Ryan McManus

Ryan McManus (RMM) is a longstanding friend of WITI, an exceptional presenter, and currently works as Design Strategy Director at D-Ford, Ford’s Human-Centered Design group, working on the future of mobility. - Colin (CJN)Ryan here. I recently sold my lightly used 2019 Ford Fiesta ST to a person a few towns over. Historically, this process wouldn’t have been remotely remarkable, except in this case I sold the car on a website called Cars & Bids, one of several auto auction sites catering to enthusiast buyers that have emerged as of late. Cars & Bids is a venture founded by Doug DeMuro, an automotive reviewer/YouTube star who has built a loyal following of like-minded enthusiasts, and his auction site features, in their words, “anything cool and exciting from the 1980s to the 2020s.” (Acceptance of the vehicles to auction is solely at the discretion of the curators of the site, but they have featured everything from a 2005 Mercedes-Benz G55 AMG 6x6 to a 1993 Camry Wagon). Doug personally adds his opinion to each auction, lending his credibility to the process.Cars & Bids is hardly novel. Bring a Trailer, a site that began as a humble blog of interesting Craigslist ads, has set the trend through its success, with over 400,000 daily users and daily auctions that sometimes reach into the millions. (The site was recently acquired by Hearst). And this week sees the launch of Rad For Sale, a new auto auction site focusing on cars “and other radness” from the ’80s and ’90s. That site is particularly notable because its founders created Radwood, an automotive cultural movement that arguably renewed interest and enthusiasm for owning and driving cars from the 1980s-2000s (the so-called “Radwood bump”). Radwood even curated their own collection for storied auction house RM Sotheby’s before deciding to throw their own snapback hat into the ring...Why is this interesting?Auto auctions are not a new idea, but the image of an airplane hanger in Scottsdale filled with Hawai’ian-shirt-wearing guys holding up number placards has dominated the experience for decades. The difference between that experience and this emergent online variant boils down to both access and community, transforming it from transactional to enthusiast congregation.Because these sites are free to access and the costs to list a car are low to zero, they tend to generate a buzz of participation from engaged community members. Each site has a slightly different character to its user base, but they are uniformly populated with well-informed enthusiasts with a near encyclopedic knowledge of the minutiae of particular models and a seemingly endless amount of time to spend commenting. (If you are considering purchasing a particular vintage automobile, a great place to start your research would be to read the comment threads on a previous auction for an identical model.) While the communities are well-informed, there’s also a refreshing lack of elitism found—if unhelpful or derogatory comments are made, they are quickly flagged down. It is, dare I say, civil. A throwback to the internet of yore.It’s also a ton of fun, at least in my experience as a seller (I’ve yet to buy a car through one, though I’ve come close). Owners are expected and encouraged to be present and participative throughout the week while your car is on the block, and it lets you geek out with fellow car nerds about those critical details you obsessed over when you bought the car in the first place. And, of course, the final moments are a thrill.There seems to be a bit of a cultural confluence at play here as well. One part of it is surely tied up in the roots of social media and influencer culture—Instagram, YouTube and TikTok creators have highly curatorial tastes, and in many ways the automobile is the ultimate mobile expression of one’s persona. While this might manifest at the highest levels with people like Shmee buying a McLaren Elva, there are places to play up and down the spectrum, and these enthusiast auction sites allow people to select their own manifestation at whatever price point they can afford. This can get really interesting at the lower price points once you get below the endless Porsche 911 collectors and into the auctions that seem to be trying to out weirdeach other.The other bit of cultural zeitgeist at play here has to do with Covid-19. The pandemic has created a bizarre, likely temporary, effect on the automotive market where demand was outstripping supply and the used car market was booming. (For reference, my previously mentioned Fiesta ST sold for almost what I paid for it new a year prior—unheard of in the highly depreciative new vehicle market.) Sites like Carvana (which plays to a more utilitarian used car buyer) have thrived. While not the easiest or the most profitable asset, cars are no longer the investment black hole they were long considered. Or, put another way:In some ways, this demand defies logic. You would expect that with a huge swath of the workforce going remote or being shut down, the demand for cars would similarly crater. But the perception of a car as a safe mobility option for millions of urbanites who formerly trusted in subways and buses has resulted in a bloom of city-dwelling car ownership. I’ve had several friends in Brooklyn reach out to ask advice on buying their first ever car (and most wanted to talk 90s cars). It makes sense: a class of people who suddenly feel they need a car, but also want to find one that is most specifically them. Couple this with the addictive, communal aspect of these auction sites and plenty of idle browsing time, and you have a syzygy of forces creating demand that auction sites like Rad For Sale can cater to. And the ease of selling a car on auction sites (with relatively stable, sometimes appreciating value) means that the same customers might be buying and selling on the site far more often than the average 10 year ownership of a traditional new car.To wit: After selling my 1 year old Fiesta, I went 2 whole months before buying a replacement for it: a 1986 Mustang SVO. To date, I’ve taken more photos of it than miles driven, but hey—still more interesting than some boring compact utility vehicle, right?Quick links:The ultimate guide to chili crisps! (CJN)Teens on a year that changed everything (CJN)New Thom Yorke mix on BBC Radio 6 (CJN)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan McManus (RMM)

The Auto Enthusiast Edition

Ryan McManus (RMM) is a friend of WITI dating back to our time at Barbarian Group. He’s a rare blend of creative instinct, industrial design plus a side of craftsman and bon vivant. He played a design role in the recent electric Ford launch. We’re pleased to have him back on the page. -Colin (CJN) Ryan here. Recently I had a pretty vigorous debate on Twitter about the merits of an often-overlooked feature on many Ford, Lincoln, and (historically) Mercury vehicles: a small 5-button numeric keypad on the driver’s door called Securicode. Specifically, the argument started when a commenter had called out the inclusion of a Securicode keypad on Ford’s future-facing all-electric F150 Lightning as a signal of how Ford’s thinking was hopelessly in the past. The deriders of the technology couldn’t fathom why, in an age of phone-as-a-key and biometric scanning, a simple keypad would still be useful.A brief history, for context: introduced in 1980 on the Lincoln Continental, Securicode (originally called Keyless Entry back when the only other way to get into a car was a metal key) allows owners to set a 5-number code to unlock their car, open the trunk, and lock it again. In a nod to human-centered design, each key carries 2 digits to create a full 0-9 option—while the system itself only required 5 keys, designers knew people liked to use numbers like birthdates that were easy to remember. The feature has remained a low-cost option or standard equipment on Fords and Lincolns ever since, and while some models now feature hidden, capacitive key versions that blend invisibly into the door, others (including the aforementioned Lightning) persist with tried-and-true physical soft keys.Photo via FordWhy is this interesting?To the casual observer, it’s understandable how the inclusion of something as digitally quaint as Securicode on an electric truck in 2021 might seem anachronistic. Yet this belies a misunderstanding both of the utility of the feature, and, in broader terms, the economics of evolutionary biology.The first point needs to be understood in the context of the low-margin world of automotive design, where build costs in literal cents are debated vigorously. Even for a vehicle like the F150, whose total revenue would eclipse McDonald’s or Nike if it were a separate business, no feature is included that cannot justify its cost. Securicode is an option on some vehicles but standard on many others. It’s not mechanically complex, but it would certainly be cheaper and simpler to remove it altogether if customers didn’t continue to find it so useful.The thing that Securicode introduces into the vehicle is the idea of both tiered permissions and variable access. Most vehicle access devices allow you total permissions—access to the cabin, trunk, or hood, but also access to drive, to park, to speed. Every car key is a master key. But Securicode introduces the idea of tiered permissions. It allows someone who knows the code access to the vehicle, but not the operation of the vehicle. Once you realize this, its utility becomes apparent. Securicode isn’t just a simple way to open the door to a truck, it’s more akin to an access role in business software—defining a specific set of capabilities for a non-driver. Take a job site, for example: having just the security code lets you allow other workers to get things from your truck—a tool, or a blueprint, or a sandwich—without granting them access to drive. Or, conversely, a fleet owner can keep the keys to a truck locked inside so that any worker with the key code can access and drive it without worrying about managing lost keys (modern key fobs can cost hundreds of dollars to replace, and the Securicode can easily be changed to protect against unwanted access later). In an ideal security system, three things control access: Something you are, something you have, and something you know. Securicode introduces the third into the mix.Is it simplistic? Yes. Are other methods of access, like fingerprint or retinal or face detection scanners more secure, more modern? Of course. But this leads to my second point, which is how to think about the role of evolution in designing a system of traits over time. This was a lesson given to me during the design of the new F150 by Ford’s previous CEO, Jim Hackett. Hackett is an interesting figure—equally fascinated by the work of the Santa Fe Institute than anything coming from Detroit. He would look at designs for a new car or truck as if they were an evolutionary morphology of an organism, and with the same critical eye toward the introduction of novel functions. Did they replace something less functional? Did their inclusion require more glucose than the previous version? How did the new virtue help the organism thrive? Most physical products don’t have the benefit of existing over many iterations, but automobiles have existed over a long enough period (and both their competition and market forces are so unforgiving) that any virtue they adopt needs to justify its inclusion continually or it will be quickly abandoned.And this is why Securicode has persisted for 40 years: in that intense ecosystem of automotive design, it is a highly useful, biologically cheap virtue of a ruthlessly evolved organism. Replacing its function with facial scanning would require cameras, power, compute power, data—a lot of “glucose,” in other words. While it may not be as elegant or as futuristic, Securicode is nearly as functional for a lot fewer calories. (RMM)Quick Links:Osaka and mental health (CJN)A profile on Goldbelly (CJN) The Ryanair affair and the delusion of flight (CJN) Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RMM) —Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Securicode Edition

Ryan McManus (RMM) is a longtime friend of WITI, dating back to our time together at The Barbarian Group. He is currently the Design Strategy Director for Connectivity at D—Ford, Ford’s human-centered design lab.  HIs last contribution to WITI was on the subject of SecuriCode.Ryan here. A few days ago I was in the parking lot of my local Whole Foods when a strange sight appeared—an unreleased Rivian R1T electric truck, completely wrapped in a bright, psychedelic pop-art pattern. For those unfamiliar with the practice, this might appear an attention-seeking act of an outlandish owner. But for those who know about prototypes, test mules, and Erlkönige (or Erkling), the Rivian would have just been the latest manifestation of an automotive subterfuge-by-design approach that has its roots in World War I.Why is this Interesting?Back in 1918, a sailor and artist in the British Royal Navy named Norman Wilkinson came up with an idea. While the open sea provided little cover for more traditional camouflage tactics, using alternating black and white geometric patterns broke up the outlines of the ships, thus making them harder to target by German subs (BMW unironically recounts this tale in their corporate blog here). The idea was if you couldn’t hide through camouflage, you could at least confuse your enemy. Wilkinson dubbed his invention “dazzle camo.”Automotive companies would face a similar (though far less lethal) challenge starting in the 1950s. This saw the rise of the very first “spy photography” for automotive prototypes when some German photographers captured images of these vehicles out testing and published them in a magazine in a section called Erlkönige (named after a Goethe poem which contained the line “Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?”). This was a new threat to auto manufacturers—suddenly, the proliferation of spy photography meant that their precious IP would be revealed to the public (and their competitors) much sooner, giving away a competitive advantage in the market. Something had to be done.(A quick aside here on why test mules, or prototypes, need to test out in the open: these vehicles tend to be fairly far along in development but their engineering and design needs real-world validation. Test vehicles need thousands of real miles before a manufacturer can feel confident about signing off on a release. Sometimes this might be durability testing, other times it might be performance at altitude, in extreme climates, or even for NVH—Noise, Vibration, and Harshness. Wind tunnels and test chambers are used extensively but can only tell you so much, and even private company test tracks are not immune to spy photography. Further complicating things, the closer a vehicle got to release the less disguised it had to become—bulky fake roofs and added geometry would foul the test.)So the automakers found themselves in a similar boat to the Royal Navy: if they can’t conceal through camouflage, maybe they can confuse. Thus the reintroduction of dazzle camo in an entirely new capacity. Starting in the 1980s auto manufacturers would paint high-contrast, geometric patterns on their erlkings to break up the shape and design of the vehicle to make them harder to discern. This embraced a paradox: By covering the vehicles in this camo they would immediately signal to anyone paying attention that it was, indeed, a prototype. But the risk was mitigated through the camouflage—if it did its job, the damage of exposure would be minimal. Enter back to the present day, and back to that Whole Foods parking lot, and we observe a new mutation of the classic automotive dazzle camo—one that seeks attention, rather than hides from it. The spy photography of the 1950s pales in comparison to the proliferation of camera phones and video and social media—suddenly, a prototype’s exposure is far more likely and far more constant. So while subterfuge and disguise still have their part to play in the early development of new vehicles (like when Rivian disguised their trucks as F150s), these late-stage prototypes embrace the spotlight. The dazzle remains and does continue to mask minor details, but more often than not it will also include a QR code or an Easter-egg packed pattern or even color to draw attention. Since now more than ever people recognize an erlking as a thing worth capturing, why not use the attention to generate interest instead of slinking away, into the dark? (RMM)Quick Links:Speaking of Erlkönige, the VfL Wolfsburg Football Club used automotive camo as inspiration for their new kit. (RMM)Dazzle Camo is also used to try to prevent shark attacks negative encounters.(RMM)“Roy’s Razor”; a simple way of determining if a vehicle is “self-driving”. Can you sleep in it? (RMM)Chasing down a U-2 spy plane in a Ford Bronco. (RMM)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RMM)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

Automotive Prototype Camouflage Edition 

Ryan McManus (RMM) is a longstanding friend of WITI, an exceptional presenter, and currently works as Design Strategy Director at D-Ford, Ford’s Human-Centered Design group, working on the future of mobility. He drives a 1997 Toyota Land Cruiser.Subscribe nowRyan here. Recently, the check engine light came on in my daily driver, a 1997 Toyota Land Cruiser. So I did what I usually do: ran the code, figured out the fault, and messaged my go-to Land Cruiser guy, Onur Azeri. Onur agreed with my assessment of the issue, but his response was somewhat uncharacteristic: he asked if I intended on keeping the truck. Because if I’m keeping it, I should replace the entire faulty system and not just the single part. Why would that be? Because he doesn’t know how much longer these parts will be available. Or, in his words, “This stuff is going to be gone very, very shortly.”Why is this interesting?Before we delve into why this response was surprising, a bit of background about Onur. He has been in the Toyota parts game, both at a dealer and independently, for decades. He is a polymath of the Toyota production parts and logistics system and is intimately familiar with key suppliers. On the night I sent him that message, he had just returned from Dubai to visit one of the largest parts clearinghouses in the world.Onur on a trip to Toyota in JapanAnd so this is where his reply to me was a little uncharacteristic. Onur recognized an early signal in the parts supply chain that for him portended a much larger shift in the industry: that the reliable access to parts for decades-old vehicles was ending. Or, in his words: “What we are seeing, in essence, is the nature of service parts availability responding to the greater macro-scope of the twilight of the ICE era in human mobility.  We are at 11:55pm—we just have a few minutes left before the day changes.”To understand the impact of this, one needs to understand that parts obsolescence is nothing new. Since the dawn of the mass-manufactured automobile, there has been a robust aftermarket for spare and replacement service parts. How long a vehicle’s parts are available after purchase is a complex equation that needs to account for the size of the Units in Operation (UIO), how competitive the aftermarket is for the particular part, how many other “platforms” share the same part (platforms, sometimes interchangeably referred to as “architectures”, are auto-industry speak for the shared structure, components, and other hardware underpinning multiple models from the same manufacturer), and the relative cost and complexity not just of the materials but also the tooling, storage, and transport. Toyota has been a leader in the efficiency of these logistics—famously applying both the Kanban and Just In Time production philosophies. This has allowed them to supply a market for their vehicles in a highly efficient manner, keeping the global fleet of Toyotas in spares at relatively low cost and high availability. The chances of finding a part that had been discontinued from Toyota was fairly low. The Land Cruiser platform is actually one of the most extreme examples of this—a vehicle that is depended on for both its durability and serviceable longevity across every continent and environment for decades after production date means that the value of its related part ecosystem is likely one of the more inured to the economics equation of discontinuation.  Which, again, made Onur’s comment so surprising: why had that equation changed, in his mind?Two factors could be contributing to this acceleration of obsolescence. The first is the more immediate one—supply chain logistics have upended the automotive industry in historic ways, and parts are not immune to this impact. Semiconductor supply specifically has likely been forever reshaped. This has been covered extensively, so let’s skip over it for now.The second, more lasting storm to hit the parts aftermarket, is the rapid industry transition to battery electric vehicles (BEVs), with many seeing 2035 as the inflection point. Not only do battery electric vehicles require more complex, semiconductor-hungry parts, and systems, but their overall need for parts is actually far less than their combustion counterparts, especially in the consumable aftermarket. No coolant hoses, no distributor caps, no spark plugs—only tires, windshield wipers, and brakes (and even those at a less frequent replacement interval).So this is the event horizon I believe Onur sees coming from his particular vantage point in the system: there will be fewer supplies to make parts for vehicles in the future, the vehicles of the coming future will require less of an aftermarket for parts (and the size of that market will shrink considerably year over year as ICE vehicles age out and die), and automakers will shift their business models from a robust parts sales aftermarket to revenue-generating connected subscription services.This is all happening at a sort of fascinating time for the industry. Because of the supply chain disruptions and the irreversible schism in semiconductor supply, new cars are hard to come by. This fact has had a more dramatic effect on used vehicle values, where historical things like day-of-sale depreciation have all but evaporated. Combine this with a resurgent romanticism (and subsequent valuation) for vintage vehicles of the 60s-90s being driven by everything from Bring a Trailer to RADwood, and the internal combustion era might be having a bit of a supernova moment before collapsing into itself. And all of the people buying vintage Civics and 911s and Land Cruisers might find their upkeep a difficult proposition in the years to come.And so back again to Onur’s prompt: do you intend to keep the truck, or sell it? Because if you want to sell it, fix only what you need to and exit at a historically high value. But if you intend to keep it, fix everything you can while parts are still available, and drive it as long as you can into that inevitable sunset. (RMM)Quick Links:Onur breaks down the logic of the Toyota Parts Numbering system. (RMM) The New Yorker on the crazy market for vintage work trucks (RMM)Thieves are using AirTags to track, and then later steal, cars. (RMM)[Sponsored links: Atlas Bars are GMO-free and keto-friendly with 15 grams of protein and just a gram of sugar. We’ve tried Atlas and they are very good. Use this link (code WITI20) for WITI readers to get 20 percent off. Get started with the sample pack.]--WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Leaders and the net-zero push. Coming out of COP26, one thing is clear: net zero is now a core principle for business. But how will companies move from pledges and commitments to clear, detailed plans? Whether your organization is contemplating joining global coalitions for change, thinking about how to finance the transition, or mitigating risk while confronting price volatility, the time for action is now. A new article highlights five fundamental considerations to help executives as they chart the path ahead.--Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RMM)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.

The End of Spare Parts Edition

Ryan McManus (RMM) is an enduring friend of WITI who previously wrote about the fashion of the aero wheel, the end of spare parts, and the simple elegance of SecuriCode. He is a Design Strategist at Ford, currently living in Massachusetts. Ryan here. My kids have spent most of their school lives learning remotely, alongside me working remotely. So when, last year, my older son’s school welcomed him back to in-person, I adopted the age-old parental tradition of leaving a note in his lunchbox to remind him I was thinking of him back at home. Writing the note itself became a ritual, one sandwiched between dozens of other rituals and preparations on a busy weekday morning. Still, I would find 5 minutes before we left for the walk to school to sit at my desk, grab a Post-It™ and Sharpie™ (I work in a Human-Centered Design practice so I have these in spades), and write a short note and a little picture. The goal is simple: make it something he’d like, something that he’d look forward to, something to make him smile to himself in the cacophony of a cafeteria and know I had made it just for him.Why is this interesting?This is not going to be a long history on the tradition of writing lunch notes, sorry to disappoint. Instead, I wanted to describe what this ritual has become for me, and why it's my favorite part of my day. In design as well as art, there is the idea of a “sketch prompt”—a quick thematic assignment you take on to get creative juices flowing. The idea is if you commit to the practice of sketching daily, you’ll lower barriers to getting started creatively. It’s designed to overcome the inertia of starting.In this way, my lunch notes took on, quite unintentionally, the role of my daily sketch prompt. The constraints are consistent: no more than 5 minutes (can’t be late!), has to be on a Post-It™, and can only use a few drawing tools. The theme can vary as you’ll see, but generally it took the form of a sketch character or animal with a quick note (bonus points for a Dad Pun). Early on, I would draw whatever things he was interested in at the time—Minecraft, Pusheen, SpongeBob, Catstronauts. These would be clumsy, but recognizable for him (please don’t sue for copyright infringement).And at first, my tools were absolutely Spartan: one weight of Sharpie only. But over time, I added new tools without changing the canvas or the time constraint. This happened quite organically—I had some Copic™ sketch markers on my desk from a work sketch session, and grabbed one impulsively one morning to add a bit of shadow. I used a basic highlighter and red pen to give SpongeBob more life. As the sketches got more complex, I started using a pencil to rough them in first. More recently, I’ve expanded to using various brush pens and colored markers to make more expressive drawings.This technique is the one I’m using now for our current series of sketches of birds. My son is a bird nerd like me, and every day I try to pick a new bird to draw for himCreativity is a bit like exercise—it’s sometimes best to find small opportunistic ways to include it in your daily routine rather than commit to a large-scale change of lifestyle. I maybe won’t ever be a wildlife painter, but these morning sketches let me be a better designer at my day job and feel inspired at the start of a busy day, as well as showing my kids some affection through craft. I actually dread the day my son is too old to get cute lunch notes from his dad at school—luckily his younger brother is starting Kindergarten in the Fall, so my daily ritual still has a few extra years to go. (RMM) —WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Workplace real estate in the COVID-19 era. Companies today should build workplaces that help them realize their strategies. The new world of work demands a different approach to workplace real estate: offices should be strategically located, built for purpose, and integrated into corporate strategies. Check out a new article to see how three companies have successfully used their physical footprint as a competitive edge.—Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RMM)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Lunch Notes Edition

Ryan McManus (RMM) is an enduring friend of WITI who previously wrote about lunch notes, the fashion of the aero wheel, the end of spare parts, and the simple elegance of SecuriCode. He is a Design Strategist at Ford, currently living in Massachusetts. Ryan here. Last summer, I was in the parking lot of my local Whole Foods when a strange sight appeared—an at-the-time unreleased Rivian R1T electric truck, completely wrapped in a bright, psychedelic pop-art pattern. For those unfamiliar with the practice, this might appear an attention-seeking act of an outlandish owner. But for those who know about prototypes, test mules, and Erlkönige (or Erkling), the Rivian would have just been the latest manifestation of an automotive subterfuge-by-design approach that has its roots in World War I.Why is this Interesting?Back in 1918, a sailor and artist in the British Royal Navy named Norman Wilkinson came up with an idea. While the open sea provided little cover for more traditional camouflage tactics, using alternating black and white geometric patterns broke up the outlines of the ships, thus making them harder to target by German subs (BMW unironically recounts this tale in their corporate blog here). The idea was if you couldn’t hide through camouflage, you could at least confuse your enemy. Wilkinson dubbed his invention “dazzle camo.”Automotive companies would face a similar (though far less lethal) challenge starting in the 1950s. This saw the rise of the very first “spy photography” for automotive prototypes when some German photographers captured images of these vehicles out testing and published them in a magazine in a section called Erlkönige (named after a Goethe poem which contained the line “Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?”). This was a new threat to auto manufacturers—suddenly, the proliferation of spy photography meant that their precious IP would be revealed to the public (and their competitors) much sooner, giving away a competitive advantage in the market. Something had to be done.(A quick aside here on why test mules, or prototypes, need to test out in the open: these vehicles tend to be fairly far along in development but their engineering and design needs real-world validation. Test vehicles need thousands of real miles before a manufacturer can feel confident about signing off on a release. Sometimes this might be durability testing, other times it might be performance at altitude, in extreme climates, or even for NVH—Noise, Vibration, and Harshness. Wind tunnels and test chambers are used extensively but can only tell you so much, and even private company test tracks are not immune to spy photography. Further complicating things, the closer a vehicle got to release the less disguised it had to become—bulky fake roofs and added geometry would foul the test.)So the automakers found themselves in a similar boat to the Royal Navy: if they can’t conceal through camouflage, maybe they can confuse. Thus the reintroduction of dazzle camo in an entirely new capacity. Starting in the 1980s auto manufacturers would paint high-contrast, geometric patterns on their erlkings to break up the shape and design of the vehicle to make them harder to discern. This embraced a paradox: By covering the vehicles in this camo they would immediately signal to anyone paying attention that it was, indeed, a prototype. But the risk was mitigated through the camouflage—if it did its job, the damage of exposure would be minimal. Enter back to the current decade, and back to that Whole Foods parking lot, and we observe a new mutation of the classic automotive dazzle camo—one that seeks attention, rather than hides from it. The spy photography of the 1950s pales in comparison to the proliferation of camera phones and video and social media—suddenly, a prototype’s exposure is far more likely and far more constant. So while subterfuge and disguise still have their part to play in the early development of new vehicles (like when Rivian disguised their trucks as F150s), these late-stage prototypes embrace the spotlight. The dazzle remains and does continue to mask minor details, but more often than not it will also include a QR code or an Easter-egg packed pattern or even color to draw attention. Since now more than ever people recognize an erlking as a thing worth capturing, why not use the attention to generate interest instead of slinking away, into the dark? (RMM)Quick Links:This thread from Sam Bankman-Fried on hiring is definitely worth the read. FTX only has 25 engineers. (NRB)I have felt this pain with the ESPN NBA coverage for a while, but this article helps put it into words: ESPN’s NBA Halftime Show Remains An Unmitigated Disaster (NRB)Guidelines for Writing About People With Disabilities (NRB)—WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.The value of the digital age. A new episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast discusses how to measure the value of the digital age. Professor Avinash Collins, who talks through his work on creating a data dashboard that could help. Listen and learn.—Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RMM)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Dazzle Camo Edition

Ryan McManus (RMM) is a product designer at Ford and longstanding friend of WITI. He has previously written about the end of spare parts, the simple elegance of SecuriCode, and how to start your own town. He smells pretty good, actually.Ryan here. Like just about all of you at this point, I caught a case of Covid-19 a couple months back. And, like many of you, the infection led to me completely losing my sense of smell and taste. But what happened after that was the twist I did not see coming.The initial infection was what we are now calling “mild”, meaning I stayed in bed for a week and rewatched Loki and felt pretty shitty. The loss of smell was a trailing symptom, one I didn’t notice until about a week after I had felt better and was testing negative. It was unsettling, of course—akin to walking around with earplugs on or an eye covered, a dulled sense of my existence—but I managed. And then one morning I poured myself a cup of coffee, took a sip, and wretched.My sense of smell had returned, but something was wrong. Instead of the superlative scent of Dunkin’ Midnight, I smelled…garbage water? Disease? It was literally impossible to describe what it smelled like, because I would later discover it didn’t smell like anything else (More on that in a bit). I had my wife come and smell the coffee to see if I had, I don't know, accidentally dropped a dishwashing detergent pod into the pot while brewing it. But she said it was fine, it was normal. I was crazy.Later that evening, I poured myself a nightcap of bourbon to find it, too, was off. It smelled acrid, chemical, almost like acetone. I could hardly finish it. What the hell was going on?WITI Classifieds:We are experimenting with running some weekly classifieds in WITI. If you’re interested in running an ad, you can purchase one through this form. If you buy this week, we’ll throw an extra week in for free on any ad. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop a line.Supercharge your lifelong learning. Upnext lets you save any content, and actually get to it later. Supports articles, podcasts and video! Try Upnext for freeFor 10 years, this has been the go-to newsletter for people who like to keep up with what’s exciting in design, books, beauty, food, & more. SubscribeFor the inner journey. For the outer journey. The Intermodal Spirit. Subscribe here.Why is this interesting?Parosmia is the name for the condition when your brain’s interpretation of a scent is misunderstood, corrupted, or otherwise incorrect. (Para from the Greek meaning “contrary” and Osme, “smell”). The condition was actually fairly rare, historically, with cases cropping up with people who’d had some serious upper respiratory tract infection or even head trauma. But like so many things after Covid-19 entered our world, Parosmia and its cousin Phantosmia (phantom scents) has become far more common as a lingering effect of the virus’ infection of our bodies. (The incidence is still pretty uncommon, considered a “rare side effect”, but not so rare that the NYT hasn’t written several articles on the subject).This is what had happened to my coffee and bourbon—or, to be more precise, what had happened to my brain. Because parosmia isn’t a nose problem, it’s a bad data problem.Let me lay it out in a loose metaphor: When you smell something, anything, the olfactory nerves capture the scent molecules as encoded data, and pass that data signal along to your brain, which decodes it and matches it to a known scent, like chocolate or feet. If the scent is new, it gets a new file. If there are adjacent scents, like something smelling sweet, the brain tells you it’s probably good to eat. If it smells like burning rubber or durian, it is a warning to stay away.Why it is so hard to describe how incredibly foul smelling things can be with parosmia is because they are literally unknown scents. The data of the coffee small is getting garbled and turning up at my brain as something totally unknown, like scrambling a QR code. And, at a survival level, a good default for “this smell is unknown to us and confusing” is “stay the hell away from this”. This is probably why so many of us who suffered this condition find everything smells horrible. In researching my symptoms, I have yet to find anyone who said their compost heap smelled like Chanel No.5 (Sorry, Cass). And this kind of makes sense—when the brain is getting bad data, it defaults to a warning. This is also true of phantosmia, which is the persistent sensation of smelling something that isn’t actually there. And when I learned more about it, I had this moment of realization: In the early days of the pandemic, before testing was available, I had had a cold that was pretty mild and wrote it off as nothing serious. But for months afterward, I felt like I was always smelling smoke. Sort of a lingering, acrid smell like living in a house that used to belong to a chain smoker—just inescapable. And I never knew why. This was unpleasant for me but downright crippling for others, who find not only food but their romantic partners or their own bodies smelling repellent, and no amount of hygiene will cover the smell (frustratingly, toothpaste is often one of the biggest offenders). This has strained social relationships, marriages, and caused people to become recluses while they try to figure out how to fix it.The good news is there are treatments starting to emerge, and I had some luck with one of the most popular, called smell training. Pioneered by a professor named Thomas Hummel who runs the Smell and Taste Clinic at the University of Dresden, and championed by the excellently-named UK charity group AbScent, smell training is a simple protocol where you sit quietly and take short sniffs of 4 different essential oils (lemon, clove, rose and eucalyptus) for about a minute, twice a day, for about 4 months. It also helps if you say the name of the scent aloud before sniffing. I get it, this sounds ridiculous. But back to my data metaphor—essentially smell training is like any other rehabilitation protocol when nerves are damaged. By smelling the oils and saying the names, you are retraining your neural pathways to understand that the molecules its receiving map to a thing that might have been corrupted by the virus.The training doesn’t work for everyone, and there are other treatments being developed. But I was one of the lucky—my sense of smell eventually corrected, and the first time I had a cup of coffee that smelled like coffee again was actually kind of emotional. Like some part of the world had been restored to me.Parosmia was a stark, sometimes cruel reminder that our experience in this world is always an interpretation, that the quality of the data our bodies and brains receive has a foundational impact on how we experience life, and how absolutely fragile that translation can sometimes be. So don’t take it for granted—go take a big whiff of the ones you love. (RMM)—Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RMM) —Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.

The Parosmia Edition

Ryan McManus (RMM) is a product designer at Ford and a longstanding friend of WITI. He has previously written about the end of spare parts, the simple elegance of SecuriCode, and how to start your own town. He has never owned a gray car. Well, one—but he was young.Via Vintique MotorsRyan here. If you were running a body shop in the mid-1990s, there was one car that might have given you pause if it showed up on the back of a truck for a respray: The 1996 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra, in a color called Mystic. First, the car would have looked purple, black, green, or even gold, depending on how the light hit it—meaning you had to be very precise in technique to get a perfect blending. Second, the paint itself was 40x more expensive than any other color you were spraying, meaning any waste or screw-ups would be deleterious to your business. Oh, and third: you would be watched the entire time by either a Ford employee, a BASF employee, an officer from the U.S. Treasury, or even the Secret Service. Why is this interesting?Back in the early 1990s, BASF had patented a new pigment for inks and paints, which used a novel patented technology: Prism Platelets. Developed by a company called Flex Systems, these tiny lenses were suspended in a clear liquid pigment that could be sprayed or printed over existing colors. As the pigment dried, the tiny prisms would harden and line up to create a holographic foil that coated the base paint. The effect on light was like nothing else in the market at the time. While automakers and customizers had been playing with metallic flake and pearlescent paints for decades, nothing approaching a true holographic effect had been perfected, and certainly not at scale. BASF knew they were on to something special, so they decided to shop the pigment around. One of the doors they knocked on was Ford Motor Co. (disclaimer: my employer), which was interested in the new color technology for use on their storied Mustang brand. Ford’s Special Vehicle Team (SVT) had been cooking up a new Mustang Cobra, the highest-powered variant at the time, and this new pigment would ensure the car turned heads even when standing still.But Ford needed some convincing, so they shipped BASF 2 black Mustang GTs to be painted in the new color, dubbed “Mystic”. After seeing the test cars, Ford ordered enough pigment to paint 2000 of the 7500 1996 SVT Cobras. The option cost $1,152.Via Vintique MotorsWhen you see a Mystic Cobra for the first time, the color that your brain sees depends completely on both the lightning conditions and your angle to the car. There is actually no color in the pigment itself—it is simply millions of tiny prisms sitting atop a gloss black basecoat. But because your eye sees color by the wavelengths reflected back at it, the prisms break the reflected light into different wavelengths, hence different colors (this also makes it extremely difficult to photograph accurately).But what about the government oversight? See, Ford wasn’t the first door BASF knocked on with their revolutionary pigment. They first approached the U.S. Treasury Department about using the Prism Platelets in their printing process to create unique holographic inks on currency. The Treasury, always looking for a foothold against counterfeiters and in the midst of redesigning the $100 bill, began using the BASF pigment to create holographic “100”s that could not be duplicated by anybody else.Unless, of course, they could get their hands on this elusive prismatic pigment—the same one Ford was now providing to body shops who needed to do paint repairs to the SVT Cobras. You couldn’t buy Mystic in a store—Ford maintained a repository of the paint specifically for body shops to use, and any resprays needed to be monitored by either Ford or BASF (and yes, even reportedly the Secret Service on some occasions) and all unused pigment needed to be bagged up and returned. The dried pigment wasn’t a risk, but any liquid leftover could have the platelets extracted and used in counterfeiting.Sadly, Mystic vanished as quickly as it appeared. There were plans for a new, gold version for 2000, but a costly recall canceled the program. And while color-shifting paints and wraps would reappear on Mustangs and other cars, none would ever use that costly, secretive pigment again. (RMM)WITI Classifieds:We are experimenting with running some weekly classifieds in WITI. If you’re interested in running an ad, you can purchase one through this form. If you buy this week, we’ll throw an extra week in for free on any ad. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop a line.My Next Electric is a hella-fun online crash course about how to move from gas to electric cars and stoves. Sign up for a classNoah here. I've got a new newsletter about brands and AI called BrXnd Dispatch. If you're in marketing, creative, or just interested in understanding what's up with AI, check it out. Subscribe to BrXnd Dispatch—Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RMM)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.

The Mystic Cobra Edition

Ryan McManus (RMM) is a product designer at Ford and a longstanding friend of WITI. He has previously written about the end of spare parts, the simple elegance of SecuriCode, and how to start your own town. He has never owned a gray car. Well, one—but he was young.Ryan here. As electric vehicles (EVs) have begun to dominate the cultural awareness and proliferate the market, those who have paid close attention to each new model and concept’s release might have noticed a common design element that seems to occur, regardless of brand or vehicle type: a smooth, almost solid wheel design. While not ubiquitous, this type of design, usually called “aero wheels,” are much more common on new EVs than gasoline-powered cars. The reason for this is fairly straightforward. Electric vehicles are, for better or worse, judged currently on a single metric: range (how far can the vehicle travel on a single charge). As Mazda has recently discovered, this number can make or break a car’s potential for success in the market, with a 200-300 mile range having become the standard for “good.” (Whether this is actually fair, or true, or if range is maybe not the best metric for a vehicle’s worth is the subject of another time.) For this reason, many considerations are made to reach an acceptable, “ideal” range for an EV. Batteries are heavy and expensive, so manufacturers look for other ways to eek out the miles.A significant way to do that is to reduce the vehicle's coefficient of drag, colloquially known as “improving its aerodynamics.” There is a massive body of scientific research behind the complexities of road aerodynamics, but you can think of it simply as how easily a vehicle moves through the air. Motorcycle? Very aerodynamic, low drag. Hummer? Not so aerodynamic, higher drag. This means that between two roughly equally sized/mass vehicles, the one with the “better” aerodynamics (lower drag) will require less energy to go the same distance at the same speed. Now the picture for EVs becomes clear: to maximize range, you don’t just need a big battery and efficient motors—you also need optimized aerodynamics.EV manufacturers do this in various ways, from creating the slipperiest possible silhouette to designing flush door handles and even shaping mirrors to minimize drag. And, yes, they also look to wheels.WITI Classifieds:We are experimenting with running some weekly classifieds in WITI. If you’re interested in running an ad, you can purchase one through this form. If you buy this week, we’ll throw an extra week in for free on any ad. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop a line.Coefficient Capital and The New Consumer have teamed up to bring you fresh new insights in F&B ahead of Expo West! Check out our comprehensive reportThe BrXnd Marketing X AI Conference is happening on 5/16 in NYC. Early Bird tickets are 20% off until the end of the month. Get your 20% off ticket today!Wheels, if you think of a typical spoked design, are actually aerodynamic nightmares. They contain edges and voids and spin at various rates, creating turbulence—the enemy of low drag. Aero wheels, then, seek to calm this turbulence through a solid, smooth design that minimizes the air passing over them getting caught up in the motion of the wheel, thereby decreasing the amount of energy needed to push that car through space. Simple.Why is this interesting?The thing is, aerodynamics are not an EV-specific concern—they are an energy conservation one, one defined not by chemistry but physics. Vehicles powered by gas or diesel motors face the same challenges with regards to the amount of energy required to overcome their drag, so why wouldn’t their design be driven as ruthlessly by aerodynamic optimization? Or, to put it in the context of this WITI, the question isn’t why do EVs have aero wheels, but why doesn’t every car have aero wheels?The answer lies in the interdynamics of humanity's relationship to energy conservation and to fashion, and the points in history where the two have been aligned (and opposed). So, first: EVs did not invent the aero wheel. Actually, aero wheels are a fairly old concept, with the first ones emerging in racing as far back as 1903, when the understanding of the impact of aerodynamics on automotive design started to take root. (Before then, the need for a low drag was mitigated by the top speed of a horse. Not much impact there). The 1921 Rumpler Tropfenwagen (with an incredible .28 drag coefficient comparable to a Tesla Model S) had aero wheel covers that wouldn’t look out of place on a modern EV concept today:In the 1930s, as aerodynamics became fashion and “streamlining” ruled the vernacular of the day, again we see the reemergence of the aero wheel idea, going so far as to include “wheel spats”, body covers across the rear wheels to improve airflow (and aesthetics).Again in the 1970s and 1980s, as gas prices increased and environmental awareness grew, we see aero wheel and car designs again dominating first the concept cars and then the production cars of the day, finding new ways to create expressive forms while signaling good aerodynamics, in principle. Once again, ‘aero’ became synonymous with ‘futuristic.’That last bit is important, because this is where the fashion part of the relational dyad comes into play. Automobile wheels are actually a highly expressive and extremely fashion-driven part of the car’s design language. Think of them as the sneakers of the car—because they are decorative by nature, and because changing wheel designs from year to year is far less expensive than changing the shape of the car, the metabolic rate of change in wheel designs tends towards the outer pace layers rather than the slower, more industry driven ones. And, like any of us, aero wheels are not immune to the forces of fashion, the cultural vibe shifts we all must endure. An industrious person could likely then look back at the points in the last 100 years when energy efficiency and conservation were at the height of collective consciousness (1920s-30s, 1970s-80s, 1990s-00s, 2020-today) and find that the occurrence of aero wheel designs to emerge shortly after those crests, only to disappear again in the trenches of time between—where they move from a vision of the future, to a dominant style, to a passé look cast aside for something a bit flashier. As EVs become more and more mainstream, as energy becomes cheaper and more abundant, and as battery technologies begin to free us from the tyranny of range optimization as a metric of a “good ev,” we can expect to see the dominance of the aero wheel to once again recede into obscurity. (RMM)—Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Ryan (RMM)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.