After much consideration and lack of time spent on various blogs created for myself and hosted for others, I am relocating parts and pieces to different blog sites to reduce the number of blogs I must maintain or keep active with content. My business site is The thINKing Canvas and you may link from here to this site. I will bring down this site effective Oct 31st, 2011.

Thank you everyone for your support and comments.

“It is not the mundane we remember, but the freaks that fill the volumes of history books. Filled with those who choose to act differently, think differently and to be different. Every company should have freaks on staff if they choose to be exceptional in business.”

If we follow traditional thinking and continue to use traditional methods of problem solving, we will never change or affect change. Albert Einstein said it best when he uttered these words…

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

We must be different if we are to achieve difference. Times change, economies alter and people switch directions, so too, should be the method in our thinking.

Also see: The thINKing Canvas

Is there a best fit term for “Visual Facilitator” or “Graphic Scribe” and any of the multitude of combinations? I don’t know, but I do know this, this 2×2 is making me look at this profession from a whole new perspective.

That is exactly what Pine and Gilmore preach, excuse me, declare. If a person becomes more involved through a staged experience with in the interaction of an organization, it only follows that the customer will develop a deeper memory of the business and if the experience is well staged, then the consumer has a higher propensity to return to re-experience the theater. (Recall action).

Hold it, who the heck is Gustav Freytag and what does he have to do with theater and business? Gustav Freytag was a Nineteenth Century German novelist who saw common patterns in the plots of stories and novels and developed a diagram to analyze them.

Using this pyramid or model in its rudimentary form, one could write stories, create plays and even stage a customer experience. I would suggest reading up on the Freytag Pyramid (Triangle) Model. By applying this dramatic structure to the customer experience an business can explore more dynamic ways of interacting with the customer and enhancing the buying relationship.

Below is a  diagram I developed to quickly outline the path of a customer’s experience with a business. I have added the “Recall Action” after the resolution as this is a critical piece of the customer recall and return action. This piece is usually called memorabilia or the take away keepsake. Use as needed with my compliments.

(The following in no means reflects the opinions of any thinkAbout Alumni or provider, merely an attempt to share a humorous rant on turmoil of been given chit.)

An experience is a personal thing. As providers of customer experiences, we strive to acquire a larger, longer lasting memory of the experience through the engineering and with the keepsakes after the experience. This token of memorabilia, a trinket to reflect on the experience can take many forms. For the experience at thinkAbout it has become formalized for alumni as a small token called a chit. A token of passage for alumni only to future thinkAbouts. It’s chit for the future.

My thoughts really begin with the authenticity of this chit. Is it real or fake this chit? How does it fall on the Real/Fake 2×2 Grid of authentic chit? Is this chit original and can we authenticate this chit or do I have to just take this chit for granite based on the marketing of this chit?

Yes, there are many questions that pile up about this chit. Whose chit is it anyway, that’s my next concern? Is it my own personal chit or is it Joe and Jim’s chit they just enjoy giving me. Is it that they just want me to hold onto their chit for awhile? Are they just giving me chit to keep me appeased? Whose chit is it really? I really need to know.

How will it come? Will it be in a box, in a paper bag on my door step or in a hermetically sealed wrap? Will I need to cut this chit out? But wait there is not just my chit; there is chit to come. There is the chit you can give to others or as the recipient of the chit, the chit you get from others. You don’t just have you own chit, you have chit to give. Now you have to make a decision, do I give chit to my friends, colleges or give it to my enemies? What if I don’t have anyone to give chit to, can donate this chit or can I sell this chit? If I can deal this chit, what’s a good price for this chit and will people be talking about my chit if I decide to sell chit on the open market?

Maybe I could auction my chit off on E-bay. What value do I place on my chit and the chit I give to others? What if I altered my chip with some sort of technology like an mp3 player? Make it loud and noisy chit. Would this make it more special and would anyone listen to my chit? I know. I could make my chit and the chit I give to others virtual and send chit to them in an email. I could spam about my chit, host a blog about my chit or better yet, give my chit a Facebook page so other people with chit can become friends and chit chat about the our chit. We could share pictures of our chit and the places we put our chit.

But wait. What if I do this and news of my chit gets out? What if there is a stalker who wants my chit and is willing to steal my chit. Oh chit! That makes me scared for my chit. Need to stash my chit. Hide the chit. This chit is making me paranoid, irrational and hungry. OMG, this chat of chit is giving me the munchies.

Wait then. That must mean that this chit and the chit I share with others is really good chit. I should be honored to have this chit. I should be proud that I earned this chit and was given this chit. By having this chit I now have the right to give chit to others. It’s true, it is better to give chit then receive it. Be proud of the chit you get, because there is no more chit after this. As for me, when I get the chits, I’ll be happy to share.

Until then, I will be updating my will to include this chit and hope to see you at the next thinkAbout.

The IdeaFreak.

What? Body language? Meaning? Does it sound like I have tipped the ink well a bit too much, well I haven’t. You see, even in the simplest of gestures or direction and form of a line, emotion and meaning can be expressed. On stick figures a line, soon to be known as arms, positioned around a dot, soon to be a head, can express many things quickly through this unique body language of the stickman.

Yes, stick figures do have body language if you believe it so and I do. If you have seen any of my earlier works, these ink people have always found their way onto the canvas consciously or unconsciously. In order to bring you into the fellowship of the Stickman, I have created a chart of arm positions seen below. Though there can be many more gestures and positions then what is on this chart, it has been a good reference for me when developing a sense of context and emotion to content.  I hope they inspire, entertain and motivate you to seek out your inner stick people and bring them to life.

Feel free to download this chart for your personal reference.

Lemons, Hot Apple Pie, Rosemary and A+ Grades

Odd, but these items have more in common than one would think. Aroma research on memory and retention has been actively seeking answers to the idea that aromas could be key to storing and unlocking memories and information to improve education, witness recall and general daily memory imprinting.

In a Psychology Today article from 2007, Rachel Herz researched the effects of aromas have on memory. Why is it that aromas are so strongly connected to memories? The olfactory center also interacts directly with the hippo-campus, a brain area involved in the formation of new memories. “No other senses have this kind of deep access,” Herz says. (see her book: “The Scent of Desire“) Other citations on this subject matter can be found at Chemical Senses at chemse.oxfordjournals.org.

If this is the case, then manipulation of imprinting information into memory is possible, but can you selectively retrieve these same memories when needed. The diagram below attempts to map a conversation that addresses this very issue.

This then begs to ask the question, ‘could sensory technology be the next technological platform, much like the use of 3D glasses do today for our visual enhancement?’

Key issues to remember:

Aroma is the strongest connection to memory of all of senses

The olfactory center interacts directly with the hippo-campus, thus deeper memory placement

Scent can trigger even blocked details or forgotten memories

Almost sounding too bizarre, but plausible, for students scent triggers could be a series of scratch and sniff cards used as the learn and then again when they recall. In the case for Visual Facilitation presenting information from group events, the use of a key scent tied to the event could be very powerful. Imagine presenting your deliverable with the same subtle aroma as was present when the content was gathered.  The recall of the event would be sharper by the combination of the visual and the original scent. You could, in essences, recreate the experience through aroma memory triggers each time the content was viewed physically.

So, which scent triggers memories of you?

Enough is Enough!

…as an associate would preach from his lunchroom pulpit, issuing his daily noontime sermon on the evils of Social Media becoming Social Marketing, I took the opportunity to record visually his rant and preaching.

Given the environment and the opportunity to test my skills as a visual scribe, I proceeded to follow his rantings as best I could. With three of us sitting a a few more associates in the wings, the sermon flowed from his lips like a well rehearsed preacher addressing his followers. Damnation and Harassment were the key topics of today’s sermon from the Formica pulpit.

As he spoke in this constant stream of words and emotional gruntings, he did touch on solid key issues facing modern Social Media and its twisting to Social Marketing. I, myself, have noticed recently on Linked In the number of “Spam” promotions that are not being policed by group leaders as my associate would present.

Is my associate right? Are these groups merely promotional Snake Oil Medicine men selling from their digital wagons with online webinars to resolve almost anything and everything? They all seem to have the answers you need and the cures to every ailment of your social network needs.

Look at your own connections and maybe you can see what his ranting is all about and remember this, a comment he made as his closing statement… “Nothing of value is free my friend, there are no cure-all in business nor social media. So beware the unseen financial hook or the informational pickpocket in the audience.”

Bruce Nussbaum discusses in detail in this video on Youtube the pros and cons of Design Thinking and the impact or lack there of in the battle to promote Design Thinking.