The Art of Innovation Chapter 8 & 10

Chapter 8
Interesting Points
Cross pollination-Knowledge that answers may come from places you least expect

Interesting Discoveries
Velcro
Saccharin

Product Flops
Dynabook laptop Computer-timing and what going on in the market is key
Product Successes
Polaroid I-Zone camera

If find it odd that famous rapper(or famous people in general) can boost the sales of products that much. Especially when it is a water resistant clock with a rope on it.- understanding these fads could be very helpful when selling or marketing a product.

Notes
Watch people struggle with existing products in new environments, and you'll likely sense an opportunity for cross-pollination.
Little stupid things mean so much.-Example Tivo packed their drive with a substance called sorbothane which dampened vibration and cut the noise reduction. Where their competitor did not leaving them with an edge.

Seven Planning Tips
1. Subscribe and surf
2.Play Director
3.Hold an Open House
4. Inspire Advocates
5.Hire Outsiders
6. Change Hats
7. Cross Train

Chapter 10

Innovation is a very goal-oriented process- try thinking verbs, and not nouns
Lexus makes great cars but it is the experience that the people enjoy and value. - People like being pampered
The Experience Economy< Is that a book that is it worth reading?
It sounds interesting that they believe a business services are coming to resemble the experience of a theme park.

One way to begin is to break down the product or service down into its component elements.
After all the steps are broken down analyze and try to come up with solutions to stop the snags in the process to get as close to the DREAM SCENARIO as possible
Again called "Experience Map"

The work place and support staff become an internal part of a customer or visitors visit
In order to design this process you have to experience this with your own two feet and see them with your own eyes.
Design everything even down to the Fish Market - Making an unforgettable experience for the costumer.

One discovery can lead to three totally different discoveries or inventions - I thought it was extremely interesting about all the uses that were discovered for Kevlar .

Least but not lease design an experience so that it is easy for the user to understand.

The Design of Everyday Things- Chapters 5

Two Fundamental Caterogories
Slips- Result from automatic behavior, when subconscious actions that are intended to satify our goals get waylaid
Mistakes- Result from conscious deliberations

I like the example of a slip when the man takes of his watch instead of his seatbelt.

-Slips result from lack of attention
-Slips can be placed into six categories: Capture errors, Description errors, Data errors, Data-driven errors, associative activation errors, loss-of-activation errors, and mode errors.

* Slip confession*
I sometimes put the ice cream in the refridgorator instead of the freesor.

Much of economic theory is based upon the model of rational human who attempts to optimize personal benfit, utility, or comfort.

Schema theory, Frame theory,or sometimes semantic networks,and propositional encoding
Theory consists of three beliefs- that there is logic and order to the individual structures
that human memory is associative
that much of our power for depuctive thought comes from using the information in one schema

Conscious thought is severely limited by the small capacity of short term memory

-I thought this was pretty interesting
Explain away errors
Problems occur in are lives so often that we ignore them or dismiss them. " There are lots of things we could pay attention to or worry about but most would be false alarms, irrelevant minor events.
Here is what a designer should do

Understand the causes of error and design to minimize those cause
Make it possible to reverse actions-to undo them- or make it harder to do what cannot be reversed
Make it easier to discover the errors that do occur, and make them easier to correct
Change the attitude towards error

Art of Innovation Chapter 5&7

Interesting Thoughts
-They know that answers don’t lie within. To design a better shopping cart, they sought out grocery stores and shoppers and industry experts. No one on the team thought for a second that a dozen people within IDEO had all the answers.
-We believe that the teams take root when individuals are given the chance of picking what groups they work with and even occasionally what projects they work on.
-Pressure can help you get it out the door
- On a Mission- Dennis Boyles hot group decided it was time to challenge the status quo-what if we all did that?
- Singapore Airlines- IDEO solved or came up with a solution that saved the airline tens of millions of dollars. They did this by figuring out they could decrease the downtime of the aircraft fleet needed while increasing the number of hours of in flight time.

- It was interesting to find out that IDEO did not limit the amount of office supplies, and kept a well stock refrigerator. It was smart of them to make their employees feel like they were part of the company.
-I think it was a good idea to have an award system for the employee's also
-It was also a great idea to give fortune 500 clients a two-day version of IDEO experience. Called IDEO U

Eight Crazy Characters for hot Groups
The Visionary
The Troubleshooter
The Iconoclast
The Pulse Taker
The Craftsman
The Technologist
The Entrepreneur
The Cross-Dresser
I find so interesting that it takes so many

The Design of Everyday Things- Chapters 1&2

Lots and lots of examples of bad design!
I find this book and the author a little bit amusing in that some of the things that are designed seem like the person that designed them had never looked or checked into how they were used.

Especially Fig 1.1

Oh, yeah the person getting trapped inside the Post office. -its actually humorous

The example of the phone system in Fig1.4 - that looks like its more complicated than trigonometry

Also the example of British Rail when they constructed a glass shelter for passengers, and the glass kept getting smash. Then they try to put up plywood and it gets grafited and carved into. A lose-lose situation here.

It makes sense that if you have a good conceptual model that it will allow you to predict the actions of the users.

Its amazing that yes there is a psychology in why things are developed in the way that the are. If this is not considered I believe that the designer will fail every time he designs something

Seven Stages of action
Forming the goal
Forming the intention specifiying an action
Executing the action
Perceiving the state of the world
Interpreting the state of the world
Evaluating the outcome

Using this knowledge will help you as a designer

1. Visibility
2. A Good Conceptual Model
3. Good mapping
4. Feedback

Art of Innovation Chapter 1,2&3

I like how they broke down the parts of the Process of Design. I feel like that will be very helpful to know.

I enjoyed finding out that people paid more attention to the actual person, even studying the psychology of a given situation. Instead of doing these Focus groups. I thought It was funny how it was sad that they actually observed people having a hard time in this study group but they would come around and tell the people who were in charge of conducting the study that there product was great, and that it had no problems. Its great how IDEO when out and treated every company differently and listened to what they had to say about what they thought they need to fix or improve or what ever but at the same time did not let them limit them.

Methods to IDEO's Madness
Understand
Observe
Visualize
Evaluate and refine
Implement

I couldn't get over how different things were portrayed in the television show than then what I had envisioned in my head from reading about IDEO

Weird processes of play and innovation- guess you can't have one with out the other.

I like where the company got there name from Ideology!
It seems through there process of Design they are able to solve almost any problem that is tossed at them.
Bug list- great way of looking at something in a critical manner, and maybe seeing room for improvement, development, and progress

Most importantly learn from observation

The Design of Everyday Things- Chapters 3&4

Precise behavior can emerge from imprecise knowledge for four reasons.
Information in the world -information in the head and in the world
Great precision is not required- absolutes are seldom required in knowledge
Natural Constraints are present- worldly constraints/ physical constraints
Cultural Constraints are present- social behavior and cultural conventions

How many people could guess the right penny? Fig 3.1

Things I thought were interesting
"Procedural knowledge is largely subconscious"
"Want to do your friends a nasty turn? Do them a favor and clean up there rooms. Do this to some people and they will lose there ability to function."-personally I'm one of those people

Conspiracy against Memory
its said to find out that we have limitations in what we can remember, but I know I have problems remembering my social, bank numbers, phone numbers, security codes, birthdays

I wonder if that is true? The author said that he use to live in Texas and he said that he needed his Drivers license number to pay for food, telephone bills, If so that’s crazy. It’s enough to remember you’re social.

Interesting in how we organize certain things
1. Memory for arbitrary things

2. Memory for meaningful relationships
3. Memory through explanation

Page 73.That pocket size device that reminds you of appointment, and links to computers is here! It’s a phone, and with some software called sync it will sync up to your computer at the office, and you can excess all your information from emails, appointments, internet, telephone numbers, databases, and of course since it’s a phone you could also make a phone call. - Really cool stuff

3.3 Arbitrary Arrangement of Stove Controls- that how my stove is arrange and it sucks!

its interesting to read about the semantic and cultural constrains- Its amazing to me how much information can be gathered from this knowledge that is already known the same thing goes for logical constraints-from past experiences and a general knowledge on how to figure something out it is amazing what you can do

ahh more examples of bad design doors, switches, clocks

Art of Innovation Chapter 4

Things i thought were interesting about the reading are as follows;
60min brainstorming sessions in the morning or evening are best according to the author.
Idea gathering should not feel like work.
Seven Steps to Brainstorming
1.Sharpen Focus- get a better understanding
2.Playful rules- no critques and debates and brainstormer should try to be visual
3.Number Ideas- Author said that it took him awhile to realize that not doing this process was slowing down the whole project
4.Build and Jump- Feed off of energy from the group and run with the it or at least try to keep the energy going.
5.Space remembers- Post it notes and sharpies are a mans best friend
6.Stretching the mental muscles-Get group into a outgoing mode
7.Get Physical- take things from the 2d into the 3d by starting to gather materials

*I couldn't get over that the imployees at IDEO get to choice what group they wanted to be in.*
Six ways to not kill a Brainstormer
1.If the Boss speaks he can kill ideas by limiting
2.Have the brainstorming session a free for all, let anyone speak and for as long as they want to speak
3.Don't be an expert snob, everyone can contribute something.
4.Off-site may not be the best idea
5.Be silly and off the wall with your ideas
6.Don't write because you would then be using the wrong side of your brain, and if you do have to write limit it