YAB
I've started Yet Another Blog as an attempt to learn Markdown syntax, and also to get a better feel for how Dropbox interacts with applications on iOS. Given the recent acquisition of Mailbox, I...
View ArticlePorter's Five Forces
One concept that stays with me from business school is Porter's Five Forces. It resembles the realization of a mature designer that the act of making does not matter unless it is considered within the...
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Bruno Munari (1966)
A few takeaways from this great book by Bruno Munari (first published when I was born!) are this quote by Maxim Gorky: An artist is a (hu)man who digests [his/her] own subjective impressions and knows...
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Paul Rand
This poster has hung on my wall for over fifteen years now. I designed it for Paul Rand's last public talk just before he passed away, with a link to a Q&A I did with him (unfortunately there's no...
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What is Strategy
My wise friend, Josh Spear, has an agency that says strategy is "the practice of figuring out the best way to get from here to there." The above diagram provides their view on this key topic of...
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Earning, Gooding, Making (, Processing)
Yesterday I spoke at the Atlantic IDEAS conference with Paola Antonelli of MoMA on the nature of design in the age of technology. I always find it helpful to be in front of folks that are unfamiliar...
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Bill Moggridge on What is Design?
The late Bill Moggridge says it well in his 1-hour lecture above delivered at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Bill's clear definition for "What is Design?" is about just two things: 1)...
View ArticleSocial Design
I've been thinking about the social design space recently, and note the Curry Stone Design Prize which is now in its fifth year as realizing solid definitions there. The following quotes were notable...
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Google on What is Design?
According to Google, "design" is both a noun and verb. But that doesn't help us to know ... because a lot of words are both nouns and verbs. Its synonyms listed here lean toward the dominant word as...
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"What is Design?" back in 2007
I wrote a mini-essay on "What is Design?" back in 2007 for Technology Review: If you turn on your TV today, you may see a commercial for Target in which the word “DESIGN,” big and bold, flashes on a...
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"What is Design?" according to Bill Buxton
I found this short essay by interaction design pioneer Bill Buxton that spoke to the difficulty of defining design compared with the relative ease of defining a clear distinction between a sketch and...
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"What is Design?" according to Herbert Muschamp
The late New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote this piece just near the apex of the dotcom boom. It's a critique of a variety of trends in design that Muschamp saw emerging during...
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"What is Design?" as Principles Compiled by Jeremy Keith
Jeremy Keith has compiled a list of many design principles that cover a whole lot of perspectives ranging from software people like Bruce Tognazzini to hardware people like Danny Hillis to classic...
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"What is Design?" while reading Jono Hey's Sketchplanations
Jono Hey's archive of sketches-as-explanations are like watching TED talks manifested as simple 1- or 4-frame sketches. One of his sketches brought back my memory of learning design in Japan --...
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"What is Design?" while reading Joel-on-Software
Like most hybrid technology/design folks, I've long admired Joel Spolsky's writings. This piece from 2006 was extremely instructive. Spolsky argues that design is about making tradeoffs. Implicit to...
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"What is Design (Thinking)?" to Jane Fulton Suri and R. Michael Hendrix
In their article "Developing Design Sensibilities" Jane Fulton Suri and R. Michael Hendrix argue that "design thinking" isn't just a kind of method for businesses to begin to adopt, but instead there...
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"What is Design?" to Frank Chimero
Frank Chimero's book The Shape of Design is such a beautiful book and also a beautiful read. It was given to me by Charles Adler of Kickstarter when it came out -- I wish I had read it before. I got a...
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