Blog Design4Impact
By Robert Fabricant - January 10, 2012
Like many of you, I was delighted to find an Amazon Kindle Fire sitting on my desk a few weeks ago, when it was first released. My delight was heightened by the fact that I hadn't actually bought it. The Fire belonged to another Robert in frog's New York studio, Robert Curtis, who was more than happy to unbox the product with me so that we could both get a sense of the quality of that crucial "first" user experience with the product. Lest there be any doubt as to whose Fire it was, the screen immediately displayed a personal message: "Hello Robert Curtis. Welcome to Kindle Fire" (even though it was not yet connected to our Wi-Fi network).
Blog Design4Impact
By Robert Fabricant - April 13, 2011
Bruce Nussbaum was right to close the book on Design Thinking. It is time to move on. Business never really got the message. What businesses continue to care about is innovation. While designers may think that innovation requires Design Thinking, that was an idea that never really stuck in the executive suite. Is “creativity” any different? Most executives will acknowledge that innovation requires some form of creativity. But creativity brings its own baggage.
Blog Design4Impact
By Robert Fabricant - May 25, 2010
Have "design thinking" and "social innovation" become permanently intertwined? You'd have to think so based on Tim Brown's book and the prevailing discourse at any major design/innovation conference (SXSW, PICNIC, GEL, GAIN, LIFT). There seems to be a firm belief that you can't establish any cred as a designer these days if you haven't applied design thinking to a major social issue of some sort (health, energy, education...). Similarly, it would seem that social innovation (or social entrepreneurship) is hopeless without a designer at your side.
Blog Design4Impact
By Robert Fabricant - April 9, 2010
By now, you are drowning in commentary on the iPad. So, let me get to the point: Don't be fooled by the fancy hardware and "magical" talk: Apple isn't really committed to tablet computing ... yet.
Blog Design4Impact
By Robert Fabricant - September 11, 2009
The hype around the iTablet is reaching a fever pitch with the Kindle increasingly looking like yet another example of Apple roadkill. If Apple can consume 32% of the profits in the mobile phone biz in less than three years, it should be no problem to swallow the nascent e-reader business in one quick bite. No sooner had Jeff Bezos graced the cover of Fast Company than the Kindle was pronounced dead by the digiterati (actually, it was "Kindle in Danger of Becoming E-books' Betamax," according to Brett Arends in the Wall Street Journal). With competition for e-readers heating up, will Jeff be able to defend his walled garden from rivals inside and outside the category that he built?
