Let’s face it, the essential ingredients comprising daily life in the Digital Age are in a state of head-spinningly rapid change, we’re often just racing to keep up, unaware of the impact the onslaught of the new. Sometimes it’s hard not to wonder what’s been lost now that we have unlimited distractions, a highly curated set of entertainment options and no space for boredom. What are the unforeseen implications of the increasingly widespread adoption of the internet of things, artificial intelligence and the shared economy? How do we create a more inclusive and equitable environment for everyone who steps into the digital domain?
These were just a few of the thorny and thought-provoking questions addressed within the vast offerings of the 2015 SXSW Interactive program. In fact, this year’s lineup was so densely packed with timely, topical and totally useful panels, workshops and mentoring meet-ups, navigating the offerings was an exercise in content curation, information architecture and design thinking. Because so much of the subject matter covered within the festival’s many panels and lectures is so indisputably germane to the Art Center community, we attended the festival targeting the events most Art Center-relevant events, which we’ll recap to you in the form of key takeaways parceled out within a series of blog posts over the next three days.
The information architecture and design thinking was front and center in our first session, entitled: A Frank Lloyd Wright Approach to Design. This panel was nothing if not an object lesson in great headline writing: Every seat in Google interaction designer, name Kent Eisenhuth’s solo presentation was packed. You’d be hard pressed to find a creative of any description who wouldn’t want to source design principals from the master of organic architecture.
The substance of his talk was interesting but not exactly revelatory. He assembled an attractive deck featuring high quality photographs of Wright’s signature structures, pointing out his commitment to merging form and function into buildings that address and reflect inhabitants’ needs with an elegant simplicity that belies their status as functional art.
Of course, it’s one thing to aim for bringing the Wright stuff to any design task. It’s another to create an app or device that’s as simultaneously innovative and inviting as, say, the Robbie House in Chicago. But the value in Eisenhuth’s talk resided simply in offering a built-world analogy to digital design. “Think of the devices we’re designing as the land where the design will live,” he said. “We take our design cues from the device and make our aesthetic decisions from there.”
We then made our way through the throng of swag-hawker and swag-haulers crowding the Convention Center’s main thoroughfare connecting the trade show booths and demos with the more substantive offerings happening inside its many exhibit halls. That buffer was helpful in shifting gears to the much more serious subject-matter of the day’s keynote conversation between Fast Company Editor in Chief, Bob Safian and Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia.
It quickly becomes clear that the Saudi Princess, who was ranked number one on Fast Company’s list of Most Creative People in Business, epitomizes the social entrepreneurial spirit with innovative programs that have proven as profitable as they are paradigm shifting. As the CEO of her family’s high-end department store, Harvey Nichols, Reema set out to change the culture of retail by shifting the balance within the all male ranks of her makeup counter attendants to include women cosmetologists. This was a radical act, given that Saudis were so unaccustomed to interacting with female clerks (and vice versa) that she created private rooms for her new employees to ply their trade in relative privacy. The program was a huge hit among customers, many of whom were excited and relieved to tap the expertise of fellow women (many of whom worked in full face and head covering) in this uniquely intimate retail interaction.
“I was thinking, ‘How do we impact the store’s bottom line by training these women,’” recalled the Princess. “And once we did, our sales shot through the roof.”
With her ground-breaking program of putting women to work firmly in place, Reema has since stepped down as the store’s CEO and moved onto more comprehensive socially innovative initiatives, including Think Academy, which offers a comprehensive training program designed to equip Saudi women with the competency and confidence that can be applied either the working world or their duties in the home. “Should you choose to work, we’ll offer you options,” she said. “Should you choose not to work, you’re now an extremely capable person. To me the mother at home is your COO. After kids she’s procurement. If she’s got staff that’s HR.”
Reema came to SXSW to announce her next ambitious endeavor: 10KSA, a massive breast cancer awareness campaign centered around an all-day, all-woman gathering on October 24th in Riyadh, where 10,000 women will gather to form the largest human pink ribbon in history. Beyond breaking Guinness records, the point of the event is to empower women to seize control of their health in a society where talking about certain body parts is taboo.
“Our message is not exclusively breast cancer it’s a circle of hope,” said Reema. “If you stand still, you give people the power to push you. If you keep walking they have to follow you.”
The final panel of the day delivered a distinct change of pace from the heady concepts covered in the first two sessions to more stomach-centered ideas. Culinary entrepreneur and media provocateur David Chang, whose New York restaurant empire includes the venerable Momofuku, began with a scathing indictment of the ways tech has failed the food industry. “The POS systems available to restaurants are the worst,” Chang said, citing how Open Table doesn’t offer the functionality that would truly improve the dining experience, like a data cache cataloguing customers’ likes and dislikes and oenophilic tendencies. “The wine inventory should be integrated with the reservation system and everything a customer has ordered.”
Chang also sees a future where tech innovation will eliminate lines outside popular restaurants and elevate the role of failure to MVP status in the success of any culinary endeavor. “We want to utilize technology better to communicate our failures in the business to each other,” Chang said. “We are successful because we make the best mistakes. It’s a fuckup you can recover from. “
Still, for all his high tech future tripping, Chang takes a defiantly populist (and arguably analog) approach to developing and running his businesses. “I’m essentially what I call a ‘normavore,’” he said. “My next restaurant is only going to have two things on the menu: A spicy chicken sandwich and a healthy option. There’s no market research involved. It’s simply about what I want to eat.” He pauses a beat. “And what I want to eat is a spicy chicken sandwich.”
