Monday 5 June 2017

Apple 'got' design for $2.5M in 1982 and by a Frog. Here's how Steve did it.

Ever wonder how Apple 'got' design? Like Gates bought DOS, Steve bought design for $2.5M/yr in 1982. Here's how Steve did it and not as Fast Company says: 


Even Fast Company scrubs the data & history but not as Christopher Mims @ Quartz magazine reports it and described here. Like any market advantage, a competitive advantage starts well before personal popular culture (read advertising and 'news') has us believe or is even aware of the advantage itself. Microsoft exists because Gates bought DOS for $50K and turned it into Windows for IBM. AC and DC were fought after by Thomas Edison who developed the opposing format to thwart competitors and performed hundreds of experiments on filaments with a whole team of researchers not inventing the lightbulb, Ive's didn't usher design into the entire culture of Apple: I've's entire group was the prodigy of a Frog - the son of Hartmut Esslinger.

It isn't often that we stop to may homage to the firms whose shoulders that we here at iGNITIATE stand on top of, but after years of knowing Hartmut and the folks at Frog, and the recent articles on design at Apple being always there from the beginning, we thought to jump in on the "correction" of the marketing machine that is Apple, Issacshons book, and Ashton's movie on the late, great Steve. However in the beginning, there was Hartmut and his firm Frog and fact that Apple bought design, brought it right into the boardroom and did it all for $1m/yr in 1982 or $2.5M 2013 dollars and the article How I Taught Steve Jobs To Put Design First tells all.

Hartmut goes on to describe how From Phones To Tablets: 26 Apple Designs That Never Came To Be and How to Innovate, Step by Step which Hartmut know exactly what he is talking about.



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Wednesday 31 May 2017

Infographics - Your Savior in New Product Launches

It has happened to every designer,  entrepreneur & product developer & it even happens to international firms launching new services - the launch black hole. How is it that designers of new products, businesses and even services miss what's out there? The solution: not utilizing design & market infographics. How do world class companies do it? They do it here:



And, as shown in this infographic of every kitchen utensil made, by type the playing field is defined. More, there are any number of similar examples for every other product and even service out there. A quick look, the 10,000 meter view is what separates innovators from the also rans. How does your firm stack up in the way it looks for new opportunities?




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Thursday 25 May 2017

Design Leaders – How to Make Them



Is there a delineation between designers and managers and can there be a back and forth training? Yes and no. 


In Delineating Design Leaders we see the clear identification and breakdown of the way that design and design managers are utilized. Can there be a difference in the way that these groups operate and the way they are able to encourage each other as a mechanism for further creative output? Yes. The key is content and creation. As evidence clearly uncovers, it is design leaders, who relentlessly focus on product and operate as a profoundly design-centric function involving a ‘hands-on’ approach. These individuals provide the vision that is catalyzed by actively leading designers and broader team members to produce differentiation and rapid change in response to demanding environmental factors [ibid].




  

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Thursday 18 May 2017

Symbols Things Actions Thoughts – Designs New Embodiment

What is the point of design and design thinking clients often ask. Permanence. From here the only question is how that is turned into profit for those firms involved in such an investment. Here’s how.



With typical academic fervor in Design Research and the New Learning it becomes clear the mechanisms of how firms can embody the clarity of turning Symbols Things Actions Thoughts into ROI for design thinking centric projects and clients.




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Wednesday 10 May 2017

Want Full Eco(control) Design? Design Physical & Digital Products

Investors don't like physical products? Why? Physicality costs & yet, Digital is as fleeting as haute couture. Are there options? Yes. Think like Gillette for the 21st century - physical + digital design. Here's how:



Wired Labs has a good starting point: Bundling Digital and Physical but that is just the beginning as the investigation is where the juice comes out: 
     1) Ask why do it at all and what is this new thing that people are going to carry around?
     2) See who's done it, so many have: Jawbone, UP, Brawn Electric Shavers w/skin sensors, naturally MP3 players, but there are others: Swifter, Roomba, Canary, etc. - we've examined these before.
     3) How's it going to expand over time as if it isn't a platform and it can't learn or adapt what's the point? 
     4) Planned obsolescence for alternative purposes: you've still got your old laptop around somewhere using it for other purposes? There are whole companies dedicated to recycling - yet another part of the ecosystem that your firm should be owning

And these are just a few of the ways. 
Naturally through disruptive design, there are a host more. 



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Tuesday 2 May 2017

Conceptual Blending: Cultural Referencing for Innovation


When design is left to it’s own, it’s as if leaving a musician in a sealed room. But not with mechanisms for blending external stimulus? Correct.


Design when left to its own devices has the choice to focus on the purely mechanical capabilities of function to determine it’s output or the relative nature of temporal and physical form to content with. But when the factor of archetype and cultural blending is implemented a whole other form of innovation is experienced.

In A Case Study On Design With Conceptual Blending several tools are defined and their application to allow design to take it’s place and build upon cultural references thus producing a conceptual blending output that further aligns itself with the values of users and well as those guided by the archetypes the cultural underpinnings evoke. End result: value. 




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