You’ve done some hard thinking to see whether design research is right for your project and spent some time preparing your design research team with the information that they’ll need to be successful. Now it’s time for the fun part: riding along with the team to hear from your prospective Read more…
In my last post, I gave a quick introduction to design research. In this article, I’ll focus on what you can do as a business to prepare your team for the field. My next post gives some practical advice for the interview if you get to ride along with the research team! Read more…
Your developers have been coding furiously for days working on the “Minimum Viable Product” perfectly tuned for the most lucrative market (according to the pricey quant study that just came back). When demo day comes you proudly show off the latest features – a marvel, to be certain; all of the Read more…
More than logic, humans base value assumptions on deviations from established norms. Stories are persuasive because they provide a platform for an artificial experience that can shift a person’s perception of “Normal.” I: What “Normal” is and why it is important Using logic to solve tough problems is one of Read more…
This morning I was doing some reflection on the difference between Data and Information (specifically thinking about the DIKW Pyramid). While the distinction is inherently simple, I’ve always had a difficult time describing it, so here is what I came up with – Data is Objective, Information is Subjective Data is Read more…
At the advice of co-worker Hammans Stallings, the next book for 2014 is The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What It Means for Business and Society by Eric Beinhocker. Complex Adaptive Systems: The purpose of this book is to propel a shift from traditional economics methodologies Read more…
The second book of 2014 is The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg. In it, Duhigg deconstructs habits in a series of anecdotes and that help us understand what they are, how they form, how they change, and what the aggregate effects Read more…
Now that I’ve finished Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, I want to add a few more ideas from the book to my list that I missed earlier, and then sum it up with a review. So, a few more important concepts: Mental Accounting: Often times, we’ll allocate Read more…
I’ve made it a little further in Nudge and would like to outline the authors’ rules for designing useable systems which they have, well, stretched, into the acronym NUDGE: Incentives: Provide Incentives for good decision making, even if they are small. It is important to remember that the fundamentals of Read more…
So, the first book of 2014 is Nudge, Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein. I picked it up because my new goal, here in a few years, is to go back to grad school for a degree in Economics and I’d like Read more…