Adaptive Path Update – Workshops in Minneapolis and D.C

Time for some company plugging. And stuff I’m really excited about. We’ve recently announced two workshops. July 19-20, Minneapolis – Beyond Usability: Designing the Complete User Experience http://www.adaptivepath.com/events/2005/july/ This is our classic two-day workshop, in which we’ll walk you through a complete design process, from business requirements gathering through user research, information architecture, and prototyping. [...]

The Dark Side of Design Thinking

While there is much good in design thinking, I think we have to not get carried away about designers’ power. In my experience, I’ve seen many negative qualities of design thinking, qualities that have proven a detriment on projects and to the profession as a whole. Overbearing control Dirk Knemeyer exposes the dark essence of [...]

Go Spurs Go!

(Though I tend to agree with my dad on his assessment of team fans. But, then, I don’t root for the Spurs year in and year out. I root for teams whose play I like to watch. This year, that’s been the Spurs and the Pistons. The Suns, and Mavs might be flashy, the Heat [...]

Death Throes of a Business Model

If the announcement today that Snapfish will be dramatically lowering prices on prints isn’t a harbinger of a business model’s doom, I don’t know what is. Snapfish, Ofoto, and Shutterfly have been playing a sucker’s game, trying to generate revenue from prints of digital images. The not-so-secret secret — most people don’t want prints of [...]

IDSC Followup Thought – Bringing the Disciplines Together

One topic among the many discussions going on at IDSC was the degree to which business types should know design. Do we want the business types to be designing? If not, just how far along that path should they go? The flip side came up, too — just how much “business” stuff should designers be [...]

Enforced Contraception is Not a Good Thing

Yesterday, I found myself in attendance at the tail end of a workshop on scenario planning. And a gentleman was presenting a two-by-two, with the x-axis being about degrees of community, and the y access about degrees of innovation. And the upper right quadrant, with high innovation and deep community, was labelled “Brave New World.” [...]

Go Spurs!

Or, as Sir Charles might say, “GI-NO-BILI!”

Thoughts on the Institute of Design Strategy Conference

In the past, I’ve written up my thoughts on the Institute of Design events: About, With, and For 2003: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 HITS 2003: Parts 1, 2, 3, Parting Thought Last week I attended their Strategy Conference, which is the successor to HITS. My notes aren’t as extensive as in conferences past — [...]

Poontangologists rejoice!

The song that inspired my page, “Everything I Know About Poontang,” has been made available for download, thanks to copyright infringement by my dad. Download “Oh! Mr. Mitchell”. (MP3)

One Way To Enjoy The Da Vinci Code

Stacy and I decided to no longer be the two remaining people in America who hadn’t read The Da Vinci Code. For our midwest road trip, we loaded up the iPod mini with the audiobook version, our companion between cities. The book, to put it simply, is a hoot. And I don’t mean that in [...]

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