Blog design mind on GOOD
By Laura Seargeant Richardson - March 10, 2010
Photo (cc) by Flickr user Leo Reynolds.
An open letter to the next generation of designers, part 1.
Blog Amphibious
By Adam Richardson - December 10, 2009
Blog frogs on the road
By Various frogs - October 3, 2009
Over the past few days, IIT held their annual Design Research Conference. The conference, run and organized entirely by the students of IIT’s institute of Design and led by graduate students Tal Shay and Kate Pemberton, brings together practitioners and students in an intimate setting to discuss issues of design, research, business, culture and society.
I gave a talk that I’ve been building and refining for the past few months, entitled “A new global design intellectualism: predicting – and avoiding – the commoditization of design research.” The talk articulates what I’ve observed over the past decade as a repeated cycle of offshoring, responsive process innovation, and cultural expectations point to the demise of a particular skill or set of methods in the United States.
Blog design mind On Air
By Chris Sallquist - September 29, 2009
design mind's mission is to share insights into and provide commentary about global cultural trends at the intersection of design, technology, and business. This quest has taken many forms: a print magazine, original online content, blogs, video series, and a social media platform that continues to grow. Now design mind is venturing into the world of audio. It is our pleasure to bring you design mind On Air, a podcast that will introduce you to the designers, scientists, psychologists, sociologists, photographers, and thinkers at frog design — and the ideas they work with every day.
design mind On Air features designers, technologists, and business strategists sharing their thoughts on design and innovation. For each episode, the On Air host Chris Sallquist, from frog's Seattle studio, sits down with a fellow frog to discuss fresh perspectives on industry trends, emerging technologies, and global consumer culture.
Our first episode examines the influence of power in design research and the role of design research as a catalyst for examining our own assumptions and creating the “light bulb” moment. Chris talks to frog Creative Director Denise Gershbein about the challenges, motivations, and hilarious anecdotes that come with the profession.
Blog Rural China
By frog Shanghai - August 4, 2009
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2008 the rural population in China — those who live outside of major and small urban areas — numbered 721.35 million. That's over half of China’s population. Their average net income is RMB 4761 per year (roughly equal to USD $700) with a growth rate of 8.0 percent compared to last year. The poverty rate is 5.54 percent. 38.2 percent of the rural population finishes doesn't make it past elementary school.
Blog frogKids
By frogKids - April 30, 2009
Blog frogs on the road
By Various frogs - April 11, 2009
As a Design Researcher, hearing Jan Chipchase’s talk at CHI was inspiring. He discussed his nuggets of discovery around the world and told the stories with beautiful photography.
Jan brought up a range of contrasts that I found interesting. He made the point that innovation often happens at the socioeconomic extremes - with technologically advanced cultures as well as very impoverished ones. As he describes, “when the cost is so low, acting becomes easy.”
Blog TotalDesign
By Nick de la Mare - March 1, 2009
Too often, design companies throw around terms like user-experience design, user-interaction design and human-centered design, proclaiming that the sole motivation, and center of their design target, is the end-user experience. It’s a noble proclamation, and most would be hard-pressed to disagree. But here’s a dirty little secret: in reality, and much to the chagrin of user-centered design proponents, it’s not all about the user.
Blog Amphibious
By Adam Richardson - February 17, 2009
Picking up on my colleagues Robert Fabricant and Jon Kolko talking about the recent IxDA conference, I thought I'd add a few thoughts. I didn't attend the conference, but their posts about behavior and its place in interaction design struck a chord with me.
Robert's argument is that the true medium of interaction designers is not technology, but behaviors.
Blog Design4Impact
By Robert Fabricant - November 13, 2008
Perhaps the most remarkable talent that Jan Chipchase showcased in his talk last week (I promise this is my last post on the subject) was his ability to create powerful community-based organizations on the fly in some of the least likely environments - urban slums in Ghana for example. While this started out as a SWAT activity to support rapid immersion and research, with Open Studios he is making his pop-up organizations much more visible in the community (which raising some interesting branding questions which I will cover in a later post).
If you havent checked out Open Studios, the basic idea is that Chipchase and team turn their SWAT ethnography into a design lab - reaching out to the community in a very visible way to gather ideas as part of a competition. The samples he showed last week centered around a competition to design your dream mobile handset. I have to say I was a bit disappointed in the topic. Seemed like they got alot of cheesy hardware design. Jan was clear the real value was not the designs themselves, but the needs and desires implicit in those designs. But I think he may be missing an even bigger opportunity to create value.
