Just What You’ve Always Wanted in Online DVD Rentals

Netflix is the king of online DVD rentals. But me, I rent with Greencine. And in the last couple of months, Greencine has announced two developments that makes it as good as, if not a better, service than Netflix. First, they lowered their monthly rate to $19.95. So it now identically matches Netflix. Second, they’ve [...]

About With and For Part 4: Ethnography Roolz!

Caroline Barry from Portico Research loves loves loves doing ethnographic research. A vivacious woman, she shared her passion for talking to and observing people, and how such work has helped her help companies better understand their customers and their desires. Her company is quite impressive. It’s chock full of social scientists (ethnographers, social psychologists) and [...]

About With and For Part 3: Students Say The Darnedest Things!

Being a student-run conference, it makes sense there would be student presentations. The first student presentation I heard was Michael Winnick’s “Crossing the Other Chasm: The perils of getting concepts into development”. He opened with Geoffrey Moore’s take on the technology adoption life cycle, where a chasm exists between early adopters and getting the product [...]

About With and For Part 2: Vijay’s Talk

The meat of the conference were eight presentations given by various design professionals. Unfortunately, there were only two time slots, which means four talks took place concurrently. Choosing was not easy. The first session I went to was lead by Vijay Kumar, a professor at ID. I went because all of the ID students I [...]

(Side thought on AIGA’s Power of Design)

So, I’m reading these notes from various illustrious speakers, and all I can think is, “I’m sorry… Isn’t this the same circle jerk the “design profession” has been engaged in for the past… 5, 10, 20 years?” “The Power of Design.” “Design is All Around Us.” “Design as Social Responsibility.” etc. etc. Okay. So I [...]

About With and For Part 1: A Great Conference

The IIT ID’s About, With, and For conference was my second favorite conference experience this year, after the IA Summit. The success of the conference was largely due to the focus of the topic — methods for synthesizing user research to provide insights and concepts that lead to better product design. The specificity meant a [...]

Urban Bookstore Pligrimages

I realized, on this last trip, that when I travel, I inevitably end up at the certain favorite bookstores. In Cambridge, I make a point of visiting the MIT Press Book Store, and Wordsworth. In Chicago, I’ve got to go to Quimby’s. And the Seminary Co-op might prove necessary on future itineraries. (Thanks, Betsy!) New [...]

HITS Parting Thought: Innovation Fetishization

The HITS 2003 conference was very focused on the idea of innovation. Whenever designers talk about business, they can’t get away from the need to “innovate.” It seems to be what designers think they can best offer business. Such an obsession with “innovation” worries me. It worries me because I live in a world where [...]

Highlights from HITS Part 3: Summary Thoughts

The prior two posts weren’t the only things that happened at HITS. Don Norman exhibited remarkable contradiction by railing against BusinessWeek’s annual design awards for focusing on the external aesthetics and not about deep use, only to then talk about how an object’s beauty can create an emotional resonance that makes the fact that people [...]

Highlights from HITS Part 2: Experience Economics

IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown spoke a bit about experience economics. He showed a lot of shiny pictures from their work on the Prada store, but I was more interested in two frameworks he discussed. The first is a pyramid that comes from the book “The Experience Economy” (I don’t know if the ‘birthday party’ example [...]

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