If You Want to Invent a Better Shovel, Start Shoveling!

This is the Idea (Ideate) stage, the fun part. We get out a bunch of post-it-notes, colored pencils and leave our creativity loose. Or do we… If you want to invent a better shovel, start shoveling! What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using Read More …

Exploration Instead Of Definition

The Define Phase is well documented in the Plan of PDCA, Define of DMAIC, Discovery of Appreciative Inquiry or even the Dream of Disney. In the Explore stage of EDCA what makes this phase different? Paraphrased from Nigel Cross’s book, Engineering Design Methods: Strategies for Product Design: Designers tend to use conjectures about solution concepts Read More …

Empathy is at the Heart of Design

The difference between the thought process embedded in EDCA (Service Design) and the other disciplines of Lean can be summed up in one word: Empathy! It is a major differentiator between the traditional process methodologies of Six Sigma, and I say this tongue–in-cheek, Lean. Many times when you review Design for Six Sigma, Lean Startup, Read More …

SDCA & PDCA Are Needed For EDCA

SDCA and PDCA prepare you to maximize EDCA or Design. I like to use the term EDCA learned from Graham Hill to designate the Explore aspect of Lean. I view it as more of Design Type thinking content that allows for that collaborative learning cycle with a customer. Design and Innovation takes place outside the Read More …

Is the Word Innovation Over Used

In the 1970s, Aaron Marcus programmed a prototype desktop publishing page layout application for the Picturephone ™ at AT&T Bell Labs. He became the first designer to program virtual reality art-spaces while a faculty member at Princeton University, and directed an international team of visual communicators as a Research Fellow at the East-West Center in Read More …

An Interaction Design Conversation

Dave Malouf, @daveixd, is currently the Manager of Product Design at Rackspace, the open hosting company (RAX). They are responsible for all the administrative control panels for our Infrastructure as a Service, Management as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Networks as a Service system. Dave has been working primarily in Internet front-end design Read More …