Interface Design Skills for Coders (and vice-versa)

6 October, 2010
Design, Development
1 Comment

Like a technical peanut butter cup - two great skill sets that go great together. What really happens when artists and coders mash things up? Intuitive Interactions: Are application developers adept at effective design? I think, as a group, no - witness all of the effort put forth to wrap "user friendly screens" in front of ERPs major and minor. Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, SQLWindows, and their ilk spawned legions of wanna-be UI designers, presented with a multitude of gadgets, and…

Design Thinking and Process – Practical Examples (2 of 2)

29 September, 2010
Design
0 Comments

So, design thinking can have a positive impact on how you do what you do, and it may very well be hidden inside, waiting to get out. Ok, you are intrigued, you might even believe you can release the designer in you. Where to next? How to get started? Practical Expressions of "Good Design" Like most tech folks, you will need something a bit more concrete that just seeing something effective on the screen; some guiding principles and "rules of…

Design Thinking and Process – Is It In You? (1 of 2)

21 September, 2010
Design
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Continuing a bit on my recent Design meme; I talk about the current relevance of design thinking, and the impact it can have on change management - but if it feels a bit foreign, how can you tell if you have it in you? Do You Think Visually? Interesting how Design always seems to have a strong visual component, even though functional design (like my data warehouse or the structure of my house) is not directly visible. Still, I thought…

Design and Change Management

14 September, 2010
Change Management, Design
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Over my career, I have developed a few strongly-held design beliefs, and one came up in conversation recently, during a spirited discussion on minimal quality requirements for a[ny] data mart. I hold that the data copied from source to destination must be provably correct and complete with little effort. When agile-ly rolling staged deliverables into production, I may not have all the attributes in place for full flexibility of drill down, but if you have [say] 1248 records in the…

It’s Design, not Decorating

10 September, 2010
Design
1 Comment

A few months ago, I read Dan Pink's book, A Whole New Mind. Excellent stuff, with echoes in his video What Really Motivates Us? (check it out here), and it introduced me to the idea of "right mind thinking". I've had a great respect for and interest in Architecture over the years, and have watched with great fascination (and a bit of jealousy) as my daughter progresses through her Interior Design studies at the University of Cincinnati (she's the quote…

Sorting with Sound

via Geek.com - yes, I subscribe to stuff like this in my RSS reader ... httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8g-iYGHpEA I thought this was interesting on two levels ... The Engineering student within appreciates the differences in sorting techniques (although I think I could speed up that bubble sort ...) I also think these videos provide a simple illustration of the power of multi-media information sharing; the audio helps the animated "description" of the sorting techniques httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXAjiDQbPSw I freely admit to be a bubble-sort…

A Little Too Literal (or, How to Teach Innovation)

Spoiler alert: It can't be taught ... One of the questions I get - and I'm getting this a lot lately - is how to get people to think more analytically, less literally. We need folks to stop focusing on the mechanical task of manipulating reports with Excel just to compute some answers. How about learning to use Excel, Access, and whatever native query / data download tools are available - to pull some data from the system, just to…

The Magic In the Middle – Practical Tactics for Digital Success

25 July, 2010
Popular, Change Management, Purposeful Innovation
0 Comments

Most projects would be considered a failure if they only got 20% of their promised value. Then again, no one expects 100% success - some folks will never make the change. Is there a middle ground? Absolutely! Read on for practical pointers and targets to focus on - with examples of unexpected benefits.

What Really Motivates Us? Insights for your Tech Team

Over the last month or so, a large number of authors in my RSS reader called attention to Dan Pink's 'Drive' video ... httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc Props to Cool Infographics (home of the Caffeine Poster!) with the post that introduced me to the video. Key insight from Randy Krum: is this a video? A well done presentation? Or another innovative infographic? Global Nerdy (a site with style and substance - content does not match the title!) calls out that this idea has…

Defining Business Benefits: Hard and Soft

6 July, 2010
Business Value of IT, Project Management
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All projects should have a clear objective, a practical plan, and an understanding of the costs and benefits to get the thing done. Easy to say, but a lot of project teams struggle to crisply and clearly define specific business benefits. One way to move the process forward would be to have a clear understanding of the types of business benefits you might claim. Hard benefits come from firm commitments to make measurable differences in the amount of revenue generated…