I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it;
– by Benjamin Franklin
Tag: Thinking
A Technique for Producing Ideas
If you ask me why I am willing to give away the valuable formula of this discovery I will confide to you that experience has taught me two things about it: First, the formula is so simple to state that few who hear it really believe in it.
– by James Young
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
It is difficult to have good communication between parents and children because parents always have their own intentions.
– Shunryu Suzuki
#38 Collected Reading – A year in review 2011
A selection of my favorite collected readings from this year. I hope you have enjoyed reading them. Happy new year!
1.Design Thinking
Design should not be seen as a discipline in the same way as geography or physics. It is a method: a method to join together separate ideas, information, emotions and organize them to develop a thought. None of the books listed below have any real examples of what is traditionally thought of as design. There are no glossy photos, models or “concepts”. Instead they are books which develop a way of thinking, a method which realizes that what is made is only as good as the way an idea is framed. There is no style, no “big idea”, just different ways to help you see the world you live in and how to rearrange the complexity of that world in a way that makes sense of things.
-KP
2. The food edition
This week I have collected together a series of recipe videos I made. Most of them were made on a recent visit to London in my mum’s kitchen.
-KP
3. Thinking about the present
A collection of thoughts around thinking, work and how to be in the present.
“Today is a gift.
That is why they call it the present.”-Eleanor Roosevelt
4. Introduction : Sherlock Holmes and the design process
After reading a collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels, I was struck by how much the process of detection has in common with the process of design. I have picked out some of the best quotes which illustrate these ideas.
-KP
5. Free markets and democracy
“And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy.”
– Neil Postman
Design thinking
Design can be seen as a method: a method to join together separate ideas, information, emotions and organize them to develop a thought. None of the books listed below have any real examples of what is traditionally thought of as design. There are no glossy photos, models or “concepts”. Instead they are books which develop a way of thinking, a method which realizes that what is made is only as good as the way an idea is framed. There is no style, no “big idea”, just different ways to help you see the world you live in and how to rearrange the complexity of that world in a way that makes sense of things.
-KP
What Customers Want : Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services by Anthony Ulwick
Why does traditional brainstorming often fail to produce breakthrough ideas?Most brainstorming and idea generation efforts yield poor and unactionable results for three key reasons. The first is because managers rarely know how or where to direct employee’s creative energy. The result is much wasted energy, hundreds of useless ideas, and unfortunately, few ideas that are truly worthy of of pursuit. Consider the typical pattern. In most firms, when employees are asked to come up with new ideas they are not directed to focus on specific outcomes; rather, they are asked for ideas to improve the company’s product in general (functions, ergonomics, fit and finish, distribution and packaging), leaving the direction for improvement open to interpretation. In the absence if a specific target, employees in turn focus on what they themselves want to improve rather than on what customers want to see improved
Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean by Roberto Verganti
Alessi knows that if all his new products are successful, the company has been too conservative and has stayed away from the borderline. This is not good, because it opens the field to competitors. So the company periodically pursues more-radical projects. And even when these efforts apparently fail (proposing products that are too extreme-beyond the borderline), that failure is the revealing moment in which the firm finally sees where the borderline was and is in the best position to make a breakthrough with the next project, before and better than its competitors.
A Technique for Producing Ideas (Advertising Age Classics Library) by James Young
What is most valuable to know is not where to look for a particular idea, but how to train the mind in the method by which all ideas are produced and how to grasp the principles which are at the source of all ideas.
How Designers Think, Fourth Edition: The Design Process Demystified by Bryan Lawson
Classifying design by its end product seems to be rather putting the cart before the horse, for the solution is something which is formed by the design process and has not existed in advance of it. The real reason for classifying design in this way has less to do with the design process but instead a reflection on out increases specialized technologies. Engineers are different from architects not just because they may use a different design process but more importantly because they understand about different materials and requirements. Unfortunately this sort of specialization can easily become a strait jacket for designers, directing their metal process toward a predefined goal. It is thus to easy for architects to assume that the solution to a clients problem is a new building. Often it is not!
Designing Programmes by Karl Gerstner
To describe a problem is part of the solution. This implies: not to make creative decisions as promoted by feeling but by intellectual criteria. The more exact and complete these criteria are, the more create the work becomes. The creative process is to be reduced to an act of selection. Designing means : to pick out determining elements and combining them. – Karl Gerstner
Collected Reading 