Not A Cloud In The Sky

I thought this picture was sort of humorous.

This lady is walking down the street with this big green umbrella, but there is NOT a cloud in the sky.

In fact, you can see in the upper right that it is a beautiful and clear sunny day.

Also, where she is walking, it is clearly shady and cool–so the umbrella is not needed as a sun screen either.

From a technology annoyance perspective, it is long past time to invent something more creative than a cheap, crappy umbrella–like from Charlie Chaplin and The Umbrella–to protect us from elements.

Someone, please come up with a push-button protective bubble that envelops us–clear for visibility, of course–and keeps us dry and temperate.

A beautiful, futuristic clear dome over the city would be nice too, but probably cost prohibitive and not as adjustable for each indiividual and their respective needs.

Hopefully, someday soon. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

The H2O Coat

Awesome coat called the Raincatchthat catches/stores rainwater and purifies it for drinking.

Designed by students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID).

The collar of the coat catches the rainwater.

The water passes through a charcoal and chemical filtration system.

Purified water is then stored around the hips of the coat where it can be distributed and easily carried.

A straw is built in and provided for easy drinking.

I like this for its functionality as survival gear and its practicality as a user-centric product.

One thing I would add is a place to put the Coca-Cola syrup to give it a little extra pick me up. 😉

Very cool–good job!

Bathroom De/sign Winner

This is a winner to me when it comes to smartest bathroom signage.

 

From graphic designer, Aliza Dzik.

 

I like that the signage identifies the wo/men bathrooms very cleverly and simply (and without any obscene graphics).

 

Intelligence + Simplicity = User-centric

 

Love it!

 

(Source Photo: here)

Designer Bobigner

While Microsoft seemed to lead for many years especially in terms of “business acumen,” in the end,Apple built the “more valuable company”–Jobs was the design extraordinare and his imagination for user-centric product designs like the iPhone, iPad, iMac and more touched people in ways that no “other business leader of our time could possibly match.”

I have found that not everyone overtly appreciates the importance of design–and in fact, some people make fun of it, almost like children chanting “designer bobigner”–whether because they value function over design or they simply don’t have “taste and style” like Steve Jobs complained about his rival.

In either case, I think people who seem or act oblivious to the importance of design are missing the incredible power of those who can develop products with an eye towards beauty, novelty, and functionality combined. A computer is a magnificent thinking machine, but an Apple is generally a work of art.

Think about how people neurotically cover their Apple devices with all sorts of protective cases as if it were a precious jewel instead of a just a phone or computer.

Art is treated as priceless, but a computer is often just a commodity. However, Steve Jobs knew how to combine the functional power of a computer with the design of a master.

While “Big Box” retailers like Wal-Mart and Costco continue to grow and expand, our world seems smaller because of it–their shelves and aisles are stocked high with rows and rows of commodity, look-a-like goods of toothpaste, sweat pants, and TVs; it is easy to forget that those products that are really valuable to us, usually aren’t just good to use, but great to hold, feel, and look at.

In this light, I found two product designs that I thought were pretty cool to share.

The first is the white milk container that says Milk and the other is a box of tea bags, each bag with its own hanger for display and use of the side of a cup. The ideas are so simple, yet somehow so creative and appetizing. Two age-old commodities like milk and tea can be made new and special by how we package and meld with it in our environment.

Like the Chinese concept of feng shui, there are brilliant ways to develop our surroundings that energize and inspire, and great design is a magical element in a commodity world and what was not so long ago dominated by the one color black Ford Model-T.

Thank you Steve Jobs and the many other great design minds out there–keep the special things coming that make us say, “I want one!”

(Source Photos: here)

Helmet Hair–Thanks Borat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’d like to nominate this product for innovation award of the week.

The UK DailyMail (12 August 2011) has an article about a Kazakhstan company that has invented “helmet hair“–a line of motorcycle hard hats that looks like a very real head of hair.

They have helmets that look like men, women, and bald guys.  

There are way crazier helmets–like the one that looks like a tush (and even one with a breast), a cracked walnut, a watermelon, a globe, a tennis ball, a golf ball, and let’s not forget the eight ball helmet.

 While I appreciate the creativity of the marketing agency Good! that came up with these, I do worry about a couple things:

1) A police officer will pull someone over for riding without a helmet, even though they are really riding with a helmet (but you just can’t tell with the look of a head of hair on it).

2) Other drivers and pedestrians will get distracted by these zany helmets and zig-zag or walk into traffic and have an awful accident.

Ever since Borat’s trip to the United States in 2006 to make a mockumentary comedy film and learn about our culture, I’ve wandered what he has been busy with back home in his native land and when he would once again come back and visit us in the U.S…I believe this must be his big return. 🙂

(Source Photo: here)

>ZyPAD + iPad = Wow!

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This is great–the ZyPAD by Eurotech.

A true wrist-mounted computer.

Rugged, wearable, ergonomic, GPS, bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled.

Turns off when arm is down and lights up when arm is up.

According to Trendhunter, sales are initially targeting military, law enforcement, emergency services, and healthcare.

I can see this expanding to sales, delivery, production, warehousing, and loads of service-based jobs–such as in “may I take your order please?” or “how would you like to pay for that?”

Runs on Windows CE–ugh!

I’d like to marry up the function and operating system of an iPad with the fit and form of the ZyPAD and then I think we may just have a real winner!

>The iWatch Does It All

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>Enterprise Architecture Design

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User-centric Enterprise Architecture provides information to decision-makers using design thinking, so as to make the information easy to understand and apply to planning and investment decisions.

Some examples of how we do this:

1. Simplifying complex information by speaking the language of the business (and not all techie).
2. Unifying disparate information to give a holistic view that breaks the traditional vertical (or functional) views and instead looks horizontally across the organization to foster enterprise solutions where we build once and reuse multiple times.
3. Visualizing information to condense lots of information and tell a story—as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
4. Segmenting end-users and tailoring EA information products to the different user groups which we do with profiles geared to executive decision makers, models for mid-level managers, and inventories for the analysts.

Interestingly enough, in the summer issue of MIT Sloan Management Review, there is an article called “How to Become a Better Manager…By thinking Like a Designer.”

Here are some design pointers from the experts that you can use to aid your enterprise architectures (they are written to parallel the principles from User-centric EA, as I have previously described above):

1. Embrace simplicity—“people often confuse simplicity…with simplistic….it takes courage to be simple…and the simplest solution is often the best.”
2. Look for patterns in the data—“good problem solvers become proficient at identifying patterns.” Further, designers seek “harmony to bring together hierarchy, balance, contrast, and clear space in a meaningful way.”
3. Apply visual thinking—often managers…rely heavily on data and information to tell the story and miss the opportunity to create context and meaning,” instead managers need to “think of themselves as designers, visual thinkers or storytellers.”
4. Presenting clearly to specific end-users—“good design is about seeing and communicating clearly.” Moreover, it’s about “seeing things from the clients point of view…designers learn pretty quickly that is not about Me, it’s about You.”

MIT Sloan states “we have come to realize over the past few years that design-focused organizations do better financially than their less design-conscious competitors…design is crafting communications to answer audience needs in the most effective way.”

This is a fundamental lesson: organizations that apply the User-centric Enterprise Architecture design approach will see superior results than legacy EA development efforts that built “artifacts” made up primarily of esoteric eye charts that users could not readily understand and apply.

>Future Police Cruiser Architected for Law Enforcement

>http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2403110&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Carbon Motors E7 Police Car Photoshoot – Douglas Sonders Photography from Douglas Sonders on Vimeo.

Coming in 2012. This new law enforcement vehicle rocks!! 

The first police vehicle architected for the law enforcement end-user (User-centric EA in action). 

“Carbon Motors is a new Atlanta-based automaker that is developing the Carbon E7, the world’s first purpose-built law enforcement vehicle that will provide enhanced performance and improved efficiency compared to the off-the-line cars used by today’s officers. Automotive engineers from Carbon Motors are collaborating with law enforcement personnel across the country to design a vehicle that is equipped to meet the unique demands of day-to-day patrol operations.” (Homeland Defense Journal)

>“Design Thinking” and Enterprise Architecture

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Ranked as one of the most innovative companies in the world, IDEO is an innovation and design firm, founded in 1991. Its client list include heavy hitters such as Microsoft, Intel, Nokia, Nestle, and Proctor and Gamble.

According to their website, they specialize in helping organizations to “Visualize new directions for companies and brands and design the offerings – products, services, spaces, media, and software – that bring innovation strategy to life.”

Harvard Business Review, June 2008, has an article by their CEO and President, Tim Brown.

First, how IDEO defines innovation:

“Innovation is powered by a thorough understanding, through direct observation, of what people want and need in their lives and what they like or dislike about the way particular products are made, packaged, marketed, sold, and supported. “

“Leaders now look to innovation as a principle source of differentiation and competitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate design thinking into all phases and processes.”

“Rather than asking designers to make an already developed idea more attractive to consumers, companies are asking them to create ideas that better meet consumers’ needs and desires.”

The three phases of design:

• Inspiration—the problem or opportunity that is driving the creative design process.
• Ideation (brainstorming)—“the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas that may lead to solutions.”
• Implementation—“executing the vision or how we bring the design concept to market.”

How you can be a design thinker?

A people first approach—based on keen observation and noticing things that others do not, you can use insights to inspire innovative ideas that meet explicit and implicit needs. This is similar to a user-centric enterprise architecture approach, where we drive business process improvement and the introduction of new technologies based on genuine user/business requirements and a strategic understanding of the performance, business, information, systems, technologies, security, and human capital aspects of the organization.

Integration—To develop innovative solutions, you need to integrate “sometimes contradictory-aspects of a confounding problem and create novel solutions that go beyond and dramatically improve on existing alternatives.” Integration is an important aspect of EA, not only in terms of enterprise architecture synthesizing business and technology to enable creative architecture plans that drive the organization into the future, but also in terms of breaking down structural and process silos and building a more holistic, synergistic, interoperable, and capable organization.

Experimentation—there are “endless rounds of trial and error—the ‘99% perspiration’ in [Thomas] Edison’s famous definition of genius.” Most great ideas don’t “pop up fully formed out of brilliant minds”—“they are not a sudden breakthrough nor the lightening strike of genius,” but rather, they are “the result of hard work segmented by creative human-centered discovery process and followed by iterative cycles of prototyping, testing, and refinement.” While enterprise architecture is not generally-speaking a disciple based in experimentation, part of the EA planning should focus on market and competitive research, including best practices identification and sponsorship that will be used to drive modernization and transformation of the enterprise. Additionally, the EA should include research and development efforts in the plans to acknowledge the ongoing innovation required for the organization to grow, mature, and compete.

Collaboration—“the increasing complexity of products, services, and experiences has replaced the myth of the lone creative genius with the reality of enthusiastic interdisciplinary collaborator.” As an enterprise architect, I am an ardent proponent of this principle. In the large and complex modern-day organization of the 21^st century, we need both breadth and depth of subject matter experts to build the EA, govern it, mange change, and drive modernization in our enterprises. As any half-decent architect knows, ivory tower planning effort are bound for failure. We must work collaboratively with the business and technology experts and give all our stakeholders a voice at the table—this give change and innovation the best chance of real success.

Tim Brown says that “design thinking can lead to innovation that goes beyond aesthetics…time and again we see successful products that were not necessarily the first to market, but were the first to appeal to us emotionally and functionally…as more of our basic needs are met, we increasingly expect sophisticated experiences that are emotionally satisfying and meaningful.”

I believe this is a lesson for EA as well:

For enterprise architecture to be successful, it is not enough to be functional (i.e. to set a good plan), but rather it has to have design thinking and be useful and usable to our end-users (i.e. User-centric). By incorporating innovative thinking into not only the EA plans, but also into how we reach out and collaborate with our stakeholders to build the plans (i.e by sparking the innovative process and creative juices with constructive challenging of the status quo to a broad array of subject matter experts), and the way we employ design to portray and communicate these plans (i.e with profiles, models, and inventories for example), we will have a architecture that truly represents the organization, is understood by it, and serves its needs and aspirations.