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Continuous improvement and the negative effects on innovation

November 9, 2012 in Business, Change, Design, Quote | Leave a comment

The natural tendency of most organizations is to restrict choices in favor of the obvious and the incremental. Although this tendency may be more efficient in the short run, it tends to make an organization conservative and inflexible in the long run. Divergent thinking is the route, not the obstacle, to innovation. – from “Deign Thinking for Social Innovation” by T.Brown, J.Wyatt

Amen!

PierG

Needs are verbs and not nouns

November 8, 2012 in Design, Innovation | 2 comments

This week I had the chance to listen to Prof.Vignoli of “Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia” talking about Design Thinking – Stanford d.school (+ something more 🙂 ).

One thing that I took with me from the speech is that:

“user’s need are verbs and not nouns”

Let me explain that: when you have to understand people’s needs, because you have to design something to service them, ask them to describe the need as a verb.

So I don’t need a STAIR (noun), a stair is a already a solution, “I need to go up (verb) to …” .
Got it?

I give you an extra tip for free 🙂 : the most the description of the need is ‘open’ (= less constraints, more general), the highes is the number of innovative options you can get back.

PierG

p.s. Thank you Matteo for teaching me that 🙂

The future of user manuals

November 6, 2012 in Design, IT, software development | Leave a comment

The future of users manuals is … no user manuals.

And what is the future for most companies is present for companies like Google.

Here is what happened to me with the new version of GMail:

A single page, the first time I use it, manual ‘in place’: easy, clean … a great pattern to me.

PierG

Service Model Generation

November 2, 2012 in Blogroll, Blogs, books, Design | Leave a comment

my goal is to share and describe a service model generation canvas that intentionally parallels the visual layout of the BMGEN canvas, but that presents ideas I wrote about in my book, Service Innovation (McGraw-Hill 2010), along with other more recent thinking I have concerning service excellence.

Briefly, I believe that a canvas specific to service models is important because most services have unique elements that deserve special attention, including the important role of frontline service providers, direct interactions between customers and the company, the inseparability of service production and consumption, and the more direct effect of corporate systems and capabilities on the customer experience.

via Service Model Generation | Service 360 Partners.

PierG

(Yet) another (good) example of (bad) UX design

September 11, 2012 in Design, Usability, UX | 2 comments

Here is another real life example after my Another (good) example of (bad) UX design.

Do you want some water? Put the glass in the proper place and push one of the two buttons over the glass: one is supposed to give you cold water, the other water at room temperature.

Now the question: which is the button that gives you cold water? The white one or the blue one? Pick your choice 🙂

PierG

p.s. And don’t ask me about the small round red button next to the glass: I’m too scared to push it!

“UX and friends” – week 23

June 7, 2012 in Blogs, Design, Innovation, Usability, UX, Visualization | Leave a comment

I’ve collected some resources about “UX and friends” and I want to share them with you. I hope they can inspire or be helpful!

SEO & UX – Working together to make your site better
http://www.portent.com/blog/seo/seo-ux-working-together.htm

5 Reasons Why Metaphors Can Improve the User Experience
http://sixrevisions.com/user-interface/5-reasons-why-metaphors-can-improve-the-user-experience/

“4 UI Lessons For Instagram, From Facebook’s New Instagram Clone prsm.tc/QnviC5 via @prismatic”
– Piergiorgio Grossi

“Eyes On Pinterest: How People Look at Your Boards prsm.tc/13xqVh via @prismatic”
– Piergiorgio Grossi

PierG

“UX and friends” – week 21

May 25, 2012 in Blogroll, Blogs, Design, Experience, Usability, UX, Visualization | Leave a comment

I’ve collected some resources about “UX and friends” and I want to share them with you. I hope they can inspire or be helpful!

Super useful online tools to work with images
http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/super-useful-online-tools-to-work-with-images

New Design Practices for Touch-free Interactions
http://uxmag.com/articles/new-design-practices-for-touch-free-interactions

7 Basic Best Practices for Buttons
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/05/7-basic-best-practices-for-buttons.php

Building a modern grid system
http://www.netmagazine.com/tutorials/building-modern-grid-system

PierG

BAU – what happens to projects when they finish

May 16, 2012 in Business, Change, Collaboration, Complexity, Contracts, Customer Service, Design, Innovation, IT, Lean, software development | Leave a comment

When a SW project finish, a Project Manager is a happy, a company can send the bill and … the team moves to another project leaving the code to the lucky maintenance team.

Is the project team deeply motivated to build a product who can last for long? Is the maintenance team skilled (and willing and has the right incentive) to make the system working better and better?

Mmmm….

Here is a possible recipe:

Form long-lived teams around applications/products, or sets of features. A team works from a prioritised backlog of work that contains a mix of larger initiatives, minor enhancements, or BAU-style bug fixes and maintenance. Second-level support should be handled by people in the product team. Everyone in the team should work with common process and a clear understanding of technical design and business vision.

via Projects are evil and must be destroyed | Evan Bottcher.

What do you think?
PierG