Life, love, and design with Samsung’s Mauro Porcini + Mark’s big news

24:24It was fascinating. When you arrive to the base camp, the first day you go up to the first, you know, the second base. The day after, you go down because you need to adjust. You need to grow more blood cells to be able to breathe. Exactly. So you do these all the second day, up and then down, up and down, up and down. Then you go to the third step and then you go all the way down again. And again, you know, long story short, she was telling us that even when you're going down, Even when you're going backwards, you are still going forward towards your goal. And often you need to do this in business, in design, in innovation.

25:00Sometimes you need to step back a moment to achieve your goal in the long run. We recently connected. You were at South by Southwest. You were doing a talk. And, you know, you've done a lot of talks globally. I remember saying, like, you know, South by is so interesting to me, but I feel like it's there. You know, it's something people care a lot about for 24, 48 hours. And I feel like it's fleeting. and you kind of made a comment like, well, this is why I'm here. I'm here to talk about this. And do you feel like expressing some of these ideas is actually just then like a window to personal growth as well?

25:32Because that's how it seems based upon what you're saying, that sort of by communicating this, you actually embody it. First of all, I believe that life is a never-ending journey of growing and learning. Again, Plato will remind us that perfection lives in the world of ideas. And we spend our life here in imperfection, but looking at the world of ideas with this tension to get better and better and better. So I really believe in it. And I feel that in life, I need to keep learning and growing. You know the story, I was living in New York at the perfect life and I decided to get completely out of my comfort zone and move to the other side of the world, start from scratch in a different company.

26:14And one of the biggest drivers was this idea of growing. But I also believe, because I believe in certain kinds of values, I believe in collective growing. I really believe that by sharing more and more, more people may embrace those kinds of values and collectively we can grow together. So you're right, it's both my personal growth, by sharing you commit and then you need to walk the talk and force yourself to practice all of these traits every day. but then you hopefully also inspire others to do similar things. I'm very active in social media. I've been always active in social media from the very beginning and even before social media were invented, I would love to share and I love a culture of images and taking pictures.

26:59So it was all part of why I became very organic. But then I realized there was something bigger than that when over the years people started to bribe me and they told me, well, a speech that you made or maybe an answer that you gave me when I sent you a message inspired me to change a job or to do something or get out of my comfort zone. And now I'm here. And it's kind of weird, like what sticks with people from a conversation. You don't realize it until sometimes years later. It happened to me. I was very young and I fell in love with the vision of Stefano Marzano that was the head of design of Philips in those years, in the 90s.

27:37And I started to kind of stalk him, you know. I mean, I was talking in a very poetic way, pre-social media way. So I met him because a friend of mine was the daughter of a friend of his. And so when he came, he was living in Holland. He came to Italy. He came to Varese, to my hometown. And this friend called me and she told me, well, there is Stefano Marzano here in my house. Today you want to come and meet him. And I had so many things going on. and I was playing soccer back then. I had to go training, but I dropped everything and I went and I met him. And again, when I met him, he inspired me so much with his passion and what he was doing.

28:21By the way, back then he was working on mobile phones and ringtones and mobile phones. I mean, Philips in the 90s was really kind of a radical company. They had a point of view, for sure. It was very inspiring. So after I met him, when he would come to Italy to give speeches and things like this, and it was not very often. I would try to go. But then my way of talking, I wrote him two or three letters, literally pen, paper, and sending. And in high school, I love philosophy. So I was fascinated with this idea of the philosopher, the maestro, and then the alumni, how do you call it, the student, anyway, I was writing to the maestro.

28:59Alumni is a much more beautiful word. Let's stick with it. I like it. I was writing in that way, very philosophical letters about design. The guy didn't answer, but then he did something even more powerful. A couple of years later, he decided to take two books that he published with Philips and he sent them to me from Holland to Italy, to my home. And on one of them, he wrote a dedication. I still have these books many years after. And one of them, he wrote, I have these books both in Italian and in English, but I'm sending them in English because if you ever want to join Philips or any other company, you need to learn English.

29:38I didn't speak a word of English. I studied French at school. So I mentioned this again in my book because two things happen in the moment. First, a leader established, successful. I meant nothing to him. I was nobody, literally. He decided to do a little act of generosity. Take the time to get those books, write it, ask somebody to send them. It's little, but most of the people don't do it. The second thing that happened is that a kid was very resilient and very passionate, very excited. And he built this, what I call this meta mentor, this mentor far away. He followed his role model and he was open to be inspired.

30:20And so this is a message both to the new generations of creatives and then to the very established one. Establish this connection, this dialogue. So today, when somebody writes me, if the possibility I try to answer, I try to reconnect. And especially if I see that maybe they write twice, that you see passion, you see resilience. And then usually you always get an answer. And I do it reminding the moment that changed my life because I did then went to Dublin to study English, you know, in an exchange program in university. And again, when I see that I'm touching the life of so many people over the past two decades, just by sharing books, social media and everything, that really gives you so much energy.

31:06So those books aren't sent to you. Do you feel like you're here now? No. What do you mean? If you didn't send those books to you and sort of give you that message. That's a good question. That drove you to then, you studied in Ireland? In Ireland. Right. You studied English. that sort of gave you a foundation to, I think, getting into the U.S. corporate world for sure. And so I'm just like thinking about that inflection point and how significant that was, not just like obviously personally, but just the skill set and think that you really took it essentially to heart and studied up. Yeah. Look, I don't know, God knows what would have happened, but for sure to go to a different country and learn English with that kind of depth by living there for a while is significant.

31:50and if I didn't do that, I would have found a job and God knows how I would have found the time to study English. Now, back then, English was not necessary to work in Italy. Today, it is. So maybe I would have found my way, but maybe I wouldn't have had the right skills at the right time to get specific kind of jobs and succeed. Too many interdependencies to really do that. Let me give you an example. I joined, after university, I did almost one year in Phillips. Then I created my own company, but then I joined 3M. In 3M, in literally a couple of months, by coincidence, I was exposed to the top management, the CEO and EVP in the U.S.

32:3327 years old, I had to present to them. Obviously, the fact that my English was already very good helped me. So it's a little detail, but imagine if my English was not good, maybe I wouldn't have impressed those people. I do think it's interesting that you go from sort of that story to then landing at Samsung, a place you definitely don't speak the native tongue, right? You aren't from the culture. And I'm wondering what it was like in those first couple of weeks of landing there, orienting yourself, learning the business because it's gargantuan too, right? It's like you could, I'm sure, spend a couple of years just touring and actually, you know, learning the ins and outs and not really being as productive as I'm sure you really have to be in the role and in this very, very competitive, you know, highly transformative technological environment right now.

33:24It's very complex, but it was less complex than I was thinking, to be honest, in terms of understanding the business. And I was trying to understand why. I think it's a mix of multiple things. First of all, I'm used to the complexity of megacorporations. My entire life, I did that. And I was lucky enough from the very beginning, even when I was 27 years old in 3M, for a reason or the other, I got projected right away at the top of those companies talking with the CEOs and everything. So I was exposed to that complexity for 24 years now, every single day. Yeah, so that scales across companies, really, for you.

34:07You really see that, even though there are different product categories or whatever else, that thinking scales. And even, you know, in 3M, there were so many different industries and businesses and technological preferences. 3M's really, yeah, very expensive. So I had to learn right away to navigate completely different industries back then in my first 10 years. Then I jump in an industry completely different than even those where I never worked. It was food and beverage. So again, for me to move in complex organizations at scale, in industries that eventually are not familiar to me, was part of who I was, what I did for many years.

34:44On top of it, the tech industry anyway was familiar to me. You know, it was my childhood dream. I, for those five years in university, for me, the passion was consumer electronics. You know, I was focused on that. I needed to enter in Philips. I did my thesis on wearable technologies and I did enter Philips. Then I worked 13 years in tech. And so 13 years in PepsiCo then were a sort of anomaly and tech was my passion. So every new gadget, any new thing, I bought it and I tried. You know, I'm very technological. It's a power user. Yeah, so I work in consumer electronics. So I've been a user and an innovator and early adopters of those technologies in so many different ways all these years.

35:29So it was less complex than what I thought because my job here is to understand society, what people want in general. And again, Maslow for me is always a reference and then more specifically in the category, but I am a user of that category, essential of every product that the company has in consumer electronics. I'm a user. So that was one variable. And then I need to understand good enough you know, the business model and the technology. You know, the three lenses of design thinking, I need to understand feasibility, viability, desirability, and then I have an army of experts. I have so many good designers, industrial designers, UX designers, and also my colleagues in R &D, marketing.

36:17So my job has been always the one of understanding, you know, in a decent way, the three variables, and then understanding what is the right vision, the right philosophy to build, and then how to land it in a very practical way in something that creates value for the business. And always working on this tension between, on one side, the primary driver that is also what we tell the world and society, but as you know, Mark, it's something I really profoundly believe in, is how we impact the world for the better. What is our why? But then the second variable is how, by doing that, I create real business value for the company I work for.

36:57So that's my job. And then I have, again, so many incredible experts to work with to take it to life. I just imagine what it's like in those first few weeks when you're meeting with the design team, you're meeting with the R &D team, and you're seeing products and product concepts that you didn't know were there, right, when you were applying and you started going through the interview process. I'm wondering what that's like, whether that first few weeks or however long that time lasts is like. And I wonder, like, what impression were you left with from it? And did you see something that's like, all right, we need to green light this.

37:34We need to push this through. We need to get funding. Did you see stuff that was like, I don't like this direction. Like, I need to communicate that. Like, what's the response like to that moment? The first few weeks, it was so exciting. I would see these prototypes. I would be like, wow, the world needs to see. I remember keep saying myself and to myself and to them, the world needs to see. You sound like a journalist, like when I'm in a place and it's like, we got to write about this. And like, I'll be in a corporation and be like, well, we're not really ready yet for this one. We don't like, it's going to weird people out.

38:05They're not going to know how to take it. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You want to share that. Trust me, trust me, trust me. So very similar. Yeah. I mean, look, I was like, if people see these things, they will understand your creativity, your leadership, how you're looking at the future. We need to find a way to see. And obviously there is a reason why companies don't share certain things. It's IP, it's competition. But you need to understand how to do it in the right way. Obviously, there are things that you can show and things that you don't. But it was very important for me to show the world what Samsung was about because a lot of people didn't know what Samsung is about behind the scenes.

38:42So that's what was one thing, you know, a variety of different prototypes and ideas that I saw. Another thing that happened was a weekend. So I came to Milan Design Week last year. I was already employed by the company. And then I go to Seoul. That week after I arrived, there is a review for a television OLED technology in this incredibly thin panel that was supposed to be launched, a CS, the year after. And so the team reviewed it with me. They wanted to have my point of view. It was just my point of view. I was one week in the company, coming from PepsiCo, you know, from a different business.

39:23There was no expectation. Give us your point of view. It's too early. Everybody knew, starting with me, it was too early. And so they show it to me. And there is a specific kind of prototype they are showing to me. And I was not thrilled by the specific solution. What they were trying to do was to create a frame, you know, similar to what they did with a frame TV, but with a different kind of execution, but trying to celebrate how thin that OLED panel was. The frame TV, the frame will cover that. It's kind of, which has been a challenge, like having been to CS and seeing those TVs and seeing all the thin prototypes.

40:00And it is kind of interesting how it's almost like a magician trying to show the trick in a reasonable way. And so, you know, people come up with all these solutions where, you know, they try to kind of show it from the side somehow, right? They encase it in something clear And none of that necessarily really works in the home, in most people's homes entirely. But yes, anyway, it's a challenge in the industry. And obviously, you're going thinner and thinner. Yeah, so I see the thing. And again, that pure luck, you know, an intuition that came randomly. I was like, what if? And they took a piece that was there of the prototype.

40:36I turned it upside down. And I showed them, what if we create this frame that goes flat on the wall? and we have this OLED panel, OLED display floating on top of this thing. Now, a team, a design team could have said, you know what, nice, thank you for the advice. We don't have time or whatever. A little polite. Yeah, exactly. That's a great idea, Mauro. Great idea. Keep them coming. And instead, on one side, I'm missed. I was just lucky, but it was the good idea at the right moment. But the team was very confident, very open. And they were like, wow, that's an interesting idea. In one night, they prototype it.

41:18The day after, they show it to the president without even telling me. In a few days, it was approved and it was going to market. That's wild. And I'm mentioning this because that was another wow moment, a different kind of a team that was confident enough to take in a completely different perspective. And they work fast enough to execute in a matter of days and get approval. And so that showed me the potential that I had in this company to move really, really fast and with that kind of approach. So you saw these, I mean, I'm trying to think of the right word. I mean, some of these items are really quite delightful.

42:02I'm thinking of Project Luna, which is this, You could really oversimplify it as an AI assistant, but it's dynamic. It has motion. It has character. It can have a face. You know, it's almost like a standing mirror. But instead of a mirror, it's a screen. And it can point up, which is very strange, right? Very shocking. But, you know, that's a piece with a lot of personality. It also comes with, you know, that's a piece that I feel like does sort of become a little bit brand defining if it takes off or, you know, it represents something about the company. And so I imagine it's a decision to share it publicly is my point.

42:35Well, I mean, the decision was given. I mean, they approved the idea of being here in the Zanguik even before the philosophy, the strategy was developed. And even before, many products were developed. Now, I mentioned that I was excited by many prototypes I saw. But what you saw in Milan, the Zanguik, 20 % of those products eventually were there when I arrived. All the others were developed after. So now developed after with technologies that the company is familiar with. You don't have to reinvent the circuit every time you want to ship something. But we then approached again that came after the approval.

43:15I'm mentioning this because there was a leap of faith early on on the company thinking, okay, we want to trust and empower this new design vision even before really understanding what it is and giving it a possibility. And it goes back to that reaction that day after a week I was in, this team really open to take the new idea, prototype it right away, move really fast and talking about that kind of potential. So it's a very dynamic organization that try to understand how to leverage new ideas in the best possible way, in the most effective way. Now, you mentioned Luna. I think it's very important to understand that for me, this stage that we have with Melandes and WIC is not just about one product.

44:02And Luna is so iconic that, yes, a lot of people mention Luna, but the reality is there are so many, even alternatives to Luna. There is this little sphere that looks at you, or your artificial intelligence may appear on a mirror or on a speaker. I was going to say, yeah, I mean, all these devices are interconnected, right? And you even kind of show interface and AI dancing across them. You know, Luna isn't my personal favorite device in the collection, I would say, even. I was really taken by sort of the way you're playing with interfaces that aren't on literal screens. And, you know, you have this record player that sort of looks like, you know, it's a square, essentially, and the record kind of juts out from it almost like a table saw or something, but, you know, a little more elegant looking.

44:48And it's really interesting to see how an interface just appears on that box. It suddenly has an equalizer or has other imagery. I feel like, honestly, a design challenge for Samsung or just a design challenge for technology companies in general is how to create that aesthetic that can celebrate the screen in the right moments when the screen's the right solution, but also bring some of that digital expression to, I think, what a lot of us want right now, which is like real stuff, touching grass, whatever else, right? Like I either almost want something hyper-technological or not quite invisible, but I guess more organic.

45:26No, I completely agree. I mean, there are different ways for technology, and in this specific case, we are celebrating the role of artificial intelligence in our life for all of this to appear. Sometimes you want this to be visible in front of your face. Sometimes you want this to disappear. It needs to be there when you need it and disappear when you don't. And you have different ways for this to appear. You may have screens. You may have transparent surfaces that do become screens. You may have surfaces that are just there with their materiality and then you project on them. Or you have other surfaces that are really different and you don't expect something to appear.

46:04It appears, but with a resolution that is not, you know, what you expect is something more less defined, more vintage. And again, it's up to you to choose what you want. This is one of the theme of this show and the philosophy that we have. Yeah, it's up to us. But I think what's really interesting is that it's up to you, right? It's chief design officer. It is Samsung. And it feels like, you know, and something you've kind of alluded to is that you're not going for that matchy-matchy one design language to rule them all that I think a lot of companies have sort of aspired to post-Bahouse, post, you know, the success of Apple.

46:40I mean, Samsung devices certainly match one another in a lot of contexts. And it seems, you know, and for you, it's an expression of humanism to actually shake it up more. Well, look, I was in the Italian national television on Monday and the presenter was going to ask me a question. And thank God we didn't have time to skip the question because it was a very difficult question to answer. He told me, I love vintage stores. And I go to the stores and I buy things from 20 years ago, 30 years ago. I mean, so much Y2K styling back, right? All the kids are collecting disc mans, corded headphones, all of that.

47:21Yeah, yeah. So in 30 years, if I go to a vintage store, what would I buy from today? And it was a very difficult question because usually what you buy is something that is iconic, that is unique, that is differentiated. If you think about products back in the 80s, the 70s, or even more recently, the early 2000s, there was so much diversity. I'm thinking obviously specifically to tech, because that's where I work. I mean, every type of different button, right? Every type of different interface, different finishes, materials. People were playing with all sorts of different things to differentiate the time.

47:57I mean, think of MP3 players, cassette players, vinyl players, CD players. There was an explosion of different kind of styles. Speakers, Dolby Surrounds. I mean, there was televisions. There was so much. Now everything looks alike. And so you see, you know, in this show, you see different kind of interpretations of similar product categories. Some go more minimalistic. Some other are more bold, colorful, iconic. Some are more Bajau. Some are more Memphis. And the idea is that we want to reflect the diversity of humanity. We're all different. My living room is different than yours. Why our televisions need to look the same?

48:39So can we have choice? And when we talk about choice, we talk about different kind of form factors, but also the materiality, as you were saying earlier, of this object and falling in love with the object even before you fall in love with the technology. I had many people this week telling me, I want to buy this thing, even if I don't care about the technology or the functionality. So I remember as a kid, I would go to a store with my parents and we would buy televisions. And the first criteria was how beautiful the object was. And then you look at the display, making sure that it works in a good way and is a good quality.

49:19But we were choosing the object. We lost that so much in this industry in the name of this common uniform design language that we all converge to. While in reality, in other industries, that's not the case. We are in Milan for design week that started as the furniture fair. In furniture, you have so much diversity. You have so many different kinds of design languages, often within the same brand. Think about fashion. That's really true. Yeah. Fashion season to season can be radically different. Yeah. Right. Or within the same season, take, I mean, most of the brands, take one iconic brand, Prada, just to name one.

50:00I could name many others. You go to the minimalism of this simple black suit all the way to super iconic ball pieces that are almost difficult to wear within the same brand. And so why can't we do this in tech? People, I think, are waiting for this. They love this. They used to have this. I think people are hungry for it. And I think the other thing is that I don't think the average consumer is worried Samsung technology isn't going to work at this point, right? Like that's not any point of differentiation for you. I mean, I think it's great, right? Like, it's great your things work. But at this point, if you want to grow the company, grow the view, or even just compete for, I think, just this really, really difficult market share right now, why not place a few bets, right?

50:46Because I'm sure you can also offer minimalism, right? You can also offer all of the sort of pared back designs that a portion of the population will always really want. And it feels like, based upon the way you produce, you can do all these things at once, right? I'm sure there are limitations. Something I'm curious about is, I don't know why I haven't seen more tech companies do drops. Where is the drop culture for the complete technological industry? We've seen it in sneakers. It's easier to make a sneaker than a phone, kind of. But depending how complicated you get, you still have to retool a whole assembly line.

51:20You're still doing a lot of that baseline work. And so it does feel like there's so much, I'd say, I don't want to say, you could say missed opportunity, right? or sort of just opportunity in the industry for this sort of point of view. But at the beginning of the conversation, you asked me how difficult it was to understand the company and the organization. This is something, obviously, that I'm learning still. There is a clear vision. I know that this vision is somehow feasible, this idea of diversity of products in the portfolio. I know the company is anyway embracing that vision, else, we wouldn't show it officially as a company here.

52:01Now, the reality is that to lend it is complex. It's really complex. This is not innovation in the product. This is innovation in business model. This is innovation in retail. What is the right balance between selling all kinds of different styles, things that is impossible from a business model standpoint versus the other opposite is having a more traditional approach with very limited SKUs. So what is the right balance? How do you manage all of this? How do you manage all the different price tiers to really make sure that you have both products that are affordable to the masses, but then maybe you have some products that are more complex technologically, therefore more expensive even just to produce, but they can make a statement or they can direct the industry in a certain way.

52:51So there is that complexity. But you asked me at the beginning, what is the role of the chief design officer? It's not the one just of dreaming cool things and then blaming the business organization. Oh, it's not happening. You really paid yourself in a corner on this one, Mauro, because you basically said it's up to you to figure it out. Yeah, look, but it's exactly that and it's a message to all the designers that are listening to us. Our role is not just the one of dreaming and then blaming the business organization if things don't happen. I am really actively working with marketing, with sales, meeting retailers to figure out how to make it happen.

53:29And this is literally end-to-end, design end-to-end, from the idea of doing something all the way to figuring out how to make it happen within the constraints of the business and the business model. You have the industry, you play in. Now, you don't do it by yourself. else you will be the CEO, the head of market, head of design, obviously, right? You need to have that kind of mindset. You go to the table with an holistic vision, but you are the vertical expert of one thing that is design. But you need to understand all those dimensions to be able to engage in a conversation with the real experts of sales, with the real experts of marketing, and so on and so forth, to then take decisions together.

54:11So you need to fly very high to build a vision with a human-centered, design-centered approach. That vision should meet the vision of other people that come to similar or different conclusions, starting from different standpoints, finance, you know, marketing and technology. And around the table, you discuss what we need to do. But you don't change design. You don't change an industry to design just through a design effort with a design leader. It's a collective effort. But again, as design leaders, we shouldn't just be in the creative vision and then leave it to the business leadership and be like, okay, get it and go.

54:51Now, there are companies where maybe you have business leaders that are, at the end of the day, very creative and really, really good. They could be design leaders too. And so sometimes you can do that. It can happen the opposite. You have companies where you have design leaders that could be literally business leaders, right? Yeah. But if you are the CEO of a company, you shouldn't rely on the random possibility that you have individuals that can wear different hats, no matter their titles. You should be in an organization where you have these vertical experts, but that have very holistic views, that understand business in 360 degrees, so that they can connect with each other, talk with each other, and really drive the growth of the company.

55:35These are the hard skills, the technical skills. Then again, we go back to the unicorns and the soft skills that they have because these people may be really, really good in their technical skills and they may understand business holistically, but maybe are totally unable to work with one another. Their ego is too big. They're arrogant. They're not confident enough. So kindness, curiosity, optimism, there are a series of soft skills that are indispensable. And very often we don't talk about them in these companies. And that's a problem. I have one more question. I'd ask where you want Samsung to be.

56:12Samsung's design to be in three years. But I think that's too far out right now. I think we'd probably both agree that everything's moving too fast for that. So I'll say one to two. What's that North Star? Or how would you like to see us think about Samsung differently? What will surprise us the most? I would prefer the three years horizon for one reason, because the answer is, you know, I want the company to be a leader in the humanistic approach to innovation. I want the company to drive a change and evolution in the tech world where we open up to diversity of products, diversity of languages, a diversity that reflects the diversity of people and humanity.

56:56And that's why I tell you three years time, because we're talking about changing many different kinds of products and influencing other companies eventually to do it. You know, with the leadership position of Samsung in so many product categories, there is a probability that if we change something in a category, competition will follow. And so this will have a chain effect and the industry will change. So it's going to take more than one or two years. So you want to shake everything up. Well, because I think, I feel that people want that. There is some fatigue, you know, in this industry. People are looking for newness.

57:31They want to go back to a store and get excited. They want to discover new things. They want to do what they do when they go to a fashion store or a furniture store or a lighting store or even, you know, in so many different kinds of industries. So I think they are ready. The world is ready. We need to lead that change. And it's just a matter of, you know, what I don't know is how fast we're going to move, not as a company, But, you know, when you start to move few things, change few things, first of all, the users, the consumers need to follow you. So we need to understand how fast they will react.

58:06And second, when they start to follow, you're going to do more of this. And then competition will start to follow. So the speed will be decided by the market. The speed will be decided by how fast consumers embrace it. But I do believe that, let's not talk about one, two, three years, but in 10 years' time, this industry will be completely different. I have no doubt about this. We can't go on, you know, in this kind of uniformity of language in the industry. Mauro, thank you so much. This was such a fun talk. Thank you. All right. And we are back for our fun segment, Hot or Not, in which our producer, Cody, tees up some of the most notable design projects of the month.

58:47And Liz and I duke it out for if they're, you know, hot or, as you may have guessed it, not. It's going to be tough. I won't know where to get my taste from for the next at least three months. I'm guessing Mark's still going to be posting to LinkedIn. Check it out there. Oh, of course. I'm just going to be texting you guys just like, not. No context. Not. Just like without a link as if we're commenting. No link, nothing. Just make me second guess my outfit for the day. That'll be fun. We're going to start off strong with a brand new Target cart. the retailer is replacing its fleet of half a million carts.

59:26I honestly thought it would be more carts, only half a million, with a bigger, beefier model. Apparently, it will drive a lot better for customers who have their phone in one hand and a coffee in the other and are trying to keep their massive cart straight with their elbows. It is an all-plastic design. It is still somehow sustainable. It uses recyclable plastic that is more durable than previous metal interior cart designs. And there are also two cup holders. And they're shaped in such a way that they can fit both a Stanley cup and a Starbucks cup. So pick your poison there, hot or not. I'm going to comment first because Mark wrote this story, so he's going to have more opinion.

1:00:11Yeah. Me, it's hot. I'm into this. I feel like Target already had a pretty steerable shopping cart, a pleasurable cart to push. And that's huge for me. I think that's great. I don't really shop in real life all that often, but when I do, I appreciate having a good cart. When it comes to the Stanley and the Starbucks cup, look, give the people what they want. I'm not carrying around a Stanley and a Starbucks cup, but if that is what their shoppers are doing, they should absolutely give them the space for that. What do you think, Mark? Yeah, no, I think it's great. Like, I loved reporting this story.

1:00:48You know, it's great. Like, they really did care about the consumer touch points. They've really been iterating this thing for 20 years. I haven't tried the car. I absolutely believe it steers better, which was their number one thing. And, yeah, like, they know their audience, right? Like, they know their audience is in there with the big Stanley Cup. They know their audience picks up the Starbucks there. Like, whatever. Like, should they not serve their customer? I'm here for it. I love it. Hot. W for Target. Next up, Venmo's redesign. It is the first big overhaul since the app launched in 2009.

1:01:20And from my read on it, a lot of it is to address previous issues with the app. Basically uncovering previously hard to find features, such as being able to send a gift card or splitting expenses with the group, perhaps putting Splitwise to shame if that's still an app, making these features easier to access. They've updated the payment flow. making it easier for you to do what you're on the app to do, presumably send money. And the search function is purportedly improved too. Instead of trying to type in somebody's username, you can just look up their phone number. I updated the app in preparation for this, and all I can really tell is there are more ads and more affiliates linked where I can spend my money using Venmo tokens.

1:02:10I loathe this app and the culture around it. I'm just going to say that right now. So I can't hide my bias, but I hope you can enlighten me, hot or not. No, my heart is resonating with fire right now. Well, I guess not as ice, because this is a not for me, or like a really huge not for me. Look, my favorite thing they fixed was user search and name search. I mean, that's been a really big problem, the idea of just like finding who you're trying to send money and that being like, sometimes it works perfectly and then a lot of the time it doesn't. but I hate to say like all of us are old enough on this call to perhaps recognize that a public feed of who you're giving five dollars to to like split like the cake that you got at the coffee shop or whatever like I just feel like Venmo in general has made people instead of like buying something for one another once in a while always have to split it and made every experience a bit more monetized rather than just like cool and chill and like I blame Venmo for that and Liz is making a face.

1:03:12So that's me. I'm a not. But I'm ready for this gauntlet. No, no, no. I agree with all of that around the culture of splitting. I think that for a lot of people, though, it's a really useful tool. So I think we just have to acknowledge that it has changed behavior, maybe not always for the better. But it's a tool that people need and they need to be able to use it. And the app sucked, right? The app actually did really suck before this update. I haven't updated mine, so I can't say with hands-on experience whether or not it's any better if it actually does what it says it's going to do or what they told Grace, our writer, that it was going to do.

1:03:48But I think it was necessary. This is the first update that they've done in 10 years. I don't know, like, why it takes so long. It just seemed like they were adding features and burying them within the UX. And so, like, writing that wrong, I think, is great. I do really dislike this move towards an everything app. Every app seems like wants to do everything now. And I just think that's naturally going to lead to a really bad user experience. So if you can get the core stuff right, if you can get search right, if you can get splitting right, I mean, this is lukewarm for me. It's neither hot or not.

1:04:22I need to use it before I actually comment on it. Yeah, I don't know. That's where I'm landing on it. Okay, well, if you just bought me a blue cord coffee, I will Venmo you$250 for half of it. I mean, that's a thing between friends. That's my take is that like if you have a friend culture where everybody feels like they need to repay each other all the time, maybe that's Venmo's fault. But that's also like kind of. That's the feed. It's totally the feed's fault. It's not the feed. Who doesn't have their shit set to default private? A lot of people. I mean, that's also my reaction. But like most people I know do not have their shit set to default private.

1:04:59There was once upon a time where there was like Venmo flirting, where you could send people like a dollar to flirt with them. Oh, my. Wait, are you telling me everybody's flirting with me? Maybe this app is great. Yeah. Yeah. That was a thing back in like 2015. Oh, I would try to see like back in my single days who my ex is with based on Venmo. Yeah. No, great. It's a fascinating feed. Great. Great recon. Just making it rain singles. Okay. We can move on. Next up, we have a new logo for Instagram side project, Little Sibling, otherwise known as Threads. Threads is apparently now trying to stand on its own.

1:05:38I don't have this app, but I guess there is an independent culture on Threads now that exists separately from Instagram, or at least that is what Meta would like us to believe. But part of that effort to get threads to stand on its own is a new logo. You might remember the old logo as being a sort of stylized at symbol. You are going to be floored by the new logo. It is the stylized at symbol, slightly curvier, slightly italicized, tilted, moving forward. Mark, you are a threads guy, right? You like threads. I like, does a threads endorsement thing? Why do you think I like, I mean, I'm fine with threads.

1:06:23Because you've told me before, you're like, threads is actually pretty cool. You can find some interesting stuff on there. All right, one second. I got to pull up Teams and pull up some very incriminating things, Alyssa said. It's not a verbatim quote, but it definitely. This is pretty cool. Okay, so it's kind of funny because, Cody, you mentioned that it's leading forward. I think it's almost leading backward, like depending on which way you see a face. It's a really minor update in some ways. As you were talking, I actually, I'd seen the redesign, but I thought to actually pull up my phone and look at how it looks like as an app icon.

1:06:58And I got to say, it's a hop for me. I just think like it looks, it has a bit more to it in a crucial way while still being recognizable. Like it's definitely not a complete logo makeover, but there's just a little bit more character. I'm here for it. I think it's solid. Yeah, I think the logo itself is sort of, indecipherable the differences are. There are differences. The average person is not going to notice them. But this was an opportunity for Meta, for Instagram to say like, hey, look, Threads is actually doing well. We sort of positioned it as this thing that was Instagram's little sibling.

1:07:33In fact, we have 400 million users. So, you know, consider us like something that you should go to on the daily as opposed to just like getting kicked there via Instagram, which is how it always happens for me. I don't think I've ever intentionally opened up my Threads app, but Instagram is always like, oh, here's something interesting happening on Threads. And then I click it in app and get kicked over. So anyway, I think the talking and the marketing around this update is really smart. The logo itself is fine. Hot, I guess. Hot? Lukewarm again? I don't know. I'm not feeling decisive here. It's not like burning hot, but I feel like it's more than lukewarm.

1:08:09Yeah. It's like, you know, this food arrived at my table at an acceptable temperature. Correct. Despite the way I introduced it, I tend to agree with you guys. Anyway, next up, we have a new Pinterest ad, which is they're kind of doing the hinge thing where they're like, this is the app designed to be deleted. They have a new advertisement that is encouraging you to go offline. And in this commercial, you see two young women who seem depressed. They're laying in somebody's bedroom, doom scrolling in the dark. And then one of them cracks open the Pinterest app. Dance music kicks in. They're inspired.

1:08:48They're standing up. They're getting off of their phones. They're somehow transported in new fits they found on Pinterest to a place that looks like the Electric Forest Music Festival, but probably isn't for copyright reasons. And then they're happy. They're off their phones. and the ad ends with the tagline, the best thing you can find online is a reason to go offline. I wanted to ask Hot or Not on this ad specifically and then also on this somewhat recent trend of apps trying to get you off of your phone. Yeah, I'm a nod on this. I just find it so disingenuous that these companies are positioning themselves as a reason to go offline when really what they want you to do is come back to them as often as possible.

1:09:35And there's no two ways about it. That is the goal. I think it's, you know, a creative, I will say that, like, I think it's like a fine and semi-creative stance for Pinterest. They've been positioning themselves like this for a while. They had an ad before this rave ad where they basically were saying, like, how did people ever think for themselves before they were told what to like? And I think that's an interesting question to ask, But I don't understand how Pinterest can do that or ask that in good faith. Like, none of it makes sense to me. I think it's icky. I don't like the trend. And I don't really like the ad.

1:10:12I'm with you on this. I'm quickly Googling this term. Is it the 15-minute seat? Like, the sort of McDonald's historically pioneered the seat that was uncomfortable, so you didn't sit in as long. So you ate faster, so you got out of the store, right? It was, you know, it's sort of unproven pieces of mythology from Ray Kroc, McDonald's. But the reason I bring it up is because I feel like I don't have a problem with this message at all. Because, Cody, to your point, like, there's absolutely a desire for this. I have a problem that Pinterest business plan in no way supports it, so it's not sincere.

1:10:46And I was thinking, like, as a parallel, Pinterest doesn't really want you to leave because they want to make more money. But McDonald's wants you to leave because they want to up their capacity. You know, if you look at a lot of like the food industry, like they are trying to kick you out to get more people in. And I feel like if Pinterest cared, they would design the app to be a 15-minute seat. They would design it to kick you out, to make you not want to be there, to black and white your phone or do any of those other things that sort of like reduce the delight level to get you in the real world.

1:11:15But, you know, I think this just lacks like just earnestness to me, right? Like I think good brands find a way to like walk the line of earnestness. So you feel a sense of meaning there. And this disconnect is hard for me. And so it feels manipulative. Even though I kind of like appreciate the message, it feels manipulative being presented by Pinterest themselves. I agree. Last thing I'll say about this is that Pinterest actually has an interesting brand narrative, right? Like it is a less toxic place to surf. It is a place that has been in its own way trying to champion for like protections for young people on the Internet.

1:11:50And I think like the cool thing about Pinterest is that you do go there for inspiration, right? Like you go there if you're working on a project. You're going there if you're redesigning your living room. And why not lean into that, right? Like that's the cool part about Pinterest. It's a place where you actually might want to linger a little bit as opposed to whatever other platform that makes you feel really crappy after you get off of it. That's my last word on this one. So still a nod. Final hot or not item for the day. this is a fun one. The IKEA inflatable chair. It is back. Some of you might remember IKEA trying and failing to produce a good piece of inflatable furniture before.

1:12:34Apparently, from what I can gather, they've done it. It is a$200 inflatable arm chair that they're launching as part of the PS2026 collection. There is a chair bed version as well, which is just essentially a chair that can lay out flat for a single person air mattress. This chair was designed by Mikhail Axelson, and it uses a chrome metal frame and the chair version, at least, uses two inflatable air chambers that you can fill up to your preferred firmness using an included air pump. If you spill something. The covers are machine washable. And Wired reports that this chair was tested on cats and Axelson's four daughters.

1:13:22So not only do they say this chair is fairly comfortable for an inflatable, at least, but it is cat scratch and jumping child proof. What do we think about the inflatable chair from Ikea? This is super hot for me. I saw it in Milan. You know, our reporter Nate actually saw it in person, heard about development too. It feels great. It has the metal piping has that like late 70s, early 80s vibe that really works. It's structurally incredibly sound. Like I just dropped my body on it. But I think my favorite part of this in the design story is that this was basically designed about a decade ago, like along the lines.

1:14:00And Marcus Engelman, who I think was then leading product before leading retail at IKEA, declared it was ugly. and they didn't release it. And the designer took a lot of shit for it internally. And look who was right because everybody loves this chair. It's hot. So that's it. Yeah, I think this is hot for me too. I have not sat on it like Mark. I have not seen it in person, but I'm into the Kelly Green just like superficially. I like the metal piping. I think that looks cool. I loved the details that Nate talked about when developing it. Yeah, this was like a pet project for a really long time in the IKEA prototyping lab.

1:14:39And Axelson worked on it forever, took it off the shelf, was like, you know what? Let's give it a go again. Made like 20 prototypes, tiny, like these like miniature prototypes, big prototypes, and they finally figured it out. I mean, I think it looks great. If it feels great, this is definitely a hop for me. We're ending on a positive note. Thanks, guys. You better add one more. Yeah. well okay I think it's just the credits then is this the end this is this is kind of it this is this is the yeah kind of the end um really fun episode everybody yeah yeah a little bittersweet Mark but good episode guys what would your preferred walk-off music be if I can convince Josh to let us air it yeah I mean really anything by the Beatles or Stones you know anything that's kind of a seven figure ad by for Fast Company.

1:15:35Done. It's your parting gift. Yeah.

1:15:43All right. Well, that's all for today. Thanks for listening to this episode of By Design. Make sure you're following us wherever you get podcasts. By Design is produced by Cody Nelson, sound design, and mixed by Nicholas Torres. Our executive producer is Josh Christensen. And a special thanks this week to Jonathan Zantini.