By Reena Jana - May 15, 2012
Scott Barry Kaufman，一位专注于智力、创造力和性格等方面发展的认知心理学家，开始反思他在教育、商业和社会研究中所施用的方法——他通过多种手段接近对方，甚至包括文字和访谈这样的交流方式。Kaufman对目前心理学实验研究的深入浅出的分析见诸《今日心理学》、《哈佛商业评论》在线、《科学美国人》等刊物，以及他刚刚上线的个人站点，Creativitypost.com。
在文章中，Kaufman不断探讨了在任何创造性工作中，无论是组建一个家庭还是完成一篇博士论文，热情所扮演的角色。Kaufman拥有耶鲁大学心理学博士学位，在纽约大学任职，这位和善的先生不仅仅对于用创造力和热情来营造和谐有兴趣，他无惧于探讨实现某个目标的内在欲望会如何损害一个人的健康——特别是在被迫拥有热情的过度竞争环境当中。Kaufman试图讲述有害的热情和积极的热情之间的差异。或许需要逆转前者，鼓励后者。
By Reena Jana - May 14, 2012
By Tim Leberecht - May 13, 2012
Can social technology enable companies and the people within them to make better decisions? Can it improve corporate behavior? Can it perhaps even help restore the social contract between business and society? These are just some of the questions to be tackled by the “Reinvent Business” hackathon – a collaborative, rapid ideation and programming workshop – to be held in San Francisco on June 9-10, Hosted by frog and LRN, in partnership with BSR, Carnegie Mellon University, Dachis Group, Net Impact, Silicon Valley Bank, Fast Company, and the World Economic Forum, the two-day event will bring together software developers, designers, gamers, film makers, writers, business leaders, and other creative minds to imagine, design, and build a more human and truly social enterprise. The goal is both simple and bold: to develop concepts and prototypes for innovative products and services that have the capacity to transform business from within.
By Max Burton - May 11, 2012
Last week was the culmination of a 16-week Industrial Design junior level class from the California College of the Arts (CCA). The class was divided into two groups with two different subject areas for the students to choose from. Myself, Max Burton from frog and Karson Shadley from Shape Field Office taught a segment on ‘wearable sound’ and Chris Luomanen of Thing-Tank and Rob Swinton from Huge Design taught a segment on ‘personal mobile safety.’ To enhance the level of realism and to develop connections with the local professional design community, we held the final presentation of the students’ work at frog design in our San Francisco studio and Lunar‘s head office in Potrero Hill with many local industrial design professionals as guest critics.
The course is intended to emulate a real-life design project. Students go through the entire design process from choosing an end user and discovering opportunity areas through design research. They then go onto concept exploration, sketching, model-making, 3D CAD and rendering and final presentation. We put an equal emphasis on problem solving and a rigorous design process as we did on the final physical form factor. In today’s competitive marketplace for industrial design it is essential that students demonstrate their capacity for original-thinking and problem-solving skills as well as the high mastery of skills that are fundamental to be a successful industrial designer.
By Jonas Damon - May 4, 2012
As designers we enjoy figuring out new ways of interacting with the world around us. Clients often come to us with raw, just-invented technologies, and we help add a human perspective. New technologies prompt new forms, and we look for meaning in form. A product’s personality is the sum expression of the content it delivers, the function it performs, the behavior it elicits, and the aesthetic it portrays.
By Jan Chipchase - May 3, 2012
Imagine never having to look for a parking space ever again. Imagine that from here on out, this problem is solved. Fast-forward to 2025. You’re driving from Brooklyn to Manhattan...because driving in New York City, and everywhere else, has become much simpler a task than it was a decade or so before.
Or has it?
By Mattijs Knol - April 27, 2012
According to the book, Strategy and Business, by Booz and Company’s Barry Jaruzelski, Richard Holman, and Omar Daud, “Globalization has created scores of nimble competitors in every industry; as a result, the product development environment is too volatile for linear, standardized processes. In such a landscape, an approach that embraces the value of flexibility and unpredictability is needed to generate more stable and successful outcomes. Paradoxically, although gated processes are focused on linearity and order, they often result in chaos. In contrast, the agile model, driven by chaos and uncertainty at the front end, yields greater order at the latter stages of product development.” frog has adopted a facet of the agile model, Scrum Methodology, to create a flexible process that adapts to the constantly evolving needs of a client.
By Mario van der Meulen - April 27, 2012
前不久，我们上海工作室的视觉设计师与我分享了一张苹果公司Logo的设计图， 展示了设计所用的原型结构和看似十分复杂的数学原理。一个中国朋友想知道是不是西方一个“好设计”必定是经过详细周密的计算。在我们的谈话中，我将这种设计原理和已有的中国风水实践相结合了起来。
By Andrea Bebber - April 25, 2012
“One of Albert Heijn’s greatest strengths as a company is our ability to understand what the customer wants and translate that insight into innovative products and services.” - Dick Boer, President and CEO
By Mario van der Meulen - April 25, 2012
Earlier this week, one of our visual designers in Shanghai shared a jpg file depicting the Apple Inc. icon, and its construction using circles and seemingly complicated math. A native Chinese, he wondered if the Western icon had to be designed so pre-calculated in order to be considered as “good design.” During our talks, I related this design principle to the established Chinese practice of Feng Shui.
