Think Ink Studios

NY Times Year in Ideas 2008

The NY Times - Year in Ideas 2008 is a digest of ideas such as the BMW concept car below that can change shapes, covered by a flexible new type of fabric; and others, such as gas that is always under $3 a gallon! 

I Love Sketch

I Love Sketch is a new 3D curve sketching program.  

ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

Innovation and Business Models

This is from a post on Communication Nation - Alexander Osterwalder offers some tools on how to innovate your business model and why it matters. It's a good example of a presentation that although is 100+ slides, is easy to flip through, holds your attention and tells a good story. Here is a link to Alex's blog

Business Model Innovation Matters

View SlideShare presentation (tags: osterwalder alex alexander telco)

WalMart's New Milk Jug Design

This is a great post from Sam Ladner's Design Research Blog. Target would have approached it from both a form and function perspective vs. WalMart's dollars and cents utilitarian design.

The New York Times is reporting that WalMart’s new fangled milk jug is getting mixed reviews.
What’s not to like? Plenty, as it turns out.
The jugs have no real spout, and their unorthodox shape makes consumers feel like novices at the simple task of pouring a glass of milk. The design of the milk jug is so bad that WalMart has taken to doing in-store demonstrations of “how to pour” with this new jug.

This jug is a design flop! Right?

Well not so fast. It seems that the designers of the milk jug created it for a specific purpose: to save money. The new jugs are stackable, saving shipping costs and space. The company saves up to 70% of labour costs using these new jugs. The milk arrives at the store fresher, sometimes even the same day. This jug is a great design! Right?

The truth is somewhere in the middle. If business requirements trump user needs, this product is a winner! It saves time, energy, and most of all, money. It’s easier to ship, easier to manage, and much more efficient.

But if user needs trump business requirements, then this jug is a total flop. No one knows how to use it. They spill it. Their children can’t pour it themselves, forcing parents to spend more time to use the jug. They feel stupid when they can’t pour it correctly. Talk about crying over spilled milk! WalMart’s new milk jug off-loads all its design failings onto its users, keeping all the benefits of the new design for itself.

WalMart is famous for putting its business needs ahead of its workers and its communities. Off-loading the negative effects of this milk jug onto its consumers? That’s another in a long line of WalMart putting itself and its shareholders first.

Great design aligns business and user. There are trade-offs in every phase of product design. But not knowing what your users before making a design change makes it impossible to do this. The verdict? Not a total flop, but clearly a business-driven design. Truly great design balances the user’s needs with the business’s needs.

Inc. - Innovation: Making Inspiration Routine

Inc.com Innovation: Making Inspiration Routine has a great article by A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan. It's not about brilliance. Valuable new ideas are the product of hard work and smart, disciplined processes. The article discusses how small businesses can be innovative and compete against the giant corporations like Procter & Gamble.

1. Select the Strategy
Looking for an underserved market

2. Connect to Customers
The social network as idea collector

3. Generate Ideas
Brainstorming done right

4. Select an Idea
Time to separate the good from the great

5. Prototype and Test
Bring on the customers

6. Go to Market
Cookies versus cookie dough

7. Adjust for growth
The process evolves

All pretty straightforward; however, the insights into P&G's innovative process are interesting - see the full article.

BusinessWeek's 2008 Design Idea Awards

BusinessWeek released its 2008 Design Idea Award winners, IDEO, based in Palo Alto, Calif., led the innovation/design consultancies by taking seven awards. Fuseproject came in second, with five; and Ziba and Whipsaw tied for third, with four apiece. France's Decathlon came in first among corporations, with six IDEAs to Apple's four. Denmark's Eva Solo and Motorola (MOT) won four awards each. Sony (SNE) and Samsung earned three.

Below, David Webster of IDEO talks about how the innovation firm used product, retail, and strategy design to help parts supplier Shimano help bike manufacturers attract a new audience of riders once Lance Armstrong retired.

What do you get when you cross a Bic pen, an infrared light and a Wiimote?

This is very ingenious; using infrared (IR) light pens and the Wii Remote, it is possible to create very low-cost multi-point interactive whiteboards on various surfaces and multi-point tablet displays. Johnny Chung Lee is MacGyver with a Bic pen and an infrared light!!

Download the software

A Wise Tree In The Grove

I was intrigued by a posting on David Sibbet's blog of The Grove Consultants. He eloquently recapped a recent Facilitation Mastery session that he led where participants learn the Grove's methodology and the four flows. Having a meditation practice of my own I was drawn to this exercise on working with the flow of attention (see below) and his metaphor that likened personal growth to the growth rings on a tree. I really like that metaphor and believe we are always adding to our edges or rings through our experiences.

From his posting Working the Flow of Attention
Since attention is fundamental, we threaded reflective process throughout. If you think of attention as a flashlight (metaphor again), then it can be broad or narrow beam. It can also be turned inward or outward. A facilitator needs to not only be aware of his or her own awareness but also imagine what people in the group are attending to. So how does a person develop mastery in being aware of attention?

Our big exercise day one was having people create large personal portraits of themselves inside an outline of their bodies drawn by a partner. These portraits were “current state” pictures looking at four aspects of ourselves (these questions were derived from thinking about the four flows). The question we asked of ourselves are the following:

1. What inspires you?
2. What nurtures you?
3. What intrigues you?
4. What are you committed to?
5. What gifts are you bringing to this workshop?

The graphic below was David's answer. Answers to question #1 are along the top. Question #2 answers are along the left side. Question #3 answers are along the bottom. Questions #4 answers are on the rights side. And Question #5 answers are inside his body outline.

Nancy Duarte on Presentations

Nancy Duarte, principal of Duarte Design and one of the guru’s behind Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth presentation, took over 135 people through her advice & thoughts on how to create powerful presentations on Vizthink.

Everyone is tired of the same old lifeless PowerPoint presentations. Nancy focuses on telling the story, some tips and tricks, and then there is a Q&A period. I love one of her tips - leave you bullets in your gun!

Click here to see the webinar.

She also has a new book, Slide:ology, that will be available on Amazon soon.

Dan Roam on AtGoogleTalks

This is Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin, on AtGoogleTalks.
See previous posts for more info on Dan's book and approach to visual thinking.