Garner Consulting, LLC

Excellent article giving a look into Kodak's 3-year development project to launch a new consumer printer technology. I know I'm tired of paying out the wazoo for ink. I hope they succeed.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2007/tc20070206_268521.htm

Someone asked recently about using Wiki's or blogs for product development. This was my response.

I've used an internal wiki for development and it was an extraordinary tool. The company had a wiki set up for awhile; no one but the "IT" guys were using it. I started flooding it with near-daily notes of my team's test results, graphic samples, links to demos and all kinds of related content to the development work we were doing.
The profile of the team increased dramatically now that the whole company could quickly (or wiki-ly I suppose) jump over and see "live" information. The further we went, the more we bumped up its use, essentially making it into a live note-taking/collaboration tool.
It made some people nervous since everyone had visibility into exactly what it was we were doing every day. It also did away with some of the wasted time for formal reporting--simply jump on the wiki, quickly summarize some sections and demote some content to deeper pages, and you're done.
Anyone in the executive group can go as high-level or as deep as they want along with anyone from any other team. I believe that the openness generated a huge amount of credibility for the entire team, greatly increased the speed and the amount of feedback, and broke down many communication/silo/mistrust barriers.
It will generate some initial resistance and fear, but well, well, worth it.

These are awesome! It's part of a contest being run by Worth1000.com to come up with designs in different product categories that Apple will tackle next.

iPiano has two keys.

iGuit is a guitar shaped like the Apple logo with two strings.

iPuff - tech-savvy cigarettes

and iPottie...just have to see that one...

Looks to be one of those self/community submission sites, so be wary of potentially offensive stuff that might get on there.

http://www.worth1000.com/cache/contest/contestcache.asp?contest_id=13700&start=1&end=10&display=photoshop#entries

 

I love this very insightful, as usual, AdAge article from Al Ries.

He accuses Motorola of blowing it when it comes to creating a brand by focusing instead only on the product. Essentially Motorola had an iPod-esque chance of creating a thin-phone positioning around the Razr brand. The problem was that Razr was only a single product for Motorola and they quickly diluted their market coup with half-a-dozen Krzr and MotoRokr and Pebl's, etc.

Now Al also has an issue with companies trying to do line extensions ad infinitum, so I'm a little curious how his full strategy would play out. He makes compelling comparisons to what Apple didn't do with iPod, and also how Motorola failed before with its StarTac.

Good stuff.

Although I haven't had a chance to sample Alltel's new Celltop interface for cellphones, several glowing articles have come out recently making me want to try it. And, the following FierceWireless post makes a pitch for the power of simplicity...so of course I had to include it in my blog...

http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/editor-s-corner/2007-01-19

After viewing the YouTube video, I am a little bit disappointed that it is still a couple of steps away from "simplicity," have to launch it each time you open your phone, etc. However, it probably points to an interim step to a complete replacement of the start-up screen.

Someday I will figure out a good way to link these things up directly to LinkedIn, or LinkedIn will offer some cool tool for me to use. (If you are "LinkedIn", this link  might send you directly to the Q/A.) In the meantime, a Best Answer related to product design is "cut-n-pasted" below:

--

Can anyone identify best practices when building a product prototype? Share successes and failures?

- MH, posted in Product Design

 

My Answer:

Obviously very generalized, but a few things I keep in mind:

• Start with the user interface / user experience. No matter how nifty everything is behind the scenes, if the engagement with the target user is terrible—they won’t get it, and you may think your entire product is a failure, although it may be extremely valuable and technically brilliant. It’s a cliché, but think iPod – it’s the interface that won.
• Dare to create a new category. There is research that shows line extensions, etc. are rarely profitable enough to be worth the effort (this isn’t a white paper so forgive me the lack of a reference, although some of this is discussed in the book “Jump Start Your Marketing Brain”).
• Use a small design team and push multiple iterations. I am convinced this is a much better methodology than trying to get too much input from too many people and slogging through requirement doc’s, etc. Build quickly and let as many people as possible “break it” over and over again.
• Let a “customer advocate” lead the design. Someone on the team should be the one to ignore everything except whether or not customers will want the product. I’ve seen products get lost in engineering labs, graphic designer wild imaginations, and executive-level wishful thinking. The “owner” of the product must be someone charged with living and breathing in the world of the customer through market research, one-on-one interactions, talking with customer service and sales people, etc. You may even be able to include a good representative customer into the design process itself. Never, ever lose track of the fact that someone has to want and buy this thing when it is ready.

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/the-apple-iphone/

Macworld: http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/01/09/iphone/index.php

Fierce: http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/editor-s-corner/2007-01-09

Bullets from report so far...

• iPhone will be $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB model--that's WITH the two year contract through Cingular
• WiFi enabled, run for 5 hours between battery charges
• include a sleek, black pen-cap-like BlueTooth headset
• earbud headphones will also include a mic
• will run on OS X, on Cingular's network, and have no keypad or buttons, just a large touch screen, and new patented technology that allows easy use of fingers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/nov2006/id20061110_328875.htm?link_position=link1

 

Interesting article from ChiefMarketer on new options that are available for making data more accessible through quality graphic representations and the user interface. Mention of several "new" dashboard technologies that can compile data from multiple sources.

Interesting overview of companies using user/consumer communities to directly design product initiatives and advertising messages. Plus some suggestions on how to do it.

BusinessWeek article. 

Just discovered this and have not had the time to form an opinion. However, it would seem that a blog on simplicity from an MIT professor should be a good thing to keep track of.

Prof. John Maeda, MIT Media Lab - Simplicity 

Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda

Wonders of the World Structural Design from BusinessWeek.

"the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered..."

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776 

Advertising Age link to the top 3 favorites for the coveted "Film Grand Prix" award from Cannes ("the" advertising awards festival). Doubtful that any of these will actually "sell more stuff" -- but the short film ad format execution of these is pretty impressive from an artistic perspective.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=110102 

Wow. Methinks I have a new favorite search tool.

Even thought it is still in 'beta' (whatever that means these days), this more advanced approach lets you get driectly at combination terms that may more specifically get you to the information you are after. If you are like me, you start with the first couple of Boolean-ish terms to narrow things down; then, you back up and add different combinations around the key term you were looking for.

Livesearch does this for you by not only expanding your term as you type--rather than waiting for you to hit the enter key--but also dynamically creates tabs with the extended combinations. Clear as mud? Or, maybe coffee?

Typing "cof" automatically generates 9 tabs that have (I presume) the highest ranking combination terms with "coffee" in them. Coffee, coffee break, coffee break arcade (probably has something to do with that dip in office productivity with unfettered Internet access), coffee makers, starbucks coffee, etc. Just have to see it for yourself: Search coffee

The tabs themselves are actually "normal" Yahoo searches that have already been done for you and are listed on the page. So you can simple stop with "cof" if that was good enough, skip down to the "coffee maker" keyword search and jump to the site you want.

 Very cool.

Somewhat dated, but a good article on basic landing page design and the importance it has on conversions.

 http://www.digital-web.com/articles/11_ways_to_improve_landing_pages/

At first glance, this looks awesome. Great way for Google to build out the richness of Google Earth. But it also looks like a great 3D "doodling" tool that does a ton of basic design for free.

http://sketchup.google.com/ 

Tracking information about this self-publishing company and service. Seems to be picking up alot of buzz.

Creative commons interview - http://creativecommons.org/text/lulu 

www.lulu.com 

Very interesting and have to admit, tweaks my interest in the power of language and words. What if every_thing_ was indexed and searchable?

ITConversations Link 

Getting Real

A PDF-only book on developing a web application. However, it is much more about rapid product development philosophies. Very good.

Written in a style that reinforces the message of the book--direct, simple, with no fluff or vagueries. Also includes a good dose of attitude.