via Putting People First

A special programme for so-called user driven innovation is to be launched with funds of EUR 50 million for projects in Denmark.

The Danish government has set off EUR 50 million over the next four years to strengthen innovation in Danish companies and public institutions. This will take place through a special programme for user driven innovation – for which support can only be applied four times annually.

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via Core77

When you start with the idea of making a thing, you’re artificially limiting what you can deliver. The reason that many of these exemplar’s forward-thinking product design succeed is explicitly because they don’t design products. Products are realized only as necessary artifacts to address customer needs. What Flickr, Kodak, Apple, and Target all realize is that the experience is the product we deliver, and the only thing that our customers care about.

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I’ve been contemplating simplicity a lot after my hard drive failed last week and I began the arduous task of restoring data from backups. Why should such a vital process be so difficult to manage? I did end up switching to a new programme and system that we are adopting throughout the office.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.

Charles MingusDr Detlef Reis, university lecturer for Business Creativity and Innovation Leadership at the College of Management, Mahidol University authored this article on “less is more.” If anything, it is a great repository of quotes about simplicity. Practically, he suggests a few questions we can all ask ourselves to simplify our products, services and experiences.

If you liked that, here are some other articles he’s written.

My favorite definition of “play” came from my days at Crayola, where after exhaustive research and expert opinion, we landed on: “It’s what kids do.” That’s how kids learn about the world around them.

Play provides a safe environment for experimentation and (*gasp*) failure. Games offer the ability to role-play or introduce healthy competition.

Jess McMullin and others (Luke Hohmann, Serious Games, LEGO, Pat Kane) are using games and play within product, software, service and even policy development. This article via boxesandarrows describes why we use games, core game principles, how to apply games, and how to sell design games to your organization or client. There’s also some good links and great commentary.

Go play.

One of my favorite Guy Kawasaki-isms was “Let a thousand flowers bloom” from his talk/book, Rules for Revolutionaries. The simple idea was that you can’t think of every use of your technology/product, so let it go and see what users with do with it.

End users are a dispersed R&D department, you just need some tools to observe them and potentially integrate some of their iterations back into your development process.

I was reminded of all this while reading this article about user uses of free Internet-based talk technology.

Though Kevin McCullough’s article on Core77 is pitched to designers, there are several lessons to be learned by anyone looking to create design innovation. Globalisation has all but ended competition on price, and commoditised design services require designers to add more value to their own portfolio of skills.

Not only does he illustrate hidden assets beyond traditional design skills, he suggests four game changing habits than anyone can use: Adopt an agile perspective; spot gaps; make new connections; and teach yourself. Design thinking anyone?

via Metropolis

Peter Hall argues in this article that design schools need to shift focus from the form of objects to understanding the systems that produce them.

Jitterbug, a newcomer to the mobile phone industry realised that their products, handsets, were only one part of the overall mobile phone experience. They applied liberal doses of design thinking, coming up with usable features and simplicity to suit extreme users, like technophobes and aging consumers.

Providing familiar touchstones to ease the mobile-phone experience became a major part of Jitterbug’s design after early research showed that older users found conventions like signal strength meters unfamiliar and confusing. Instead, when you open a Jitterbug phone it emits—get this—a dial tone. “If there’s no dial tone, you can’t make a call,” Harris says. To reach a Jitterbug operator, who can place calls or answer questions for you, dial 0.

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Imagine the scene. You are a young designer, perhaps just finishing your degree and you already have 3 job offers from exciting companies in your own country.

Where is this nirvana? India, where companies are falling over themselves to employ designers as a means of generating competitive advantage.
Does this sound like Ireland? Well, no. Not yet anyway. Most of the brightest and best still find the only way to work is overseas. The future of a successful design industry in Ireland is demand-led; and it can’t come too soon.

Though written primarily from the perspective of designer to designer, Jennie Winhall wrote this fascinating essay on the politics of design. Not only do designers need to take responsibility for the consequences of design, whether they be unintended like the “butterfly ballot” which may have turned a US election, but also the conscious choices designers make around creating sustainable products and services, and even the clients they choose to work with. The very process of design is becoming more “democratic” as users become a focal point and in some cases are co-creating solutions.

I recall seeing Bruce Mau speak in the States and he began and ended his presentation with a challenge to all the designers sitting in the room, “Now that we can do anything, what are YOU going to do?”

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Jennie is setting up Participle, a social enterprise focused on designing a new generation of public services along with the former UK Design Council RED team members: Hilary Cottam, Colin Burns and Charles Leadbeater.