Showing posts with label Feng Shui. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Feng Shui. Show all posts

November 13, 2011

Designer Bobigner

In a book review in Fortune Magazine (7 November 2011) of "Steve Jobs: The Biography...His Rivalry With Bill Gates", one of Apple's early employees from the 1980's is quoted as saying "Each one thought he was smarter than the other one, but Steve generally treated Bill as someone who was slightly inferior, especially in matters of taste and style."
While Microsoft seemed to lead for many years especially in terms of "business acumen," in the end, Apple built the "more valuable company"--Jobs was the design extraordinare and his imagination for user-centric product designs like the iPhone, iPad, iMac and more touched people in ways that no "other business leader of our time could possibly match."
I have found that not everyone overtly appreciates the importance of design--and in fact, some people make fun of it, almost like children chanting "designer bobigner"--whether because they value function over design or they simply don't have "taste and style" like Steve Jobs complained about his rival.
In either case, I think people who seem or act oblivious to the importance of design are missing the incredible power of those who can develop products with an eye towards beauty, novelty, and functionality combined. A computer is a magnificent thinking machine, but an Apple is generally a work of art.
Think about how people neurotically cover their Apple devices with all sorts of protective cases as if it were a precious jewel instead of a just a phone or computer.
Art is treated as priceless, but a computer is often just a commodity. However, Steve Jobs knew how to combine the functional power of a computer with the design of a master.
While "Big Box" retailers like Wal-Mart and Costco continue to grow and expand, our world seems smaller because of it--their shelves and aisles are stocked high with rows and rows of commodity, look-a-like goods of toothpaste, sweat pants, and TVs; it is easy to forget that those products that are really valuable to us, usually aren't just good to use, but great to hold, feel, and look at.
In this light, I found two product designs that I thought were pretty cool to share.
The first is the white milk container that says Milk and the other is a box of tea bags, each bag with its own hanger for display and use of the side of a cup. The ideas are so simple, yet somehow so creative and appetizing. Two age-old commodities like milk and tea can be made new and special by how we package and meld with it in our environment.
Like the Chinese concept of feng shui, there are brilliant ways to develop our surroundings that energize and inspire, and great design is a magical element in a commodity world and what was not so long ago dominated by the one color black Ford Model-T.
Thank you Steve Jobs and the many other great design minds out there--keep the special things coming that make us say, "I want one!"
(Source Photos: here)


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October 28, 2007

Feng Shui and Enterprise Architecture

Feng Shui, which literally means earth and water, is typically a way of “arranging living quarters with optimal comfort for mind and body.” It is the adaptation of “homes to harmonize with the currents of ch’i” (life force or energy).

However, feng shui does not only apply to home arrangement. More broadly, “the aim of feng shui is to change and harmonize the environment—cosmic, currents known as ch’i—to improve fortunes.” “The Chinese saw a magical link between man and the landscape: Nature reacts to any change and that reaction rebounds in man. They saw the world and themselves as part of a sacred metabolic system.”

Feng shui has a basis in Taoism. “The Taoists glorified nature. Love of nature permeated their view of life. Things would not be correct until man could mirror within, the harmony of nature without.” “Tao united everything, exemplifying the need of nature and man to bring all opposing forces [yin and yang] into a fluctuating harmony.”

“Ch’i is the most important component of feng shui.” “Ch’i must flow smoothly and near a person to improve his ch’i. It must be balanced. If the current is too strong or too weak, it can have negative effects.” “Feng shui practitioners try to direct a smooth, good current of ch’i to a person and divert of convert harmful ch’i.” (Adapted from Feng Shui by Sarah Rossbach)

In User-centric EA, we seek to create information products that are useful (relevant—current, accurate, and complete) and useable (easy to understand and readily accessible) to the end users to enhance decision-making. One way to make EA products more usable is by applying the teachings of feng shui in terms of harmony, flow, and balance.

User-centric EA seeks to harmonize information products to make them balanced, flowing, and positive or harmonious to a person’s ch’i. In other words, if EA information products focus not only on content, but also on the format, then the information products can be easier to understand, more potent in reaching end users, and more influential to decision-making.

“Feng shui brings good fortune to the home.” I believe it can also bring good fortune to the enterprise that effectively uses it to communicate vital information to end users for business and technology decision-making.


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