All posts from
August 2009

Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product

Added on 31 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“A product is actually a service. (…) In reality a product is all about the experience. It is about discovery, purchase, anticipation, opening the package, the very first usage. It is also about continued usage, learning, the need for assistance, updating, maintenance, supplies, and eventual renewal in the form of disposal or exchange.” (Donald A. Norman – Interaction Magazine XVI.5 Sep/Oct 2009)

Personas: How does the internet see you

Added on 31 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.” (Aaron Zinman – MIT Media Lab)

Smart talk about content strategy

Added on 27 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the lovely city of Atlanta to moderate a panel discussion on content strategy. Panel participants were selected from a variety of disciplines in order to facilitate discussion about how content strategy has impact on (and benefits for) a number of roles and functions across an organization. (OK, we were also hoping for a little fighting.) Participants were: Karen McGrane, Bond Art + Science (User Experience), John Muehlbauer, InterContinental Hotels Group (Marketing), Brian Ikeda, Philips Design (Visual Design), and Ryan Esparza, Content Management Consultant (CMS/IT).” (Kristina Halvorson – Brain Traffic)

Preso: Design and Emotion

Added on 27 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Presentation that I gave at the Design and Emotion 2008 conference in Hong Kong. May be hard to understand from the slides alone… I’ll try to add speech when I can. Content was from my thesis paper that I wrote for my Master of Interaction Design degree at Carnegie Mellon University.” (Carrie Chan)

Jeff Veen on Great Designers

Added on 26 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Good designers copy. Great designers steal. – In this week’s Ignite Show Jeff Veen, well-known for his design work on Google Analytics, Wikirank and Typekit, lays out a strong argument for why iPhone imitators are the cargo cults of the digital era. The people building touchscreen knock-offs don’t understand what makes the iPhone great. So instead of creating an end-to-end service they attempt to imitate it’s flashiest features – kind of like Pacific Islanders who built ‘planes’ out of bamboo.” (O’Reilly Radar)

Design Thinking: Hard skills from a soft science

Added on 25 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Design thinking — distinct from analytical thinking — has emerged as the premier organizational path not only to breakthrough innovation but, surprisingly, to high-performance collaboration, as well. “It’s not about the pretty,” says one design-thinking practitioner, “it’s about the productive.” In this special section of articles, interviews, illustrated cases and research findings, the Review explores how to put design thinking to work.” (MIT Sloan Management Review) – courtesy of elearningpost

Why can’t we integrate sustainable design with mobile phones?

Added on 21 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Mobile phones have become an integral part of our daily life. Retrieving information has never been easier with current phones offering an array of features such as GPS and Internet access. However, a new mobile phone is released almost every week, and it has become common practice to get a new mobile phone at the end of every year’s contract since they are often offered as free with the new contract. But what then happens to the mobile phone you are upgrading from? Many are forgotten, most are thrown away, very few are recycled. Discarding such a high-tech piece of equipment as though it were as easy as balling up a piece of paper and throwing it in the bin surely cannot be sensible. Why do mobile phones only last for just over a year, and what are the effects of all of this high-tech electronic waste that we are generating?” (Peter van Lanschot)