January 2012
25 posts
1 tag
CES officially "jumps the shark." →
Software and Service (Digital Product) experiences are the new differentiator as “Devices” continue their downward slide toward commoditization.
CES requires that tech companies pretend to put on a show for attendees and that those in the media who depend on tech companies to do things they can talk about to pretend that it’s some sort of huge mind-blowing experience.
“Web applications are digital products. Design & think of them as such.”
– Luke Wroblewski 10 Things I Learned In Web School
#XPrize "Build a device that can allow a user to... →
The Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize website says that the following will be required of the winner:
Diagnose diseases
Provide ongoing metrics of health (vitals)
Allow monitoring or continuous use of sensors to diagnose and measure health
Provide awareness of health state
Give confirmation that everything is ok with a consumer
Notify that something is not ok (a “check engine light”)
The Pirate Ship as Organizational Model →
An organization is healthy as long as its survival is sufficiently in doubt that each employee feels a primary responsibility to ensuring the survival of the firm, and a secondary (or lesser) concern for their own position within the hierarchy.
"Madness" by Dr. Rob via @riander #hcux →
People need to know how dysfunctional our system is, not on a political or sociological level, but in the reality of the exam room. This madness is making the most committed doctors have second thoughts about their profession. I didn’t go into medicine to learn to “play the game.” We all deserve better than this.
“Our deep-seated belief that what comes later is better than what came before has...”
– Eva Zeisel Schools Us On The Hazard Of Too Much Innovation
“on designers: “we’ve been brought up to think that we’re in the artifact...”
– Allan Chochinov via networkedculture
“The biggest lie you’ve all been fed is that good design sells itself. Whoever...”
– Mike Monteiro - 10 New Year’s resolutions for designers
December 2011
21 posts
1 tag
Meaning in Communication: What Skeuomorphism Can... →
jochmann:
Skeuomorphism is one of those concepts that occasionally makes for great small talk. Admittedly it only works with a rather select audience. But when it does work you not only have the pleasure of overcoming a hurdle of three consecutive vowels, you also have a topic where design minded folks can…
“What I hear I forget, what I see I remember, what I do I understand.”
– Confucian scholar, Xunzi (340-245 BC)
A Life That Mattered :: R.I.P. Vaclav Havel ::... →
Havel, a puckish, absurdist playwright turned political activist, spent four and a half years in prison for opposing Czechslovakia’s Communist government before emerging as a leader of the Velvet Revolution that swept it aside in 1989.
He went on to become president of Czechoslovakia, and of the Czech Republic when the country split in two at the end of 1992.
Who “Gets” Product? | Neil Wehrle →
Finding people who work in product development with a compatible outlook and skillset is difficult, but identifying higher-order abilities in those people is hard. [How can we find] people who can understand how and why products are made and succeed (or don’t), and can articulate and repeat that outcome.
Another good read, by another Wehrle, this time @neilw
Why You Can’t Hire | Startup Boy →
There isn’t a shortage of developers and designers. There’s a surplus of founders.
A good read via: @sylviawehrle
“In other words, what we see as the glory of Rome is really just the rubble of...”
– Fascinating read on income inequality in the Roman Empire (via curiositycounts)
India’s “missed call” mobile ecosystem →
Missed calls are being incorporated into mobile apps and services as a standard type of messaging like a text or an answered call itself. For example, an Indian cloud telephony service provider startup called KooKoo has been working with a Bangalore-based company to create an information market based around missed calls. If you want to know the latest weather, the latest Groupon-style deal, or...
Successful projects are born out of depth :: →
When you dedicate the bulk of your attention to a small number of things, working persistently to become so good they can’t ignore you, this builds depth. When you have reached sufficient depth, you begin to encounter possibilities for impressive, exciting projects.
Excellent advice.
Social or Cultural Entrepreneurship: An Argument... →
Cultural entrepreneurs, who often rely heavily on new media tools such as Twitter and Kickstarter, use persuasive communications and peer influence to shift attitudes, beliefs, and behavior and, in doing so, change the world for the better.
Think of cultural entrepreneurship as social entrepreneurship’s little sister. Social entrepreneurship has gotten considerable attention in the last decade...
–Engage » Observation as skill →
…and as long as i’m on the self-referential kick, here’s another great conversation i had with my pal, Dave Malouf.
…never in all of my years has anyone come to me to tell me or teach me how to observe, let alone that it is a skill at all. I’ve been told that “listening” is a skill and we practice that through interviewing each other as students and what not, but just...
November 2011
38 posts
Errol Morris on the art of the interview - →
What he’s most interested in when he conducts those interviews, he said, is a kind of journalistic version of mens rea: literally, and in the legal sense, “a guilty mind.” In Morris’ sense, mens rea isn’t necessarily about guilt, legal or moral or any other kind; it’s about appending the why of a person’s action to the action itself. And about doing so on an individual, personal level. This is...
Staff of global IT services firm, Atos, to be... →
stoweboyd:
Henry Samuel via The Telegraph
Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos and a former French finance minister, wants a “zero email” policy to be in place within as early as 18 months, arguing that only 10 per cent of the 200 electronic messages his employees receive per day on average turn out to be useful. Instead he wants them to use an instant messaging and a Facebook-style...
