Zeitgeist 2011: Year In Review. Google in Talks with Retailers to Take on Amazon [REPORT] From Google Ventures: 4 Steps For Combining The Hacker Way With Design Thinking. Jake Knapp is like the middle-school teacher everyone should have had.
Tall, with clear blue plastic glasses, he holds a classroom-clock-sized timer like a football while explaining the first activity of the day: an exercise called "Crazy 8s" that involves drawing eight different solutions, with 40 seconds for each, to address one design challenge. On a whiteboard nearby, he’s sketched out a five-step game plan for redesigning the Blue Bottle Coffee website.
Below the first box in the schedule, labeled “Understand,” there’s an unsure emoticon. It turns to a smiley face by the next step, “Diverge," sticks its tongue out for “Decide,” sports a toothy grin under “Prototype," and alternates between despair and glee under “Validate.” Blue Bottle, I am told, is currently somewhere between the number two and number three emotional states. Visite inaugurale du nouveau siège de Google France.