Fresh Perspectives
Leah Hunter — 30 June 2009
I've been thinking alot about the idea of progress, change. I've always been a fan of the stretch goal, for myself and my clients. BIG ideas. Overhauls. Starting revolutions and burning things.
I'm in a different place today. Change doesn't have to happen in leaps. It's the movement that's important. The fact that you're taking a step. Tiny movements or slow ones, like in tai chi, are still movements. Imprecise or clumsy ones count too, maybe even more. When you're feeling awkward and still take a step, that's brave. Progress is really...
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Posted in Meaningful Experience
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Dave Decelle — 24 June 2009
I can’t believe how easy it is to compost, and how much it reduces the volume of garbage we put out each week. It’s really very simple. We have 2 plastic bins hidden away in a discreet place in our back yard that is full of red worms who love to eat vegetable matter. Under the sink in our kitchen we have a small plastic container that we put all our food scraps into after each meal. Every 2 or 3 days we simply dump the kitchen container into the large bins in the back yard and let the worms do the rest of the work. They produce an incredibly nutrient-rich compost that we then add to our garden, lawn and houseplants twice a year. And other than dumping more food scraps on them, the worms are zero maintenance.
We have grown fond of our worms and the important work they do for us. I wouldn’t quite call them pets, but we do have a phrase in our family: “It’s time to feed the worms.” This is one of my two year old son’s favorite things to do.
This is one of the simplest, hassle free sustainability tasks you can do. How much vegetable matter do you waste by throwing it in the garbage?
Posted in Etcetera
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Leah Hunter — 18 June 2009
I was in Houston a few months ago doing a brand experience workshop with Added Value. I always get into great conversations at these things, and this one was no exception. One of the participants told me a lesson her grandfather taught her when she was 10. He said, “No matter how high you rise in this world, you’re never too high to go back and clean a toilet.”
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Posted in Meaningful Experience
LiAnne Yu — 16 June 2009
What makes Disneyland the happiest place on earth? Those of us love Disneyland understand that there’s pure magic in the park, our sense of reality is suspended and, long lines and overpriced food aside, we step into a sense of wonder. But how is this achieved? I recently read Designing Disney: The Art of the Show, and was captivated by Walt’s vision and leadership of his design team, called the Imagineers, and how they developed principles for what we at Cheskin Added Value call Experience Design. As unique as the Disney experience is, I believe a lot of those principles can also be thought of as universal guidelines for truly remarkable experience design. Here are some of the principles:
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Posted in Innovation & Design
LiAnne Yu — 15 June 2009
I’ve recently entered parenthood by becoming a stepmom to my partner’s 14 year old son, and even though I like to think of myself as both young at heart and technologically savvy, I’ve come to realize that when it comes to tech and entertainment, I’m an old fogie. Here are some areas where I’ve experienced myself on the wrong side of the generational gap:
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Posted in Etcetera
Darrel Rhea — 31 May 2009
The business world has woken up to the need to manage their relationships with customers with a more holistic framework than “products services and brands.” And many of us in Design have long been asserting that “experience” is the way to think about and guide the organization on their value-creation journey. But many of my peers in Design and Innovation claim that design managers should be accountable for the customer experience, and I disagree.
While designers have unique skills and processes for creating and managing experience, I believe there needs to be experience principals and a defined strategy at the corporate executive level. Designers usually contribute to only a few of the touch points of experience and have limited exposure to many critical areas of influence. The Experience Component dips into too many of the operational crannies, the technology aspects, engineering, marketing, customer service, finance, etc.
So who determines what the experience is?...
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Posted in Innovation & Design | Meaningful Experience
Tommy Stinson — 27 May 2009
In a recent briefing for BNET, Katherine Glover noted a growing trend in the "local food" movement: false "local" claims and measures to qualify "local" when resources like fertilizer, pesticides, etc. are flown in to support local foods. Clearly, "local" isn't as simple as we'd hope.
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Posted in Consumer Goods Trends | Meaningful Experience
Tommy Stinson — 22 May 2009
FrontlineSMS is a free mobile phone software solution that allows mobile phone users to send text messages to large groups of people. It's specifically geared towards non-profit organizations and NGOs. The initiative is sponsored by Kiwanja.net and nGOmobile and is achieving some pretty exciting and impressive things on the ground in emerging markets.
Kiwanja.net's blog has had a recent series of guest blogs sponsored by other innovative leaders; most recently by Anthony Papillion, founder of OpenEMR HQ.
Anthony's entry features a really innovative - and important - potential use of the FrontlineSMS software: allowing women in abusive relationships to make safe calls to authorities that can't be traced but can be used in future court action - or to summon help immediately.
This is a great example of innovative extensions of innovative solutions. Read more here.
Posted in Innovation & Design | Meaningful Experience
Lee Shupp — 11 May 2009
Can a company blunt its innovation edge if it listens to its customers too closely? This is the question that Miguel Helft posed in this Sunday's New York Times. The article describes the departure of Douglas Bowman, a senior designer, from Google, who said on his blog that Google was unfriendly to designers, instead relying on customer data to make even the most minute design decisions. This raises an important issue in the age of real time web metrics and intensifying competition: what is the right balance between data and design?
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Posted in Consumer Technology Trends | Meaningful Experience
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