Niku Banaie (Naked) offers Twenty-Five Signals for Change at the PSFK Conference London

This 35 minute video taken at the PSFK Conference London 2007 presents Niku Banaie from Naked Comminications as he talks about how an understanding of the basic human needs can keep your employees, customers and friends happier, fresher and healthier.

Need for love:

• “where’s the love in our connected world”? Lack of intimacy… there’s something fundamentally missing or reforming in these connections
• Americans becoming lonlier - eg: Gabe Henderson shutting down MySpace account because of ’superficial emptiness’
• Eg’s: 5 minute friend; Guardian soulmates the most traffic to entire guardian site; Hug t-shirt letting you send vibrations via bluetooth

Need to learn:

• “Living in open source times - sharing is best”
• Eg’s: MIT Open Courseware (now anyone can access MIT course materials), FabLab (travelling lab to poor countries to let them make the tools they need), ExpoTV (video opinions about products), Instructables (sharing how to make things), Crowdstorm (social shopping, products go to top based on buzz), Disaffected game

Need to give back:

• “Grow your own future”
• Eg’s: waiting lists for allotments; Patagonia (get out of jail free card for environmental activism), KIVA (invest in entrepreneurs in developing countries via a direct connection), Freecycle

Need for simplicity:

• “We’ve just got too much to deal with”… we’ve got full lives but becoming uncomfortably full
• “Impatient generation”
• Eg: Google/Craigslist (interface makes more appear less); Sugar GUI for $100 laptop for kids who’ve never seen a PC before
• Laws of Simplicity SHE - Shrink, Hide (complexity), Embody (add sense of values) … eg: Technology that disappears: WiFi umbrella that glows when the forecast is for rain
• Some things are dreadful though (Flexpets); mustn’t forget the emotional and social aspects

Need for play:

• “Don’t think like adults”… reframing products to be used in different ways
• Eg: climbing wall in Japan which has bricabrac, old picture frames, etc on it; DutchTub that’s a BBQ and a hottub; Mii - Mii’s on parade

Audience Notes

Charles Frith gave this review:

Niku Banaie, Managing Partner of Naked Communications did a heartwarming presentation that explored some of the more pressing humanist dimensions of digital life today. Niku’s grandfather was one of the early entrepreneurs of arcade and pinball games in the UK and the lesson learned by him that a fundamental human characteristic of playfulness is a key driver of all activity was not lost. Niku outlined a guideline of five universal needs for successful understanding on interaction that apply not just to life but cascade down into winning people over in general social intercourse.

• Need for love
• Need to learn
• Need to give back
• Need for simplicity
• Need for play

Niku talked about the sense of loneliness on the net and how face to face interplay is still a hard wired necessity. He talked about how The Guardian, the worlds leading liberal voice, makes most of its revenue from Guardian soulmates by putting like minded individuals together. The irony of this massively connected world is the absence of love and how so many people are facing increasing levels of loneliness. Its remarkable how important it is for science to put a tactile face on its output and yet so often the results are engineered for efficacy rather than satisfaction.MIT open course ware, a revolutionary sharing approach to putting the best lectures and learning materials in the world on the net. Self education with the aid of an internet connection really does open up the potential for people to explore and fulfill our learning instinct. When quality content and flat distribution are coupled, the potential for unlikely people to enable themselves is nothing short of magic.

The need to give back was best exemplified by an example of the Patagonia company

… On simplicity Niku Banaie highlighted how massively successful interfaces such as Google and Craigslist have become by streamlining the information we are exposed to and the number of linked options they can provide… Niku talked about John Maeda’s laws of simplicity: Shrink, Hide and Embody.

…Niku finished up with the human need for play and gave us a bunch of examples that highlighted this important ability for positive reciprocity that all humans have and can leverage.

The AdLads summed the keyt points as:

• We all have the needs to Love, to learn, to give back, for simplicity, to play. Our ideas in particular and our lives in general should try to embrace as many of these as possible.
• Ideas should Shrink, Hide and Embody (Maeda’s law of simplicity).
• Promote the spirit of curiosity, it’s that same spirit that allows us to grow into the adults we do.
• Take open source to everyone.
• Grow your own future.

Come listen to more inspiring speakers at the PSFK Conference Los Angeles on September 18 2007 in West Hollywood - psfkla.eventbrite.com.