Welcome to Forbes. Nille Juul-Sørensen: Designing systems to solve social problems. Danish designer Nille Juul-Sørensen says his country is famous for fantastic chairs and teacups, but it dawned on him that it was time that designers turn their attention to designing for the 99% of people – "to do some design that gives meaning to people and that they can engage in.
" "I realised that by working for big companies like Nike, Nasa and IKEA, if we really focussed on the systems that is where the gold is for companies. But also for me as a human being, I will better understand things and my experience of design would be seamless," he says. He goes on to question what a "luxury project" is. Is it a beautifully crafted high-end handbag or is it actually a glass of fresh drinking water? For 99% of the world the glass of water is the luxury. "We still need nice things around us but we need to put them in a context that gives meaning to us," he argues. "For me it is about creating these systems that you actually don't notice," he says. Why We Need Storytellers at the Heart of Product Development. There's an interesting question on Quora right now: If you had to pick between an amazing product designer or an amazing engineer to build a new company around, which would you pick and why?
This question reflects a painful problem that is common at both small startups and large corporate organizations. Far too often, teams focus on execution before defining the product opportunity and unique value proposition. The result is a familiar set of symptoms including scope creep, missed deadlines, overspent budgets, frustrated teams and, ultimately, confused users. The root cause of these symptoms is the fact that execution focuses on the how and what of a product.
A product is more than an idea, it's more than a website, and it's more than a transaction or list of functionalities. Who are the product storytellers? The first goal of a product storyteller is to facilitate collaboration and co-creation. Who are the right-brain thinkers?
YouTube. RI Citizens for the Arts. Rise of China’s Creative Class? Creativity helps fuel modern economies.
If China wants more of it in classrooms new experiences are key. Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class explores the thinking and lifestyle of the 30 million Americans responsible for the creativity that fuels the 21st century global marketplace. In his study, Florida explains that creative individuals are drawn not to workplaces and urban settings that offer the highest pay or tallest skyscrapers, but to places that can stretch their creativity and identity. They typically want to do challenging work with motivated people in a diverse and open workplace, and they want to live in cities where they can attend jazz festivals in the evenings and go hiking on the weekends. With the creative class, there’s a blurring of work and leisure so that creative individuals structure every minute of their lives in the pursuit of the new experiences and stimulations that are the font of their creativity.