Programmer Wanted

I thought I would ping the group to see if anyone has any programming skills and is interested in working up a software prototype. I am looking at putting together at least one prototype of one of the ideas I posted earlier to see if it could become a viable service. Any thoughts or suggestions on this would be appreciated.

Our Manifesto & Name

Following the great meeting we had last night (gorgeous bird's eye view of the city, thanks Dave!), I found this design-think company (www.frogdesign.com) on Facebook. They describe their company as a "strategic-creative consultancy," which sounds like what we're going for. Thoughts?

They have a really cool manifesto that I thought I'd share. I propose we write our own manifesto to solidify our group identity and keep our purpose top of mind.Also, since we brainstormed on a group name, a frog blog post that might spark some interest.

WSJ- The Journal Report Product Design

Yesterday's WSJ had a great section on product design and how the products came to be. Really fit in with everything we learned. There are also a few flops that we can learn from including products from Apple and GM.

There's also a great podcast and video as well.

Design Thinking Library

Between this class and an addiction to Amazon I started to feel like I was developing a "DESIGN THINKING LIBRARY" .... and then I thought ... we all probably are. To curb my book spending habit and to help others out along the way, I thought I'd post some of the books I have and offer them up to exchange for other books that you might have.



Managing As Designing
Editors: Richard Bolland and Fred Collopy









The Back of the Napkin
by Dan Roam








The Art of Innovation
by Tom Kelley











ZAG
by Marty Neumeier







Designing Interactions
by Bill Moggridge
(in process of reading this one)







Let me know if you're interested in any of these! Maybe we could exchange at the next meeting of our group!

6-17 Meeting Wrap-up and Next Steps...

Hi guys!

A few of us (Paul, myself, Chris, Maria and Megan) met on Tuesday night at TUCC to kick off our new club. We found ourselves addressing a few key questions, so I thought that might be the most appropriate structure for this posting (as opposed to boring meeting notes).

What's the problem?

• People don't get it. Design isn't seen as an important part of the MBA curriculum or of many professional settings - therefore, we feel like we "get it" and no one else does. How can we change that, and help people understand what we understand?

Why are we forming this group? Why now?

• We want to sustain and nurture the sense of excitement and eagerness to learn that began with Professor Yoo's course.
• We want to introduce new students to design thinking.
• We have an itch (to learn more) and want to scratch it.
  

What kinds of activities define us as a group (e.g. what do we do)?

• Share information and foster discussion about personal and professional dilemmas which might benefit from design thinking.
• Read design- and innovation-centered books, perhaps as part of a monthly book club (or some variation thereupon)
• Visit local companies with a design focus
  
• Brainstorm collectively - ideate to help each other solve problems
• Document our activities - tell our story
• Network with similar groups at other universities and companies
• Provide hybrid consultative advice, incorporating our business-smarts with our design savvy

What do we believe? What is our mission?

• Design should be a part of the MBA toolkit, and is equally important compared to economics, finance, accounting, marketing, etc.
• Design should be a part of every company, and is equally important compared to Human Resources, Information Technology, Facilities Services etc.
  

What's the next step? What can we do now to get started?

Meeting again on Tuesday, 6-24 at 6:30 PM (location to be announced)

• Goals:
  
• Apply design thinking to our club and our main problem
• Brainstorm and ideate around this group, trying to answer all the questions above and determine the best design for this group
• Leave all options open - encourage crazy ideas - fail often to succeed faster!

I hope to see you guys at the meeting! I will let everyone know when the location has been finalized.

-David Sutton
brinserdave@gmail.com

Business ideas

One of the things I was hoping to contemplate on this blog is ideas for new businesses. Two of the areas that I find very interesting are web based business models and mobility oriented services. To explain: we all know what a website is and there is no shortage of web based businesses. My hope is to come up with something better than what is out there. Something that takes an existing an idea like Mass Customization / Personalization or an Auction based web business and does it better.

Here are two ideas I have been kicking around in this area:

Personalized Clothing. Lands End already has this and does a very good job with it. If you want to see what they do visit their site: http://www.landsend.com/. Click on Men’s or Women’s clothing and look for the links that say customize. This is one of the fastest growing areas of their business. It seems to me that there are big opportunities to do more in this area. I’m interested in your thoughts on this.

Auction Site. We all know about eBay and Priceline. The auction based business model is now established as a working solution on the web. My thoughts on eBay are that it addresses too much. It is now full of lots of brick and mortar businesses and individuals selling everything from engagement rings to nuclear subs. I think there are opportunities to specialize auction sites. Bring together one type of buyer such as an art site or estate sales or something else that is specialized and build the site around the needs of that particular group of buyers and sellers. One idea I had was to get small time vendors in places from around the world to put their goods on an auction site. Limit the vendors to art & crafts: hand made jewelry, rugs, pots, carvings etc. Make the site a specialized place and market it to consumers as the place to shop for authentic hand made crafts from around the world. Thoughts?

We all saw on the design tour how mobile services are the next big thing. There are many opportunities here for design applications or services for mobile services. One idea I had in this area is to provide a service oriented around nightlife. With every mobile being a potential live streaming video/ audio/ picture generating sensor out in the world why not build a business around clubbing / nightlife. For 20 and 30 something people in cities all over the world people know most of the bars and clubs available to them but no one every really knows things like how crowded a place is, who’s really there, how long the line is. What if you could jump in a cab, browse a site on you r mobile and get live or recently uploaded pics (say 3-4 mins old) or live video of a bar or club? Maybe you could get other info too? You could make a decision on where to go in real time w/o actually having to go someplace that is dead or too crowded. Just one idea. What do you all think? What kind of info do you want when all you have is your phone? Traffic? Weather? You can get this from the radio. Think of what you really want to know that you can’t really get unless you’re in front of a PC. I am interested in hearing what you think on this as well.

Omnipresent Swoosh

Just some fun food-for-thought. A couple of weeks ago, I read one of Neutron's books, Brand Gap. In it, Marty Neumeier calls attention to the omnipresent "swoosh" as the symbol du jour in today's logos. I laughed at the folly of modern corporate branding teams; how naive of them to believe that adding a swoosh would set their logo apart and make it "fresh."

Today, while I flipped through the PRSA National Conference brochure, I came across just a few examples of the omnipresent swoosh and I laughed again. How trite.I stopped laughing; however, when I realized that the swoosh has become so overused that it's found its way onto Jefferson's new logo :( Side note: PGW is also defenseless against the omnipresent swoosh, see below.

Design Website

Hey everyone,

I guess we're still not sure where this blog is going since nobody posted yet, so I figured I'd try and start things up. I have a unique situation at work that I thought we could discuss. I was recently asked to lead a team in designing our new website. We actually already hired a company called CivicPlus to create the website, they just need us to tell us what we want in it. Although I just got assigned to the project, it has actually been going on for over a year. During this time it looks like they did absolutely nothing, but create a design for the home page, which a lot of people still aren't happy with : ) The first meeting I went to (this was before I was assigned to supposedly "lead" the project) we brought up the proposed home page and started discussing what we liked and disliked. We took an informal and collaborative approach, which was good, but we really didn't accomplish much because although we agreed on a lot of the things that we didn't like with the home page, nobody really had any suggestions on how to make it better. I still haven't decided what my next step is going to be, so if you have any suggestions I would appreciate them, but I think I have a better idea for us, so let me know what use think.

I say we go back to square one and talk about the best approach for creating a new website. You know like what steps we should take (brainstorming, post-its, etc...). We could even go as far as implementing it too, where we would go through a whole design process in order to create our own website for this club. I think it would be pretty fun to do this, but it also may be a little too much too soon, so it's up to you guys.

Another more simpler approach could be to look at our propsed website, which I pasted below and discuss it. You know just say what we like and dislike and why. And see where it goes from there. BTW, nobody should really be seeing this picture outside of the company, so please don't copy and paste it anywhere else. Thanks :)

Welcome Club Blog

Hello everyone. I think the blog will be a good place to share ideas and such. So feel free to post ideas for the club, issues you would like input on regarding design thinking, or anything.