 Hi, I'll start in the most humble way I can with With a picture of myself. My name is Ted person. I'm a design partner at Ikea adventures, and I spent the last 20 years designing marketing campaigns and designing products in the form of startups and also in the form of running various agencies and the topic of the next 15 or so minutes is It's about human beings and about how irrational human beings actually are and how we can navigate that in product design and in marketing but before that some shameless self self promotion I work for Ikea adventures, which is a fairly new VC fund And Ikea adventures a part of EQT, which is one of the northern Europe's largest proud equity companies Ikea adventures has only been out there for for a year or so and we're multi-stage fund So we invest between very early stages 1 million euros and later stages 75 million euros and one thing that sets us apart from the from the other In the landscape is that we're we're mainly ex entrepreneurs and ex ex operators and we've so far done a Bunch of investments. I think 20 22 in total some here in Finland and throughout throughout Europe With that being said back to the actual main track of the of the presentation and I figured I would start in the end of annoyance because there are Certain things that you don't really understand how they can work So for instance, if you're if you're a designer, you might have been annoyed with Amazon, how can Amazon work because it doesn't look very very nice Maybe the last few years it is looked started to look a bit bit nicer But it back in the day it used to look really really Crappy, how can it be like this or to take an example that is closer to you to ventures because we have the founders of Booking comm in in our team. How can booking comm be? That's successful as it is because it's just like a lot of boxes and kind of feels hard to navigate them and so forth If you are a Developer you might be annoyed with with IBM Watson It's just a couple of different Different disparate tools I hear over and over again. How can that work? And if you're human being how can this guy be be the president of of the United States? How did that how did that happen? And I think the answer to all these three questions is because we're not fact-based as human beings We're very emotional beings and we have a lot of cognitive biases going on in inside our heads So if you apply this on the three examples as I just gave I think booking comm is one of the most carefully crafted user experiences And they use a lot of emotional engineering and nudging to make us do what they want us to do In terms of IBM Watson, I think this is an example of world-class storytelling creating the story about this character called called Watson and This guy is I think the the opposite of being fact-based But he's a really good storyteller. He understand that the power of visual Persuasion and also language patterns and and so forth So I figured I would I would share three learnings that I have gained the last ten or so years with you starting with In a way what I just talked about that stories have this tendency to beat To beat facts and I think this is because we're storytelling animals Even though we have very small like data We try to fit that small data into a story because that's how we work We were a sequential and we want to we want to hear stories and we're good at telling Stories and even read this this research report. This is a bit old now around that the evolution of language actually comes from and these small Gossipy stories almost like a live rating system in between human beings should I hang out with that person should I hang out with the person? What's this person's role in the in the group and and so forth? So I think when when we as builders engineers designers when we build stuff We usually start in a very functional end. What do we want to build? What's the product we want to to bring to the market and and We usually start in there in the end of benefits and I know if any of you remember Microsoft zoom I think this is a zoom ad Telling about all the cool features you got just when zoom became the Windows phone Platform and if you contrast this with with this which is maybe five years prior to to zoom I think it's very clear. There's a there's a story It got 1,000 songs in your in your pocket and this is still very very functional if you take this story to an Emotional level, I think this is a story of belonging and I don't know if you remember this But in the beginning when you when you had the the iPod and then later the iPhone just wearing those white eye buds earbuds Was almost like being part of a a club or something like that on the subway people like nodded Ah, we have the same the same thing. So that's I think a good example of of Connecting on an emotional level rather than on a functional level If you haven't seen Simon Sinek's Ted talk start with why Google it and watch it It's also a bit old, but I think it's really good and it it talks about the story and and the and the power of of purpose and that People today connect with a product or connect with a company on emotional grounds and to connect with the the purpose Why you do why you do something and if you're a startup? And I think a good exercise to do is to sit down fairly early on and think about What is our why and what is the story that comes from from this? Why almost like a narrative at Iki's adventures. We call this a mother story So when we got started three years ago, we sat down and crafted our own mother story And now we've updated it a few times This is really really interesting to follow over time and see where we're in the beginning where we go next and so forth And we won't have time to go through this mother story in detail, but you have here. What's the problem? We are believed that entrepreneurship is a team sport We're an entrepreneur driven EC we have we're supported by the QT platform We have some proof points in there And then it ends with a with a call to action. So I when we work with our startups in our portfolio We we support them in developing their own mother stories And this is good not just for for product or for marketing, but also for for culture And when crafting this mother story, I think it's easy to become overly complicated I I like this quote from from Elon Musk in an in an email when he really wanted to get rid of all these weird acronyms at SpaceX that people used to To exclude people from that from the group so keep it simple another example here I think is is how Apple used to communicate and I think this is one of the classics when Steve Jobs killed flash Just a simplicity in the in the wording my mother and my dad would would understand this So that's number one stories beat beat facts moving on to something also vaguely apple-related on Standing out and thinking differently And I think this is also kind of interesting that the word branding comes from branding cattle in the in the early days So the whole idea here was about standing out and especially in categories where products are pretty much the same It's very important to to say tell people how about how you're different. So here we have Volvo Audi and BMW and and just look at differently. They they communicate with Swedish house mafia and and and the data and and horse powers and stuff like that, but in in startups, I tend to see Another tendency so if you if you have a category and you're disrupting that category for real Then the logical thing would be to stand out in how you present your product or how you design your product but because it's new a lot of these companies want to belong to the category and It's also because companies in the beginning are engineeringly driven and you might not have designers and stuff like that on the on the team so Thank you and another another interesting aspect here is that if you if you is back If an engineer created a website, you could see that they looked kind of crappily nowadays with Frameworks like bootstrap. It's very easy to create something that looks kind of decent So when I look at startup websites, I think all startup website look exactly the same and it's there are trends in this as well so 2015 all startup websites look like intercoms website Those were the the big trendsetters and now it's all about stripe with a like 45 degree angles and and so forth So I guess the the messaging here is Think about this and and and and and do try to to make it distinct try to find your own voice Based on your why in your and your story. I Think this is an interesting example. This is adidas is impossibly. It's nothing campaign and and They made this distinct by adding something that sounds kind of weird I mean impossibly is nothing is not even Grammatically correct. It would be nothing is impossible But just because it's there's some weirdness in it You remember it more and it's the same case would think different which should be think differently Of course, so make it distinct maybe add some kind of weirdness to what you're doing. I think that's a good It's a good piece of advice Another tip is to make it fun or to to make it a bit weird This is dr. John Medina and he claims that emotionally charged events Persist much longer in our memories and are recalled with greater accuracy Than other memories and I think that's also in this picture why he chose to have his brain outside your His his head because you you remember this picture more and thus you might remember dr. John John Medina So in a way, you could claim that if you take the old massless hierarchy of needs From the base needs to self actualization and apply that on on products It's almost like this. You have the functional. It has to be reliable usable But then on top make it pleasurable make it fun make it make it quirky And it's lacking and I think this is a good example when you close apps in in iOS It's almost like like bubble wrap. It's the same almost addictive effect and look for these addictive effects and and try it on on people And just me to make you remember remember my name I figured I would do an experiment. So this is a Ted talks stage. Obviously some guy talking about I don't know Big tattoos or something like that But then if I if I add this Ted doll To the Ted stage and then I add this picture of myself most likely you will have Higher accuracy in recalling my name after this. So my name is is Ted My name is Ted and my name is Ted There was number two about thinking differently making it visual funny quirky standing out and The third one here is about exploiting the cognitive biases We all we all had and we we looked at this map before and there are so many and but I think it's extremely interesting just to like spend some time with with looking at them and I even ordered a Painting or like a Yeah, to put on the wall with all these different different biases and here we have some of the ones We have been talking about that bizarre funny visually striking or or stuff like that is is easier to recall or That we tend to find stories and patterns even if there are no stories or or patterns But there are some that connect more to relate more to Visual perception. So for instance, there are the the principles all principles of just just out and Which are five Design laws in a way and it's about how we as human beings perceive for instance things that are grouped together So things that are grouped together we think make up a unit or things that look the same make up a unit or How are our eyes move so you can put things in between and then they they become a story almost like one two three Closure how you use negative space and also figure and ground and I think just thinking about this and how you can use these Visual biases in your design is kind of interesting. So for instance here one of my favorite Logotypes where they added this this closure effects and if you see it see the arrow there But after you've seen this arrow you you can't stop remembering it and looking at it over and over again Some more biases that I think are interesting From a startup perspective. There is this babyface bias That has evolved over over the years where we tend to to like cute things things more And I think this this is used in startups over and over again So this is of course mail chimp in there their character This is pretty smart, I think this is not Twitter's Icon or mascot, but actually if something goes wrong They they use this cute thing to maybe prime you into a nicer nicer place and anyone know who this is This is github's Octo cats the same thing very cute and you you connect with the cat and like it a bit a bit more So that's yeah, you have the golden section for aesthetics. This is Twitter You have the David versus Goliath bias where human beings always tend to back and like the the smaller of the Of the of the two which is very good for startups obviously Expert or consultant bias where we tend to listen more to people who who look look as if they are knowledgeable like that the doctor's Cote also things we can we can use in in design in in different ways So another another tip go go to Wikipedia search for cognitive biases and and just go through them And then have a reflection about how you can use them to to hack people to do what you would like to to achieve So those were my three tips. This is the third one exploit the cognitive biases here. You have the three of them Stories beat facts think differently exploit exploit the cognitive biases and before handing over for questions Just three book tips and then some of the examples here are taken from these books The first book here is called designing for emotion, which is part of the book apart series, which I think is really really good Buy it read it. It's only like 60 pages And another book which is a newer book is a book created by Scott Adams the creator of Dilbert And he was bashed like a few years back because he he he backed Donald Trump and he also foresaw Donald Trump becoming the president a few years back and This book is is about Donald Trump's Tricks in a way in in persuasion, which is a really good book and then this is one of my favorites Childini who is like the master of persuasion his his book 50 scientifically proven ways to be to be persuasive and Personally, I think these books that are not particularly about design marketing I think they have more sort of value in in this than your typical design book So that's it. My name is Ted. Any any questions? Yeah, applause. That's good. Good Okay, just pick one or two questions from the slide or in front of you. Thank you So there's one question Design thinking becomes a bit outdated as a concept for some reason. What is the next big thing? Obviously, I don't know who asked that question I'm not sure that design thinking is a bit outdated I think maybe it's connected to Apple's hype that they became the the most Highest value company in the world and if the big hype now is AI, I don't know But I think there there's a lot of interesting stuff happening in in the generative design space where you where you use Computers to assist you in this in the design Design process, but to me. I'm not I'm not sure I agree with that design thinking is is is outdated Here's another question. How can we apply more design principles to? to venture funding One one thing that I do as a VC is that I I usually Try to start with with end So what is this company trying to to do and then I work my way work my way backwards? I Think just having a big think about simplicity and who are you targeting and stuff like that makes a makes a huge difference And sometimes we have big debates in the team because sometimes technically progressive Works against being easy to use for instance. So I think there is this this contrast there Potentially and here is the third question You mentioned start with why? Do you think? Do you think that with so many startups nowadays? It's better to start with what? I Think that's The opposite of the whole point of this presentation away. I think there are so many what's out there so many Companies doing similar things. So I think it's about finding ways to connect in other ways And then just around exactly what you're you're offering and or what you're what you're doing That was the third question Good stuff. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you behind to ten percent. Thank you I think everyone will remember your name now 10 the only one