Last weekend HP announced a bold new strategy. They are exiting their manufacturing intensive consumer businesses to focus on Software and Services. The message is clear: making real stuff is difficult and costly, whereas making software is easy, almost free money. But HP is missing one important fact about software - making software that people like is actually very hard. Moreover, software is not about engineering anymore, it’s outgrown that phase to become something different – it’s become interactive. Can an old-school engineering firm the size of HP lead in this brave new world of interactive products? [More]

Links to slides, speaker notes, and reading list from AgileTechDC talk on Mixing Product Design/Innovation and Agile [More]

Your team is building the next great whatever to replace the last great whatever. You’ve got requirements, use cases, user stories, personas, and all that stuff in full production. If they call you to a status meeting you’ll have lots of proof that the project is going someplace…iteratively of course, since you practice good Agile. But is your next great whatever any good? Stakeholders might be involved in every stage of development, but what about all the little things, the smallest of decisions? Does your product exude wholeness, consistency, and a strong center? Will the product resonate with the people who use it? Is it nice? Is it fun? Does it smile? [More]

Our labs have been doing a bunch of stuff with Microsoft KINECT lately. Check out this video that John made to demonstrate an algorithm he has been working on. [More]

There are Design firms and then there are Design Innovation firms, and the world’s most famous Design Innovation firm is IDEO. Everyone knows IDEO. People in every industry drop their name, quote their founders, read their blogs, and emulate their business model. IDEO appears incredibly open and free-love about sharing their secret sauce, always willing to explain what they do and how they do it. Because of their openness we’ve learned Design Thinking, Mind Maps, new perspectives on Ethnography, and more. Are these the real down-to-earth ingredients behind IDEO’s secret sauce, or are they cleverly designed to send competitors on a goose chase? Have you critically examined their advice or just accepted it on faith? [More]

It was born at IDEO before the pandemic media coverage that spanned Harvard Business Review, Business Week, Forbes, Fast Company, and other mags talking about the phenomena called “Design Thinking”. Now, a few years later, what can we say about Design Thinking? Is it real or just hype for design agencies to pitch services? Do designers in black turtlenecks and square-rimmed glasses actually think differently than suits or polo shirts? Is Design Thinking something genuine or just a tool for shifting power in R&D organizations towards the “creatives”? [More]