August 2008
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How Recruiting iPhone Designers is Like Raising Kids
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2 min read
When two of the really amazing thinkers I admire — Ken Bain and Jeanne Liedtka — both say they admire Carol Dweck, I figure it’s time to figure out who Dweck is. Her latest book, Mindset, provides some fascinating psychological support for the power of play and prototyping, as she says… People who believe in…
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Using Real Options to Value Design Concepts
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3 min read
The common way that financial people will judge the potential value of a project, or a design concept representing a potential future concept, is by building a model, usually a discounted cash flow model like Net Present Value (NPV). The calculation essentially asks, if we do this project and gain the profit we think we’ll…
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I’m happy the concept design research and development I’ve been doing has received some attention, even though I haven’t had much time to share my work. That will start to change next month when I present some tools for generating concepts at the 2008 European Information Architecture Summit in Amsterdam, where I’ve been honored with…
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The Age of Heretics, Updated in 2nd Edition
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1 min read
Art Kleiner revised The Age of Heretics and the 2nd edition is on it’s way to my greedy little fingers. It explores heretical ideas in management starting in 1945 through several case studies to find that: People are basically good at heart; they are fundamentally trustworthy. Only workplaces that give their members the chance to…
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Studio 360 on A Pattern Language
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1 min read
This morning Studio 360 broadcast a piece on Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, and the influence of patterns in software development. If you know the story, you know the story. Still, I always like hearing Alexander speak, and this is the first time I’ve heard Ward Cunningham’s voice.
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Concept Design: Name the Baby!
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2 min read
When you create a product or service concept, you should give it a name. Sounds like a no-duh idea, but in the heat of the moment we forget to do this. Sometimes… we give them numbers or letters. “You see the change in materiality here in concept 2…” or “Clearly Concept C is a total…