Come see me speak at Stanford’s Leadership Seminar

by Tristan Harris on February 9, 2010

I’m honored to be invited to Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leadership seminar tomorrow February 10th. Some old friends of mine from the Stanford Mayfield Fellows program will be speaking too, Kimber Lockhart, Jeff Siebert, Clara Shih who wrote “The Facebook Era”, Steve Garrity, and Josh Reeves. All of us have gone off to start companies at a young age, so the dialogue should be interesting.

And one of my favorite professors, Tina Seelig, will be moderating.

See you then! BTW, here is where we’ll be speaking (at 4:30pm):

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The Right Answer

by Tristan Harris on December 12, 2009

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Live your life this way. Most important decisions in life are almost impossible to resolve. The right answer is usually the impossible simultaneous achievement of two opposing extremes. The intuitive answer to find an average solution in the middle, to be balanced, is a sure way to find mediocrity. More to come on this topic!


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Keep Pulling with Vision

by Tristan Harris on November 27, 2009

Startups are tough. I’ve several friends doing different companies and projects. Some have been going at it for three years, others only six months. Some of my friends’ companies have been bought after 3 months of launch. I’ve seen others keep working for multiple years without any traction at all. How do you convince people to stay on board with you to keep pushing?

What I realized is this:

Your best substitute for traction is strong vision.

Statistically, most startups don’t make it. Most products that are launched require many, many iterations before they see even basic pickup in the market. But you have to substitute the lack of traction during those iterations with something else – and I think that’s vision.

Think back to when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. The company’s financials were a disaster. The company was corrupted by poor positioning, tons of confusing product lines, and lack of concise leadership. Talk about a situation where a company’s health does not look good.

Think about it. If you’re an employee of Apple in 1997, how can you ignore the market? What confidence can you have? How would you trust Steve to turn it around?  Phrases like “Macs suck” and “Apple is going bankrupt” dominated public perception. Arguably even Steve’s track record — at NeXT — wasn’t very successful.

So what have you got left? Vision and leadership.

And look what Steve did. He spent the next 10 years revolutionizing the Music, Film, and Telecommunications industries — and perhaps soon, the Publishing Industry.

Watch it in action. Here’s one of my favorite videos of Steve demonstrating a simple idea, but presenting it with pure charisma.

Keep leading with vision.

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5 Things “Nosferatu” teaches us about “Next-Generation” Storytelling Techniques

by Tristan Harris on November 11, 2009

(Sorry for the long blogging hiatus. I should be back to your regularly scheduled blog programming over the next few months).

This Halloween, I went to San Francisco Davies Symphony Hall with some friends to see a special screening of Nosferatu, a 1922 Dracula film that pioneered the horror genre.

But while watching the film, what struck me was just how innovative it was. F.W. Murnau ’s crew invented suspense-creating techniques that are still used in film today (80 years later!).

First, let’s remember. This is a silent film. It’s all black and white. Made in the age of print and barely radio, not television or film. Made before directors used cut aways to retain teenagers’ 1 second attention spans. And despite the film’s scratchy, messy texture, it still manages to get your heart pumping into a pseudo fight-or-flight response which good horror films do so well. How did they do it?

These innovative techniques stood out to me. All are examples of Murnau’s ingenuity to shape the horror-genre with storytelling that took advantage of a new kind of medium:

1. Look and Feel: Shadows and Chiaroscuro

Sure, the film is already in black and white, but Mernau leverages the space between these two colors further to set the film’s dark tone. With chiaroscuro scenes of long dark hallways and half visible mysterious figures, and distant shots of the quiet and barren castle where the vampire lives, he makes the viewer mistrust the environment and have concern for the helpless man seeking to meet the vampire. The use of shadows for example enhances the hidden image of the vampire’s long claws.

2. Accentuating Physical Appearances: Costume and Makeup Design

The physical appearance of actor Max Shreck, who plays the vampire, is disturbing. The costume designers altered his nose to make it extra long and bent. His fingers are long claws. He has pointier ears. Bulging eyes (when used in longshots of the vampire). A warped ratlike mouth and teeth. And he’s a thin, stodgy creature whose shoulders placement don’t match a normal human body.

These tweaked facial features remind me of Stephen Jay Gould’s study of how Walt Disney evolved the character of Mickey Mouse to gradually look more cute over time by making the face rounder, with bigger cheeks, bigger eyes, smaller foreheads, and big ears to gradually match the way we evolutionarily perceive animals with these characteristics as “cute.” Mernau is almost using the opposite effect to make us detest Count Orlok’s appearance.

Of course, costume designers knew these techniques long before film (theatre, for example), but combined with moving images, chiaroscuro, and b&w cameras that can be repositioned to better exploit character’s unsettling features, the effects have greater impact.

3. Hiding Things Behind the Camera

You know the cliché horror movie effect of the villain’s shadow slowly looming over a victim, without ever seeing the villain’s body – guess what? These guys invented it. Why does this work so well? It’s because the audience can’t see the vampire behind the camera that makes the scene so terrifying. And it’s something you can only do in film. (See example clip below – you only have to watch about 10 seconds worth because I’m using the Apture YouTube clip time feature)

4. The Surreal: Unexplainable Characters

If you were told to make a story feel surreal in the medium or radio or printed text, how would you do it? You’d have to call surreal qualities explicitly — talk about strange characters’ visual features, or inconsistencies in the scene. But Murnau uses subtle techniques to make things not make sense.

For example, there’s a point in the film where the unknowing victim reaches the remove village near the vampire and accepts a ride from a mysterious horse carriage whose driver looks exactly like the vampire (who the audience will meet later). It’s as if the vampire himself is omnipresent, spying on him and existing in two places at once. This technique has been used in other films, but I believe Nosferatu is the first. (see clipped video below)

How would you have communicated that in radio? Or in words?

5. Making Things Stand Out: Extraordinary Physical Abilities

This one is a classic technique. At one point in the film, Count Orlok (the film’s vampire) is able to rise up magically from the coffin to being completely vertical. I’m not sure if they use a hook or captured this sequence in reverse, but either way the effect is chilling if you’re a movie goer in the year 1922.


Summary

The German crew who invented these techniques were mostly born in the 1870s and 80s. There weren’t many books on these techniques. All they were given was a new canvas and creativity. And when you look back on the innovation in the new medium of film, you wonder what new techniques and strategies people have pioneered in the new medium of ‘web’?

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Apture wins AlwaysOn Global 250 Award

by Tristan Harris on July 19, 2009

It’s moments like these that it’s important to sit back and reflect on how far you’ve come after three years of long hard work. Congratulations to the entire Apture team for all that they’ve done to earn this recognition!

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How Apture can create meaning in the brain by channeling Tom Wujec’s TED Talk

by Tristan Harris on July 14, 2009

Watch Tom Wujec, Information designer at Autodesk discuss three key qualities of successful information design to create meaning. It is fascinating:

The video outlines how good Information Design builds meaning in the brain by activating three key areas: the ventral stream of the visual processing pathway, the dorsal stream of the visual processing pathway, and the limbic system to deepen the way people experience information. Tom’s message is identical to how Apture presents content and enhances the way readers experience information on the web.

Five years ago at Stanford University, I took Professor Kalanit Grill-Spector’s classes on the Psychology & Neuroscience of Perception and read certain literature which influenced a lot of how I think about Apture’s user interface.

Here are the three take-aways and similarities I saw:

1. Use images to clarify ideas.

Apture let’s you turn flat phrases of text and flesh them out into visually rich and memorable representations: images, videos, slideshows, etc. For example, you can turn the word sad, into something rich. Turn the word happy into something more colorful.

How this relates to the brain: Wujec suggests that images activate the “what” part of our visual perception pathway, the ventral stream which deepens how those ideas get stored.

2. Interact with images to create engagement.

Apture doesn’t just let you present information, it lets you interact with it. You can open, close, drag and maximize any Apture window and move them around as you see fit. Try one now. We’ve found in user tests that readers frequently drag a window around and feel pleasure in having the control to rearrange them as they read. Interactive maps are an even cooler example.

How this relates to the brain: Wujec suggests that being able to spatially manipulate images (or Apture windows) activates the “where” part of the visual perception pathway: the dorsal stream and deepens the meaning of our engagement.

3. Augment memory with persistent and evolving views.

When we designed Apture, we chose to include animations so that users had a persistent and evolving view of a content object. As a window spawns or maximizes, it happens smoothly and creates continuity. But there’s another reason too: the right animation can literally cause an emotional response. It can be fun!

How this relates to the brain: Wujec suggests that animation activates the limbic system, which is the part of the brain responsible for feelings & emotions that are very core. If we’re doing our job right, you should say “oh wow, that animation just feels so nice!”

Other thoughts

Certainly there are many more ways to deepen a person’s understanding without depending on your visual senses, specifically. After all, we have four other senses we use to experience the world. But I believe there is something to this idea: that the more senses you can engage in a story, the more deeply you are able to process and experience it.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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My Interview with “The Deal” now posted

by Tristan Harris on June 19, 2009

Below is my interview with The Deal, who wrote up a great post about Apture’s fundraising back in March. Thanks Mary Kathleen!

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Addicted to this Noisette’s Cover

by Tristan Harris on May 29, 2009

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Benjamin Zander on Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Chopin

by Tristan Harris on February 16, 2009

I was watching an amazing talk last night about leadership from Benjamin Zander, an English classical music conductor.  He has the most inspiring way of talking about leadership. To think like a leader, you always have to speak about a goal as if there is no doubt in your mind.  If you want to put a PC on every desk and classroom in the world, then you need to believe it. That’s how you move from a naïve idea, to building one of the world’s largest multi-billion dollar companies.

Watch Benjamin’s TED talk below and you’ll see what I mean. 

 
Also, be sure to listen to the Chopin piece he plays in the video. I’m going to use Apture to link it up for you so you can listen to it separately and even see the song and the composer’s history. Isn’t empathy great? :)

I’m even going to include the sheet music:


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Steve Jobs Speech and Design Philosophies for Startups

by Tristan Harris on February 14, 2009

This is a favorite video of mine.  I still hold myself to this philosophy even after three years since I first saw Steve Jobs‘ commencement speech.  Even if you’ve seen this video before or heard the speech, watch it again.

When I worked at Apple several years ago, I’d see Steve walk into his design review meeting every Monday just a few doors down from my office.  As often as I saw him, I never got a chance to speak to him about his speech, but I always admired it.  The man is terrifying to his employees for the perfection he demands and the asshole he can be about his opinion. But you have to respect him for the ridiculously high standards he holds for the products Apple creates.  I’m sure there’s nicer, more respectful and polite ways of managing teams and inspiring to do their best, but I can also see how the absolute best is still beyond what most people consider “good enough” and  Steve consistently pushes things farther.  

What’s interesting at Apture is how we as a startup with only a few youthful engineers and one product designer can hold ourselves to the same bars of quality.  It’s one thing to have more than ten thousand employees, employ some of the best graphic and interaction designers in the world and pay them more than $100k salaries – but it’s another thing to take a tiny group of people of 4-5, pay yourselves light salaries, and accomplish comparably beautiful and functional products that exceed people’s expectations.  We also do this not only for our product’s success – but to help communicate Apture’s culture.  In our case, we hope to communicate how much we care about design.  

At Apture we’ve spent hours and hours replaying the animation functions we use, stressing out over the gradients in Apture’s windows, the colors we use in the product, and the multiple revisions of the interaction flow in the Media Hub.  It’s endless.  We probably spend too much time on this.  But we care about every pixel and every time slice.  It also costs us too.

As a startup, how do you balance your limited resources with your effort to inject your products with the same levels of detail users see in the most popular commercial products? Assuming your resources simply can’t compete of larger companies like Apple or IDEO, then you can’t possibly win.  Given the impossible tradeoffs of tight deadlines, how do you prioritize a pixel over a launch date?  Or a launch date over shaving off three seconds in your product’s responsiveness?  Obviously you have to quantify the value of the outcome of each decision, and then triage.. We have our own method, but I’d love to hear yours.

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