IDEO CEO Tim Brown on the future of "design thinking" - 60 Minutes הבעיה של גוגל: צירוף של מספרים לא בהכרח מניב מסקנות נכונות - גלובל - אתר חדשות כלכלה ונתוני בורסה מישראל ומהעולם TheMarker דה מרקר ניק בילטון מ"ניו יורק טיימס": "אנחנו ממהרים להשתמש בנתונים של גוגל ושוכחים כי מדובר באסופת מספרים שמתעלמת מההקשר" לפני מספר שנים גוגל יצרה משוואה מפוארת שיכולה לפענח כמה אנשים חולים ברגע מסוים בשפעת. החשבון עבד כך: מיקום האדם יחד עם חיפוש הקשור לשפעת במנוע גוגל בתוספת אלגוריתמים חכמים במיוחד: מספר האנשים בארה"ב החולים בשפעת. ניק בילטון מספר בבלוג ב"ניו יורק טיימס" כי בעוד לפי נתוני גוגל, בחורף הנוכחי 11% מאוכלוסית ארה"ב היתה חולה בשפעת, ולפי מאמר שפורסם במגזין המדעי Nature, האלגוריתמים של גוגל שגויים והתוצאות כפולות לעומת הנתונים של המרכז האמריקאי לפיקוח על מחלות שמדווח על 6% מהאמריקאים חלו בשפעת. לפי בילטון, ייתכן שהבעיה באלגוריתם של גוגל היא כי הוא מסתכל על מספרים, ולא על תוכן. "בעולם של היום, המידע נמצא בכל מקום. בילטון מוסיף חוויה דומה שהתרחשה כאשר לימד באוניברסיטת ניו יורק ב-2010. לפי תוצאות הניסוי, סטודנטים השתמשו במעליות בשעות הבוקר, כנראה כי עוד היו עייפים מהלילה, ובלילות עברו לשימוש במדרגות.
Design innovator "schools" Charlie Rose The design innovator whose company is responsible for the first stand-up toothpaste tube and Apple's first computer mouse talks to Charlie Rose about the field he helped pioneer that gave birth to such ingenious products in a 60 Minutes profile to be broadcast Sunday, Jan. 6 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT. David Kelley takes Rose on a tour of his Palo Alto, Calif., company, IDEO, the place where thousands of inventions have been created through the concept of design thinking -- incorporating human behavior into design. He demonstrates how the most brilliant designs are those that simply pay attention to human behavior. He sits Rose down in a new classroom chair IDEO designed for the venerable Steelcase company, furniture makers for over 100 years. And attached to that support stem where it meets the floor is a set of wheels. Says Kelley, "The big thing about design thinking is it allows people to build on the ideas of others. © 2013 CBS Interactive Inc.
Everything a product manager needs to know about analytics Everyone knows analytics are important for product managers. But, like lots of things everyone knows, not everyone knows why they are important and in the case of analytics even necessarily what they are. This post is going to look at: What exactly are analytics?Concepts of analyticsImplementing analyticsMeasuring analyticsReporting analyticsAnalytics and experimentation What exactly are analytics? Put simply, analytics measure the state of the product, what users are doing, what they are clicking on, etc. To illustrate the difference, consider this example. The more independent measurements you have the better you can characterise the state of the system or how people are using your product. Why are analytics important? Analytics are important for one major reason: What you don’t measure, you can’t improve. Without knowing what the state of the system is, it is very hard, if not impossible, to do much to change or affect the system. Analytics Concepts The four concepts are: Data points Funnels
7 Days with Sketch 2 Day 1: Upgrading to Sketch 2 was a cinch. Having bought the previous version from the Mac App Store, updating to Bohemian Coding’s latest and greatest Illustrator replacement was as simple as hitting the update button under Sketch 2’s product icon. And whilst the 16MB update downloaded in the background, I began to un-install Adobe’s prime creative application from my computer. To say the least, I got rid of Photoshop. The un-installation took me over half an hour. If you’ve never used Sketch before, then you should know this: unlike Photoshop, Sketch has an infinite canvas. As I tinker more, the Photoshop un-installer tells me it’s finished. I restart my Mac. I log in and see Sketch 2 in all its glory: Re-opened windows. Day 2: Serious work. If you’ve ever used the pen tool before in Adobe Illustrator, or at least in Photoshop, then you basically already know how to use Sketch 2. I begin my icons. Sketch 2 feels slightly more 1-on-1 in terms of UI improvement. Day 3: Day 4: The result?
Big-Bang Disruption By now any well-read executive knows the basic playbook for saving a business from disruptive innovation. Nearly two decades of management research, beginning with Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. But the strategic model of disruptive innovation we’ve all become comfortable with has a blind spot. That advice hasn’t been much help to navigation-product makers like TomTom, Garmin, and Magellan. The disruption here hasn’t come from competitors in the same industry or even from companies with a remotely similar business model. That kind of innovation changes the rules. We call these game changers “big-bang disrupters.” In this new era, strategy needs a rethink. A Difference in Kind The first key to survival is understanding that big-bang disruptions differ from more-traditional innovations not just in degree but in kind.
Reliability vs. Validity A couple of weeks ago in Detroit, I had the delight of sitting in the cockpit of a brand new Pontiac (GM) Solstice. What a beauty: a drop-dead gorgeous convertible roadster listing at a mere $19,995. The Solstice is destined to be a hit. When my mind came back from the imaginary thrill of driving up to our cottage with this little baby's roof down, I realized that the Solstice brought into high relief a burning question concerning design: If you can have great design without a significant cost penalty, why do so few companies use design to win? It has nothing to do with a trade-off between great design and cost effectiveness. Rather, it stems from the largely hidden trade-off that every CEO should address -- the one between reliability and validity. The Trade-off between Reliability and Validity Reliability is the result of a process that produces a consistent and predictable result over and over. The problem is that IQ doesn't serve as a particularly great predictor of anything.
The Story Behind The Famous FedEx Logo, And Why It Works The following is an excerpt from The Laws of Subtraction by Matthew May (McGraw-Hill). My ten-year-old daughter points out the logo on a FedEx truck every time she sees one. She’s done that without fail ever since she learned to sound out letters. But she doesn’t do that with any other logo. What’s special about the FedEx logo isn’t the vibrant colors or the bold lettering. “There’s the white arrow that no one on my gymnastics team knows about,” she’ll say. The FedEx logo is legendary among designers. We spoke at length about visual impact, his creative process, and his story of the FedEx logo development. “It’s those kinds of stories that are the most gratifying for me, most rewarding,” he says. When Lindon graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, his very first job was with Saul Bass, the iconic Los Angeles designer perhaps best known for creating the AT&T logo. Lindon begins a design project in a fairly typical way, generating a long string of designs.