Weekly inspirations: March 3, 2014

Here are the things that I think are worth reading and checking out this week:   The Secret Phrase Top Innovators Use How do Google, Facebook and IDEO jumpstart the process that leads to innovation? Often by using the same three words: How Might We. Some of the most successful companies in business today are known for tackling difficult creative challenges by first asking, How might we improve X … or completely re-imagine Y… or find a new way to accomplish Z? This article is a great look at this process and how to make it work for you. Read the article here. Here’s How To Prototype Facebook’s Paper iPhone App in 15 Minutes Using Apple Keynote Facebook recently released their Paper iPhone app, along with Origami: a prototyping toolkit for Quartz Composer that they used to prototype that app. Origami and Quartz are great, but they can be too technical and complex for the average...

Social Media gets some culture with MILQ

  Don MacKinnon has been a busy man as I recently wrote about his work with Ken Burns and Big Spaceship to launch very cool Ken’s new iPad app. It seems he is at it again with the launch of  new social media network that became available to the public earlier this week called MILQ. I know  most people think the last thing the world needs is another social network but after using it for a few months I think it that solves the two most common problems people they have with social media networks – curation and collaboration. Once you set-up your MILQ account you need to learn a few things to understand how the site works. The site resolves around ‘beads’ which are made up of a question and then content from YouTube, Vimeo and SoundCloud that try to answer or illustrate the question. Beads can be public or private so you can just post the content you like and...

How To Design Like Google

I spent some time last night with the team from Google Glass doing a design hackathon at their NYC Basecamp in Chelsea Markets. The most interesting part of the event was hearing the Google design team talk about their approach agile design. The process originally came out of Google ventures team which would use it to does it as a 5 day process but it can be shortened to as little as 2 hours. It is based on the design thinking model from IDEO and Stanford’s d.school but the Google Design team has tweaked it over the past few years. The process has 5 steps which are defined below with links to in-depth articles from Google on how to run each step of the process. 1: Understand Dig into the design problem through research, competitive review, and strategy exercises. Read about this phase in-depth here. 2: Diverge Rapidly develop as many solutions as possible. Read about this phase...

Weekly inspirations: February 17, 2014

Here are the things that I think are worth reading and checking out this week:   A New Car UI: How touch screen controls in cars should work I love cars and so I am always fascinated with why in-car technology displays are so badly done. Even when I recently drove a Tesla I was shocked at how the dual screens down the center of the car are nice but the complete lack of haptic feedback and the way the interactions were designed didn’t seem to take real driving use cases in to their design work. For instance opening the sunroof requires you to locate  the button visually and then do a sliding motion to open the roof instead of it being a button which means the chance of error in using the interface when you aren’t looking is huge. This is also why I found this video so fascinating since it is the first UI design that I have seen that is really designed from a drivers...

My upcoming 2014 keynotes and talks

I wanted to give a quick update on three new speaking engagements I will be doing through the upcoming year including two keynotes that will be within two days on each other in April in Miami. CUSTOMER CONTACT EAST April 8, 2014, Marco Island, Florida - Opening Keynote Social media is real, but is it it’s own channel? My first speech will be the opening keynote be at the Customer Contact East conference in Marco Island Florida in April 8th. This keynote will cover my thoughts on the state of social media, its strengths, its weaknesses and how to utilize it to build a strong brand. TOTAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE LEADERS April 10, 2014, Miami, Florida - Creativity and Innovation Keynote The Crazy Ones: How to be a leader that inspires creative and innovative customer solutions I am asked all the time about what makes my team successful and how are we able to produce that work that we do...

Weekly inspirations: February 10, 2014

Here are the things that I think are worth reading and checking out this week:   Steve Jobs’ lost time capsule found after 30 years The time capsule was put in the ground at the Aspen International Design Conference in 1983, and contained dozens of other items from the era. It became known as Steve Jobs Time Capsule after he gave a speech foreshadowing the development of wireless technology, the iPad and the App Store at the conference and put his own mouse in the historic pod. The historic vessel was meant to have been dug up in 2000, but a major landscaping project in the Aspen area caused the organizers to lose the position of the time capsule until last year. A National Geographic television programme called Diggers was able to locate the capsule last September, only now releasing a video of the discovery and what was inside ahead of the show’s debut on 25 February. Read the...

Ken Burns’ iPad app turns U.S. History into a Mixtape

  A few months ago I got a sneak preview of a new iPad app that was being created for filmmaker Ken Burns by producer Don MacKinnon and Big Spaceship.  When I saw it I thought the concept and user interface design were brilliant but this new app went back to an old theme in Don’s work – mix tapes. The world first got to know Don’s work when he was the head of Hear Music which was the brand name for Starbucks’ wildly successful retail music concept. What made that brand work so well was that it let Don and the rest of us revisit that time in our youth when we would sit with our record player or tape deck to make your own custom mix tapes. With Hear Music, Don just got to make mix tapes again but he got to do it with some of the world’s best artists. So when it came time to concept a new app for Ken Burns whose movies run a total of 136 hours, Don knew...

Weekly inspirations: February 3, 2014

Here are the things that I think are worth reading and checking out this week:   THE GAP by Ira Glass In 2012 David Shiyang Lius did a great video piece on Ira Glass about the gap between ones taste and ones skills.  The audio from that was then taken and made into this really well done video that is meant to be a mantra and a reminder about the fact that creativity is hard work but you have to stick with it. Watch the video here. Brand Development: Process vs. Framework No matter what you’ve been told, what you’ve read or even what you’ve seen, there is no magic methodology, no silver-bullet or thaumaturgic process that will produce your brand. A brand is an imperfect, living, breathing organism, and each one takes a commensurate imperfect living, breathing, approach to it’s development. This is why whenever I develop a brand I don’t use a set process as every brand has...

Facebook Creates the Photoshop of App Design

  I wrote last week about my thoughts on Facebook’s new app Paper but I later found out that the Facebook Design team created a really cool new rapid prototyping tool called Origami that they used to design all the interactions for the app.  Origami is a free toolkit for Apple’s free Quartz Composer application that has traditionally been used as a motion graphics tool. Origami makes some key additions with effects like scrolling, animations, remembered states, transitions, layers, buttons and iPhone, Android or Windows Phones to test your work on. I am genuinely excited about Origami because there has been a desperate need for a design tool like this for at least the past three years. Adobe has been completely asleep at the wheel on how digital and app designers workflows have changed and that we can’t create great experience through static Photoshop comps any...

My 2014 Super Bowl commercials report card

I know that the last thing the world needs is another Super Bowl commercials top 5 list but since my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers weren’t playing in the big game again this year I had nothing better to do. TOP 5 I struggled to find even 5 ads that I thought stood out since I was really disappointed once again by this years crop of Superbowl ads.  The first place finisher on my list was the only ad I truly liked but found four others I thought had some merit since I wanted to do a top 5. 1 – Audi “Doberhuahua” I thought that over the past few years Audi had come close to creating a great Super Bowl commercial but never was able to get everything right but this year I thought all that changed. A couple at a pet store want to get a Doberman or a Chihuahua and the clerk suggests that they compromise and breed them together. They then imagine the possibilities of this union...