Design Sojourn

Innovation is Getting Out From Under a Street Lamp

Post-it Jaguar by Scott Ableman

Legendary 3M inventor of the Post-it Note, Art Fry, shares his words of wisdom on innovation, creativity and getting disruptive products into the market. A wonderful read for all innovators, designers and entrepreneurs.

Q – Fact or fiction: Post-it® notes were an accident?

Art – A lot of people would like to think that you get something for nothing. A discovery might be an accident. But an innovation requires so much work. I use the analogy that we’re all working under a street light. We’re acquainted with what we see and work with day in and day out. But out there in the darkness there is so much stuff that we don’t know about that if we send somebody out and they feel around and find something and bring it back, we all have something we can work on. But sending those people out to look is not an accident.

Here are a few more notable quotes which showed how a disruptive innovation, something people do not understand, is made acceptable to consumers by going through a process of design thinking anchored by critical insight, observation and user centered research.

Reinventing Work

Click graphic to see it bigger!

Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin (Amazon link), reinvents work by challenging everyone to be an “Artist” now! (Check out the Linchpin manifesto graphic above for a gist!) This is something most designers should already do well, and then again for some of you maybe do better?

Now, if the man on the street is encouraged to work with passion and artistry, how is a designer, whose work is about passion and artistry, going to do one better?

Design’s Return on Investment

Looks like China is getting it when it comes to design.

In a recent interview on the local Chinese CCTV, Chen Dongliang, Director of the Beijing Industrial Design Center, has highlighted the tremendous economic value of Industrial Design to China’s economy.

The output value of industrial design in Beijing reached 80 billion yuan in 2008. Now around 250-thousand employees are working for nearly 20-thousand design companies in the city. Beijing is also expanding technology service and high-end manufacturing industries, both of them can help boost the industrial design sector.

That’s just in 2008! While the job definition of an Industrial Designer in China is pretty broad, even if we discount their statistics, it is still a lot of people and money.

What is more interesting is their next set of statistics.

Why are there so few truly remarkable products?

It’s quite simple really.

Our industrialized economy, founded on mass manufacturing and economies of scale spurred by consumerism, is the greatest enemy of remarkable products.

Of course many products will come close, in fact many will be hailed as fantastic or even great, but the truly remarkable will be few and far between.

People striving to create awesomely remarkable products can do so because it is actually quite straightforward. Unfortunately it rarely happens, as making remarkable products is a constant uphill battle against the basic machinery that makes it all happens.

Lets take a look and see why.

Frustrated Consumer Designs a Dead Simple Headphone Wire Management Solution

A Lifehacker reader, frustrated with every headphone wire management solution in the market, decided to design his own dead simple solution that I dare say rivals any professionally designed consumer solution! I do wonder why designers can’t seem to get away from reinterpreting the dog bone, fish bone or donut?

Product Hack found in the Back Streets of Hong Kong

A colleague recently shared with me an interesting product proposition he purchased. It’s not really a product proposition as such, but an interesting mix of different electronic components slapped together in a “why did I not think of that” manner. It was purchased for under USD $50 from the back streets of Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po electronics district.