Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Controversy is Jeremy Scott’s thing; you may remember Co.Design’s coverage of his Adidas shackle sneakers, which braced wearer’s ankles with chains. “In retrospect,” wrote Mark Wilson, “they weren’t such a fantastic idea.” Last month, Scott unveiled his 2013 Adidas Originals collection, and while it’s not all easy punchlines about race and ethnicity, many critics are up in arms about several garments that borrow from Pacific Northwest Native American traditions.

Scott’s thing is parroting genres and subgenres–which usually results in some pretty awesome hybrid garments. Take a peek at the lookbook and see how many distinct cultural sects you can count. I got to five, at least. Scott gives nods to late ’70s British skinheads, ’80s urban streetwear, and ’90s raver culture, to name just a few.

The 2013 collection stumbles into some problematic territory when it comes to a series of tracksuits, shoes, and dresses decorated with cartoon renderings of Pacific Northwest Native American carvings–what some bloggers are calling “totem pole print.” Totems originated as a way for some First Nation groups along the Pacific coast to honor their ancestors, describe legends, and sometimes, memorialize the dead. Scott’s simplified the symbology and tacked them onto dresses, tracksuits, and sneakers.

Curious what those in the Native community would think, I reached out to Jessica Metcalfe, a Turtle Mountain Chippewa who is a professor of Native American art, fashion, and design. As it turns out, she’d already seen the designs and written a post about them. “Misappropriations like this one are bad, unethical, and in some cases illegal,” she told me. “Bizarre, garish, unpleasant and disgusting were several terms used to describe this outfit by people in the Native American community. Several individuals noticed that his inspiration was unoriginal, and that his take on Northwest Coast formline was ignorant, disrespectful and badly construed (in other words, Scott needs to work on his ovoids and u-forms).”

More than that, Metcalfe explains, they devalue the meaning and quality of the original source material. “When companies like Forever 21, Urban Outfitters, or Adidas put out tacky images like this, they perpetuate the idea that Native American people have no sense of ownership or artistic legacy when it comes to our art, and anyone can steal it, tack their name on it, and make a buck–all the while putting forward the idea that our art is ugly and cheap,” she says.

After mulling over these images for a bit, I wondered if there’s a “right” way to do this. Metcalfe thinks so–after all, she’s built a business mindfully promoting Native designers through her blog and online shop, Beyond Buckskin. For the prolific and often very funny Scott, it seems like a missed opportunity: Why not make this a joint effort with the First Nation artists? I’m willing to bet that the fruits of that collaboration would’ve been super interesting. Instead, we get a cartoon version of a tradition that goes back hundreds of years. Even divorced from its historical underpinnings, it’s just sort of. . .lazy.

Whether you agree with critics or not, it seems that Adidas wants to keep these from American eyes–these pieces won’t be available in the United States. Check out the full collection and judge for yourself here.

In 2005, whether you were using a dumb phone with T9 Word or a BlackBerry with a physical keyboard, you were probably texting without looking at your phone, at least occasionally. It was just part of the times, like Brick Breaker, or Nelly. Then, in 2007, the iPhone showed up with its bold, buttonless design and erased all of that functionality. Texting suddenly became a two-thumb, eyes-on affair–a Dark Age of text entry we’re still suffering through today. Fleksy wants to change that. And what sets it apart from all the other alternative keyboard apps is that, from the moment you try it, you get the sense that it just might be able to.

Ioannis Verdelis and Kostas Eleftheriou, the two Greek computer scientists behind Fleksy, didn’t just set out to make a better touch-screen keyboard. They set out to make one as good as the keyboards we were using in 2005–or at least to make one that lets us type as well as we were on those infinitely more primitive devices. Their software is currently available in beta for Android and as an iOS app, and while it’s still rough in places, that core, no-look functionality is already there to a remarkable extent. I loaded up Fleksy on my iPhone, directed my gaze elsewhere, and thumbed in my best approximation of the word “difficult.” Without having to learn anything new, and without letting the app figure out what kind of thumb-typist I am, and without even pausing at first to make sure my fingers were lined up in any particular way beforehand, Fleksy got it right on the first try.

The founders claim Fleksy can recognize words even if you miss every single letter in them. Or if you’re not even typing on the keyboard section of the screen at all. The reason it’s able to do so, Verdelis explains, is that in addition to using conventional autocorrect cues like context and word frequency, Fleksy was built from scratch to accommodate the sorts of errors we make on our mobile devices. Errors, unsurprisingly, that are totally different from the ones we make on our laptops–and ones that demand a totally different approach to autocorrection.

“Most other touch-screen keyboard technologies, including those built-in and most third-party ones, use technology that derives from research done for Microsoft Word and hardware keyboards,” Verdelis says. Essentially, those keyboards look at the buttons, or letters, you tap, and then attempt to suss out your intended words from there. But on a smartphone, that’s a problematic approach for one huge reason: Those touch-screen buttons don’t really exist, and we’re not very good at using them.

On our laptops, the tiny bumps on the “F” and “J” keys keep our fingers oriented. With time, you learn to find them every time you put your index fingers down on the keyboard, and your other digits just fall in place naturally. Touch-screen keyboards don’t offer this type of tactile feedback, so our thumbs can never be sure where they are–at least not without our eyes double checking. As a result, we’re not missing letters every so often on our smartphones; we’re missing them as a matter of course. Occasionally, we drift off and miss entire words at a time.

But still, that doesn’t mean we’re typing poorly. We’re just not typing in quite the right place. “A user will be typing,” Verdelis explains, “and the overall pattern of the word might be the same, but he’s missed all the buttons because his finger has been 10 pixels up … So rather than look at buttons, which don’t exist, we look at where you touched the screen and the pattern of the words you’re trying to type.” That’s Fleksy’s secret sauce. Instead of looking at the on-screen buttons you happen to be tapping, it looks at the patterns between those taps and from them deduces what you meant to type. It erases the very possibility of not typing in the right place.

The solution is a smart one, and it’s clearly effective. But for the last several months, Fleksy has had the added benefit of being in the hands of a large, concerted group of test users: the visually impaired. The developers introduced an early version of the app to the blind community last summer at a conference for the National Federation for the Blind, and they quickly amassed a user base numbering in the thousands that has generated a great deal of insight, feedback, and, of course, raw typing data.

For the rest of us, though, the current version of Fleksy will only be so useful. The Android beta is the newer of the two versions, so it still needs considerable polish, and the iPhone version, shackled by Apple’s unwillingness to let users swap in alternative keyboards on a system-wide level, is constrained to a standalone app. And while the word-to-word accuracy is astonishing right from the start, that iOS version version relies on a somewhat complicated series of swipes for spaces and punctuation–upping the learning curve for true adoption considerably.

Verdelis hopes that someday Apple might reverse that policy, but he and Eleftheriou think there’s plenty of room for their technology to flourish regardless. In fact, their real vision is for Fleksy to become not just a replacement available to users but a replacement for suboptimal stock keyboards at large. Verdelis says he and his partner have seen “incredible interest” from hardware manufacturers about building the app into next-gen smartphones, and they’re currently in talks with a handful of potential partners. Hopefully that pans out. We could certainly use a more enlightened way to text.

Android users can grab the beta here; the iOS app is available in the App Store here. More on the app can be found on the Flesky site.

Illustration: Shutterstock

Imagine Ford attempting to sell a car without lights. No doubt, they’d be bucking all sorts of laws, but consumers would never buy it, either. Who would fork up a few hundred bucks a month for a car with no lights? Who would settle to drive a car only during the day? Absurdity!

But expensive bikes are sold without lights every day.

Sparse is a new Kickstarter-backed company that wants to reimagine the world of bike accessories. As silly as that car/bike analogy may seem to a serious biker, Sparse agrees: There’s way too much to worry about when you hop on a bike these days.

“Getting on a bike as your primary mode of transport is more complex than getting in your car–you have to be mindful of weather, distance, attire, and all that stuff that we all need,” CEO Colin Owen writes. “The checklist is simply a bit longer when on a bike vs drive. It’s an underserved and under-considered region of the market.”

The company’s first product will be the Sparse Bicycle Lights. They’re a pair of die-cast aluminum LED bike lights, two standouts in durability, subtle style, waterproofness, and even security. The rear light fits on most popular seat posts, and it can’t be stolen without removing the seat. The front light doesn’t just fit on your handlebars, it replaces a spacer in their stem, integrating to actually become part of the bike itself. On top of the theft-deterring design, the company plans to announce some further security measures coming in the future.

For Sparse, it’s one of countless low-hanging pieces of fruit in the bike industry. Despite just launching their first successful Kickstarter campaign, Sparse already has 450 potential product sketches sitting on a wall. 450! That’s not just a lot of ideas, that’s sheer absurdity. You have to wonder, how any company can come into a major, established market and immediately bring with them such a massive pile of disruption? Sparse sees opportunity in the industry because of the lack of regulation stemming from a misunderstood customer.

“There is a shocking lack of standardization in the industry. One quick example: seat-post sizes. There are currently 22 (22!) different seat-post sizes in use (and that’s not counting the non-round aero posts). Some folks slam their seats against the frame. Others ride them such that the clamp can barely hold them,” Owen explains. “People attach bags, reflectors, lights, pumps, chains, and who knows what around these posts. From a manufacturer standpoint, addressing that space (and this could be said for almost every region of the bike), is just a difficult problem and one whose solution will have countless exceptions.

“Culturally, the bike industry is stuck in a rut of optimizing for performance in racing. Most folks in the industry are, by our own highly unscientific survey, hard-core bike nuts. They port that interest over to the job and optimize the bikes via metrics that aren’t fully aligned with the daily rider.”

In other words, bike manufacturers are selling highly customizable performance to the masses–treating the entire world like their geekiest contingent–killing usability and peripheral standards in the process. Sounds like the PC industry about a decade ago, right? And we all know what happened there.

If you’d like to order Sparse’s first pair of lights ($120), the Kickstarter campaign has ended, but you can no doubt inquire on their site.

Every era has its architecture of excess, whether it’s correlated to a depression or a boom. Nineteenth-century Vienna had the Ringstrasse, where wealthy aristocrats struggled to outdo one another with cheaply built, flashy mansions. New York in the ’00s has the High Line, or more specifically, the streets that run along the edge of the High Line, where every year brings a new smattering of glittering office and condo buildings, from Neil Denari’s HL23 to Della Valle + Bernheimer’s 459 West 18th Street.

This week, the Chicago-based Studio Gang unveiled its own forthcoming High Line building, which it calls the Solar Carve Tower. Formally, the tower falls into stride with its neighbors along the elevated park, with a gem-like facade covered in faceted panes of glass. But the design–slated for completion in 2015–also makes some interesting concessions to context and environment.

“Our Solar Carve Tower employs a surprising twist to traditional zoning logic,” explain the architects. “Geometric relationships between the building form and the sun’s path, as well as the viewshed between the park and the Hudson, guide the shave and shape of the tower.”

In other words, the sloping cutouts that shape the facade are extrapolated from the path of the sun, allowing light to fall into the interior spaces that the 13-story tower would have permanently overshadowed. The cutaway sections are faced in sawtooth glass that reminds us of Olafur Eliasson’s dangerous-looking (but beautiful) chandeliers. The prismatic details are likely meant to exploit the unusually open, atmospheric conditions of the site, which offers a rare, unobstructed view to the Hudson (and the sunset).

It’s a trope we’ve seen quite often with architects like Bjarke Ingels, whose housing schemes tend to take shape based on simplified sun and ventilation diagrams. In fact, only 40 blocks uptown, Ingels’s forthcoming first New York building is predicated on similar solar calculations. Studio Gang’s most well-loved building, the Aqua Tower, relies on a similar mix of formal gestures knit from environmental observations.

Not everyone will be excited to learn that it will perpetuate the onward march of demolition that’s quickly clearing away any remaining evidence of the neighborhood’s past, for better or worse. But it is a polite gesture among ostentatious neighbors, striking an elegant compromise between the concerns of hungry developers and advocates for public space. It is, as Jeanne Gang explains, “a skyscraper that enhances the public life of the city in ways that a stand-alone icon cannot.”

Via FastCoDesign: http://www.fastcodesign.com/

illustration by matt dartford

For decades, Steve Jobs extolled the virtues of “building the whole widget”–in other words, designing and manufacturing a computer or a digital media player or smartphone as an organic whole, from the molecular materials of the hardware to the abstract bits and bytes of the software. The resulting products may not always have been as inexpensive or utilitarian as the standardized machines that ruled the PC marketplace, but they did always possess the svelte and winsome quality that Apple’s loyal customers love with a passion.

Earlier this summer, Microsoft tried to make like Apple. The company had never itself built computers, out of deference to its many hardware partners, but on June 18, it revealed the results of a three-year secret project: a sleek and distinctive Windows tablet PC called the Surface. No mere iPad knockoff, the Surface is Microsoft’s effort to build a “whole widget” of its own. It could well be the most beautiful and best engineered Windows device ever made. And it has bells and whistles that won’t be easy for Apple to quickly mimic.

Google too has concluded that it can’t really compete against the iPhone long term without its own end-to-end laptops, handsets, and tablets–hence its $13 billion acquisition of Motorola’s cell-phone design and manufacturing business. The Motorola patent portfolio is valuable, to be sure, but Google wants to find a remedy to the fragmented world its Android architecture has fostered. The immense diversity of Android devices and generations of not-quite-compatible operating systems are beginning to look like liabilities, especially to app developers who don’t want to have to support multiple versions of their own products.

So with Google and Microsoft as emerging widgeteers, might Apple finally be losing one of its historic advantages? Hardly.

At the annual World Wide Developers Conference held June 11 in San Francisco–the first big event since the death of Jobs–Apple demonstrated how its software prowess and skill at building interlocking digital platforms is the real game changer. How? By enlarging the definition of the whole widget. Increasingly, the Mac, iPhone, and iPad do not exist alone. Instead, Apple now offers a multidimensional, integrated ecosystem of devices held together by the centripetal force of iCloud. Apple’s ideal customer, who likely owns at least one of each kind of product, can now share a single user identity, and core personal content and data can be viewed, consumed, used, or manipulated in familiar ways regardless of platform, with any changes or additions from one gadget instantly available on any of his other Apple gear.

In other words, Apple can now boast of providing a complete, coherent, and consistent digital experience at home, at work, in your car, and on the go–without any conscious effort on the part of the user. It’s as if just at the moment when the visiting team finally steps up to the plate, they discover that the home team has moved the fences out, raised the pitcher’s mound, and increased the distance between the bases. This is a different ball game.

Apple didn’t announce some silver-bullet innovation at the WWDC to make all this possible, but instead described literally hundreds of new features and data services borne of software, many of which integrate how all its hardware products create, display, and share digital information. New versions of its Mac OS X and iOS for portable devices, along with much-improved data storage and remote processing services accessible via iCloud, will all come together in the next few months to markedly improve the quality of the entire Apple digital experience. Indeed, in many ways, improvements for the Mac will result in new capabilities for customers’ existing iPhones and iPads with no new hardware required.

That is what you get when you enlarge the widget, and it doesn’t even reflect the inevitable hardware improvements Apple is so famous for delivering like clockwork.

Microsoft and Google clearly understand this strategy. But Apple’s ecosystem is the product of carefully nurturing smaller whole-widget ecosystems in such a way that they could be stitched together. Until recently, Microsoft has always tried to contort Windows to fit just about any class of hardware–using a one-size-fits-all strategy that has never played out well in non-PC devices. Google has tried to turn its browser software into a modest computer operating system, even as it took a completely different approach to Android smartphone software, and now is trying to make coherent architectures that are intrinsically different. Software can paper over just about any incompatibility, but a patchwork is not an ecosystem.

Apple’s Tim Cook knows he has to be very careful not to over-standardize these individually dazzling devices. That’s why it is unlikely that Mac OS X and iOS will ever subsume each other. The masterstroke is in using iCloud to knit them together, which hides the complexity of managing and not duplicating all those trillions of bits that each of us consume or manipulate every day. For today’s digital consumer, syncing data, managing your access to it, and keeping it all straight and secure is the key to a powerful digital experience that we are only now beginning to grasp. Cook, an operations wonk who is a master of taming complexity, might even be better at figuring this out than Jobs was. And since Apple usually improves any screen it focuses on, a new and improved AppleTV platform could become an intriguing fourth species in the ecosystem.

So while it’s certainly a bonus for consumers that Microsoft and Google have joined the game, Apple’s lead could conceivably widen before they can even begin to play. There will be glitches as Apple moves into its post-Jobs era, but Microsoft and Google have so much to learn that the company has plenty of time to figure out how to live without Steve.

“Our dream is to empower yours.” In any other context, the message printed on Ilan Moyer’s business card would read as cliché. But in Moyer’s case, it’s simply the truth. The recent MIT graduate is the founder of “personal fabrication” startup CTMTM, where he is developing inexpensive and portable fabrication tools aimed at helping people manufacture objects in their own homes. Like a foam core 3-D printer, for example, which can even print ketchup and chocolate pudding. “Personal fabrication is about empowering individuals to express themselves and to shape their own worlds,” he says, “independent of the mass-manufacturing system.”

Moyer’s latest project is PopFab, a tiny fabrication multi-tool that he developed alongside MIT Center for Bits and Atoms PhD student Nadya Peek. PopFab packs a CNC mill, 3-D printer, vinyl cutter, and drawing tool into a briefcase, letting designers carry a tiny, nomadic fabrication workshop with them wherever they go. The duo call it “a multi-tool for the 21st century.”

As Moyer and Peek demonstrate, PopFab is fairly simple to set up. Inside the suitcase sits a computer-controlled motion platform, which serves as the work stage. A mechanical arm hangs above it, connected to a detachable head. You hook up your laptop and choose which printer head and material you’re going to use, and the machine whirs to life. In their introductory video, they start small by printing a little plastic goldfish–but it’s easy to imagine the broader implications of a portable fab lab, especially in remote undeserved parts of the world.

PopFab is the result of years of research and prototyping. Moyer and Peek are strong believers in DIY fabrication, active in the Fab@Home open source movement. In 2009, Moyer built a personal fabricator called FabMate with Indian engineering students. At MIT’s CADLab, he developed a CNC mill that could be built at home for less than $100. At MIT, Peek’s advisor Neil Gershenfeld teaches a class called “How to Make Something that Makes Almost Anything.” It was there that Moyer and Peek built the current prototype, which they say owes much to Gershenfeld’s Machines That Make project.

What’s been made with PopFab so far? Moyer recounts one great example over email, remembering when he and blogger Christine McLaren found a lost bike helmet in a Berlin park. Someone had tied the helmet to a lamppost, hoping to attract its owner. “Christine suggested that we turn the lamp post into a lost and found. So we went to a nearby cafe, plugged in, and 3-D-printed some hooks and vinyl cut the words Fundbüro (lost and found office).” They attached the hooks and signage to the lamppost, and voilà: an impromptu lost and found.

Looking at the wire-filled metal suitcase, it’s tough to imagine that the TSA would allow PopFab through security. But the team has already carried it onto several transatlantic flights. In fact, the machine was partially designed in Saudi Arabia and Berlin, where Moyer finished it before presenting at the now-infamous BMW Guggenheim Lab. “We’ve only run into trouble at security once, and that was departing Saudi Arabia,” Moyer remembers. “The language barrier made it difficult to explain what the device did, so the airline staff ended up padding the machine with thick foam and stowing it below. Generally, the machine sails through security without raising any eyebrows or even being opened by security.”

Moyer and Peek are devoted to the concept behind PopFab, which is autonomous, self-sufficient creative production. “A large motivation for this project has been the fact that as engineers we are tied to the tools which we use to manifest our designs in the real world,” Moyer says. “This generally means that we’re tethered to the electronics benches and machine shops which house these tools. Our goal with PopFab is to break these chains and permit a lifestyle where adventure and travel can co-exist with our need to design and create.” Over the next few months, they’ll create a few more demo videos showing PopFab’s capabilities. “We hope that this is only the beginning,” they say, though they’re mum on details about when (and, indeed, if) it’ll be available to the public.

Service matters. We know this in our guts, and yet, most companies make service an after-thought, and a cost center. They say, “We value our customers,” quite often on their pre-recorded 6-8 minute long hold message tape. Service has always mattered, but it’s coming to be a vital competitive edge. With that in mind, I wanted to offer you 9 starting points for improving your service craftsmanship.

Cure Your Amnesia

If someone buys from your organization and then later communicates with you about some matter, it would be good to know that they are a customer. Though we’re not really supposed to treat people differently, you would be foolish not to treat your best customers with the utmost of care. Remember that “most money paid” isn’t always the criteria for best. You’ll know the difference. To cure this, simply be sure that every system that requires one to know a name also gives that file some kind of nod to the fact that the customer is a repeat patron of your organization. Want to go a step further? Remember what I did last time and ask me if I want more of the same.

Consider The Extra Touches

In almost any business transaction, there’s an opportunity to add an extra nice touch. Quite often, this makes a powerful impact on your customer. What can you do? It can be simple, inexpensive, or even free, if it’s timely and shows a level of connectedness with your customer. Christopher Lynn from the famous Hotel Colonnade in Boston knew that Jacq and I were out at a Black Keys concert. He ran over to the mall across from his hotel, picked up a copy of the latest CD, and had it on our pillow when we came back. It was a perfect little touch that cost about $15 and 20 minutes of his time, but that strengthens my commitment to staying at the Colonnade any time I’m in Boston. What extra touch can you give? Can you draw smiley faces on my sales slips? Even that’s nice.

Communicate Simply, Clearly, and Almost Often

Airlines seem to have mastered the art of vagary, especially lately. As I experience more and more delays on flights, I’m getting answers like, “we’re just waiting on some paperwork.” First, it’s 2012. Do we really use a lot of paper? Evidently so. Second, why are you holding up my flight 10-15 minutes for a piece of paper? Answer: that’s not really why they’re delayed.

People want to feel informed. This improves outcome, even if the response from a company is a bit negative. It’s better to know that you’re not going to get your package today than it is to say, “Well, we’re tracking it and there haven’t been any updates to the status.” Be simple, be clear, and communicate fairly regularly (but not too much- if you over-communicate, it’s showing fear).

Reduce Friction Everywhere

Most processes come about from past experiences, and rarely from current circumstances. They almost never come from “what’s best for the customer.” If you have a process that makes it harder for people to do business, why would it shock you that people won’t do business with you? Policies are meant to facilitate business, not hamper it. Revisit every policy frequently to determine whether it’s giving you or your customers/clients a problem. It’s amazing what you’ll turn up. Sometimes, fixing this kind of friction costs money, but often, it’s as simple as crumpling up a piece of paper and starting with a new perspective. The rewards are magical.

Say Thank You

Companies have a strange history with saying thank you. Sometimes, they get the words out, but follow them up with, “And I’d love you to buy THIS item, too!” Other times, they say thank you only when they’re ready to hit you up in the sales process again, or when they need something. Get in the habit of thanking your clients and customers. It’s a magic secret to creating good service.

Service Craftsmanship

Service Craftsmanship is part of the Human Business Way, a set of guiding principles and practices we’ve assembled for professionals in companies of any size – solo to mega corporation – so we can help you build a sustainable, relationship-minded business. If you want to learn more about the Human Business Way, I’d recommend checking out my weekly newsletter (it’s FREE).

It’s a testament to the ebbing tide of starchitecture that some of the most admired new buildings of recent memory are the ones you hardly notice at all. Consider this summer home, which won an AIA Housing Award last year: Designed by Seattle-based Heliotrope Architects, it crouches long and low along the shore of the Straight of Georgia, in Eastsound, Washington, its metal facade almost disappearing beneath a stand of Douglas firs.

The barely-there effects aren’t just visual; they extend right down to the house’s bones. The architects faced two major design constraints here: They couldn’t build directly at ground level (the site falls on a federally designated flood plain) and they couldn’t excavate for foundation footings (the grounds are archaeologically significant–an erstwhile winter camp for the Lummi Indians).

So Heliotrope poured a mat-slab foundation directly over the grass to avoid hacking deep into the earth and recessed the foundation to minimize its footprint. Then to conform with flood plain regulations, they raised the structure several feet off the ground. Heliotrope also minded a third unwritten law of the land: None of those majestic trees were cleared to make way for the house.

The AIA’s jury praised the North Beach Residence for “the lightness with which it sits on the site, the compact nature of the project …” It’s remarkable, in other words, for what it doesn’t do: leave a trace.

Via FastCoDesign: http://www.fastcodesign.com/

We’ve all suffered through a lunch, date, or meeting with a monologist–you know, a person who, oblivious to social cues, dominates the conversation, shows little interest in others around the table, and, when someone tries to shove in one’s oar, raises his voice to drown out the hope of a dialogue.

The question is, how to call out the offender on his obnoxious behavior when you can’t get a word in edgewise? One way is to throw his words back at him. Two Japanese researchers have created a gunlike instrument that does just that. Using the principle of delayed audio feedback, their SpeechJammer records speech and plays it back with a split-second pause, effectively stupefying and silencing the speaker.

Kazutaka Kurihara, a researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, thought up the idea after participating in a demonstration of delayed audio feedback at a local museum. “When I spoke to a microphone, my voice came back to me after a few hundred millisecond delay, then I could not continue to speak anymore,” Kurihara tells Co.Design. “Around that time, my research interest was about developing a system that controls appropriate turn-taking at discussions and was looking for technologies to enforce some discussion rules for participants. Then I came up with the gun type SpeechJammer idea utilizing DAF. That’s the destiny.” He recruited his friend, Koji Tsukada, a “gadget master” at Ochanomizu University, to help him realize the concept, consisting of a direction-sensitive mic and speaker, a distance sensor, a laser pointer, and a microcontroller.

Kurihara stresses that the intent isn’t only to shut up blabbermouths but to allow space for the less vocal to join the conversation. “Fair discussions are essential for resolving conflicts through communication,” he and Tsukada write in their paper. “However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately interrupt other people when it is their turn in order to establish their presence rather than achieve more fruitful discussions.” SpeechJammer was conceived to correct such abuses and allow all participants to have an equal say in proceedings.

The technology behind the idea might be overkill: Under ordinary circumstances, thrusting a mic-equipped gun into a person’s face should be enough to throw anyone off his game. But in the case of, say, the upcoming presidential debates, we can imagine it being an entirely effective (and somewhat hilarious) way to impose time restrictions.

Image: Everett Collection/Shutterstock

Shortly before Facebook’s turbulent IP “uh oh”, GM announced that it was pulling its $10 million advertising budget from Facebook. Controversy erupted. Accusations ensued. Camps divided into three factions, those who support GM, those who support Facebook and those not yet ready to take a stance either way, but are paying attention.

It will forever be known as “the meeting” between Facebook sales executives and General Motors Global CMO Joel Ewanick and other GM senior marketing executives. In the end, Facebook and GM each walked away with less than they had walking into the meeting. Facebook lost a premier advertiser and also lost Ewanick as an advisor to its invitation-only client council. GM lost the ability to demonstrate leadership in a time where the advertising and automotive industries are flailing. All is not lost however as GM will continue to spend $30 million annually in managing its Facebook presence through earned and shared media strategies.

So what happened in that now infamous meeting? Perhaps one day, its premise will inspire an episode of AMC’s Mad Men…

It’s a dark, dimly lit room illuminated only by a projector. Cigarette smoke fills the only visible light. On the wall is an image of Facebook’s timeline. Don Draper leans forward. His words cut through the smoke. In a calm voice with menacing undertones, Draper asserts his one and only reason for staying in that room, “my client has requested a home page takeover. Now, before you respond, allow me to be clear. This, what it is you’re selling, your advertising products, they don’t work for us. We have deep pockets and we’re willing to invest in the right partner that shares our vision. Now, how about you play nice like all of the other media partners and give us what we want.”

Facebook responds, “no thank you.” The sales team then shuts their iPad and MacBook Air lids and proceeds to leave the room in what almost seems like a well-rehearsed exit. They must do this often. Draper sits back in his chair and exerts a simple, but telling response, “huh…”

While many speculated what actually took place in the meeting, Advertising Age’s Cotton Delo reported that the scenario above is probably not far from the truth. GM is interested in Facebook’s audience, but believes that the ad formats currently available are unattractive and ineffective. The automaker’s team desired bigger, higher-impact ad units. After all, GM and many other brands around the world have learned the art and science of advertising by investing in campaigns that stand out from others, literally and figuratively.

So why is Facebook steadfast in its position to not cash in? The answer is user experience. Facebook is home to over 900 million engaged users. U.S. users alone spend 441 and 391 minutes per month on average interacting on Facebook’s desktop and mobile platforms respectively. Mark Zuckerberg and the storied “build and ship” culture he’s created is passionately dedicated to improving and not compromising the user experience. For the time being, anything that disrupts that experience is off the negotiation table even it means the company must walk away from $10 million deals. As a publicly traded company however, it must now also improve investor experiences.

At some point, brands will need to see additional options for paid media. By design, advertisements should be engaging rather than distractions. But a large part of the problem has nothing to do with form, but instead function. Advertisers are still deploying uninspired digital ads on other platforms. Many bring that methodology to social media. Accordingly, the metrics traditional marketers use to measure success in social networks are limited to impressions, reach, clicks, and engagement.

“A bad ending follows a bad beginning.” – Euripides

Advertisers need to think about new end-to-end experiences that inspire and engage a far more connected and discerning audience. Home page takeovers are for Myspace and the digital nomads who roam elsewhere on the web. Facebook is a new type of co-created canvas that requires different strokes to attract a savvy clientele.

Even though GM remains committed to Facebook through earned, owned, and shared programs, it appears to carry a traditional philosophy and approach to its everyday community strategy. General Motors currently is home to 383,000 Likes. Chevrolet boasts just over 1.2 million. Changing lanes for a moment, its competitor Ford has more than 10 million fans globally with 4 million supporting Mustang, the single largest vehicle fan page on Facebook.

I reached out to Scott Monty who leads Ford’s Global Digital Communications for his thoughts on GM’s move. Ford sees Facebook as a new vehicle for storytelling where paid, earned, owned, shared, and promoted media converge to create a new story board that begets new rules. According to Monty, “Ford is accelerating our efforts in Facebook and other social platforms. It’s all down to execution. We’ve found Facebook ads to be very effective when strategically combined with engagement, great content and innovative ways of storytelling, rather than treating them as a straight media buy.”

One of Ford’s much touted successes on Facebook was its introduction of the 2011 Ford Explorer via its “Reveal” campaign. The company claims that the combination of advertising and creative storytelling helped it outperform a traditional Super Bowl advertisement for a fraction of the cost.

Monty emphasized support of Facebook, “We continue to have a strong, collaborative relationship with Facebook, which includes first-of-a-kind vehicle reveals, advertising and innovative ways of sharing content. Our engineers have also been working with Facebook engineers to develop unique and safer ways of integrating the car experience with Facebook.”

Ford’s Facebook strategy is also an extension of a more empathetic marketing and sales campaign that’s underway worldwide. I had the chance to interview Jim Farley, Ford’s first CMO during Blogworld Expo in Los Angeles. His mission as instructed by Ford President Alan Mulally was to, “get people to fall in love with the blue oval all over again.”

When brands approach marketing and advertising opportunities with a purpose, the results that follow are commensurate with an investment of both intention and execution. In other words, you get out of it what you put into it. And according to a report due this week, comScore has found that Facebook ads are effective. In a report by CNBC’s Julia Boorstin, she explained that comScore thinks Facebook ads are having a “statistically significant positive lift on people’s purchasing of a brand.”

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For years, advertising has made a business by thinking outside of the box. But when it comes to flat, consumerized networks such as Facebook, perhaps the industry needs to think outside of the box once again. Facebook is not without fault however. It too must help advertisers create and measure successful campaigns while enticing the community of active users to support the brands they love. Over the last few weeks alone, Facebook introduced new APIs to help advertisers design “clicks to action” within its marketing efforts to trigger what could be unconventional, but possibly more meaningful outcomes. It challenges marketers to think beyond the Like or traditional impressions for that matter.

In what seemed to be a direct response to GM’s adieu, Facebook also introduced a clever new tool that shows marketers just what they’re missing. Now within the timeline, marketers can see reach data for each post. Information includes the number of total fans who may have seen the post and the amount people who were reached through paid promotion.

Facebook is teaching marketers that it’s not just about whom you reach, the opportunity also lies among those you do not reach today.

The court of public opinion may be weighing in on the matter of Facebook vs. GM. But I think the real case is against the people in social networks vs. traditional marketing methodologies. What’s clear is that Facebook is intent on serving users first. Perhaps advertisers could take a cue from Zuckerberg to rethink experiences through advertising and marketing campaigns that consumers can’t help but click, share, and engage.

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