, long-term studies and potentially even
clinical trials will be needed. "All we need now are field trials that
take a close and critical look at what types of nature can help, and how
often and for how long we need to visit," she says.
After Hillary Clinton's logo broke the Internet, Moving Brands considered a new, logo-less approach in a five-day design sprint.
When Hillary Clinton announced her bid for the 2016 presidential election, the Internet freaked out—mostly over her campaign logo.
Rumored to be designed by Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, the logo was
called everything from an ode to the hospital sign to an Easter egg
revealing Clinton’s true, right-leaning agenda.
We challenged Moving Brands—a
global creative agency with AAA clients like Sony, Google, HP, and
Netflix—to rethink the Clinton’s approach in an impossible project.
While a new brand might be built over the course of months, even years
spent going back and forth with a client, we gave them just five days to
remake Clinton's brand in a small-team design sprint between their
London and San Francisco offices. Despite the constraints, they managed
to create an evocative conversation piece—a political campaign without a
logo—that offers a fascinating peek into the branding process.
Step One: Get To Know Your Client
To get started, Moving Brands brought together a few designers, a
copywriter, a brand and communications expert, and a project manager.
They were supported by whomever else was available each day.
Usually, the agency's designers would meet with a client to get a
deep, nuanced perspective on their work. They’d have several
conversations with various members of the company, conduct interviews,
and hold workshops. That would inform everything to come.
"The biggest difference was that we didn't have any client input nor
feedback so we have to really research and study what Hillary has been
saying publicly and read various articles to understand her story,"
explains creative director Aki Shelton.
"We love collaborating with our clients and most of the time, many of
the answers are in our conversation with them—we’re just there to help
identify and define them."
Step Two: Research and Form A Point Of View
The designers ran several internal polls and interviews (and did a
lot of Googling) to form what they call a "point of view," or, in
essence, what would become Clinton’s branded take on the world. This
point of view encompassed everything from her views on debt, abortion,
and education.
Step Three: Define The Brand Story, "Make It Real"
With a Hillary Clinton persona in mind, the team built the brand
story. In this case, it was a first-person letter from Clinton herself.
The letter proposed that we unite on the causes that we all care about,
it imagined the world we would want, and it suggested that citizens come
together to make that world a reality. "Make it real" became the
punchline of the story—the unifying thread of the entire brand.
But is "make it real" really unique enough to be a brand, let alone help Clinton stand out?
"I would normally agree [that it’s too cliche], but we’re talking
about politics, where the concept of reality is shockingly rare," copy
director Michael Meyer
says. "We all have coworkers and family members with wildly different
points of view on political issues, but we’re able to live, work, and
talk together ... the media often portrays America as completely
polarized, but in our experience, that’s just not the case. Hillary is
the most centrist of all of the candidates, and we believe that her
brand should reflect that."
Step Four: Decide On A Name
Any recognizable brand—whether it’s a company or a product—needs the
right name. But in the case of Hillary Clinton, Moving Brands decided
that name shouldn’t be "Hillary Clinton." Instead, it should just be
"Hillary."
"Everyone in the studio was referring to her as Hillary, which at
first seemed inconsequential until we started talking about how much of a
differentiator it was. It’s a huge and rare advantage to be on a first
name basis with America," Meyer explains. "Additionally, it helps to
separate her from the baggage of previous Clinton administrations.
Hillary Clinton was First Lady—Hillary is the Senator/Secretary of
State/Presidential Candidate. Once we got to 'make it real,' using her
first name became a no-brainer to be more relatable, more
approachable—more real."
Steps Five and Beyond: The Visual Brand
With the brand’s name and story intact, the designers turned their
attention to all that visual stuff that most laypeople would call "the
brand," like the typography, imagery, colors, and, of course, the logo.
The new campaign’s boldest decision was to ditch the stereotypical
red, white, and blue of the American flag, which, while traditional (in
fact, the team came across some pins that FDR had used in 1932 that
looked "exactly the same" as what we use today), seemed too tired for a
progressive candidate. Instead, they opted for an electric red and
blue—a contemporary remake halfway between an American flag and a 1980s
seafoam and pink color palette.
"It was also how we [tacitly] addressed the fact that Hillary has a
good chance of being the first female president," Meyer explains.
"Historically, that’s significant, but Hillary does not play the gender
card. The palette is unisex, but warm and optimistic."
Imagery of the brand was carefully curated. Photos had to have just
the right tone: "real but not gritty, posed but not preconceived."
Airbrushing, even for the 67-year-old candidate herself, wouldn’t be in
line with the "make it real" tagline playing itself out in photography.
Ditching The Logo
Ultimately, the team decided that the photo-driven visual branding,
anchored by Hillary herself, would be more powerful than any one
campaign logo.
"There’s no symbol in the world that could ever have as much equity
as Hillary’s name and face. She’s an icon in her own right," Meyer
explains. "All a brand needs is a consistent visual design element that
makes it instantly recognizable in any application.
So to unify the visual brand, the team created what they call an
H-Frame system. Yes, it’s built from the "H" in Hillary, and it
leverages the brands electric blue and red colors to frame any images
and text in the campaign.
"We didn't want this to be called a logo. It's not just about the one
symbol to represent Hillary's brand. We created a system and voice to
represent Hillary's brand instead," Shelton says. "Brand is about story,
aligned touch points, and how you connect with your audience. We saw
all the conversations on the Internet where everyone was criticizing the
existing logo (symbol), and we thought that was totally the wrong
conversation. We should have asked, 'What is her story? Why should
everyone care?' rather than, 'Why an H and an arrow?’"
With just a few clicks, you can help make a map
that will assist aid workers in getting to those in need.
For relief workers in Nepal after the massive
earthquake on April 25, one of the challenges is just knowing where to go: Most
roads and buildings don't exist on a map. But that's a situation that's
changing, hour by hour, as thousands of volunteers around the world build a
detailed digital atlas of the earthquake zone
as part of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).
Volunteers use aerial images from satellites to
mark open spaces where helicopters or planes might land with supplies,
highlight streets between towns and villages, and outline buildings that aid
groups can use to guess where victims might be. Using OpenStreetMap
technology—known as the "Wikipedia of maps"—they build continuously updated
maps that can be used online or downloaded into navigation devices.
72 hours
after, thousands of amateurs have mapped something like 30,000 buildings.
Just two hours after the earthquake hit, the
organization's coordinators in the U.S. were getting emails from a partner
group in Nepal, Kathmandu Living Lab. "They laid out
districts and villages that needed mapping because they were getting all of
these reports of awful damage and casualties," says Blake Girardot, activation coordinator of HOT and vice
president of the organization's board.
Thanks to some foresight, the group had already
worked on maps of most of the capital city. "Half of our mission is
response to crises like this, so when something awful happens we can jump on it
and start giving them data they need," says Girardot. "But the other
half of the equation is preparing for these disasters. It's not a mystery where
vulnerable places are. In places with earthquakes, floods, drought, or
political conflict, we can start identifying those places ahead of time and
start doing mapping before the crisis happens."
Since Nepal was identified as a vulnerable location
by the World Bank and other organizations, HOT began mapping Nepal a few years
ago, and helped set up Kathmandu Living Lab to work on the project locally. The
group is working quickly to map out the remaining areas of the disaster zone.
"Seventy two hours after this happened, thousands
of people who are amateurs at this or brand new to it have mapped something
like 30,000100,000 buildings," says Girardot.
The group is looking for more volunteers. It's
possible to learn what to do—and start helping—in less than an hour. "If
you can use a computer and mouse, after 45 minutes, you can really be
contributing data that's literally saving lives," he says.
Thanks to the number of people contributing, even
an hour or two of work can make a difference. After new volunteers mark out
data points, more experienced volunteers go in and add more details, like
whether a road is paved or unpaved. Later, volunteers on the ground will make
the final corrections on each map.
"That initial data is super useful—it's 80% of
what we need," Girardot says. "Then we'll spend the next weeks
refining it back to very high-quality data."
They're
asking you to map wells because there's only water in every couple of villages.
As volunteers work, they start to feel a connection
with the people on the ground. "You start to realize what's
important—they're asking you to map wells because there's only water in every
couple of villages, or you're mapping pharmacies because people need malaria
meds. You feel like you've spent time in these places after spending hours
digitizing aerial imagery. You end up with a connection with people you didn't
know anything about."
The network of volunteers is always growing.
"It's not for everyone—truth be told, it can get boring, since you're just
drawing squares for as long as you can do it until you want to quit,"
Girardot says. "For some people, it really clicks and they keep doing it
and learn more—that's what happened to me. Five minutes in, I loved it. It's
not one of these things where I'm volunteering and I don't know if it helps or
maybe it just makes me feel better. Organizations like the Red Cross are asking
us and begging us for more."
"Any mapping that people can contribute
helps," he adds. "It matters. It's surprising that it matters so
much, but it matters. People can feel good about half an hour of mapping, or 10
minutes. Every click turns into a data point. You do 20 clicks, that's three
buildings that nobody knew about, nobody had access to until you put it in
there. Now suddenly those things are on the map."
