Showing posts with label design thinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design thinking. Show all posts

July 12, 2012

Not A Cloud In The Sky

I thought this picture was sort of humorous. 

This lady is walking down the street with this big green umbrella, but there is NOT a cloud in the sky. 

In fact, you can see in the upper right that it is a beautiful and clear sunny day. 

Also, where she is walking, it is clearly shady and cool--so the umbrella is not needed as a sun screen either. 

From a technology annoyance perspective, it is long past time to invent something more creative than a cheap, crappy umbrella--like from Charlie Chaplin and The Umbrella--to protect us from elements. 

Someone, please come up with a push-button protective bubble that envelops us--clear for visibility, of course--and keeps us dry and temperate. 

A beautiful, futuristic clear dome over the city would be nice too, but probably cost prohibitive and not as adjustable for each indiividual and their respective needs. 

Hopefully, someday soon. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

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June 10, 2012

The H2O Coat


Awesome coat called the Raincatch that catches/stores rainwater and purifies it for drinking.

Designed by students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID). 

The collar of the coat catches the rainwater. 

The water passes through a charcoal and chemical filtration system. 

Purified water is then stored around the hips of the coat where it can be distributed and easily carried. 

A straw is built in and provided for easy drinking. 

I like this for its functionality as survival gear and its practicality as a user-centric product.

One thing I would add is a place to put the Coca-Cola syrup to give it a little extra pick me up. ;-)

Very cool--good job!

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December 29, 2011

Bathroom De/sign Winner

This is a winner to me when it comes to smartest bathroom signage.
From graphic designer, Aliza Dzik.
I like that the signage identifies the wo/men bathrooms very cleverly and simply (and without any obscene graphics).
Intelligence + Simplicity = User-centric
Love it!
(Source Photo: here)

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March 23, 2011

ZyPAD + iPad = Wow!

This is great--the ZyPAD by Eurotech.

A true wrist-mounted computer.

Rugged, wearable, ergonomic, GPS, bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled.

Turns off when arm is down and lights up when arm is up.

According to Trendhunter, sales are initially targeting military, law enforcement, emergency services, and healthcare.

I can see this expanding to sales, delivery, production, warehousing, and loads of service-based jobs--such as in "may I take your order please?" or "how would you like to pay for that?"

Runs on Windows CE--ugh!

I'd like to marry up the function and operating system of an iPad with the fit and form of the ZyPAD and then I think we may just have a real winner!

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January 29, 2011

The iWatch Does It All

Forget James Bond gadgets or Dick Tracy 2-way wrist-watches, the new concept iWatch is the one to drool over.

This is the vision of Italy's ADR Studio, but I believe it is just "around the corner" for all of us.

Fusing the design of an iPod Shuffle/Nano with the functionality of an iTouch/iPhone and voila, the new iWatch.

Clock, calendar, calculator, and weather--that's nice, but frankly it's child's play. Think more in terms of:

- News
- Stock quotes
- Social networking
- Music, videos, and games
- Google
- GPS
- 300,000 App Store downloads (and growing)

Unload some smartphone "baggage" from your belt and bag and integrate on your wrist.

There is a reason this concept keeps coming back in ever cooler ways--it makes sense functionally and feels right ergonomically.
I envision this working one day with virtual display and controls, so that physical "size doesn't matter."

We will walk on the moon again or some other distant planets, but we will always be connected to each other and not just in spirit, but with our iWatches

"Slide to unlock" now, please!

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July 26, 2009

Enterprise Architecture Design

User-centric Enterprise Architecture provides information to decision-makers using design thinking, so as to make the information easy to understand and apply to planning and investment decisions.

Some examples of how we do this:

  1. Simplifying complex information by speaking the language of the business (and not all techie).
  2. Unifying disparate information to give a holistic view that breaks the traditional vertical (or functional) views and instead looks horizontally across the organization to foster enterprise solutions where we build once and reuse multiple times.
  3. Visualizing information to condense lots of information and tell a story—as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
  4. Segmenting end-users and tailoring EA information products to the different user groups which we do with profiles geared to executive decision makers, models for mid-level managers, and inventories for the analysts.

Interestingly enough, in the summer issue of MIT Sloan Management Review, there is an article called “How to Become a Better Manager…By thinking Like a Designer.”

Here are some design pointers from the experts that you can use to aid your enterprise architectures (they are written to parallel the principles from User-centric EA, as I have previously described above):

  1. Embrace simplicity—“people often confuse simplicity…with simplistic….it takes courage to be simple…and the simplest solution is often the best.”
  2. Look for patterns in the data—“good problem solvers become proficient at identifying patterns.” Further, designers seek “harmony to bring together hierarchy, balance, contrast, and clear space in a meaningful way.”
  3. Apply visual thinking—often managers…rely heavily on data and information to tell the story and miss the opportunity to create context and meaning,” instead managers need to “think of themselves as designers, visual thinkers or storytellers.”
  4. Presenting clearly to specific end-users—“good design is about seeing and communicating clearly.” Moreover, it’s about “seeing things from the clients point of view…designers learn pretty quickly that is not about Me, it’s about You.”

MIT Sloan states “we have come to realize over the past few years that design-focused organizations do better financially than their less design-conscious competitors…design is crafting communications to answer audience needs in the most effective way.

This is a fundamental lesson: organizations that apply the User-centric Enterprise Architecture design approach will see superior results than legacy EA development efforts that built “artifacts” made up primarily of esoteric eye charts that users could not readily understand and apply.


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June 12, 2009

Future Police Cruiser Architected for Law Enforcement

Carbon Motors E7 Police Car Photoshoot - Douglas Sonders Photography from Douglas Sonders on Vimeo.

Coming in 2012. This new law enforcement vehicle rocks!! 

The first police vehicle architected for the law enforcement end-user (User-centric EA in action). 

"Carbon Motors is a new Atlanta-based automaker that is developing the Carbon E7, the world's first purpose-built law enforcement vehicle that will provide enhanced performance and improved efficiency compared to the off-the-line cars used by today's officers. Automotive engineers from Carbon Motors are collaborating with law enforcement personnel across the country to design a vehicle that is equipped to meet the unique demands of day-to-day patrol operations." (Homeland Defense Journal)

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August 31, 2008

“Design Thinking” and Enterprise Architecture

Ranked as one of the most innovative companies in the world, IDEO is an innovation and design firm, founded in 1991. Its client list include heavy hitters such as Microsoft, Intel, Nokia, Nestle, and Proctor and Gamble.

According to their website, they specialize in helping organizations to “Visualize new directions for companies and brands and design the offerings - products, services, spaces, media, and software - that bring innovation strategy to life.”

Harvard Business Review, June 2008, has an article by their CEO and President, Tim Brown.

First, how IDEO defines innovation:

“Innovation is powered by a thorough understanding, through direct observation, of what people want and need in their lives and what they like or dislike about the way particular products are made, packaged, marketed, sold, and supported. “

“Leaders now look to innovation as a principle source of differentiation and competitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate design thinking into all phases and processes.”

“Rather than asking designers to make an already developed idea more attractive to consumers, companies are asking them to create ideas that better meet consumers’ needs and desires.”

The three phases of design:

  • Inspiration—the problem or opportunity that is driving the creative design process.
  • Ideation (brainstorming)—“the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas that may lead to solutions.”
  • Implementation—“executing the vision or how we bring the design concept to market.”

How you can be a design thinker?

A people first approach—based on keen observation and noticing things that others do not, you can use insights to inspire innovative ideas that meet explicit and implicit needs. This is similar to a user-centric enterprise architecture approach, where we drive business process improvement and the introduction of new technologies based on genuine user/business requirements and a strategic understanding of the performance, business, information, systems, technologies, security, and human capital aspects of the organization.

Integration—To develop innovative solutions, you need to integrate “sometimes contradictory-aspects of a confounding problem and create novel solutions that go beyond and dramatically improve on existing alternatives.” Integration is an important aspect of EA, not only in terms of enterprise architecture synthesizing business and technology to enable creative architecture plans that drive the organization into the future, but also in terms of breaking down structural and process silos and building a more holistic, synergistic, interoperable, and capable organization.

Experimentation—there are “endless rounds of trial and error—the ‘99% perspiration’ in [Thomas] Edison’s famous definition of genius.” Most great ideas don’t “pop up fully formed out of brilliant minds”—“they are not a sudden breakthrough nor the lightening strike of genius,” but rather, they are “the result of hard work segmented by creative human-centered discovery process and followed by iterative cycles of prototyping, testing, and refinement.” While enterprise architecture is not generally-speaking a disciple based in experimentation, part of the EA planning should focus on market and competitive research, including best practices identification and sponsorship that will be used to drive modernization and transformation of the enterprise. Additionally, the EA should include research and development efforts in the plans to acknowledge the ongoing innovation required for the organization to grow, mature, and compete.

Collaboration—“the increasing complexity of products, services, and experiences has replaced the myth of the lone creative genius with the reality of enthusiastic interdisciplinary collaborator.” As an enterprise architect, I am an ardent proponent of this principle. In the large and complex modern-day organization of the 21st century, we need both breadth and depth of subject matter experts to build the EA, govern it, mange change, and drive modernization in our enterprises. As any half-decent architect knows, ivory tower planning effort are bound for failure. We must work collaboratively with the business and technology experts and give all our stakeholders a voice at the table—this give change and innovation the best chance of real success.

Tim Brown says that “design thinking can lead to innovation that goes beyond aesthetics…time and again we see successful products that were not necessarily the first to market, but were the first to appeal to us emotionally and functionally…as more of our basic needs are met, we increasingly expect sophisticated experiences that are emotionally satisfying and meaningful.”

I believe this is a lesson for EA as well:

For enterprise architecture to be successful, it is not enough to be functional (i.e. to set a good plan), but rather it has to have design thinking and be useful and usable to our end-users (i.e. User-centric). By incorporating innovative thinking into not only the EA plans, but also into how we reach out and collaborate with our stakeholders to build the plans (i.e by sparking the innovative process and creative juices with constructive challenging of the status quo to a broad array of subject matter experts), and the way we employ design to portray and communicate these plans (i.e with profiles, models, and inventories for example), we will have a architecture that truly represents the organization, is understood by it, and serves its needs and aspirations.


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October 3, 2007

Driving Innovation and Enterprise Architecture

The Wall Street Journal, 24 September 2007 reports that “managing innovation is one of the biggest challenges that companies face.” Why? “They not only need to come up with new ideas, but also need to foster a culture that encourages and rewards innovation.”

Douglas Solomon, the Chief Technology Officer of IDEO (an innovation and design consulting firm) provides some insights on how to make a culture more innovative:

In general, “corporations inherently have antibodies that come out and try and kill any innovation.” Small companies don’t have sufficient resources and big companies “don’t always have the thought processes and the skills to really think outside their current business, nor the permission to really do it.”

Here are four things organizations need to be innovative:

  1. Degree of discomfort—“there are still people who say, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And I don’t think these companies are in a really good position to change…you have to have a certain degree of discomfort in your business to be willing to make the changes that are necessary
  2. Design thinking—rather than analytical thinking extrapolating from the past to the future, innovative thinking requires ‘design thinking’, which is rooted in creativity, optimism and is goal-driven, trying to create new possibilities for a new future.
  3. Time to innovate—“you have to actually build processes, you have to support people, you have to give them time…to think on their own…you have to provide a reward system for encouraging innovation.”
  4. Risk tolerance—“you have to tolerate risk, if you’re going to try to be innovative.” Doug Merrill the VP of engineering and CIO of Google adds that “Every company in the world says ‘don’t ask permission, ask forgiveness.’ Every company in the world says ‘It’s OK to fail.” And for 99% of them, it’s probably not true.”

In User-centric EA, developing a target state and transition plan for an organization requires innovation. If there is no innovation in your target architecture and plans, then you’re just regurgitating the same old stuff to the enterprise and it’s probably of very limited, if any, value. EA must step outside its traditional box and come to the table with innovative ideas and new approaches to the business; that is it’s real value add.

As we see above, being innovative is hard: It requires sometimes going against the grain, standing out amidst nay-sayers and the ‘old guard,’ looking outside the enterprise for best practices and marketplace trends, and being optimistic and open-minded to future possibilities that are not eclipsed by ingrained thinking and turf battles. Finally architecting the future state must be grounded in present realities (including constraints such as resources, politics, and other priorities and requirements), but innovate we must if we are to make a better state tomorrow than the one we have today!


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