Matt Diffee, a cartoonist for the New Yorker since 1999, talks at Cusp 2011 about how he designs jokes. Titled “Things You Might Not Think I Think About”, Matt shares his process for coming up with jokes and many of the tips and rules he uses. From the composing the visuals that maximize the comedic effect to the word play, there is no doubt that Matt is right as rain speaking at a design conference.

Yves Béhar talks at Cusp 2011 on his company’s projects including the Puma shoebox, NYC condoms, Herman Miller Sayl Chair, One-Laptop-Per-Child, and many others. With every project, Yves team strives to make long-term partnerships with their clients and are keen to strive for innovative, sustainable, and ethical designs.

Hans Rosling, famous for his lectures which explore enormous amounts of public data and presents it in a storytelling fashion, presents data on 200 countries in 200 years. Weatherman and sports commentators can step aside as Hans presentation style is both exciting and engaging and for the first time steps it up with the use of augmented reality. In this video Hans shares the story 200 countries have moved from being poor with low life expectancy to wealthy and high life expectancy using over 120,000 data points in the process.

Tom Wujec studies team dynamics and puts on workshops around team building and prepares groups to solve large and complex problems. During his workshops he gives teams The Marshmallow Challenge, an 18 minute challenge to build the tallest structure from a few items including spaghetti and marshmallows. Interestingly, kindergarteners produce some of the tallest structures. Tom chalks up their success to iterative prototyping and trying lots of ideas. On the contrary, business school students do the worst.

Seth Priebatsch, Chief Ninja and CEO of SCVNGR, a mobile start-up looking to build a game layer on top of the real world. In this TEDx Boston talk, Seth talks about the fact that the social layer (think Facebook) is now complete, and that the next step is creating a game layer. Games already exist in today’s world, be it credit card and frequent flyer miles, or the happy hour at your local bar, but they are not very well designed. Seth believes we can do better. Seth advocates using game dynamics for good, be it getting people to take their medicine on time, reconsidering the grading systems in schools, and organizing communities around common goals.

Ji Lee, Creative Director at Google, speaks at the 99% conference about his personal endeavor in 2002 to break out of the creative constraints of his advertising job by creating his own art project. Ji’s ad-spoofing Bubble Project entailed printing out stickers in the shape of word bubbles and sticking them on advertisements all around New York City. Ji would return later to document what people would write into the bubbles. Amusing, political, and esoteric, the bubbles were a hit and spawned campaigns by others. Ji now advocates for using personal projects to provide an outlet for personal creative freedom, create platforms for others to collaborate, meet new people, and to learn new skills.

Philip Zimbardo, the man behind the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, talks at RSA ( Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) about how people perceive time differently. This perception is sometimes faith based, geographically based, or may be indicative of one’s age. The result of which directs one’s behavior in the world. The presentation is fascinating to say the least and Philip recommends first recognizing how other’s perceive time and then take that into account to better understand where they are coming from. RSA has posted a brilliant 10 minute animated featurette, and the full 41 minute talk can be found after the break as well.

Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We’re trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.
- Philip Zimbardo

In an effort to counter the frequent aggression and violence against public service employees in the Netherlands, an interactive billboard has been created to inform otherwise casual onlookers on how to take action. The interactive billboard uses a pre-recorded clip of an aggressive act happening and combines it with a live camera pointed at those in view of the billboard. The final composition is both striking and effective at conveying the problem at hand and moving onlookers to take action.

Johanna Blakley studies the impact of the fashion industry’s lack of copyright and imparts many lesson on how other creative industries could flourish with a similar regard for copyright. Johanna discusses how the fashion industry is forced to constantly innovate to keep ahead of trends, obsolescence, and build brands. The fashion industry is only one of many industries who’s work is not copyright eligible. Other industries include food, furniture, magic, jokes, cars, databases, etc… The talk is thought provoking to say the least and will provide some fodder for your next discussion on issues of copyright.

Ian Glass, of “This American Life” fame, talks about the aspects of storytelling. Incredibly engaging, Ian discusses the building blocks of storytelling (part 1), editing your story (part 2), pursuing ambitions of good taste (part 3), and some of the common pitfalls (part 4). It is 100% worth the time to watch all four parts. Enjoy!

Alan Siegel, a branding expert and a leading authority on business communication, stresses the importance of clear, concise, and simple language for use in government documents and literature directed at consumers. Armed with a research lab that specializes in measuring the comprehensibility of documentation, Alan has taken it upon himself to redesign several documents including tax forms, credit agreements, and healthcare legislation. He is a true savior and inspiration for anyone fed up with unintelligible legalese pervasive in today’s culture.

Robert Cialdini, professor of marketing at Arizona State University, studied for 3 years working in the fields of sales, fundraising, and advertising. In this short excerpt from the documentary “Social Reality” with Philip Zimbardo, Cialdini shares the 6 universal principals of influence he distilled from his experiences. If your interested in learning more, his book Influence: Science and Practice is a good quick read with practical advice and great anecdotes about his experiences researching this topic.

Dan Hill, designer and urbanist, talks at Interaction ’10 about urban landscapes and the information that inhabits them. Dan loves to identify all of the data points that are embedded in cities and expose them through meaningful ways. In this video, he provides a wonderful tour of the many projects that he and others have worked on. After watching the video, it is difficult to ignore the pervasive bits of information that you once passed by without ever considering how exposing them might change people’s behaviors.

Dwell magazine visits the design firm Smart Design and talks to Dan Formosa, and Richard Whitehall about the ‘intersection of Universal Design principals and the limitations of public bathrooms.’ The video presents an insightful yet humorous look into the use of public restrooms. Well worth a watch and if anything will provide a great topic for discussion amongst friends.

Julian Treasure, author of Sound Business, speaks at TED about how the sound around us play a large role in productivity, shopping behavior, emotions, and many other ways. Once you are inspired by the talk, head on over to birdsongradio.com and get your daily 5 minute dose in.

In an effort to change people’s behavior to promote earth friendly and healthy activities, Volkswagen has come up with several fun and clever ideas. For instance to reduce litter, a trash big with sound effects triggered by placing trash into the bin, collected nearly twice as much trash as a near by bin. In another experiment, when using sound effects on stairs, 66% more people than normal chose the stairs over the escalator. View more videos at: TheFunTheory.com

Bill Gurstelle, author of book like Backyard Ballistics and Absinthe and Flamethrowers, speaks at Gel 2009 about risk taking and its correlation with life satisfaction. Both inspiring and informative, Bill shares multiple stories of his own and others’ risk taking adventures.
Do you take risks? Take the test here.

Steve V, a video producer from Kitchener, Ontario, replicates the marshmallow test. An experiment in kids ability to sacrifice short-term gratification for long-term rewards, the marsh mallow experiment is interestingly academically just as it is fun to watch kids struggle with waiting the fully 20 minutes for their reward. In terms of relevance, if the child can resist the instant gratification, there is a very good chance they will be successful in life. For more details of the original landmark experiment, watch Joachim de Posada’s TED talk.

Us Now, a documentary from Banyak Films, takes a look at social media and its effect technology communications have had on democratizing society in every aspect imaginable. Whether it is offering a couch to sleep on to strangers, sharing advice between mothers, managing a soccer club, or any number of other things, social media is changing the world. Us Now takes a look into several virtual communities which are having a very real impact and begs everyone to question what else can benefit from democratization and plain ol’ good will.

Adam Savage, of Mythbusters fame, talks at Maker Faire 2009 shares two personal stories of when he has failed in life and how those failures have shaped who he is today. While many people are quick to say that failure is how people learn, he wishes people would share more openly their stories of failure. That said, Adam shares two of apparently many stories of when he has totally let others down and was forced to deal with the failures head on. A great storyteller, Adam is lively and this talk is well worth the time watching.