Some people ask me why I call my blog yakshaving. Well, I fell in love with the word since I learned about it in 2005. Often times, I blame myself to the point of melancholy that I am unable to focus on something for any period of time without being distracted by something else. [...]
Archive for the 'Innovation' Category
Obama, speaking at Georgetown:
One of the changes that I would like to see — and I’m going to be talking about in this in weeks to come — is seeing our best and our brightest commit themselves to making things — engineers, scientists, innovators. For so long, we have placed at the top of our [...]
I was just revving a diagram of bettr@ today and looking for an icon for the Amazon kindle. Search for one on Google. You won’t find one. Okay, then search for “ipod icon” in images.
Now, there are already problems with the naming of the Amazon Kindle (yes, it reminds me of Fahrenheit [...]
Last week, we sat down with senior professors at the Institute of Design the other day, we got some great feedback about Bettr@ and its current business model and interface.
In particular, Tom MacTavish (adjunct Professor and former Motorola executive) had some good ideas about goal setting and referred me to Csikszentmihalyi’s flow model. [...]
Tomorrow (or I guess today, at this late hour) starts the first day of Design Analysis at the Institute of Design, taught for the first time by Pip (of Doblin fame).
For this class, I’m a teaching assistant, which is great for multiple reasons. The first of which, I think that design analysis and synthesis [...]
Much has been written about the freemium business model since Fred Wilson wrote about it over a few years ago and Chris Anderson wrote his book about Free!
Free for the bulk of your users is all fine and dandy when advertising is a legitimate business model; What happens when advertising revenue on the web [...]
This summer, I was at bar called Weeds here in Chicago with some friends when a guy came up to us with a styrofoam container that had a handle on it like a cooler and said “Tamales?”
No, he didn’t work at the bar, and no he didn’t speak the greatest English so I wasn’t sure [...]
Lately, I’ve been reflecting about the meaning of being in “beta”. Web startups are interesting because they can always be in motion, adding new features and functions on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis (though that’s a little overboard).
The iPhone is kind of like being in beta. You can add bells [...]
The NYTimes ran an article very relevant to design.
According to the article, The Macklin Intergenerational Institute developed a program called Xtreme Aging as a sensitivity training program for schools, churches, workplaces and other groups that have contact with the elderly.
Increasingly, these types of simulation programs are going to be important for designers [...]
Hi there, after another long hiatus due to the crazy schedule I’ve had the last few months. My summer semester just finished up at the business school, and now I really get to sink my teeth into the Electronic Learning Record again. It’s getting exciting– we just found a guy to join [...]
I’ve learned from working with the experts in human inquiry methods at the Institute of Design a lot about learning about patterns of daily human life. As we know, there’s very little asking of questions necessary in most interviews on the researcher’s part.
Lately I’ve been looking into more participatory approaches into design, which somehow [...]
When I was wee little lad, I loved this book so much. It’s a book in the time machine series (of which I’ve read quite a bit), it’s from the makers of choose your own adventure. Back before the interactive days of the internet, Choose Your Own Adventure books were the best way [...]
I didn’t fully appreciate the lessons that I received from Larry Keeley’s Innovation Frontiers class last semester until I started to explore the X-prize model in depth.
Listen to their elevator statement:
“The mission of the X PRIZE Foundation is to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. The Foundation fosters innovative, high-profile competitions that [...]
On May 22-23 (Thursday and Friday), the Institute of Design is hosting a Strategy Conference at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
As usual, I’m pretty excited about the speakers: notably, Bill Buxton, AG Lafley, Roger Martin, John Seely Brown, and Paul Polak! How amazing is it that we get so many great minds in [...]
Hi everyone, I am working on creating a prototype of something called the New Options Initiative at school, in concert with the Kellogg Foundation. I’d love to get your thoughts on a video mockup that we plan to show business leaders.
If you have just a few minutes, I’d love to get your thoughts on [...]
