Shelley-Ann.com | Living On Creative Juice » innovation

A Design Thinking Mashup

Shelley — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 01:42:02 +0000

Can innovation be reduced to a process? Well that debate has been raging about design thinking for several years. Some think it’s a failure others believe it works. With any process or idea the question ultimately is..does it work? It depends. Not every process works for every situation.

Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop products, services, processes—and even strategy. ~ Tim Brown

Here are several articles, resources and videos about design thinking. Some are for it, others describe its failures and other discuss what it is and how to use it.

Design Thinking video from The Institute of Design at Stanford University.

Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO, author of Change By Design talks about design thinking in this TED presentation.

So what process works best for you or your organization?

How to “Ignore Everybody”

Shelley — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:59:00 +0000

I recently attended a showing of Hugh MacLeod’s work at a bar in New York. I had never heard of Hugh until I started using Twitter six months ago. But every since I have been a big fan of his work. If you’ve visited my site at all you’ve seen that I’ve installed his gapingvoid.com widget.

I finished reading Hugh’s book a few days ago. It’s been in my pile of “to-read” books for awhile now but I got through it in two hours. It was a great read and I highly recommend it to any one with a new idea or a creative person who doubts their abilities.

The following quote is one of many that are interspersed through Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity

Great ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That’s why good ideas are always initially resisted.

According to Hugh the book condenses as follows

Work hard
Keep at it
Live Simply and Quietly
Remain humble
Stay positive
Create your own luck
Be nice
Be polite

His advice as he mentions “isn’t rocket science” so why not give it a whirl. I got a chance to chat briefly with Hugh at the event in New York and he was nice, very gracious and even asked how the widget was working on my site. Fame doesn’t seem to have gotten to his head and over a million downloads of the manifesto that lead to his book deal don’t seem to have made him a prima donna. We should all be so lucky when we achieve success.

Follow him on Twitter @gapingvoid

Fixing your piggy bank

Shelley — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:00:54 +0000

It’s no secret that the financial industry has a serious image problem at the moment. They also don’t have the most user friendly websites either. There are two financial websites that I think are getting it right. They are listening to feedback from their users and making changes that are useful as well. Sometimes those changes meet with resistance but at least they are constantly striving to improve.

The two sites I am talking about are Mint and Smartypig. Mint is a free personal finance, online money management, budgeting, and financial planning software. Smartypig on the other hand helps you save money for specific savings goals, allows friends and family to contribute, gives incentive boosts.

Mint has introduced some really great changes. They have improved the design of the budgeting features within the application. Mint makes financial software easy and fun to use. It can help you focus on your goals and see where your money is going and help you spot trends. I love getting the emails telling me I’ve spent more than I’ve budgeted for coffee. It’s virtual scolding but hey whatever works to get you to manage your money better.

SmartyPig on the other hand is your own virtual piggy bank or as they say “social banking” at it’s best. You can save for a specific goal or have others contribute to your goal as well. Need help saving for baby furniture perhaps? Or your next computer? This is the place to do it.

I used SmartyPig to save for my new sofa. I’ve watched it change since I signed up several months ago. They’ve added a visualizer so you can see how your money grows across your accounts. They are pretty active on Twitter as well. They offer customer service and hold contests. They were on there before it was “hot”. Smartypig also integrates with other financial software sites such as Mint, Geezeo, Wesabe, Rudder, Yodlee and Buxfer.

The bigger corporations should take a cue from these smaller sites. Listen. Innovate. Then innovate some more. It’s not rocket science make a product people like to use and people will use it.

Follow Mint and SmartyPig on Twitter.

Making a splash under 35

Shelley — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:42:45 +0000

Technology Review published by MIT, features in it’s October 2009 issue 35 Innovators under 35 aka TR35.

The categories they recognize that people are making great strides in are

Nanotechnology
Internet
Biotechnology
Energy
Software
Hardware
Telecom

The Innovator of the Year is Kevin Fu, 33 whose work focuses on computer security. He is an assistant professor of computer science and a software engineer. His work is primarily focused on RFID - which is becoming increasing common in everything from credit cards to electronic keys.

A couple of the projects that stood out for me were:

Andrea Thomaz – an assistant professor of interactive computing, 33: She’s working on robots that learn the way people do. Her robot Simon is on the cover of Technology Review. Robots have potential to help in lots of areas like helping people with disabilities, in hospitals and the elderly.

Jeffrey Bigham – assistant professor in computer science, 28: He working on a free service WebAnywhere to help blind people navigate the web.

José Gómez-Márquez, 32 – won the Humanitarian of the Year Award. His work is focused on creating medical devices for poor countries.

This year’s innovators are definitely working on some very fascinating projects. I’m amazed at some of the things people are working on. I can’t wait to hear more about these projects or read next year’s issue of Technology Review.