Victor
-
Web 2.0 Strategy: Customers Create Value
•
3 min read
Note: Over the next few weeks I’m blogging my notes on Amy Shuen’s book Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations. (O’Reilly Media). The book is both a good introduction and a synthesis of diverse theories that should offer something to even experienced strategists. Background: What is Web…
-
Come Do RFP Jedi Mind Tricks, Jan 13
•
1 min read
If you’re a member of the AIGA and in New York, you might enjoy a fun little breakfast gathering planned for Tuesday, January 13, 2009… Redesigning the RFP response Maybe you’ve gotten one: the RFP that asks for mountains of miraculous work, for no money, delivered in 20 minutes. Or the one for a project…
-
Nokia Offers New Email Accounts Via the Mobile Phone
•
1 min read
Niti has an intriguing post including this quote describing service for the Nokia 1202: the new devices will allow users to set up an e-mail account on Nokia’s Ovi Web portal without ever going near a PC. That’s an important distinction for the millions of mobile-phone users who live in regions without reliable electricity, much…
-
Designing Better Proposal Price Tags
•
2 min read
Not long I was talking to a project manager who was writing her first request for proposal, explaining the common wisdom on budget disclosure: “You’ll want to give them a ballpark idea of what your budget is without telling them your actual budget; agencies will sometimes configure the work to take all the money on…
-
Designing Lower Legal Fees
•
2 min read
So we all know that at the heart of creativity lie constraints. And one constraint I love is money. I thought of this today as I read about a friend’s company who spent “tens of thousands of dollars” on legal fees just for their domain name. Maybe that was money well spent, but from personal…
-
To catch you up, Motrin posted the below ad and people, particularly baby-carrying mothers, were so offended that the makers of Motrin pulled the ad. Many of the offended people (“Motrin Moms” there were dubbed) were on Twitter, as well as blogs and YouTube. As a result, marketers are starting to get scared of social…
-
Interview With Me Discussing Tangible Futures
•
1 min read
Stuart Candy, researcher at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies and research fellow of The Long Now Foundation, asked me a few questions about tangible futures and published the interview on his blog. While I’m more focused on near-term concept design these days, it was helpful for me to reflect on why and how…
-
Finally, The Iraq War Ends
•
1 min read
…not really, unfortunately. But that was the headline on a “special edition” of the “New York Times” today. The credibility was in question from the start, as the paper was handed out free at the subway which is never the case with the Times. The production is quite accurate, but a quick glance at the…
-
A New Service: Future Practice Webinars
•
1 min read
We’re pleased as punch to partner with our good friend Lou Rosenfeld at Rosenfeld Media to offer you Future Practice Webinars. Our first two events are Modern Web Form Design with Luke Wroblewski and Using Mental Models for Tactics and Strategy with Indi Young. When we created them we wanted to accomplish two things: Provide…
-
Did You Know Brainstorming Is 70 Years Old?
•
2 min read
That’s right, Alex Osborn started popularizing brainstorming in the late 1930’s. It’s a classic tool I still use, but I have to wonder if there’s something better. Brainstorming is simple, and I would bet this simplicity is the key to its popularity. Yet even the basic rules that Osborn set out aren’t very common. Brainstorming…
-
Spontaneous Interaction Design Group Work Styles
•
2 min read
There was a New York City IxDA event at Roundarch last night that challenged 10 teams of designers to invent the portable electronic ink magic paper of the future. In addition to the usual functional stuff, fun ideas emerged like using it as a yoga mat, a DDR mat, or modules that could be connected…
-
How Can I Be More Strategic?
•
2 min read
Designers often ask this question. Sometimes I think the question arises from a genuine desire to be doing something else which is more strategic in nature, and sometimes I think what is being asked is, how can I convince or influence others to do things my way? The answer might be the same or it…
-
A friend is contracting with a design firm for work that will include web analytics, so I asked my colleague and expert Marko Hurst for resources that would provide a gentle introduction, mostly from a marketing perspective. He recommends: Web Analytics Demystified — A bit more technical, but not a tech book geared for someone…
-
New Article on Concept Design Tools
•
2 min read
The nice folks at Digital Web Magazine published my new article on Concept Design Tools. It’s already received some nice reviews in the Twitterverse… For those of you who haven’t seen Victor Lombardi’s new article on concept design tools, it’s a must read… …it’s brilliant stuff and super accessible. It’s great to see solid thinking…
-
I’m just back from the Euro IA Summit held in Amsterdam, September 26-27th. Overall it was a good event with many warm, interesting people in attendance. I was considering attending PICNIC as well but as I heard it was “very corporate… lots of white men with PowerPoint” I spent my time with the city instead.…