I was surprised at the train station in Lucerne yesterday morning. There was a black man with another not far from him. They were dressed in smoking jackets and cylinder hats. They distributed flyers in the shape of a hand. I smiled when I read the claim: "Win a butler for a year".

This promotion was for Helsana, a Swiss insurance company. Usually, I find them boring. Ladies dressed in tight clothing giving away Coke Zero? Free toilet paper from folks in white at the Zurich main station? Usually, promotions live off freebies and are hardly inspired. Helsana does it differently with a free butler who takes care of your chores for one year.

It's a great promotion and it will probably be successful. I was amused and hopefully, others were as well. The campaign is simple, clear and the message aligns with what we associate with insurance— they look out for us when things go awry. The company collects customer information. At the very least, they grab the attention of those who don't submit the card.

I am not tempted enough by this lucrative prize.

In this article by Paul Saffo, he discusses the beginning of a new economic era that he calls the creator economy, originating from its predecessors producer economy and consumer economy. I like this particular juicy sentence: “Swayed by the messages of mass media, consumers discovered that, suddenly, their lives were incomplete without products they had never even known existed—things such as Saran Wrap, tail fins, TV dinners, transistor radios, and, of course, the hula hoop”. Mad Men, an award-winning TV series, gives an accurate glimpse into the consumer attitude of 1960’s America.

This animated information short about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico grabbed my attention. I enjoyed the increasingly eerie soundtrack as the clip progressed and the calm narration which contrasted with the severity of the accident (if you are hungry for more animation of the sort and need an expert on the field visit my friend Christian Eggenberger’s blog and his portfolio; he’s ready for your commissioned work).

If you love cats as much as I do then you will find the flying Nyan Cat endearing and slightly annoying. The rest will find it just annoying, but I hope that you appreciate the video as an example of the culture of remixing. The same idea in web development goes under the term Mashup (a compelling example is You Are Listening to Chicago). If neither of those sound experiences pleases your ears I hope Kid Cudi’s Pursuit of Happiness gives you the kick. I regret that the loop function was disabled (let most YouTube videos loop autoplay by following this URL structure: <www.youtube.com/v/kT_cp2x0qso&loop=1&autoplay=1>. Watch for the /v/, loop and autoplay attributes).

In a March 2010 supplement about service design in the Guardian, David Kester, Chief Executive, UK Design Council is quoted about the value of design to a company. He mentions Apple as a poster child that has been innovative since its early days because design plays a central role in its organization. Kester asserts that "technology is just ideas. Design is about taking those ideas and making them work for people."

Technology introduces new opportunities. Suddenly, things we thought impossible are possible. With the mobile phone, for example, any place has the potential to be a phone booth. Wherever we are, we can catch up with the well-being of the family cat or listen to our boss’s praise for the great project presentation. With Facebook, I don't need to ask my friends about their lives anymore. Their Facebook profile tells me when and where they ate, who they married, and what they think of recent elections. With Skype, long-distance relationships are maintained and people are hired. Technology increases the number of options available to us.

Technology is the raw material provided by engineers and computer programmers that designers build upon. They look at the new opportunity and ask "How can we refine that?" Once the technology is established, designers are hired to make it juicy and fun to use for all kinds of people—not just those who feel comfortable using a command-line interface.

And what's the next big technology? Maybe HTML 11 :).

Here is the definition of the word “idea” according to Apple's dictionary (my comments are in parenthesis):

1. a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action (That's what the word strategy implies as well.)
2. a concept or mental impression (Mental impressions are formed when a thought teams up with a sensation. A mental impression marks the moment when I have a sudden insight, and I connect two separate pieces which form a mental impression. I am clueless as to how the two meet each other, and that's why there remains something mystical about concept generation.)
3. an opinion or belief (An idea can't be backed up with evidence as it's directed towards the future. In the beginning, many ideas are mere beliefs. That's why there needs to be a culture of trust in an organization that wants to shine with its many ideas.)
4. a feeling that something is probable or possible (Feelings are experienced in the body. I believe that the body's role in idea generation is undervalued. Maybe theatrical improvisation is a way to tap into the body's idea reservoir. Also, the body's reaction towards a certain idea could inform us about how likely its implementation will succeed if we were willing to listen.)
5. the aim or purpose (Any idea attempts to achieve something. We learn more about which idea works and which doesn't by thinking about the aim or purpose.)
6. philosophy (in Platonic thought), an eternally existing pattern of which individual things in any class are imperfect copies (That's a very interesting take on the word. It's suggested that ideas are timeless and have always been there, and what we humans do with our work on earth is to add variations to the imperfect copies. That's a spiritual interpretation of the word.)
7. (in Kantian thought) a concept of pure reason, not empirically based in experience (I complement the word reason with fantasy and imagination. Again, the notion of not yet in existence is brought up again. Ideas are like thought inventions but, without their materialization, they don't live up to their true potential, and that's why ideation without materialization is not design.)

There is a facet of the word “idea” for each day of the week :).

There is a video in which Paola Antonelli tries to define good design. She mentions aspects that one might take into consideration in an attempt to define good design such as form, function, beauty (aesthetics), usability and energy efficiency (sustainability). She points out that these categories are all valuable, but don't account for the breadth of today’s design output. She suggests a heuristic that asks: "If the object didn't exist would you miss it? Is the object necessary"? In her definition design is supposed to add value to people's lives.

I find Antonelli's rule of thumb helpful; I believe that design ideally adds value to the world. This value may be emotional, functional or monetary. Antonelli acknowledges that design may not be functional, but rather emotional, like the juicer by Philippe Starck. I think that Antonelli's approach is useful to detect quality design that is also popular.

Nevertheless, there are limitations. To be missed a design artifact needs to be liked by people first. It needs the support either from critics like Antonelli who serve as gatekeeper to museums and magazines or it needs to find customers who openly celebrate the product, like in Apple's case (or a rather silent mass that appreciates the product without being necessarily aware of it, like the potato peeler). Another factor comes into play: time. In order to be liked the object must have been given the chance to be liked; if it's around for some time it will have that chance.

In a specific case these two factors aren't given.

If you came up with a new design idea yesterday and wanted to predict how likely your design would be to pass the would-you-miss-it test then you need another tool. There is simply nothing to miss yet. What guiding principle would help to assess the quality of the few sketches and diagrams that encapsulate the concept?

I like to believe that it's about novelty and the connections the design builds with other artifacts. Is this thing adding something new to the multitude of objects? Is it original? Has it been done before? That's novelty. With connections I specifically mean the relationships the artifact establishes with other artifacts. Is the artifact helping another artifact function in a better way? Does it integrate many different features in one? Any new design concept builds upon other designs. Obviously, the two guiding concepts of novelty and connectedness are related with another.

There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to the definition of quality in design. Quality in design is not absolute or definite. Despite the difficulty to get a hold on quality in design, it's possible to fill the term with temporary meaning. The question becomes how useful a certain definition is given the purpose of the definition. If the purpose is to figure out whether or not a new design concept has any potential, the idea of novelty and how the concept connects with existing artifacts is more appropriate than the approach suggested by Antonelli.

Marketing is like the halo effect in psychology: if a person is good-looking then he must be competent as well. Marketing applies the same logic because it tries to persuade customers using aesthetics. Marketing is glossy brochures and TV ads that suggest that buying a car brings freedom and wonderful rides in the woods. Marketing makes me believe that every frozen pizza by Dr. Oetker tastes like the ones made in a restaurant in Naples.

In contrast to marketing, service design is not based on looks but on functionality; it tries to add value by actually working on the components that comprise the service. Service design works on the content and understands that branding isn't always the reason why customers choose one product over another.

When marketing folks and the steadily growing tribe of service designers join their efforts they can create meaningful services that appeal to a wider audience, just like the Groupon service that brings together small businesses with people who want to save money and the Airbnb (the service explained on Youtube) rental service that transforms every home listed on the website into a hotel room. The poster child of the design community, the iPod, iTunes, and Mac family by Apple, is another example how the two fields serve each other to accomplish the best possible user experience.