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This article was originally published in the Robin Report, Robin Lewis interviews Ed Schlossberg

Robin Lewis: What in the world was Best Buy thinking when they discontinued their Studio D and Escape small store concepts several years ago? You designed these neighborhood boutiques to customize these stores for specific niche demographics and lifestyles. What’s the backstory on this?

Ed Schlossberg: I had this idea in 1998 to do something called a Digital Playground. I thought if these technology companies were going to be successful, they needed to let people play using digital stuff so that they could see what would work. So I made a presentation to Brad Anderson who was CEO of Best Buy, and he said, ‘This is fantastic, we would love to do this.’ He hired us to design the first Digital Playground. It took some time to get it going. When Brad hired James Damien as their visual merchant, he was really excited about it, and we kind of became his team.
RL: What was the design strategy?

TED launched TEDx as a platform for people around the globe “to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.” With events from Kibera to Amsterdam, TEDx came to Brooklyn for the first time over the weekend. The event centered on the idea of “one moves many” or the making of a movement.

As the New Yorker magazine put it "naturally, Brooklyn, a hotbed of freethinkers, is having its own [TEDx] get-together.” So what is it about Brooklyn these days? It’s New York City’s most populous borough with roughly 2.5 million inhabitants. The affordability, amenities, community and beauty have attracted a strong creative class—from artists and designers to writers and inventors—to live and work in the borough. At ESI, nearly half of our staff lives in Brooklyn!

Here are some of the highlights of impressive Brooklynites from TEDxBrooklyn:

Swoon

Everyone seems to be dreaming these days . . .

When ESI first took on the project to design a pavilion for Expo 2010 Shanghai, we thought long and hard about the Expo’s theme: “Better Cities, Better Lives.” And we realized that dreaming is at the heart of innovation, creation, invention, empowerment, and improvement — dreams lead us to see things from a different perspective and to think outside the box. So dreams became the main metaphor for our pavilion, the Dream Cube, a place where visitors discover that by working together they can make their dreams for the future of Shanghai come true.

Well, if dreams can inspire people in Shanghai, then why not New Yorkers? This is just what FIGMENT NYC is trying to do, with a festival this weekend (June 11-13) on Governor’s Island, as well as interactive art installations that will be on display there throughout the summer. FIGMENT is art at its most open, participatory, and collaborative, inviting people far and wide to create, share, explore, and imagine. Its founder, David Koren, is a firm believer in the power of participatory, collaborative art, especially when it is made even more magical by being ephemeral and of the moment.

The media content you create for visitors to read, watch, or listen to can add up to an experience that’s either A) totally engrossing, or B) propels people straight toward the gift shop. During the weeks ahead, I’ll share my collection of basic (and hard-learned) pointers on writing for general audiences.  As a preview, here are four to keep in mind.

1.    Treat your visitors as if it’s Saturday — If your touch screen content and exhibit labels read like a textbook — or your audio and video content sounds like a lecture — you’ve already lost half of your audience. When writing for your visitors, treat it like a conversation, not a lesson plan.

2.    Lose the PowerPoint speak — It typically looks something like this: "Given the synergistic limitations on current storage management technology imposed by a heterogeneous archive infrastructure. . . .”  You get the idea. It’s the opposite of clear communication.  Don’t let it escape from your keyboard.

3.    Give your writing a personality — Modern life already bombards us with far too much bland, generic writing.  Show a little mercy.  Use a distinctive tone and voice that lets visitors know a living human being — not an android committee — created everything they’re reading, watching, and hearing.