via en.wikipedia.org
I'd like to watch this, it comes highly recommended and looks really interesting when you see things like this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/7929938/Foxconn-faces-fresh...
Sunday 3 October 2010
Friday 1 October 2010
Kids are the best design-thinkers
Tim Brown's TED talk was all about how play is a key ingredient for creativity to flourish. One of the great ways he demonstrated this was by asking the audience to draw a 30 second sketch of the person next to them. Of course everybody was embarrassed by their efforts, at how ugly or strange they made their neighbor look. The point being that if you do this experiment with kids, they don't feel the slightest embarrassment. They don't have the pre-conceptions or societal constructs that we become constrained by as we get older. They have no fear of failure.
The video clip above is from a recent documentary on the BBC - one of the 'Imagine' series with Alan Yentob. This episode - 'Art is Child's Play' was all about how artists - the creative purists of society, strive to maintain a child-like innocence in their art. I forget the name of the artist (can't find the full vid online), but one of them was talking about how being true to your art, especially in today's world, is a case of trying to shut your ears to all the voices that are telling you to do something different, that it won't sell, that you're stealing ideas, that you should do what your client likes...
I had another reason to think about this today. My wife told me how Isaac (5) had commented on a workman breaking up the pavement. I guess he'd seen a pneumatic drill on Bob the Builder, so he asked why the guy didn't use 'a drill thing' to make it quicker. My wife said it might be because those things are so noisy that they don't really use them any more (you don't seem to see them in Holland where we live, but I think that's more likely because the streets are mostly un-mortared bricks lying on sand). So Isaac thought, and then asked why they don't use some sort of thing to stop them being so noisy, like a tent. On the face of it, that sounds kind of stupid, and not the kind of suggestion that 'grown-ups' would make. But why not? Even if the tent idea doesn't end up being feasible, there are probably other spin-off ideas that could end up reducing noise pollution from building sites. I'm sure there are inventions waiting to happen there. The most entrepreneurial thing he said though, which I am sure would impress Peter Jones, was about potential names for this thing (I was discussing it with him at this point). He didn't like the idea of calling it a 'Pneumatic drill sound tent' or similar because it was too narrow an application (not his words). He thought it should have a more generic name, so that it could be applied to other noise reduction problems. I'm obviously biased, but that seems pretty smart to me. Did I mention he's 5? It must be my wife's genes...
So a huge part of design, or 'design-thinking' - which is debated to much at the moment, is bringing a creative, open-minded and questioning approach to business or societal problems. I don't think it means that designers should think they can suddenly solve all business problems (a great article on Core77 about this and the 'T-shaped designer'), but it does mean bringing something that traditional business strategists might not have - the ability to ask the dumb questions, to make the crazy suggestions which might lead to something big. Richard Saul Wurman was talking at the 'Why Design Now' conference today (I was watching the live stream). He says rather than selling knowledge, he sells ignorance. No-one knows everything, every problem is different. The best quality to have is an acceptance that you are ignorant, and able to lay fresh eyes on the problem space. We grown-ups like to think we know a lot, but maybe we'd be better off focusing on how little we know.
When we are no longer children, we are already dead. - Brancusi
Wednesday 29 September 2010
Design-Driven Innovation
How to create innovations that customers do not expect, but that they eventually love? How to create products and services, that are so distinct from those that dominate the market and so inevitable that make people passionate?
Design-Driven Innovation unveils how leaders such as Apple, Nintendo, Alessi, Whole Foods Market build an unbeatable and sustainable competitive advantage through innovations that do not come from the market but that create new markets. These leaders compete through products and services that have a radical new meaning: those that convey a completely new reason for customers to buy them. The cases, data and stories in the book show how to create this new vision and how to successfully propose it to customers. A strategy and a process that leverage the rich and multifaceted network of a firm outsiders, looking beyond customers to those "interpreters"– such as scientists, customers, suppliers, intermediaries, designers, artists - who deeply understand and shape the markets they work in.
Another book for my christmas list. Actually I don't have a christmas list, which is why I don't end up getting what I want. No offense (if my ludicrous chance someone I know reads this), but I like books on design, innovation, photography and stuff, not socks or shower gel.
A better approach to Terms & conditions?
Terms & conditions are the most ridiculous thing. Every now and again my iPhone asks me to accept a new set of T&C's before i download a free app - which in itself seems ludicrous. I happened to notice the last time that I was viewing page 1 of 59. 59 pages of legal garbage. Imagine how long the team of people (who charge their time by the minute on chess clocks) took to draw this up and get it approved. I wonder how many people actually reads even the first line. I wonder how many read past the first page.
I really don't know much about legal issues, but in my limited experience legal judgements seem to usually come down to what is 'reasonable'. I'm sure there have been cases where people have technically been in breach of the T&C's, but the legal verdict was sympathetic to the fact that people could never reasonably be expected to have read all the small-print anyway. If that is the case, then its pretty ridiculous that everyone has to go through this rigmarole of supposedly legally accepting a contract which they've got no knowledge or understanding of. Shouldn't it be a legal requirement that you must have read and understood everything in order for it to be legally binding? I seem to remember on the PS3 they make an attempt to ensure that happens - you have to scroll to the bottom of the text before you can click 'Accept', having not read a word of it of course.
Everyone does it, its just the way it is. The exceptions are when we're buying a house or signing an employment contract, but in those cases the implications are much closer to 'home' and we usually have an expert helping us understand the salient points. For the rest of the legal stuff we accept every day, we just hope it never comes back to bite us - but it obviously does sometimes. Does anyone know what my legal rights are if Flickr decides it can't afford to keep all my photos any more? No doubt their T&Cs completely absolve them from any legal recourse if things go pear-shaped. Anyway, that's not a great example, and Flickr is probably one of the best example of a service that respects copyright issues for ordinary people through Creative Commons etc.
Anyway, with the whole T&C's thing in general, there must be a better way - at least of informing people a little bit better. If you are going to read an article, its nice to scan an abstract first. I'm sure its not just a lack of loving attention that makes T&C's so ugly and uninviting - it's not in the interests of the legal dudes to make it easier to understand, because more people would have a 'WTF?!' moment and decide not to accept them! But if there was a kind of 'Key points' or summary approach it would be much nicer from a brand > customer relationship point of view. Why not start with something like 'You own all the content, but if it gets deleted by accident you can't sue us, sorry.', followed by a 'Read more about content ownership' link.
From a (UX) design point of view, T&C's is not something that designers think a lot about. It's probably last on the list, and is tedious and very uninteresting. But, it is pretty important and has a large ethical aspect to it. If people understood more clearly what they were accepting, they might challenge them more - a good thing!
Thursday 23 September 2010
Creativity and partnerships
The human mind depends on narrative, characters, and concrete action, while the idea of interdependence easily dissolves into abstraction.
Wednesday 25 August 2010
Crack-stop princess
Isaac just informed me his new name is 'mental radiator'. Rosa followed up with her new moniker 'crack-stop princess'.
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