Blog - Tommaso Nervegna - Design Director

5 Best Digital Tools and Resources for Design Thinking

Tommaso Nervegna — Sat, 25 Nov 2017 13:11:36 +0000

One of the main ingredients that make Design Thinking so effective is collaboration. Whether working alone or collaboratively, it is extremely important to capture every single aspect of the workshop in the most effective ways.

To do so where utilize post-it notes, clips, posters, Legos, material samples and any other tool that allows us to iterate fast before moving on to the next idea.

After a lot of research, I discovered that there is no single design thinking tool or platform that is right for every project. You need to handpick every single tool from your arsenal when the time comes.

Although few things could ever replace the simplicity of post-it notes (I’ve come to the point that, when I ask people who they think invented Design thinking, they usually answer Post-It), today’s digital collaboration platforms are becoming a powerful way to quickly iterate even with remote teams.

Here, I've rounded up some of my favorite Digital Tools and resources for design thinking:

TimeTimer Online by Design Thinking Coach

I found this extremely handy online TimeTimer to display full-screen during Design Thinking workshops.

A Time Timer is a visual timer designed to “show” the passage of time through the use of a patented red disk that disappears as time elapses. TimeTimers are typically quite expensive, so having a digital version for free could be very helpful for many practitioners.

Mural

MURAL is a visual collaboration workspace for modern teams. Based in the cloud, MURAL provides shared, digital whiteboards where teams visually explore complex challenges, facilitate design thinking methods, and organize Agile processes across any device.

A mural is a large, shared canvas for mapping content of all kinds. Think of it as a giant board or wall you can customize the way you want.

Smaply

In design projects all over the world, teams working in service design (or design thinking, experience design, UX, cx, etc.) often struggle with similar issues: What to do after a workshop? How to process workshop results? How to work with geographically dispersed teams? How to create professional deliverables with limited time and budget?

Smaply helps private and public organizations to successfully do design thinking workshops by …

Developing software to efficiently use basic service design tools such as personas, (customer) journey maps, and stakeholder maps.
Developing software to efficiently research customer experiences using mobile ethnography (ExperienceFellow).
Offering free templates as well as ready-to-use template packs and other workshop materials.

Prototype On Paper

POP helps you transform your pen and paper ideas into an interactive iPhone or Android prototype.

Quickly snap your sketches and then link them together to simulate your app idea.

It even allows you to record feedback and test your idea. POP allows you to instantly get feedback on your ideas with user testing, commenting and collaboration tools.

Moleskine Smart Writing Set

The high-end notebook vendor has packaged a 'smart' pen with a specially imprinted paper notebook that lets you transfer notes to a mobile device.

As a compromise between yesterday's and today's writing technologies, Moleskine recently introduced its Smart Writing Set, which includes the Pen+, a version of the Neo Smartpen N2, and a notebook designed to be used with the Pen+ (and which, according to Moleskine's PR, "is purposefully designed with extended rounded edges to look like a tablet"). The Pen+ works with a mobile app to record everything you write in the notebook in digital format.

Everything then gets synced to Evernote or other Cloud Account. Magic.

Can you think of anything I missed? Let me know in the comments!

Design Thinking Summit 2017 - Prague, 19-20 October 2017

Tommaso Nervegna — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 13:10:59 +0000

As the urgency for innovation is higher than ever before, organizations are trying to find creative ways to grow in this design-centric culture, by putting more emphasis on the user experience.

Take charge of your business processes and get a competitive advantage, establish new strategies for growth and lead your team to achieve success by efficient design thinking practices.

Be sure to save the dates as the Design Thinking Summit will take place on 19-20 October 2017! Come and join me in Prague to learn how to leverage from design thinking in product innovation and customer experience, and how to open new channels to creativity within your business.

I'll be talking about Data Led Design Sprints: A framework to define a human-centric approach to consumption, intelligent decision making, and analytics adoption.

Designers who apply Design Thinking can—and should—propose drastic, daring changes. And if they want their clients or other stakeholders to actually agree, they should back up their design hypotheses with data.

“Design is a really loaded word. I don’t know what it means. So we don’t talk a lot about design around here, we just talk about how things work. Most people think it’s about how they look, but it’s about how they work” – Steve Jobs

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5 Lessons I learned after facilitating 40+ Design Thinking workshops

Tommaso Nervegna — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 12:50:45 +0000

Design Thinking is a mindset that encompasses a pluralist systemic thinking that aims at building a better future.

People seem to think that it’s a sort of wizardry trick to create innovative products and services, however it is not a magic toolbox of solutions to problems; it does not follow a linear thinking model and cannot be over simplified, at the risk of losing its value.

“Design Thinking is the balance between business and art, structure and chaos, intuition and logic, playfulness and formality, control and empowerment.”

— Concept extracted from Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation, Idris Mootee

In practice, Design Thinking is a human-centred approach that accelerates innovation and brings about solutions for complex problems.

In the last 6 months, I had the opportunity to facilitate more than 40 Design Thinking sessions with clients, students and colleagues.

The experience I built after numerous iterations led me to identify 5 main lessons to be learned by any Design Thinking practitioner.

1. Design thinking isn’t magic

Design Thinking is not a one-shot vaccine; I like seeing it as a cooking class or an innovation fitness program that puts organizations on top of its game. It is not an “event”, limited to a single workshop, it is a way of thinking, communicating and doing every day.

I noticed that lots of design practitioners, including famous design agencies, explain how the end deliverable of design thinking is a high-level concept, a paper prototype or a storyboard. Without the commitment to the actual delivery of the concepts, Design Thinking is pointless.

Most agencies, after gathering some initial data and insights from customers, the experts then create an interface and hand it over to developers.

Anyone who has ever been involved in delivering project knows that initial insights are hardly sufficient. You need an understanding of the interaction and an implementation plan with deliverables and milestones.

If the team who'll be rolling up their sleeves and delivering the product weren't involved through the whole design thinking exercise, and if the design thinking exercise doesn't end up giving you a tested prototype design and an implementation plan, then it's nothing more than a set of unproven concepts.

For me, it’s vital to involve representatives from every discipline on the team in the design thinking process.

There's a myth that only design agency staff or marketing can do creative thinking, so you need them in order to bring creativity to your company.

Truth is, Design thinking helps every disciple get clearer about what their role will be, what tasks they need to perform, and what type of support they'll need to provide as the project moves forward.

2. Design Thinking is actually Design Doing

A full design thinking cycle always includes a validation phase where you build out the design concepts and test them with your customers.

During Design Sprints, my favorite design thinking framework, teams plan and prioritize the implementation details, so that you can move straight into the development process. I noticed that, when engaging an agency or learning new design thinking techniques from a design institute, you need to first check that the company that's going to work with you will take you all the way through to a working, tested prototype and project planning exercise.

When I conduct an intensive 5-day Design Thinking Academy, I always teach the importance of shifting from Design Thinking to Design Doing, else, a workshop would simply be a nice team building exercise.

Never hire agencies or send your team to courses where the output is simply a concept.

Good Design Thinking practitioners always show you how design thinking leads through to a validated prototype and a well-defined project plan.

3. It’s all about the design challenge

I experienced that I tend to spend more time defining the Design Challenger rather than actually applying Design Thinking during a workshop.

It is important to have a 360° view of the challenge.

During this time a team should be aggregating all the assumptions and hypothesis on the table and to let go of them.

It is vital to collect all the existing and available data that will be used to kick-off a session. This phase is a very important moment for the team, as this is the time for levelling the knowledge base and setting a well-defined perimeter.

My favorite Design Challenge formula is the following:

We will design ___________________

for _________________________________

because (they value)_______________

I then write the challenge on a piece of paper that is big enough so that everybody can read and pin it on the wall. I Highlight the words or short phrases that will be exploited separately. I dedicate some time to discuss the de notion and meaning of each section of the design challenge in my team.

A design challenge needs to be:

Relevant and tied to the team goals
Concise
Inspiring
Focused on a target audience or target segment

4. Embrace failure

“Fail often to succeed sooner”

— Ideo

The looks I get when I explain colleagues or clients that they need to fail often to succeed sooner…

I truly think that when you spend quality time on your creations, they will reveal themselves to you. But if you let your ideas grow wild, without any government, they will gain a life of their own, Ideas will become tangible and will reveal themselves for what they really are.

By listening to real customers throughout the validation of your ideas and because you've already tested your prototype ideas before you start actually building the real product, you can get a really good idea of which areas of the product are likely to give you the most benefits.

And you don't have to wait until you ship the product to see if you were right.

Usability tests and even user groups can be used to measure how successful the product is likely to be while it's still in development.

This early feedback helps you understand whether you’re on the right track and let’s adjust your course if required.

Testing and failing early will help you change direction or cancel the project with a lot less investment. And because you're working in a user centered way it's much less likely that you'll have to completely cancel it.

5. Always be tracking your successes

In the era of Big Data and data-driven services, how are you going to show that your crazy ideas created thanks to design thinking are worthwhile?

The only way is to track what you did, and then, to show how your actions directly impacted customer satisfaction and revenue.

People love storytelling. The way I like to present progress is to show photos of the early sketches and prototypes, then screenshots of the first alpha build, and the first release. People love following the story of how the project matured.

Even at this early stages, you can set some metrics so you know when you meet your goals.

I can’t count the times I saw development projects just weren't measured. How did they know if the project was failing?

Setting measurable goals helps you ensure that you really are delivering business benefit. You should measure early and often as you go through the iterative design thinking process.

You should be looking to collect two kinds of data, quantitative and qualitative. Numbers and words.

The numbers should be metrics that show how successful your project is. Customer satisfaction, acquisition or retention, as an example.

It will not be always possible to measure this kind of data easily, most of the time you'll have to estimate, or extrapolate these numbers. Especially in the early stages of a prototype. In any case you can always be measuring success.

And what about you? What are your most valuable lessons learned on Design Thinking?

Design Sprint Venice - 19th May 2017

Tommaso Nervegna — Mon, 22 May 2017 14:47:49 +0000

A Design Sprint is a one-day event which uses design thinking to reduce the intrinsic risks in successfully bringing products to market.

Together with an amazing team of UX mentors I run a Design Sprint for early and medium startups with the aim of teaching and share the Google Venture Product Design methodology to solve a specific business, UX or design challenge with an existing product.

During the Design Sprint, startups were taught into the methodology to clearly define goals when kicking off a new feature, workflow, product, business or solving design problems.

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5 Creative Google Home Commands

Tommaso Nervegna — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 12:07:52 +0000

By now you should be familiar with Amazon Echo and Google Home, those “smart” pieces of hardware that live in living rooms and respond to voice commands.

Unlike Echo, Google Home works seamlessly with Chromecasts so it can stream to your televisions, to your Hi-Fi speakers and has full access to Google’s search engine making it extremely useful in terms of voice search.

While being an upgrade to Siri or the standard Google Assistant on your Android device, Google Home by default did not fully amaze me.

In a matter of fact, Google Home, for now, does less than Amazon Echo, for instance, it can’t connect to an exchange account.

Google Home, during its first release, is an improved Google Assistant and connects to a small set of home automation devices such as Philips Hue, HoneyWell, SmartThings, WeMo and Nest.

With a couple of configurations, Google Home can also connect to services like Uber, Netflix, Instacart, and Openable, etc. I can see how Google plans to constantly upgrade the number of available services.

The following list aggregates some of the most interesting and creative uses of Google Home for Home Automation. These “recipes” will surely amaze you and your guests.

Turn on/off the TV

There are a couple of ways to turn on the TV.

First of all, you may simply connect a Chromecast to it. Be sure that your TV supports Consumer Electronics Control. In short, if you enable this feature on your TV you will allow tv dongles or external appliances such as a console to turn the tv on.

Turn it on by simply saying “Hey Google, play Stranger Things from Netflix on the TV”. The main problem is that you can’t turn it off…unless…

With a bit of extra effort, you can connect the google assistant to a Harmony Hub. You may do so my using this IFTTT recipe. Now simply say: "OK, Google, turn off the TV”.

Find your phone

Usually, when I lose my phone I use the Apple Watch functionality to make it ring, but what happens when I’m not wearing one?

I simply say, "OK, Google, find my phone," and Google Assistant initiates a call to my phone with this simple IFTTT recipe. When I finally answer, a recording says, "Hooray! You found your phone." Of course, this is only useful if your phone is on and not silenced.

Start vacuum cleaner by voice

Planning to buy a Robot Vacuum cleaner? Buy a Samsung POWERbot Wi-Fi vacuum. It works great with Google Now making it completely hands-free with this IFTTT recipe. go all in and make the activity hands-free. You can use your voice and Google Home. Say, "OK, Google, clean up" and the robot will begin its work.

Start the Coffee maker

I’m Italian, I only drink espresso. While I’m struggling to hack my Nespresso coffee machine in order to make it prepare my coffee the moment I wake up, you still can prepare an “American” coffee thanks to Wemo-enabled coffeemakers by simply activating this IFTTT recipe and saying: “OK, Google, it’s time to wake up”. Just remember to fill the machine with grounds and water!

Mailbox Notifier

With a friend we were wondering how to receive notifications on Google Home. After some research, I stumbled upon this article that provides a guide on how to achieve a workaround.

This discovery triggered a couple of ideas. Among them, the most interesting and useful one was allowing Google Home to notify you when you receive any new letters.

Fortunately, someone had already created a mailbox event notifier DIY project using Moteino. The project is quite straightforward. All you need is a couple of components, a Moteino and a lot of patience.

A One-Day Design Sprint: Crowdsourcing UX Design, Analysis and Usability testing

Tommaso Nervegna — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 15:47:21 +0000

Together with Accenture Digital and the Milan UX Book Club, last Saturday (20th March 2017) I hosted a one-day Design Sprint Workshop.

Since a typical Design Sprint should last 5 days, our fist challenge was to create a shorter version of the framework while keeping its effectiveness.

Building on the experience of past Design Sprints, we were able to create a hands-on workshop that allowed the participants to apply the methodology, learn how to facilitate a workshop, and provide feedback on the methodology itself at the end of the event.

Compressing a 5-day Design Sprint into a single day sounded impossible, but the participants were all members of the UX Book Club. This allowed us to have multidisciplinary teams all with deep knowledge of rapid prototyping and UX research.

The Challenge

The first step was identifying the Design Challenge. As Google suggests:

"A great design challenge is inspiring, short and specifies the target user groups and deliverables of the sprint."

However, we wanted to complicate things a little bit by providing a higher level design challenge:

Create a Crowdsourcing solution that allows its users to perform usability tests, design audits, User Experience optimizations and Heuristic evaluations.

This would allow the participants to design the portal from multiple perspectives: Designers, product managers, and start-uppers.

The idea of the design challenge came from a simple need: Test, Validate and enhance Prototypes created during Design Sprints.

Morning activities

The workshop methods and exercises used are briefly summarized in the following paragraphs. The gathered ideas were listed and evaluated by the groups in order to be able to systematically select the best ideas or elements of them for further development during the prototyping phase.

The morning was about breaking down the ideas into meaningful categories and defining strategies.

Each team created a user journey: a map that listed all the stages that a designer or a product manager goes through during his/her day in relation to our design challenge.

After that each team completed the customer journeys, each participant was asked to identify pain points or gaps based on the as-is set of Americana services. Each team member selected a specific touchpoint or gap, to improve with innovative ideas.

Participants then were asked to work individually and sketch 8 ideas in 5 minutes. This exercise is called Crazy 8s.

The aim is to identify solutions to frustration points selected from the customer journey.

Continuing the previous exercise, the team members now had to work individually and sketch 1 big idea and give it a catchy title.

Given the short amount of time that each team member had to create his own ideas, most of them may have needed a reality check.

The quickest way to do this is through a speed critique activity.

Each team member passed his own Big Idea to the colleague on his right. Right after this, each member wrote a critique to that Idea in 3 minutes. In the final step of this exercise, the idea and the critique was passed once again to the right. Each participant had then only 3 minutes to find a solution to that critique.

The final activity of the morning consisted of the teams voting the best solutions find during the brainstorming activities.

Teams dedicated the remaining time to refine the ideas, merging the most interesting and useful solution into a single big collaborative idea.

Afternoon activities

Most of the afternoon activities consisted in rapid prototyping. Today prototyping can be used throughout the design process: to generate ideas, validate concepts, or explore technologies.

The first-afternoon activity required the teams to create a storyboard.

The goal was to take the ideas generated so far and sketch an updated user journey showing how a user would move through this the design solution – where they click, what info they enter, what they think, etc.

Teams then were allowed to use laptops and smartphones to create interactive prototypes.
The only limit? Time: 90minutes!

Once that the prototypes were completed, teams were given the possibility to test the design solutions with real users.

Taking turns, each team demoed their solutions inviting the user to Think out Aloud. Think aloud is a simple usability test where users are required to think out loud. The activity is quite simple:

1. Give the user representative tasks to perform.

2. Shut up and let the users do the talking.

Outcomes

The outcomes were fascinating. From auto-generated designer communities based on affinity to quantitative design audits generated by crowd based Heuristic evaluations. All the ideas were unique and in a way could revolutionize the way we validate our prototypes and design solutions.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the event, we ran a small discussion between all participants.

What I could identify as the most important lesson to be learned is that the inclusion of a Business Model Canvas activity when creating a new service or product in mandatory. By not doing so the risk is that the final outcomes while being design wise possibly impeccable, might have a weak cost structure.

What we noticed is that, since we did not discuss about the business model, some tests were influenced by the users trying to validate the idea itself rather than the design solution (usability test).

Nonetheless, working closely with the design community in Milan we learned how to improve the way we plan and facilitate a Design Sprint, especially when managing a one-day long workshop.

From Design Thinking to Agile Delivery in just 5 Days: Design Waves

Tommaso Nervegna — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 12:58:53 +0000

Having worked with many companies and Start-ups I often bump against two recurring problems when planning and executing projects.

The first problem I encounter is that Project stakeholders and Product Managers want to unify seamlessly developers and designers in the Agile Process of product development. And usually fail hard.

This is due to the different needs and methodologies the two teams follow. The truth is, in my humble opinion, that Designers and Developers will never get a long happily.

The second problem is that, due to the current hype around Design Thinking, many companies want to start using it but are struggling to actually apply it in practice.

All teams are now trying to be agile, but we are not really there yet.

In the last year I did many experiments trying to work out which frameworks, activities and organisational models and activities will be the most effective when trying to combine Design Thinking, Lean UX and Agile Process Delivery.

Before jumping to the result of my experiments allow me to provide you with some context.
If you are confident regarding Agile and Design Thinking you may skip this section.

Design Thinking and Design Sprints

In its simplest form, design thinking is a human centered process of creating new and innovative ideas and solving problems.
It is not limited to a specific industry or area of expertise.

Developed by IDEO founder David Kelley, design thinking is defined as a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” Thus, the method focuses on three main elements of a product or solution: people, technology, and business. All of these aspects evolve around the customer.

Google Ventures recently released a handbook that collects industry best practices that allow teams to run design sprints: rapid prototyping and testing sessions.

A Design sprints is a framework for teams of any size to solve and test design problems in 2-5 days. The idea of sprints originates with the Agile framework. The idea of design thinking was developed at IDEO and the d.school at Stanford. These frameworks were adapted to the idea of “design sprints” thanks to the Google UX teams, Google Ventures and Google [x] and teams across the industry.
While sprints are popular at Google, they are also used by startups and companies of any size.

I really enjoyed how Google rationalised some common UX best practices making them easy to adapt to teams who are just beginning their design practice. For this reason I now never start a project without a Design Sprint session.

Download now the Design Sprint Methods Handbook.

Agile

Agile software development describes a set of principles for software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing cross-functional teams. It advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change. These principles support the definition and continuing evolution of many software development methods.

The term agile was first coined for this in 2001, in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development (Agile Manifesto).

The Solution: Design Waves

Inspired by Agile development, Lean UX and Design Thinking theories, I found out that the best way to approach a succesful project is trough Design Waves.

I've called them waves because, as a amauter surfer the project goes trough some defined stages before going "Pro".
First we understand the context, looking at the ocean, studiying other surfers.
Then we start swimming, trying to reach some easy waves in order to start to have some fun while learning.
Then as soon as we get the grip of it we start looking for bigger waves, buying better boards, having much more fun and why not, maybe compete with other surfers.

You get the idea.

Design Waves bring the true nature of design work to light faster, with less emphasis on deliverables and greater focus on the actual experience being designed.
By starting lean and applying Design Thinking, the frequent collection of feedback minimizes the time and budget spent heading down the wrong path.
The approach also decreases development time. Thanks to Design Sprints and fast MVP generation we are able to provide the development team an early insight into the design’s direction.

Day 1 - High Level Planning and Research

As a Facilitator, before Starting take some time to do some research on the subject. This will allow you to oversee bottlenecks and manage them appropriately.
Send out the invitations for the upcoming week. In my opinion, the best Design Sprints are the ones with teams made out of 5 people plus a Facilitator.
Usually I work with multiple teams with a cross functional set of skills including Design, Development, Product Management, Sales and Marketing. Use this day to set up the "War Room" and prepare all useful material.

Don't forget to Define the Design Challenge.
The critical task before the sprint is to formulate a meaningful design challenge that the sprint will center around. A great design challenge is inspiring, short and specifies the target use groups and deliverables of the sprint.

Day 2 - Design Sprint day 1: Understand, Define, Diverge and Decide

Day two will tackle the design challenge and include the first brainstorming activities.

Phase 1: Understand

Start by having a 360° Lightning talk: Lightning talks allow the team to understand the problem from many different points of view. The talks should include:

Business goals and success metrics / 15 min
Technical capacities and challenges / 15 min
Relevant user research / 15 min
Competitive overview / 15 min

Stakeholder Map: Products and services often have multiple types of people they are designed for. The stakeholder map lists all the possible people concerned in a situation.
1. List all possible stakeholders in a project / 10 min
2. Group the stakeholders in meaningful sections / 5 min
3. Decide what stakeholders you will design for during the sprint, and in what order.
4. Plan need finding activities and consider creating a team to work on each group.

Phase 2: Define

The User Journey: The define stage of the workshop is about breaking down the ideas into meaningful categories and defining strategies. One of the ways to do that is to create a user journey: a map that lists all the stages that someone goes through from learning about the product to becoming an expert user. / 30 min

The first Tweet: Imagine it’s time to launch your product. What is the first announcing tweet you will send out? Writing that can help the team focus their strategy in 140 characters... or less. / 15 min

Phase 3: Diverge

Crazy 8s: This technique invites the team to work individually and sketch 8 ideas in 5 minutes. The aim is to identify solutions to frustration points selected from the customer journey. / 5 min

1 Big Idea: Continue the previous exercise. The team must now work individually and sketch 1 big idea. Give it a catchy title. / 10 min

The Storyboard: Sometimes, the ideas are too complex to express on 1 page. This is when the team need to think in terms of stories or flows. The team must now sketch a storyboard of all the key steps the user must take. If the team is new to design, it is easier to think in terms of comic book strips. Remember to add the ”catchy title”. / 30 min

Phase 4: Decide

Art Museum + Zen voting: After the Sketching, it is time to share the ideas on a whiteboard.
The team will now perform Zen Voting: reviewing the ideas and voting in silence.
This allows everyone to form their own opinions before they get biased by others.

Team Review: At this point, the team can discuss the best ideas. The best way to do this is to ”invest” on the ideas. Each team member will have a “budget” of 10 dot stickers. The Idea with the most dots will be the winning idea.

Day 3 - Design Sprint day 2: Prototype

At the end of day 2 the team usually has come up with a few ideas that will be the focus of the prototype. The Prototype can be of course high level as doing it on paper, but if the Designer on the team is skilled enough, with the help of the group be sure that he will be able to come up with a mockup of the idea that can be "understood" by anyone.

A prototype is something that makes your ideas “real enough to feel,” so you can get feedback from users.
Teams tend to spend the most time in this stage.

If you're feeling creative why don't give a try to Lego Serious Play?
Rembember, the prototype must be just a facade of the final project. Design it wisely and efficiently.

Day 4 - Design Sprint day 3: Test, Refine and Validate again

Spend the morning by testing in just 3-5 minutes the prototypes between teams (if you're working with more than 5 people). If you have only 1 team, find some volunteers in the company. Typically, when we have enough time we invite people who have no idea on what the project is about. 5 test are sufficient.

Gather all valuable insights quickly.
What do users like and dislike in the prototype?
What would they like to improve?
Does the solution meet their needs overall?
Check also with the development team, do the design ideas match or exceed the technical capacity of the team?

At the end of the day integrate user feedbacks in the prototype.

Day 5 - User Stories and Prioritization

Start the morning by discussing all prototypes and repeat the "investment" exercise done on day 2. As a group you may decide to integrate more than one prototype together. Before moving on further, it is mandatory to define a minimum viable product (MVP) to begin the process.

User Journey Blueprint

Similiar to the Customer Journey map, it is now time to break down all the tasks we want users to be able to achieve. The only main difference, is that now you'll have to be very detailed. Use a whole wall for this purpose.

User Stories mapping

A different approach to User Stories: Job Stories. We frame every design problem in a Job, focusing on the triggering event or situation, the motivation and goal, and the intended outcome

What are the product features? Catalog all relevant functionality in terms of User Stories (I use JIRA, or your project planning tool). The typical form of “As a , I want so that ”.

Prioritising

The activity that I do is to ask the teams members to think of delivering their experience over a series of three phases, as an example "Sunbathing, Swim, Surf, Cruise”. The metaphor is to represent that the first release will be very limited, but it should equally be a great experience on its own, and after each release the experience just keeps getting better.

Week 2 - Sprint 0

Sprint 0 will focus on setting up Organisation and logistics, assemble the team and refining if needed the prototype and user stories. The Design team will kickoff detailed design of the MVP in order to provide an enhanced prototype at the end of the sprint to the development team.

After that the classic Agile project approach will start, the only main difference will be that the Design team will be always ahead of the development team in order to provide them with "fuel" (the design). When their job is complete they will focus on Quality assurance.

When to plan a new Design Sprint?

At the end of each release I like to plan a new Design Sprint in order to enhance the current product and solve any problems.

What's Next?

Clearly I'm still experimenting with this methodology, now that InVision has been integrated with Jira it is easier to create a better synergy between design and development team but the road is still long.

What do you think of this process, any suggestions? Do you apply something similar with your team?

User Centered Design Canvas

Tommaso Nervegna — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:53:00 +0000

I stumbled upon an extremely interesting User Centered approach to the Business Model Canvas.

I found it very useful in defining initial brainstorm sessions with my team and the project stakeholders. It has helped us provide even more focus on the final user.

It was created by two very talented UX designers working at Rectangles: Alina Prelicz-Zawadzka and Leszek Zawadzki.

UCDC was created out of need for an easy and effective tool facilitating user experience design process. Heavily based on user-centered approach and inspired by other great tools such as Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas, the tool enables a comprehensive analysis of the user and the business main goals.

Find out more by visiting the website.

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10 Must Have Mac Utilities - 2016 Edition

Tommaso Nervegna — Sat, 05 Nov 2016 09:41:02 +0000

It is that time of the year again where I round-up my favorite Apps, Tools, Gadgets used during the year.

This article in particular will focus on what I recon being my most essential and used utilities installed on my Macbook Pro.

Tools I can literally can't work without anymore. These are the apps I install first when setting up a new workstation.

Evernote
I've always been a great fan of Evernote. I've been a Premium user since the beginning and I used on a daily basis throwing inside every single document worth to reference in the future. I can't list the times that Evernote saved my day. I use it for Anything that matters, making it ready for me when I need it.

Skitch
Not to be confused with Sketch, this nifty little app is great for when I need to annotate screenshots and share them across my team. It helps my ideas become reality faster. From the team that brought you Evernote...

Due
I hate procrastinating. But I'm a human after all and I often commit this sin as well. Due helps me build up frustration when I procrastinate by sending costant notifications until I get things done. I hate it so much that I love it. Works great on my Macbook and a evergreen App on my iPhone.

ClipMenu
ClipMenu can manage clipboard history. You can record 8 clipboard types, from plain text to image.
To paste a recorded item, you just pop up menu by invoking the shortcut key, and select a menu item from the menu. I can't work without it.

Day One 2
Not really a utility, but I've gotten in to journalling a couple of years ago and since then Day One has always been my go-to App. Day One is my favorite journaling app by Bloom Built. Having it installed on both my Macbook and iPhone, it has seamlessly integrated in my life thanks to both its design and great user experience.

F.lux
Many years ago I suffered from a severe condition of eye strain due to computer overconsumption, I was almost blind for a full month. Install F.lux to save yourself for going blind. Is your computer keeping you up late? f.lux is free software that warms up your computer display at night, to match your indoor lighting.

1Password
With hundreds of Social Networks, credit card credentials, ftp addresses and back-office logins, 1Passwords has become one of the first App I install on a new terminal.
A true gem.

Todoist
My go-to task manager. I've recently migrated from Omnifocus 2 to Todoist (reading this sentence out loud is weird). I've been using it since 5 months now and I don't miss Omnifocus at all. The fact that I can delegate tasks to team members, friends and family members was the main winning feature that made me switch.

Mindnode Pro
I use this tool for mind mapping.
Mindnode can be used to create site-maps on the go during Design Thinking brainstorms.

Backblaze
Another lifesaver service that I can't live without. Backblaze grants you unlimited cloud backup for your Mac or PC. Just $5/month. Backblaze will automatically backup all your files including documents, photos, music and movies. Unlimited files. Unlimited file size. It syncs also external Drives!

Of couse I'm limiting my selection on Utilities, not on work-related applications such as Sketch, Transmit, Sublime Text, and clearly I'm not listing the most known tools such as Dropbox or Slack...you get the point.

What are yours?

How to conduct a 2 Hour Design Thinking workshop for Branding

Tommaso Nervegna — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 13:56:40 +0000

In the last months I'm all about Design Sprints.

If you haven't read it already go straight to Amazon and buy Sprint by Jake Knapp.

A Design Sprint offers a transformative formula for testing ideas that works whether you’re at a startup or a large organization. Within five days, you’ll move from idea to prototype to decision, saving you and your team countless hours and countless dollars.

While I love setting up 5 days workshops with clients and collegues, it is incredibly difficult to find a bunch of people that are able to free up a whole working week in order to lock themselfs in a war room for a Design workshop.

In Jake Knapp's book, a Design Sprint must last at least 5 days in order to work efficiently. While I fully believe in this statement I also think that it's possible to start a design process with some Design Thinking "appetizers" workshops that can last just a few hours.

Recently we were asked to set-up a Design Thinking workshop for a company that required Rebranding. Given the confidentiality of the assignment I can't share too many details but at least I can list the activities that we did in our two hour workshop.

1. Setting up the stage

The ideal team size is 5-8 people. Larger teams should be split into smaller teams working on the same challenge or separate challenges depending on your desired deliverables.

So start by identifing key stakeholders in the company with mixed roles.

Obtain the following material (I'll explain later what to do with it):

Value Proposition Canvas 1*1m Poster (Download PDF template)
Brand Personality Spectrum Poster 1*1meter (Download PDF template)
Color/Emotion table (Download PDF template)
Empty Moodboard Template (Download PDF template)
A lot of photos (Download them from unsplash.com)
Many Post-Its
Colored Dot stickers
Sharpies
Paper sellotape

Set up the stage at least 40 minutes prior the workshop and prepare the room. Maybe to a trial Run if you have new collegues that have never attended a Design Thinking workshop, it is vital that everyone feels compfortable.

2. Introduction on Design Thinking and Emotional Design

After welcoming participants, and doing introductions, start by explaining what Design Thinking is. Keep it simple, explain how design thinking is a process—applicable to all walks of life—of creating new and innovative ideas and solving problems. It is not limited to a specific industry or area of expertise.

I usually like to share a personal story about Design, passion and emotion. It is important to share how emotions have a crucial role in the human ability to understand the world, and how they learn new things.

For example: aesthetically pleasing objects appear to the user to be more effective, by virtue of their sensual appeal. This is due to the affinity the user feels for an object that appeals to them, due to the formation of an emotional connection with the object.

Check Donald Norman's Ted Talk to better embrace this concept:

“The first step is ‘getting the right idea’, the second is ‘getting the idea right.’”

— Marty Neumeier

3. The Value Proposition Canvas

Created by Alexander Osterwalder, the canvas is a simple way to understand your customers needs, and design products and services they want. The Value Proposition zooms in on only two blocks: Value Proposition and Customer Segment, in order to describe them in more detail. It helps the entrepreneur to project in the best way the business Value Proposition to solve problems, difficulties and needs of customers.

The Value Proposition zooms in on only two blocks: Value Proposition and Customer Segment, in order to describe them in more detail. It helps the entrepreneur to project in the best way the business Value Proposition to solve problems, difficulties and needs of customers.

The Value Proposition Canvas is organized as follows :

Customer Jobs: In this box you gather all the customer needs, the problems that they are trying to solve and the tasks they are trying to perform or complete.

Customer Pains: In the box ‘Customer Pains’ you gather all the negative emotions and undesired costs, situations and risk which the customer could experience before, during and after getting the job is done.

Customer Gains: In the box ‘Customer Gains’ you gather all the customer’s benefits and desires, and may span personal, functional, or economical etc. For example, this box could include positive emotions, functional requirements, or specific cost savings.

Product & Services: In the box ‘Product & Services’ you list all the products and services which your value proposition is build around. This includes for example the services that you offer or the help the customer receives either a functional, social, or emotional.

Pain Relievers: In the box ‘Pain Relievers’ you describe how your products addresses the challenges needs and the pains of the customer, how you eliminate negative emotions, undesired costs or avoidable situations.

Gain Creators: In the box ‘Gain Creators’ you describe how your product creates customer gain, how it offers an added value to your customer.

Explain the team how the Value Proposition Canvas helps you to challenge, design, and build the company’s Value Proposition in a structured and thoughtful way. It is important to create empathy with the stakeholders, start by providing some examples and stay assured that the whole room will start sharing their own point of view.

4. Brand Personality Spectrum

I stumbled upon an interesting article on bigbrandsystem.com

It is a clever exercise that will help how to discover the company’s brand personality so you can use this style in all the marketing efforts you undertake in the future.

Ask to the stakeholders to place dots closest to wherever the company falls along the spectrum. Explain that the must not over think this, and mustn't be afraid to envision where they'd like the company to be, even if it’s not there now.

5. Real-time Moodboard definition

This is when the magic happens. In this exercise you will create together the high-level mood-board.

For each adjective of the Brand Personality Spectrum print 3-4 photographs (I usually select a total of 48 from unsplash.com).

For each row of the spectrum, place a cluster of the relative photographs and ask the stakeholders to place a dot sticker on one preferred photo for each group.

Place the photographs with the most “votes” on the moodboard template with paper sellotape (Download the template)

Show the following color/emotion matrix.

Colors are used to represent emotions; especially in advertising.

PAY ATTENTION: depending on the country, some colors have different meanings.

Based on the Brand Personality spectrum, select with the stakeholders two colours.

If you want to do one step further, print a selection of trending logos for inspiration and vote together the most interesting. I've found a wonderful article by Logo Lounge that can help you: https://www.logolounge.com/articles/2016-logo-trends

Conclusions

There you have it, you have concluded your Design Thinking Workshop.

Now you may go back to your studio and elaborate your findings in order to kickoff the whole redesign process.

As a designer you must understand that to be creative, you must follow a design a process.

There is no such thing as creating a logo design out of thin air or even imagining what a logo will look like without first understanding why the logo is needed.

Last but not least you will be able to create a strong empathy with your client allowing them to have a sneak peek on your design process.

Do you have any other interesting Design Thinking exercises that can be done in under 2 hours?

10 Must-Read UX design books

Tommaso Nervegna — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 10:47:44 +0000

Every year, with my team we teach Service Design and User Experience to newly graduates, and the most common question at the end of the course is: "Do you have any book recommendation for aspiring User Experience Designers?"

There are a lot of great books on UX and Usability these days. So many, in fact, that it’s almost impossible to select only a few! However, after a couple of iterations we have defined a list of 10 Must-Reads.

1. Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug

Five years and more than 100,000 copies after it was first published, it's hard to imagine anyone working in Web design who hasn't read Steve Krug's "instant classic" on Web usability, but people are still discovering it every day.

In this second edition, Steve adds three new chapters in the same style as the original: wry and entertaining, yet loaded with insights and practical advice for novice and veteran alike.

Don't be surprised if it completely changes the way you think about Web design. Number one in my list!

2. The design of everyday things by Don Norman

The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible.

The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints. The goal: guide the user effortlessly to the right action on the right control at the right time.

In this entertaining and insightful analysis, cognitive scientist Don Norman hails excellence of design as the most important key to regaining the competitive edge in influencing consumer behaviour

3. Smashing UX Design: Foundations for Designing Online User Experiences

The ultimate guide to UX from the world’s most popular resource for web designers and developers

Smashing Magazine is the world′s most popular resource for web designers and developers and with this book the authors provide the ideal resource for mastering User Experience Design (UX).

The authors provide an overview of UX and User Centred Design and examine in detail sixteen of the most common UX design and research tools and techniques for your web projects.

4. Service Design: From Insight to Implementation

Service Design is an eminently practical guide to designing services that work for people.

It offers powerful insights, methods, and case studies to help you design, implement, and measure multichannel service experiences with greater impact for customers, businesses, and society.

5. Designing Interfaces – Patterns for effective interaction design by Jenifer Tidwell

UI designers over the years have refined the art of interface design, evolving many best practices and reusable ideas. If you learn these, and understand why the best user interfaces work so well, you too can design engaging and usable interfaces with less guesswork and more confidence.

Designing Interfaces captures those best practices as design patterns -- solutions to common design problems, tailored to the situation at hand.

Each pattern contains practical advice that you can put to use immediately, plus a variety of examples illustrated in full color. You'll get recommendations, design alternatives, and warningson when not to use them.

6. Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

The Lean UX approach to interaction design is tailor-made for today’s web-driven reality.

In this insightful book, leading advocate Jeff Gothelf teaches you valuable Lean UX principles, tactics, and techniques from the ground up—how to rapidly experiment with design ideas, validate them with real users, and continually adjust your design based on what you learn.

7. Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp

A new addition, Sprint offers a transformative formula for testing ideas that works whether you’re at a startup or a large organization.

Within five days, you’ll move from idea to prototype to decision, saving you and your team countless hours and countless dollars.

A must read for entrepreneurs and designers of all stripes.

8. 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk

We design to elicit responses from people.

We want them to buy something, read more, or take action of some kind. Designing without understanding what makes people act the way they do is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient.

This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With it you’ll be able to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that matches the way people think, work, and play.

9. Agile Experience Design

Agile development methodologies may have started life in IT, but their widespread and continuing adoption means there are many practitioners outside of IT--including designers--who need to change their thinking and adapt their practices. This is the missing book about agile that shows how designers, product managers, and development teams can integrate experience design into lean and agile product development.

It equips you with tools, techniques and a framework for designing great experiences using agile methods so you can deliver timely products that are technically feasible, profitable for the business, and desirable from an end-customer perspective

10. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.”

The Sweet Setup: my Mac and iOS setup

Tommaso Nervegna — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 18:16:08 +0000

Every week The Sweet Setup, one of my favorite websites, posts a new interview with someone about what software they use on their Mac, iPhone, or iPad. They do these interviews because not only are they fun, but a glimpse into what tools someone uses and how they use those tools can spark our imagination and give us an idea or insight into how we can do things better.

This week they were so kind to publish my interview.

I hope you find it interesting, and please, do share your setups with me. I'm always eager to know how other people enhance their days with iOS devices.

New setup interviews are posted every Monday; follow The Sweet Setup on RSS or Twitter to stay up to date.

Read the full interview HERE.

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Day One 2.0

Tommaso Nervegna — Fri, 05 Feb 2016 09:21:00 +0000

It's not a secret that I'm an extremely analytical person.

A few weeks ago during a Change Management training they asked me, as an icebreaker, to list all the most important "changes" in my life during 2015 and how I reacted to them.

They said it would have been difficult task. I opened up Day One and listed date, time, location of all the most relevant events that affected me during 2015.

After 10 minutes the whole classroom had installed Day One.

Day One is my favorite journaling app by Bloom Built. Having it installed on both my Macbook and iPhone, it has seamlessly integrated in my life thanks to both its design and great user experience.

On February the 4th, Boom Built release Day One 2.

Thanks to some new features and a UI/UX revamp, Day One 2 is worth the investment.

Through some added features and fresh skin, Day One 2, launching today, is definitely an improvement worth the investment of a paid upgrade.

The most relevant new feature is the possibility of having multiple Journals.
This is a great addition that has given me the ability of logging work related entries in a separate journal. Same goes for logging what I eat with two separate notifications after lunch and dinner time.

I use Day one early in the morning to set my day objectives, such as what I want to work on, what I want to achieve, what I would like to learn and how I would like to feel throughout the day. At the end of the working day I then write down how my day went and what I plan to do in the evening.

If I go to the Gym I log in a separate journal my training and how I felt before and after it to track patterns and improvements.

In a metter of fact, my inner teen who always wanted to have a secret diary but never wanted to actually sit down and write it is satisfied. I now never lose the context of "when, where, and what" I'm doing with automatic date, time, location, weather, and motion activity metadata.

It appears that Bloom Built will not stop to enhance the App.
On the Roadmap the will be releasing new functionalities. Each new feature will be carefully considered to not over-complicate the app. Here’s a glimpse of some things to come: Audio Recording, Places, Activity Feed, Night Mode, People Tags, Advanced Search (as a filter), Publish 2.0, native embeds, attachments, and lots more…

Day One 2.0 can be purchased for $4.99 on iOS devices and $19.99 for Mac during the first week. After February 11, the prices will raise to $9.99 and $39.99

Design Sprint Methods

Tommaso Nervegna — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 08:29:00 +0000

Google Ventures recently released a handbook that collects industry best practices that allow teams to run design sprints: rapid prototyping and testing sessions.

Design sprints are a framework for teams of any size to solve and test design problems in 2-5 days. The idea of sprints originates with the Agile framework. The idea of design thinking was developed at IDEO and the d.school at Stanford. These frameworks were adapted to the idea of “design sprints” thanks to the Google UX teams, Google Ventures and Google [x] and teams across the industry.
While sprints are popular at Google, they are also used by startups and companies of any size.

I really enjoyed how Google rationalised some common UX best practices making them easy to adapt to teams who are just beginning their design practice.

Download now the Design Sprint Methods Handbook

Download now the Design Sprint Methods Handbook

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Game of Drones Part 1: Hangar - How to build your first FPV Drone

Tommaso Nervegna — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 09:47:27 +0000

I've started a terrible new Hobby: Drones.

Props, screws, wires, carbon fiber frames, motors have been all over my desk for months, and I still have no idea of what I'm doing...

But the idea of mixing all three of my passions, travel, photography and technology keeps me motivated in pursuing the frustrating and time consuming activity.

Every-time I start a new hobby I usually end up focusing 100% of my spare time on figuring out how to max up my skills and my knowledge on the matter.

This time, my new hobby has made me insane.

There are hundreds of drone models, kits, brands on the market. Quadcopters, FPV Racers, Hexacopters, Octocopters. Where to start? What to buy?

After many weeks of trial and error, I thought that sharing my experience would have helped many Wannabe Drone Pilots.

Here's an overview on the first models to buy and how to gradually evolve this terrible yet fascinating hobby. Prepare your credit card.

Aviation Academy - Learn the basics

Probably you're trying to figure out what will be your first drone. You're browsing amazon, forums, and tech blogs to find the best drone you can buy with your budget.

Probably you're looking at the DJI Phantom 3, or the DJI Inspire, or the 3DRobotics Solo.

But are you ready to crash more than 1000€ worth of equipment?

My suggestion is that first of all you understand the basics of flying.

Buy a cheap small Drone, maybe a Hubsan H107L X4 Mini Drone. Worth only 50€. Fly it in you house, learn the basics, break it, fix it. Understand if you're really interested in this hobby. If so you're ready for the runway.

Hangar - Build your first drone

Before preparing for takeoff I strongly recommend you to learn how to build a drone. Building is half the fun, and will teach you how to fix your next drone in case of crashing it.

There are many Drone kits out there. My suggestion is to build an FPV 250 Racing Drone.

What is an FPV 250 Racing Drone?

What is the difference between a mini drone and some of the other popular platforms such as the Iris+ or the Phantom?

Drones like Phantoms and the like are easy to fly. They are built with multiple safety features and everyone can easily get started with them. However learning the basics with Mini Quadcopters that are built for speed will entangle you to this hobby.

To better understand what I'm talking about I suggest you to view the following two videos:

Building a drone is not as easy at it might seem.
With the help of my friends from Sir-Drone, I've summed up a list of components and kits to buy to get your hands dirty in no time:

Start by buying a Kit:

The ARRIS X-Speed FPV250 Pure Carbon Fiber FPV Racing Quadcopter BNF (Assembled) from Hobby-Wing.com

Package Includes:
1 x ARRIS X-Speed FPV250 Racing Quad Frame
4 x ARRIS 1806 2300KV Brushless Motors (2 CW + 2 CCW)
4 x ARRIS 12A Simonk ESC
4 x ARRIS 5x3 Inch Nylon +30% Carbon Fiber 5030 Propeller (2 CW + 2 CCW)
1 x CC3D Flight controller
1 x 700TVL 3.6mm camera

Then you should head to Hobbyking.com and buy the remaining gear:

Radio System Transmitter and Receiver:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__62710__Turnigy_TGY_i6_AFHDS_Transmitter_and_6CH_Receiver_Mode_2_.html

FPV Camera Video Transmitter and Receiver
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__65997__Skyzone_Plug_N_Play_FPV_200_Set_With_TS5823_TX_RC832_RX_Sony_CCD_and_Circular_Polarized_Antennas.html

FPV DIY Google
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__78125__Quanum_DIY_FPV_Goggle_V2_w_5_inch_LCD_Monitor_Kit_.html

2 Batteries for the Drone
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__21346__ZIPPY_Compact_2200mAh_3S_25C_Lipo_Pack.html

Lithium Polymer Sack (Safety first!):
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__4134__Lithium_Polymer_Charge_Pack_18x22cm_Sack.html

Lock Strap for the Batteries:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__17411__Scorpion_Lipoly_Lock_Strap_230mm_Medium_x_3.html

2 Batteries for the FPV gear
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__9170__Turnigy_1000mAh_2S_20C_Lipo_Pack.html

Battery Charger
http://www.helipal.com/skyrc-s60-ac-charger.html

Once that everything has been delivered to your house you can start building your awesome drone.

I've found the following video tutorial incredibly useful:

Once that everything is correctly assembled and tested you'll be ready to fly and wreck your first drone! Congratulations.

And now what? Practice, practice, practice!
In no time you should feel confident to go for the next level.
Aerial Video/Photography with a high end Drone.

Stay tuned for part 2: Runway!

12 Must-Have Apple Watch Apps

Tommaso Nervegna — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 13:46:04 +0000

The first Apple Watches will start arriving this Friday, April 24.

Maybe right now your wondering how can I show off how cool I am with my brand new smartwatch, for this reason, thanks to WatchWare.com, I've created a list of 10 Must-Have Apple Watch Apps to destroy notion that Apple Watch is just a “second screen” for your iPhone or iPad.

HooToo Tripmate HT-TM01 Review - A True Digital Swiss Army Knife

Tommaso Nervegna — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 17:03:39 +0000

Traveling often I'm always in search of gadgets that can ease my stress.

One of the first world problems I usually encounter when travelling, is the wi-fi limitations in hotels. Often too slow and most likely don't support more than once connection at a time. Usually the cable connection is an excellent solution for my laptop, but what about my mobile devices?

Recently, I discovered a device that’s a combination of an external battery pack, Wi-Fi router, and a micro NAS.

What is the TripMate?

The TripMate is a combination device.

It’s a 6000 mAh battery pack that you can use it to recharge your devices on the go.
It’s a Wi-Fi router; that you can use both as a LAN-to-Wi-Fi node or a stand alone Wi-Fi node that can be shared with many devices.
It’s a NAS (Network Attached Storage unit) that you can plug a to a USB drive and share files and stream media.

The Design

The device is well-designed and built in the shape of a small battery. It weighs only 125g, the same as an iPhone 5. Wide only three fingers, it is light and compact enough to be stored in a backpack or even a pocket. Perfect for trips.

How does it work?

As a battery pack, the TripMate functions seamlessly. Even if not over powered as other external battery packs. I was able to charge fully my iPhone 6 and more than 50% of my iPad. I was able to stream content to my iPad for 6 hours straight before dying.

As a Wi-Fi router I always maxed out the connection speed I was on.

Wi-Fi coverage was also outstanding. Considering most people will be using the device in small areas (such as hotel rooms) the signal power is more than enough.

As a NAS it also performed well. I had no issues moving files between a Hard Drive and my Macbook. And HD video streaming is flawless.

Conclusions

If you need a travel router and a travel NAS, you can't go wrong with the Tripmate. For only 35€ it's a more than respectable device that can drastically improve your trips.

HooToo ® Tripmate HT-TM01 Router - 35€ on Amazon

My Backup in the Cloud: Dropbox + Google Drive + Backblaze

Tommaso Nervegna — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 17:31:46 +0000

I'm an anxious guy. I've always been. I unfortunatly live with the fear of forgetting about something, taking precautions before doing anything. I simply need to have everything under control.

Amongst my many fears, I have always felt the urge to do double, if not even, triple backups of everything for my peace of mind.

The war for the best Online storage service has recently escalated to a new level. Companies such as Microsoft have even started offering 100GB for free if you have a Dropbox account.

The competition is rough and the decision to choose the right cloud storage service is starting to get a bit complicated.

I don't want to share with you a compare chart based upona my online researches where I point out the differences between the various solutions.

I will simply describe to you my current online backup setting hoping that it could be somehow inspiring for you.

My setup relies upon the sinergy between 3 main services: Dropbox, Google Drive and Backblaze. Plus of course backing everything up on External Hard Drives.

But before getting in to details, let me answer a couple of things:

Why you should always have more than one Backup

You're backup will never be safe unless you have a solid backup strategy that relies on redundancy. I oblige to the backup rule of three, also known as the Backup 3-2-1 rule. What if your house burns down? What if Dropbox screws up for some reason your backup and you instantly loose a decade of pictures?

3 copies of anything you care about - Two isn't enough if it's important.
2 different formats - Example: Dropbox+DVDs or Hard Drive+Memory Stick or, as I do, Hard Drive+Backblaze, or more
1 off-site backup - If the house burns down, how will you get your memories back?

Why use three services?

It's because of the budget. I won't lie. It would be much easier to simply stick to Dropbox+Backblaze, however I think that in the present time Dropbox is far to expensive compared to the competion.

Why do I still use Dropbox if it's so expensive?

Because of it's almost perfect (and fast) camera roll upload functionality and due to the fact that many App I use daily sync trough dropbox. Another main reason why I use Dropbox is the fact that in time I gained up 20GB for free by inviting people to join Dropbox. Very convenient.

Probably I will switch completly to iCloud Drive as soon as I'm able to fully test the Photos app since it looks really promising and I can sync all of my App settings trough iCloud too.

I can't deny that I also make use of Flickr for an extra backup solution limited only to photos. I use a IFTTT recipe to auto-upload My Camera Roll folder from dropbox to Flickr.

Why don't you rely only on Google Drive?

Because of the file ownership policies.

"Your Content in our Services: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.
The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps)."

This sentence doesn't clearly define the final scope.

The Setup

Dropbox: is mainly used for Camera uploads and syncing App settings, as fore-mentioned, I’m waiting to fully test the Photos App of iCloud Drive when it will be officially released.

Google Drive/Creative Cloud: I use Google Drive to have a shared reference folder and for when I need to collaborate on documents or projects with teams that don’t use or have Creative Cloud(that offer 100GB if you're subscribed).

Backblaze: After much research, this service is the easiest and most affordable way to backup files to an off-site cloud server. For only 50$ a year it does a complete backup of my hard drive and my external USB disks. No weird settings to play around with, just register, download the app and start syncing all of your hard drive. Is it secure? Yes, the files that are backed up on Backblaze are more secure than the files you have in Dropbox thanks to data encryption.

If you loose your computer or you need to restore it you can simply reinstall the app and conveniently restore your data in 3 simple ways: downloading a zip file, making the company send you a USB drive or a USB flash drive.

Backing up files has never been so easy and affordable. I think that memories(and documents) are worth less than 5$ a month. So why not reach the peace of mind and starting setting up your own personal Backup in the cloud?

Due 2 - Create reminders at the speed of light

Tommaso Nervegna — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 18:38:12 +0000

I rely on Omnifocus 2 to manage my projects. I've set up a complex and well balanced ecosystem in the last few months that is crucial for me to be sure that I get things done and on time.

However, throughout the day I need an app that can give me the ability to quickly jot down personal tasks and create alerts that will buzz me until I put them off. For this reason, reminders such as "call Mom", "go to the dentist", "Pay car insurance" find their place in Due. Because it repeatedly reminds you of items that are due until you act on them, it‘s impossible to forget anything with Due.

Due has been around for more than 4 years and has always found it's place on my iPhone's homescreen. Due 2's new creation panel features a grid of quick access times that can tapped to rapidly set daily reminders. With Due you can set due dates and reschedule existing ones *fast* by tapping on any of the 12 preset and customizable times. No need to scroll through the time picker wheel.

Due 2 is available as an Universal App for $4,99.

5 Must-Have Travel accessories for in-flight enhanced productivity

Tommaso Nervegna — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 15:04:58 +0000

A long flight can be both a curse and a blessing when it comes to getting things done.

The aircraft cabin noise that simply doesn't stop, with kids two rows ahead that won't go to sleep, the guy sitting next to you smells like he has been on a diet that required him to eat only onions and keeps looking at your monitor asking questions like: What are you working on? You’re a designer? I’m a designer too, I use Power Point. Can you use Power Point on MacBooks too? All of this while the guy sitting in front of you reclines his seat disintegrating your knees.

But on the bright side, with a couple of tricks and gadgets, a long flight can be a productivity sanctuary.

A place where to do the work that thrives on network disconnection. Like writing this article. Focusing on that assignment, clear up your email inbox and writing a few chapters of that book that you never have time to work on.

It’s all about isolating yourself from distractions.

And to do so I would like to share with you the list of my must-have travel accessories for in-flight enhanced productivity.

Bose QuietComfort 25

Have you ever experienced an 8 hour flight during the night after a 12 hour shift?

The aircraft cabin noise that simply doesn't stop, with kids two rows ahead that won't go to sleep, and occasional announcements that interrupt your sleep sinergically create a wall of stress that can’t be destroyed.

You need do yourself a favour: Buy a pair of noise-canceling headphones. I was skeptical at first but now I can’t live without them.

The Bose's QuietComfort 25 over-ear headphones feature excellent noise isolation and a sculpted, powerful audio performance and comes with a neat carrying bag and an airplane plug adapter to enjoy your in-flight entertainment. They are great even with no audio since they suck all of the noise from the cabin. If little children start screaming, just launch some soothing sound from your iPhone and you’re done.

HooToo TripMate Wireless N Portable Travel Router with 6000mAh Battery Charger

This little wonder allows you to both charge your devices during long flights, both it’s able to stream two separate HD movies and some MP3s simultaneously on a flight. Plus, once landed and in the hotel it serves as a great wi-fi router replacing the usually-not-so-good Hotel connection.

Privacy filter

Tired of having people give quick glances at your work? Raise questions about stuff that is none of their business? A handy Screen privacy filter is all you need. You can even buy one for your tablet if you, like me, prefer using your iPad to get stuff done during flights.

WD My Passport Wireless Hard Drive

This little wonder is a USB 3.0 portable hard drive with an embedded Wi-Fi network and a battery. Besides working as a regular USB hard drive it can also become a wireless media server. Excellent to wirelessly stream content to mobile clients, such as tablets or smartphones.

A surgeon mask

Even if it’s the universal symbol for flu, this precious object is an armor. Besides protecting you from bacteria and other horrors lurking in the air aboard airplanes it create a healthy microclimate for your nose and mouth. Quick tip: bring always two masks. When the woman sitting next to you will ask if you’re sick just hand a mask over to her. She will thank you later when the guy sitting next to her will start sweating garlic from his armpits.

Bonus: Knee defender

This infamous device should be used carefully. A man got kicked off a Flight for using it. When attached to the seat in front of you it will prevent it to be reclined giving you more space and making sure that your laptop or glass of water doesn’t get catapulted on your face.

So even if you’ll look like an idiot with your noise-isolating earphones and a white mask, this simple setup will enhance your in-flight experience. Working with no distraction is almost a stress relieving activity. You’ll get things done in no time and you’ll even have time for a great power-nap.

And what about you? Do you have any travel accessories that you simply can’t live without?