Part of my research into concept design is to look at where successful products and services came from. Today, it’s Twitter. Lately I’m also perusing Stephen Johnson’s thoughts on Where Do Good Ideas Come From. In this context it’s interesting to read here and here about Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s years of experience creating software… Continue reading Twitter was a slow hunch
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IDEO’s Open Dev of the BugBase Hardware/Software UI
Concept 1 – Electronic Ink over Tactile Switches. Source: IDEO It’s not often we get to peek inside anyone’s concept design process, so this blog from IDEO has me starting up my reverse-engineering machine…. An open project between BugLabs and IDEO, this deep-dive exploration of the BUGbase UI is focused on re-envisioning the BUGbase interface… Continue reading IDEO’s Open Dev of the BugBase Hardware/Software UI
Interview With Me Discussing Tangible Futures
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… Continue reading Interview With Me Discussing Tangible Futures
Did You Know Brainstorming Is 70 Years Old?
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… Continue reading Did You Know Brainstorming Is 70 Years Old?
Thoughts on the Euro Information Architecture Summit 2008
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.… Continue reading Thoughts on the Euro Information Architecture Summit 2008
Presentation Hardware: Tiny USB Speakers
I’m learning the hard way that presenting concepts may mean giving them to someone else to show on an unknown laptop across the world somewhere. I can control for many factors by simply making a video of my design concept, with voice over. But that laptop won’t get the audio loud enough, and no one… Continue reading Presentation Hardware: Tiny USB Speakers
Do We Live in a Fantasy World?
Rolf Jensen says so, but that doesn’t feel quite right to me. Though his point of view is certainly interesting… In the Dreamtelligence era, we trade in stories and dreams, in the extraordinary and the implausible. In this new age, industry can make anything you want, but what it can’t manufacture is fantasy – and… Continue reading Do We Live in a Fantasy World?
Brad Bird on Sacrificing Ideas
Here’s a quick clip of Brad Bird talking about the film creation process and giving up particular ideas for the good of the overall concept. I find that’s one thing people learn along the way: it’s good to critique and trash ideas, just as long as it doesn’t get personal. His dig on “businessmen” is… Continue reading Brad Bird on Sacrificing Ideas
Dream Cars Meet Harsh Reality
That’s what Phil Patton at the New York Times thought about the concept cars at the Detroit Auto Show. In the article I found some insight as well as some assumptions we can toss out… But this year, dark economic clouds seem to have cast a shadow even over the designers displaying their ideas at… Continue reading Dream Cars Meet Harsh Reality
No-Click is the New Click
I’m bummed I’ll miss Dan Saffer’s talk tonight on Tap is the New Click (though happy I’ll finally get to try Five Points as I take a client out to dinner). But on that topic, I just came across some examples of interaction design that do away with the click altogether. It’s radical enough to… Continue reading No-Click is the New Click
What’s Your Favorite Book on Building Digital Products/Services?
The responses to my question about your favorite books on innovation were so interesting and useful I can’t help but ask another: Let’s say you’re a manager charged with developing a software-driven product or service like a website or a mobile service. You already have staff to handle the interface design, programming, and marketing. But… Continue reading What’s Your Favorite Book on Building Digital Products/Services?
Tangible Futures in Denver, Wednesday, August 16th
I’ll be giving a presentation on Tangible Futures in Denver next Wednesday, August 16th. Since giving the talk in Philadelphia I’ve refined the how-to part of the talk quite a bit with more perspective of the people on the receiving end of this work. If you’re in the neighborhood and interested I’d love to meet… Continue reading Tangible Futures in Denver, Wednesday, August 16th
The Difference Between Customer-Focused Innovation and Cluelessness
Last week a friend of mine was telling me about how new products are created at her software start-up. Essentially it consists of salespeople talking to current and potential customers about an existing product and asking, “What else would you like it do to?” That in itself is a fine question that acknowledges the customer… Continue reading The Difference Between Customer-Focused Innovation and Cluelessness
Creating organizational vision with storytelling and artifacts
“The Institute for the Future couldn’t get clients to read its trend forecasts. So it started giving away prescient product ideas instead.” These are great examples of the tangible part of what we’ve been calling Tangible Futures. The IFTF objects seem like good ways to, as they say, ‘start conversations’ about alternate futures. The intention… Continue reading Creating organizational vision with storytelling and artifacts
Artful Making
I watched State and Main recently. It’s a movie about making a movie, and hints at how that industry must blend the pure creativity of writing stories, the pure business of running a studio, and the combined creative/business endeavor of bringing together stories and studio to create a movie. I started to wonder if the… Continue reading Artful Making