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"Design challenges are inherently complex - and every client has their own particular knots to untie - but over the years, our experience has shown that better service design depends on overcoming four crucial problems that are common to all our clients: how to get closer to consumers; how to collaborate across every part of the organisation; how to create a strong narrative that inspires key people and finally, how to conquer the fear of failure. Hand in hand with identifying the problems our clients all share has gone the development of techniques to tackle them. This article takes a look at these in detail and shows how they can be used in collaboration with organisations of every size and in every business."

By IDEO's Fran Samalionis, published in the new book Designing Services with Innovative Methods by Satu Miettinen and Mikko Koivisto.

ID magazine awarded IDEO a design distinction in its Annual Design Review 2009 for work on the Peek. According to the magazine, “It’s a game-changer,” and praised the interface and cheap access, explaining, “It’s all part of the easy-tech revolution.” Click here for the full article.

Fast Company blogger Craig Pelkey-Landes writes on IDEO’s method card deck in “IDEO Method Cards Turn, Um, 7!” Read the article here.

BusinessWeek’s “Innovation of the Week” podcast highlights Kara Johnson’s latest book, I Miss My Pencil (co-authored with Martin Bone). In the interview with BusinessWeek, Kara walk listeners through the book’s freewheeling experimentation. Listen to the podcast here or visit the I Miss My Pencil website.

June 24, 2009

Why do many internal Web 2.0 systems fail to thrive? Is it culture? Fear of new technology? Unspoken rules around collaboration and competition? Designing solutions that work means finding triggers for individual motivation, insisting on simple and intuitive UI, and integrating into existing workflows. IDEO’s Gentry Underwood shares key insights derived from his experience building knowledge sharing systems internally in his talk, “How to build collaborative software that people will actually use.” For more information about the conference, click here.

June 23, 2008

Jocelyn Wyatt will speak at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco. She will participate in two panel discussions – one on innovation and one on social intrapreneurship.

PATTERNS is an ongoing effort that lets the IDEO team share some of the common insights we see bubbling up across projects, as well as out in the world. They are a foundation for intuition. A way to elevate insights to the level of cultural impact. And a way to tap into IDEO's collective intelligence to do better work for our clients — even faster.

IDEO kicks off PATTERNS with Business in Beta by Colin Raney, who considers how to build a business around a new-to-world concept or in an unknown market.

Visit the PATTERNS site here.

Paul Bennett was interviewed on Survival of the Fastest. The initiative is the product of a partnership between London Business School, the Daily Telegraph and Google, and aims to provide “unique bite-sized insights contributed by some of the UK’s leading organisations.”

View the video clips here:
• “The importance of asking the right questions”
• “What will winning organisations look like in 18 months' time?”
• “How do business leaders prepare for the upturn?”

IDEO’s Tim Brown is part of a new iGoogle launch of homepages created by world-renowned celebrities and thought leaders, including Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, and Dave Matthews. Add some of Tim’s favorite gadgets to your own homepage with just a click. There are sketches of IDEO mind maps, photos of our global offices, updates from Tim’s blog about Design Thinking, as well feeds from his top online picks, including Bringatrailer.com for finding great vintage cars.

Core77 reviews Martin Bone and Kara Johnson’s recently released book, I Miss My Pencil. The 240-page tome considers what inspires designers to design. The authors provoke new ways of seeing the objects that surround us. Click here for the full review on Core77.

Financial Times reporter Sarah Murray spoke with IDEO’s Sabine Müllauer, based out of IDEO’s Munich office, about designing medical devices. In the article, Sabine explained, “The concept of old age has changed significantly in last few decades. They’re working, very active, participating in sports and starting businesses … So it’s really extremely important to have a next generation of designs for this age group.” Click here for the full article.

Design critic and columnist for both the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, Alice Rawsthorn wrote about the notion of “form follows function.” For the article, she spoke with Kara Johnson, a material scientist and co-author of the book I Miss My Pencil. In the story, Kara explains that “people are always ready for new or better or more sophisticated experiences — digital and physical.” For Kara, “the role of the designer is to make them simple and meaningful.”

IDEO sketched out fourteen scenarios to answer one big question: How will we get our news after the current model bottoms out? In these scenarios, we see that information has become even more personalized and hyperlocal—and, paradoxically, more communal, participatory, and global. To download a PDF of the full article, which originally ran in the June issue of San Francisco magazine, click here. To read San Francisco magazine’s story about IDEO’s process and the creation of the “future of news” scenarios, click here.

View the PDF

IDEO’s Ted Howes was part of the final panel at Greener by Design 2009. As part of the “Designing for Energy Efficiency” panel, Ted explained that “In the real world, people don’t want energy efficiency; they don’t think about ROI [return on investment].” “You have to build on what people care about,” he said. To read a Reuters article about the panel, click here.

Every year Miami-based research firm Universum publishes a list of where B-school students most want to work for an exclusive Fortune.com list. This year, IDEO ranks fifteenth on the list. For the full Fortune article, click here.

Mat Hunter will speak on a panel hosted by The Foundation Forum, entitled “The Last Thing We Need Right Now Is Innovation.” Mat will pose the question of whether or not we’re focusing our innovation efforts on the right challenges. The talk will take place on Tuesday, May 19, 6:30 to 8:15 pm GMT at The Arts Club in London.

On May 15th, 2009, Tim Brown will participate in the Talking Design series, chaired by Alice Rawsthorn at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he will discuss IDEO’s work in redefining industrial design and pioneering concepts of service design. Read more about the event here. Or, follow Tim’s blog about design thinking.

Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management will present Tom Kelley with its annual award for distinguished leadership on May 19.

文 Richard Kelly（IDEO亚太区总裁）

增长市场的关键不在于对科技研发主导的产品进行逐步的改善和优化，真正的业务增长来自于对用户的理解：揭示消费者未被满足的、未被提出的需求，然后满足这些需求

In China-based Business Watch, IDEO’s Richard Kelly writes about what happens when China shows the world its design-driven innovation, rather than merely its technology-based R&D innovation. He explains why a human-centered approach to design is so well suited to the Chinese market, where consumers have a rapacious appetite for new experiences and accelerated learning.