After working with a variety of tools purporting to help define and develop new products, I can tell you I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated by how difficult they are; Even something as basic as the underlying need, whether articulated as a ‘customer pain’ or a ‘painkiller’ or a ‘need’ (vs. a ‘nice to have’) the final […]
Category: Innovation
DoubleShot Coffee’s Single-Click Order Dashboard Widget
Yesterday, I came across the DoubleShot Coffee Order Widget. DoubleShot Coffee, the same Tulsa, OK folks on the receiving end of a trademark infringement claim by Starbucks, just made one giant leap for ecommerce. Simplicity and Persistence. After setting up credit card information on the widget’s backside, select one of their 18 coffees from the […]
A Good Scale for Rating An Idea
“That’s not an idea that’ll make you a million dollars tomorrow, that’s an idea that’ll make you a billion dollars some day in the future” – Patrick Kuntz
Software Distribution History: Shrinkwrap to Download to Appcasting
NetNewsWire, my preferred RSS reader, isn’t particular about the file type within a given podcast. Audio (podcasting), video (videoblogging), images, pdfs (like 101sheets), torrents, or even applications (appcasting?). As you can tell from the appcasting link, Fraser Speirs was the first I knew of using an RSS feed to distribute his excellent iPhoto Flickr plugin. […]
Theres Always More Than One Way
“Don’t ever allow yourself to believe that there is only one way to make ideas real.” – Scott Berkun Stated more traditionally, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” The great thing about roadblocks is they force an evaluation of goals. For example, you’d like to publish a book and are continually rejected […]
Kayak and PinPoint Changing the Face of Online Travel
A couple years back, I helped Orbitz.com redesign their shopping process. During that time, if you wanted to book travel the major players were Expedia and Travelocity, with Orbitz aiming to be the more usable, better-looking alternative. Today, those three players are equally mature and equally less than compelling. They don’t capture all airlines and […]
More Gets You to Better
As I mentioned in my interview at Podcast411.com, I had an art professor who believed everyone had 5,000 bad drawings in them. Five thousand drawings bad drawings before the good ones could come out. This perspective is re-iterated in Throw More Pots over at Crossroads Dispatches. In this same token, I’m a firm believer every […]
Care and Feeding of Your Harshest Critics
Marqui is paying people to test drive and blog about their content management system. From Marc Canter on the origins of the idea: When I first came up with the idea – the question was poised “what if they blog something negative?” My answer was “that’s a good thing! Can you imagine how powerful it […]
Once More, In Half the Time
I apologize for the length of this letter, but I didn’t have time to make it shorter. – Mark Twain Twain was referring to the fact that refining something down to it’s essence takes iteration. Each iteration abbreviates the time necessary to produce and consume the item. I offer the Van Buren Law of Iteration: […]
The Smoke in Need of a Fire-Breathing Dragon
“This sounds like part of an idea. It’s the smoke, and we still need a fire-breathing dragon.” This statement was exclaimed by one of the students I’m working with in my involvement with MCAD‘s Visualization program. I was leading the team through a ideation evaluation exercise – culling down their large number of brainstormed concepts […]