Digital Copycats: Escaping Plato's Cave (SXSW17)

DIGITAL COPYCATS:
Escaping
Plato’s CaveKarwai Ng and Will Anderson
#thecave@karwaing / @will_ander5on/ @willwai1

Hello,

DIGITAL COPYCATS
3
DIGITAL
COPYCATS
Digital
Copycats

Diagonals

Plants

Squiggly Lines

#thecave
Facebook is copying Instagram’s
copy of Snapchat’s Stories
@karwaing / @will_ander5on/ @willwai1

a cookie cutter approach to design

Stanford d.school IDEO
Design Council Gartner

The
Cave the
fire
the rough ascent
to daylight
diffused
daylight
the
roadway

Sunday Sketching by Christoph Niemann

#thecave
Kate tempest – europe is lost
It's the BoredOfItAll generation
The product of product placement and manipulation,
Shoot em up, brutal, duty of care,
Come on, new shoes.
Beautiful hair.
Bullshit saccharine ballads
And selfies
And selfies
And selfies
And here's me outside the palace of ME!

The Cave
the
fire
the rough ascent
to daylight
diffused
daylight
the
roadway
In a Plato’s Cave of digital
copycats, how do we escape?

THE WILLWAI EXPERIMENT

Objective
#thecave
to evolve our one-size-fits-all design
process and battle digital copycats

Best-in-class Ideation Value
💩 😪 🎐

We did an
experiment

London Hong Kong

The escapeROUTE 1 ROUTE 2 ROUTE 3
Below the
iceberg
Conscious
experimentation
Uncomfortable
design

#thecave
Below the
Iceberg

The forces at play below the polished surface of
products and services we use and experience today
Below the Iceberg

The Environmental Toll of a Netflix Binge
The data centers that support the Internet use a huge amount of energy.
@karwaing / @will_ander5on #thecave

• The invisible/Unseen
• Unintended consequences
• Context (Inflection points)
Below the Iceberg:

• Product/Service
The Iceberg Canvas • Customer

The world’s first conscious design tool / framework ®

We clearly didn’t know what an
iceberg looked like…
Mountain
#thecave
The Iceberg Canvas

HOW IT WORKS

#thecave
• Product: Deliveroo
Value Proposition Canvas• Designing For: Urban Professionals
Speedy food
delivery from
restaurants in your
neighbourhood
Easy online
booking system
Easy
Simple
Fast delivery
FOOD!
Food not
tasting good
Food doesn’t
arrive
Reliable service
Food
‘now’
Looking
fat
Search by post code
/ street name
Filter by food type /
other filters, incl.
family favourites or
gluten-free
Tasty food Convenience
Fast, reliable service
Large selection of
restaurants (20k+ in
London)
Trusted
Time to deliver
Try new
food
Food not
worth the money
Minimum charge
Convenient
Hassle-free
Visualise rider’s
journey
EnergyHydration
Unhealthy
Experience
Benefit
Features
Fears
Needs
Wants

Speedy food
delivery from
restaurants in your
neighbourhood
Easy online
booking system
Easy
Simple
Fast delivery
FOOD!
Food not
tasting good
Food doesn’t
arrive
Reliable service
Food
‘now’
Looking
fat
Search by post code
/ street name
Filter by food type /
other filters, incl.
family favourites or
gluten-free
Tasty food Convenience
Fast, reliable service
Large selection of
London)
Trusted
Time to deliver
Try new
food
Food not
worth the money
Minimum charge
Convenient
Hassle-free
Visualise rider’s
journey
EnergyHydration
Unhealthy
#thecave
Entitlement –
blame courier if
food doesn’t
arrive
Treat food as
something that
just comes to
you
Racial/econo
mical divide
between riders
and customers
Street
congestion
Diluting
people’s
relationships
with restaurants
Neighbourhood
supermarkets/off-
license etc. losing
business
Food waste
Packaging
waste
Rise of on-demand
economy
Forget how
to cook
Exposed to new
cuisines
Lose touch
with how food
is made
“Netflix and
chill”
People
socialise in
homes / not
restaurants
Free up time to
do other things
Being fat
Growing
impatience
Fuelling
Instagram
photo craze
Riders:
pressure to
deliver food on
time to avoid
penalties
People can’t
understand
food / menu
Only
restaurants who
can pay
commission fee
will be
represented
More work
for waiters /
chefs in
restaurants
Customers in
restaurants wait
longer
Individual
Societal
(S)TEEP
Experience
Benefit
Features
Fears
Needs
Wants

Speedy food
delivery from
restaurants in your
neighbourhood
Time to deliver Speedy delivery
Food doesn’t
arrive
Convenience
Food ‘now’
Food not tasting
good
Large selection of
London)
#thecave
• Product/Service

Speedy food
delivery from
restaurants in your
neighbourhood
Food doesn’t
arrive
Convenience
Food ‘now’
Food not tasting
good
Packaging
waste
Treat food as
something that just
comes to you
Neighbosupermarkets/
off-license
neighbourhood etc.
losing business
Diluting people’s
relationships with
restaurants
Racial/economical
divide between riders
and customers
Sense of
entitlement - if
food doesn’t
arrive blame on
courier
Street
congestion
Large selection of
London)
#thecave
• Product/Service

• Product/Service
The Iceberg Canvas
• Customer
Speedy food
delivery from
restaurants in your
neighbourhood
Food doesn’t
arrive
Convenience
Food ‘now’
Food not tasting
good
Packaging
waste
Treat food as
something that just
comes to you
Neighbosupermarkets/
off-license
neighbourhood etc.
losing business
Diluting people’s
relationships with
restaurants
Racial/economical
divide between riders
and customers
Sense of
entitlement - if
food doesn’t
arrive blame on
courier
Street
congestion
Large selection of
London)
Reducing waste -
socially
Tasty food now
Building relationships
between riders and
restaurants
Speedy delivery

2. Group into themes 3. Reassess value
1. Pull the most interesting insights

#thecave
Conscious
Experimentation

#thecave
•Experiment
Conscious
Experimentation
•Rigour

Hong Kong
University of
Science and
Technology Design Thinking
Asia Meet Up
Chinese
University
Hong Kong
Singapore
Public Service
Division
Innovation Lab
NO DESIGN EXPERIENCE DESIGN PROFESSIONALS
#thecave
How Hong Kong helped us add rigour:

Design strategist
Entrepreneur
Freelancer
Robotics startup founder
Head of Digital Transformation
Creative lead

#thecave
“Real-time rigour”
Re-purposing the parking lot

1 - LANGUAGE = OBSCURED
2 - IS DT EMPATHETIC
3 - When does the questioning start?

Uncomfortable
Design

#thecave
we used improv
to help us
differently
think.

Operating within the cave

#thecave
Plato warns us…
When a prisoner escapes, he’s
initially blinded by the light

#thecave
Uncomfortable design provides a perfect
counterpoint to how we ideate today

#thecave
inside
outside
inside
outside
It opens up corridors to access ideas outside the cave

#thecave
• Product/Service

Design tools gather rust too.
When the thinking / the tool becomes too comfortable,
it’s time to kill it.

69
ROUTE 1
Below the
iceberg
ROUTE 2
Conscious
experimentation
ROUTE 3
Uncomfortable
design
Disrupt the
shadows
Break free
from the
shackles
Harness the
light

#thecave
In a plato’s cave of digital copycats,
we are sleep walking into the dark.
Is this the end…?
Or is this the beginning?

DIGITAL COPYCATS:
Escaping
Plato’s CaveKarwai Ng and Will Anderson
@karwaing / @will_ander5on
👉 @willwai1
#thecave

Digital Copycats: Escaping Plato's Cave (SXSW17)

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