Free Reading Material

Number of words: 326 In conducting a belief audits you can come up with all sort of question designed to uncover the core ideas, assumption, and values; the fears, hopes, and dreams about the future; the current strategies and strategic vision or boxes of the relevant people involved in your business collectively and individually. Doing … Read more

Number of words: 224 The late Marcel Bich acquired the patent to ballpoint pens following World War II and founded the storied BIC Corporation. He initially envisioned BIC as a stationary company that would specialise in selling low cost ballpoint pens. From the late 1940’s through the early 1970’s BIC management spent most of it … Read more

Number of words: 140 Complete the following sentence: An example of a bird is……. Now complete this one: A bird is an example of……. Which of the two exercises seemed easier if you are like most people it was quick and easy to come up with example of birds pigeon, Sparrow, dove….. The second sentence … Read more

Number of words: 280 These fears have long been with us. In ancient Greece, Plato tells us that Socrates complained about the impact of books, arguing that reliance on written material would diminish not only memory but the very need to think, to debate, to learn through discussion. After all, said Socrates, when a person … Read more

Number of words: 409 In every successful product there lurks the carrier of an insidious disease called “featuritis,” with its main symptom being “creeping featurism.” The disease seems to have been first identified and named in 1976, but its origins probably go back to the earliest technologies, buried far back in the eons prior to … Read more

Number of words: 133 If we examine the history of advances in all technological fields, we see that some improvements come naturally through the technology itself, others come through standardization. The early history of the automobile is a good example. The first cars were very difficult to operate. They required strength and skill beyond the … Read more

Number of words: 534 The role of iteration in human-centered design is to enable continual refinement and enhancement. The goal is rapid prototyping and testing, or in the words of David Kelly, Stanford professor and cofounder of the design firm IDEO, “Fail frequently, fail fast.” Many rational executives (and government officials) never quite understand this … Read more

Number of words: 224 The initial research to understand the nature of the problem itself is part of the discipline of design research. Note that this is research about the customer and the people who will use the products under consideration. It is not the kind of research that scientists do in their laboratories, trying … Read more

Number of words: 430 One of my rules in consulting is simple: never solve the problem I am asked to solve. Why such a counterintuitive rule? Because, invariably, the problem I am asked to solve is not the real, fundamental, root problem. It is usually a symptom. Just as in Chapter 5, where the solution … Read more