Welcome to the everyday p.m. podcast of how castlereagh discuss project management principles for your everyday life. My name is Anne campea and I am a certified projects last program manager with a kind of years of experience working for healthcare retail. Consumer, goods Tech marketing. I've been kind of all across the industries here in In the p.m. world, I am so excited to welcome. David Rose who is an entrepreneur, MIT lecturer author and expert on digital.
Innovate product Innovation. He is also going to introduce us to some of the more recent books that he has written. But David, before I do your intro anymore, Injustice, please take a brief moment to introduce yourself to our audience. Sure. Hi on. So, I am a product leader and have Alton number of products that are being used by many, many people.
I my career started off when I was at the media, lab at MIT, worked on the LEGO Mindstorms project, which was a robotics invention kit that hopefully has taught. A lot of people how to kind of Be Inspired to build things with Legos that they that they imagined, but then also to put behaviors into those into those things so that they could. Build robots that have the can animate and respond to sound and
lights. I worked on Guitar Hero early also in my career which tried to kind of democratize making music and jamming with other people. I know a lot of people use that I started a company called ambient devices, that created little Wireless objects that make you aware of information
throughout the day. So the ambient or by have actually an ambient word here lights up to show you things like What the stock market is doing or what the weather is doing or what when the next bus is coming or how many steps you've walked or other kind of glanceable information and I wrote a book called Enchanted objects, all about iot and recently I've been really interested in augmented reality.
Like that is how to kind of create a metaverse out of the real world and superimpose information that could be useful throughout people's day. And one of those things that we can talk about is boating. Because I'm kind of taking the world of self-driving technology and applying it to the marine environment. Great awesome.
You know, when there was an Outreach from your team on whether or not you would be a great fit for the everyday p.m. the everyday project manager, I saw your bio and I thought holy crap, there are a thousand things that are a great fit for this podcast. I mean we could have gone every which way with this interview in terms of talking about product that Asian talking talking about AR. I just want to start off by entry Ali.
Introducing yourself to the audience in terms of your professional Journey. Because it's so fascinating. How people get to where they are and their space today? And I looked at your bio BP of Warby Parker at one point. I mean, there's just a lot of steps and Milestones that I learned about you, that I'm so fascinated to share them with our audience. So, take us through the professional journey and how you got to where you are today.
Day. Sure will, I think I've always been kind of open to finding new opportunities for Innovation. Many of them have been kind of made possible with new technologies. So when I graduated from undergrad, I grew up in the Midwest and did a physics major and a fine arts major because I was kind of equally interested in science and and designed the credible. And you know, when I was Thinking about what to do as a
career. You know, obviously architecture came to mind but when I went and did a lot of informational interviews and architecture firms, I found a lot of people pretty frustrated because they said, you know, this this is
such an established field. That as a new architect you really end up doing a lot of things that aren't very creative for the first 10 years of your of your career because there's so many people that are Architects and into architecture and trained as Architects that it's it's not really a
Greenfield opportunity. So instead I got very excited about Museum exhibit design which oftentimes if you're working for a science museum or even a history museum trying to do a simulation like you are FDR, are you going to jump into World War Two and and you know respond to Churchill that was one of the simulations that we created. You know, you kind of get to learn a lot quickly about either scanning electron microscopy for the for this.
For that for the Boston Museum of Science which was one of our first projects that I did as a created. A my first company to do Museum exhibit design and that was one of our first projects was helping to explain this very technical thing to a very broad audience. And so we got to use kind of the tools that were available at the time, which were touch screens and expensive, computers, and
animation and multimedia. And then the web emerged and And like that offered another set of potential and Technologies. And I created one of the first photo sharing websites kind of this was before. It was a good idea because it was already your digital photos online. But I would say kind of with with every with every chapter of new technologies and the democratization of, you know, what we could do with embedding sensors and to everyday.
X or creating new musical instruments or creating iot, you know, connected connected objects and now with glasses that can embed information in terms of, you know, kind of are pods in the temples of the glasses. Like what bows is doing or even project information into blending, what you see in the real world with information though. That's another advancement Vance and technology that You know, as a designer gives us kind of a new field to explore and design. I love it.
And there's to your point there seems to be some connectivity between all of the choices that you made in your professional Journey with Innovation and creativity and the evolution of just the things that are available to us. And and that was the first connection point that I made to our project management Community.
Is that even in project management as Anna boring, Our profession sound sometimes is that with Innovation comes new ways of being a p.m. as well and and how you're saying, you know, each product kind of came as an idea from something that happened before it, you know, and p.m. there's always this evolution of the way we do things and very very often and actually in 2023 in particular as we talk about the trends that are happening in our industry, a lot of what's going to evolve at
least what's projected is that. It's going to To progress with AI and and this introduction of Automation and and theme tools that PM's can use to mimic the repetitive behavior and what we do so that we can start to get creative and Innovative and and other areas that we often don't have time to even think about our look at. So I love that there's this Synergy between kind of the way that you've portrayed your professional journey and with everything that you've created,
I'm just in awe that and I think that there is something to say about The way that can show project managers how we can also evolve with the tools that are available and and when there are not tools available, you were still able to create some amazing things. So thank you, David. That was great. It was rarely, I mean to your point about project management, like it's rarely me, it's merely only me. Like, if we take this product, which this is an internet-connected medication
cap that goes on ordinary pill. Vials So if somebody has a heart transplant or a liver transplant and they really need to take like the immunosuppressant so they don't reject the new kidney or heart or liver. It's there are some medications that are incredibly important to you know, they're prescribed but not taken very regularly and so we kind of we understood that
this was an issue. I put together a team of people that included people that were industrial designers that Could, you know, kind of craft beautiful forms mechanical engineers, that could figure out kind of how it could attach electrical engineers. That could figure out how to create, you know, how to make a watch battery that you could insert in this last for nine months and make sounds. This makes a kind of arpeggios when it's time to take your meds. That kind of tap you on the
shoulder or acoustically. It also blinks like a bike lights to kind of try to get your attention. Attention without being too obnoxious. And we had to work with AT&T about Telco in order to connect it to the Internet. So this just jumps to a night light, which is really a cellular modem, you know, the guts of a cell phone that you plug into the wall. Just like you plug a nightlight in.
And so, it was kind of the combination of people that knew specific things about their craft and then being led by somebody who had a vision of How do we make, you know, medication adherence something that is that is easier and something that people will welcome into their lives, you know, that will be given away for free at the pharmacy, the business model was look Pharma companies. You're going to sell a lot more meds because people going to be taking them more regularly.
So, there's a big lift in the potential for Pharma companies, when medical insurance companies win. And because you don't go to the office, you don't have unnecessary hospitalizations people are healthier because they're taking the medications that they're prescribed and you know so it was kind of it was a vision. It was designed, it was packaging design. It was an earring like kind of assembling all those people. That's been the story for anything that I've built over.
Time is kind of how do you know enough, technically about the Process that each of these disciplines needs to go through in order to coordinate the kind of vision and make sure that everyone is has a fire under there. But in order to make it happen. Yeah. Very often we got it be the ones, lighting it. Yes, absolutely. And for those that are listening or watching that was such a wonderful use case for you.
I would recommend if you're listening to this episode, go back to the beginning of what David just said because he starts with With we identified a gap or we identified a problem or some sort of use case, that would be beneficial if we could solve for our end users. And in this case, it's people
who are in medic medication. And I have worked in the product development space and been able to see the brain storing storming sessions, the engineering of products and then ultimately seeing that in the end users hands. But some of the project managers may be in different Industries where you don't necessarily get to be in the Up front part, maybe you're just kind of in the back and working on the logistics of everything. So David can you walk us through? How that brainstorming Works?
How do you come up with the use cases? Because you have so many that you've shared already with us that are so fascinating that they were able to go to market. So can you talk to us a little bit about how that works and how do you work with the team on that? Sure, I think oftentimes, when a new projects, the Genesis of a new project is May Come. From something that you don't know a lot about you have a kind of a hunch, right?
You have you think, huh? Like, for example, with the Boating project that I'm currently working on, I had this hunch that maps of the Appalachian Trail, and of the woods. Like are just these kind of beautiful, beautiful representations, that pack. A lot of information in and help you understand kind of the grade of something, or the risk of Of falling or the how difficult it
will be and these topo maps. Thanks to other companies like arcgis, which has this GIS is graphical Information Systems. They are now available more and more because of satellite data. So I thought, well could we take these kind of maps of the mountains and project them with augmented reality into and through the water to give you a sense of being able to see
through a water surface. You know, it's kind of This magical inspiration of like could have X-ray vision, you know, in this situation, you know, I've the augmented reality world has has been kind of doing projects that have to do with seeing into a machine for for being able to see what needs to be fixed. Like into an aircraft engine or through the streets of a city to see infrastructure.
So I got really excited about this idea of, could you just hold up your phone and see through the water? Surface anywhere in the world to see kind of data elevation models and where to fish. And we're not a boat, it's a good background. So it was kind of it was first kind of inspiration and I didn't know if it was a very good idea. So I immediately sketched I'd be happy to show you or maybe a send you afterwards you can cut it in.
Sure. I worked with a graphic designer and we kind of sketched a bunch of situations where it would be useful. Full to see underwater topography superimposed in a harbor or in a lake or that kind of thing, and we didn't write any code at all. We just, we sketch stuff. We showed it to people and then we started this kind of customer research project and went out on boats and interviewed boaters and said what are the Marine
Electronics that you use today? And how and do you ever run aground and do ever like, how do you find fish and how do you keep track of where other boats are? So you don't run another? And what about the fog? And what about Twilight? When you're coming home and it's dark out, like how do you, how do you navigate?
So we kind of Unearthed a lot of needs and tried to kind of map those to what the existing tools that boaters had were, and what the price of all of those were too, kind of just prove to ourselves like is there a, is there a business here, is there kind of a cool idea? This new and novel. And then we wrote a patent for anchoring 3D topo maps, over bodies of water. And then we hired a team and developed an app that would do it.
And then after being out on a lot of boats with an app like bumping up and down in the waist and trying it with a our glasses, trying to put the information like into your field of view and realizing well it's doesn't really work very well because these aren't waterproof These are waterproof yet and they, yeah, you know, that like the projection technology is not
bright enough yet. We eventually decided, Well, actually to solve this, we really need to make out of camera system that goes high up on the boat. This is called the lookout cameras. This is the current the current. Wow. It's like so this this sits way up high on the boat and has a 360-degree camera system, like a lot of cars have these these days that sees out with stereo vision?
Asian in front of you and can try to find small craft or things that are in the water or people and then it takes that information and has a video feed that just shows it on the screen, which is right at the helm. And so now that I've got about, that's the system were building and it turns out it's like Hardware plus a game engine. We're using Unity as a game engine and vision. And so from a cup from a project management perspective, it's
kind It's a lot right now. Yeah, because it's, you know, it's a relationship with a contract manufacturer in Norway. Who's going to build the product? It's a engineering team that's based in Cincinnati. It's a software development team that does a game engine. He's the based in London, it's a, it's a interaction design firm and a graphic design firm, and a branding firm that's based in Florida. So, it's like can Working with a boating company that's based down in Florida.
So it's a lot of moving Parts. I think for me, one of the kind of aha's for the for this project. It's called Clearwater is create these kind of moments, that things must be delivered, because we're going to go to Khan. We're going to fly everybody to con, and we're going to show this to boating companies. It's kind of gotta work, you know.
So yeah, I'm always trying to kind of create a deadline moment that can also be a summit kind of experience that somewhere between, you know, three weeks and seven weeks out. So that everyone feels like, oh well, let's figure out what we can achieve in that Sprint of time. So yeah. And we can all come together and work together and solve problems and get out of the water
together. In order to, you know, kind of take the product to the next level, which won't be done, but it will again, will be the next important Milestone that everyone's really working and cramming for sure. So setting realistic deadlines as best as you can being being realistic about this materialistic. It's more. Just like it's just, it's setting. These kind of intermediary or intermediate Intermediate deadlines like intermediate kind of Sprint. Sprint points.
Yeah, because I can imagine with a project this big and then there's just so many moving pieces and you don't know what's going to work and what's not that that helped settle the team in a way that you know there's there's smaller more consumable B of the project that they can work towards. I think a lot of what comes with being a project manager. Is there's a finite, there's a defined and To a project then that most most people that go into project management.
That's where they find their satisfaction is when they actually finish something accomplish something and have that feeling of, hey, I made this or I had contributed to this project and for you to set those intermediary steps as probably very helpful for the team to feel like they're progressing towards the bigger picture.
So I think one of the things that I'm trying to think about transitioning into because I want to ask you, About another innovation of yours is when dealing with the Boating project right now I'm sure communication across all of the multitude of teams that you're working with is key, making sure that people are communicating and understanding where everything is at. Now, there's an invention that I saw that you created which is the conversational balance
table, and I don't know how long ago that was done but you created it for Salesforce to increase team, communication and collaboration I'm fascinated by that, just because a lot of what we do is Project managers is Shepherd, and communication. We are harboring the communication between the teams breaking down the silos and that sort of thing. So, when it comes to this particular thing that you have created, the conversational balance table.
How, how did that come about? How did it work out? Do you find that it was effective? Did it give you the results that you are looking for? Would love to learn more about that. Yeah, I so the inspiration really for this came from a book by Susan, Cain called quiet and it makes the point that in organizations and teams, you have extroverts and introverts. And usually, they have just as many good ideas.
As each other, the introverts have plenty of good ideas, but the extroverts tend to kind of Dominate. And like not let out those good ideas that the introverts have and through You know, through my work with ambient devices. You know, the orb is like a feedback device. No, it gives you, it helps you see like have I walked as many steps as I want to walk and that is expressed through a color.
And the the information is really good like glanceable and so the feedback loops are fast so you don't have to have, you know, have to go to an app at the end of the day and say how many steps did I walk but instead like you kind of want feedback loops to to motivate a In behavior in the moments, you know, or rather than having to do a big retro at the end of the
week. You'd rather have teams provide feedback to each other, and kind of subtle ways, I think, as we're like, if you're a facilitator in a meeting, you kind of want to do things that subtly encourage people who aren't contributing to kind of, you know, say something.
And so, if you're in a facilitator, you might like use your hands and gesture and say, you know what about you You or or ask or ask somebody who's speaking too much, like you might even kind of put your hand on their shoulder, maybe there's something kind of. Yeah, push them down.
So, the inspiration came from, how could we embed feed a feedback mechanism into furniture that people are already sitting at. So this was a six-sided table like a table for six people that had six kind of facets around it. Yeah, it lights up this kind of beautiful, almost like a star constellations. Section underneath the veneer of the table as people speak in
front of them. So you can at any point minutes into the conversation, you kind of just looked down at the table surface and it shows you graphically like the contribution of each person over the last 20 minutes and the, the behavior is very slow. So it's kind of not shocking
anyone but it's also evidence. So you can see like this this this person has Been dominating this person hasn't said, much at all and hopefully people kind of glance down and kind of subconsciously see this and can moderate and regulate their own behavior. And maybe it's appropriate for certain types of meetings for certain people to say a lot in for certain, but at least you have like, kind of a little bit
of evidence of what's happening. And and so it can be clear, like that feedback mechanism can be clearer. And so we I worked with an Architecture Firm. One of the biggest in the world called gansler they were designing the new Salesforce offices and they were kind of interested in. How could you make more sensing and kind of passive feedback mechanisms that were embedded in
the space itself? Another thing we did was a brainstorming table that would listen to the conversation and put them images almost like a how tenuous Google image search just as like a as to kind of get people to think. Think more nonlinearly kind of out of the box. But the balance table was really about this, you know, giving people just feedback on Contraband on kind of contribution percentage. And right now I can tell like, I'm talking way too much. No, no, that's a bad.
My mouth is probably open because I'm just so fascinated by that. I always, I often think of how great would it be to introduce more innovative ideas to things as mundane. It's a weekly status call, right? And so the what you're describing is just something that would completely break the mold of what we're used to. And I was so in awe of that and where that came from. And I'm I would be interested to see if I use it in my own space. If what would come out of it,
but you're right. I think, I think we usually leave meetings thinking. Oh, well, there was only one person contributing or why was it? Why was Is that a meeting that could have been an email type of conversation so it's those things that come to mind on our day-to-day that can often lead to something as really cool and Innovative as what you've described.
And hopefully the folks that actually got to test it out or currently using, it are finding the beneficial but I would imagine it would it would if there's like a sociology or psychology to it as well in terms of how people interact and them understanding, if they're, if they are extroverts and introverts or Or what not in a meeting space.
So, that's that's really cool. David now, have you if people want to see a video of it, there's a there's a website that goes with my book that's called haircut supersite dot world and it has videos of the conversational balance table and the Boating application. And some project that's about redesigning with algorithms Landscapes outside people's homes to have more shade trees more. Natural. Pollinators less grass to to poison with with your chemicals. So that's another that's another
project called home outside. That's, um, I'm really proud of. That's that's also at that same, that same URL supersite, that world, that's great. I'm glad I will definitely make sure we include all the links and images or whatever.
You're willing to share with the audience and you perfectly segwayed into what I was going to ask you, which was, you've got all these Innovations out in the world and now you've been working on it. It's like you're publishing yet another book but tell us about all the all the literature that you put out into the world as well. Well, I've only done two books. The first one was called
Enchanted objects. Kind of all about the Internet of Things. There's an umbrella that knows when it's going to rain, if it's on the cover and kind of the, the hilt of the umbrella makes this kind of rain pattern. Cool, remind you to bring it and this is really all about kind of what The human desires that are age old desires that are revealed in fairy tales and myths. And how those those desires for omniscience or telepathy or other kind of wishes can be satisfied through.
Internet-connected things. That keep us healthier or whatever the case may think. Wow. In the most, the most recent book is called super side, and it's really about as it as a species like what? Should we be seeing, you know like what is the thing that we really are myopic about today? That would really be useful to
see. And month argument that I make here is that we have a hard time seeing the future, like we have a heart like we kind of live in the moment and it's hard for people to kind of Imagine a more sustainable landscape or a more walkable city or a more or environments that That you know, aren't has dominated by cars or by chain stores or whatever.
So one of the things that are demented, reality can do is to show us kind of a different vision of what the world could be around us. That would Inspire that change that's great amazing. I'm looking forward to picking up both of those books actually I just feel super inspired but what you've shared with us today and and there is for sure, Synergy across what you've put. Out there in the world.
And what project managers are product, managers are currently working on. So I'm sure they'll also feel inspired by everything that you've shared. So David, I have one more question for you, maybe it's a challenging one or maybe, you know, this right away but of all the Innovation you put out there which one is your favorite?
Well. I mean, the kind of Victory the heuristic for favorite is I think something that really responds to human needs and human desires that has like an Elegance or Simplicity to it, where people see it and they're like, of course, like what this didn't take, this didn't already exist and that also kind of folds in the creative work of not only one discipline. But you know, kind of people that are skilled at Information that design and wireless and
data and design. So I guess I don't know for me. Yeah, I am fascinated by camera systems and computer vision and all of the things that the world can see around you. The one that I would, I think I'm going to mention is there's it's a new company, it's called Xander. They just want to seek an award at CES. And basically, Captions for the world. So imagine you're talking to somebody and they speak a
different language. It translates the language and then put and then shows you the text of what they're saying as if you're as if you have. Wow. And those are those are superimposed over the other person so out like over their body and it's especially good for people who have a hearing deficit and because even hearing aids like kind of suck in loud environments.
And so, it has been-- Informing microphone array and and can listen to the person, you know, in a very narrow way of who you're talking to and then be able to project captions on people as you as you glance at them and conversation. So with their a lot of how old a lot of Aging people in my life, my mom and my mother and father-in-law, they're all wearing hearing aids, the hearing aids, all suck.
And I don't like, I really want to help people because it's important for their own for their own You know, to avoid dementia to a engaged in conversations. Like you want them to be more social and more social with, you know, in spaces that are not just one-on-one kind of interactions. And so the ability to have a technology that helps them continue to engage is something that I'm really proud of and want to see a part of the world.
Gosh, that's just incredible and II might where my mind went was just beyond kind of the using it for you know my mother. Her is, you could use that to break down communication barriers that exist in the workplace right now. Especially as we see, a lot more people losing that in person touch because many companies have gone to remote work.
I see that that could potentially help in the communication channels that are often lost because we are communicating just by text, or by email more frequently than we are via in person or virtual. So, There could be something there as well and so I could easily see that breaking down some of those barriers to so that's great. Thank you so much David for sharing that.
So I mean I think we've taken up enough of your time today but I think we've learned so much about you and what you put on the amazing things that you put out into the world. So David if folks want to follow you continue the conversation with you. Where can they find you online? Yeah. Super site. Dot world has a lot of design principles for augmented reality. T. I definitely encourage. You can download the first first and last chapter of the book for free.
I'm at David Rose on Twitter, on LinkedIn. People can reach out to me. My MIT email is DLR at mit.edu, so they can also reach me that way. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll make sure all the appropriate links are below this posting, as well, just a quick plug to support the everyday p.m. podcast by giving The five star review on Apple podcasts or whatever podcasting platform you are listening in. On the podcast is available on Spotify. Google Play overcast. You name it just search for the
everyday p.m. You can also find the video version of this conversation with David on my YouTube channel, youtube.com forward, slash and campea. While you're there, leave us a comment. Let us know what you thought. Ask David all the amazing questions, maybe Inspire us or inspired a woodwind more of your incredible. Thinking and ideas and Innovation and then leave any questions that you may have for.
Either of us on there, that will do it for you David and I should have used more Snapchat filters and I realized video like I've got a bunch of snap filters that like work and zoom you know David I'm surprised you haven't invented something that we could have used today in the zoom conversation but I'm sure it's coming from you. I would expect nothing less. So David, thank you so much for joining us on this installment of the everyday. I'm podcast. And until next time, take care.