in tune

links for 2009-07-10

2009-07-10T15:06:25-07:00

Get Satisfaction

Part feedback system, part community engine, completely different than anything you've had a chance to test with your customers.

(tags: customer-experience software feedback)

links for 2009-07-09

2009-07-09T15:01:43-07:00

Building Brand Runways

Marketers focus on their brands and customers as the family jewels--and they are. But there is another kind of marketing asset that I call "runways" and if you don't have them, you will miss huge opportunities. In this ADD world of rapid-fire Twitter streams, long-tail options, and media multi-tasking, you must be in the right place at the right time or the moment is lost. Runways are relationships your company can create with trading partners and consumers that make your brands accessible, and give YOU access to markets and marketing options you otherwise would not have.

(tags: brand-strategy)
IDEO Method Cards Turn, Um, 7!

What the Cluetrain Manifesto did for marketing strategy, IDEO and specifically the Method Cards did for design strategy. In the same way Cluetrain saw and named what was happening in a "small pieces, loosely joined" world, in the Method Cards, IDEO saw and named a design strategy that was for and about interconnected everyday people. If all markets are conversations (Cluetrain), then all useful design is indeed conversation as well.

(tags: ideo design creativity innovation)
Human-Centered Design Toolkit

Human-Centered Design is a process used for decades to create new solutions for companies and organizations. Human-Centered Design can help you enhance the lives of people. This process has been specially-adapted for organizations like yours that work with people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Human-Centered Design (HCD) will help you hear people's needs in new ways, create innovative solutions to meet these needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind.

(tags: ideo design-thinking collaboration)
Why Designers Need to Focus on Focus Groups | Design Reach | Fast Company

Back in the day--and by "the day," I mean the legendary days of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and legendary computer scientist Alan Kay--we would say, "We spend millions in research and development figuring everything out, and then the first consumer who walks up to the machine can tell you everything that's wrong." Today, market research is a $19 billion industry and focus groups are one of the most expensive types of market research. The question is, what role should design play in the process?

(tags: design-thinking focus-groups customer-experience)
IDEO's Human-Centered Design Toolkit

As designers working to improve the quality of life in other countries, the firm IDEO has spent more than 10 years creating a methodology focused on designing for the user. And now, IDEO wants to give all of that methodology away. A series of PDFs that are free to download, the Human-Centered Design Toolkit hopes to empower organizations and design firms by giving them their field-tested tools for social impact in a way that focuses more on sharing information than authorship.

(tags: ideo design-thinking)

links for 2009-07-06

2009-07-06T15:01:27-07:00

Hamilton Wood Type Museum

(tags: typography type-history)
Web Museum of Wood Types

(tags: typography type-history)
How to Promote Your Business on FaceBook

(tags: facebook)
Capacities for imaginative learning

From Lincoln Center Institute and Andrew Taylor. ''Capacities for Imaginative Learning'' offer some useful language to define the goals of integrated arts education. But to my eye, they also describe the core competencies of a vibrant and engaged cultural organization, or even an ''artful manager''

(tags: creativity creative-business learning-styles)

links for 2009-06-30

2009-06-30T15:01:38-07:00

The Music Instinct

From PBS

(tags: music brain neuroscience)

links for 2009-06-29

2009-06-29T15:01:30-07:00

NY Times Magazine redesign

The magazine you are holding is 9 percent smaller — a little off the top, a little off the sides — than the issue you held last week. This is not the first cut of the ‘‘trim’’ size of The New York Times Magazine in its 100-year plus history. That makes it no less regrettable. We liked being one of the tallest and widest magazines in America — and actually, we remain so (just less so).

(tags: nytimes redesign)
Schwartzco Inc.

(tags: typography type-foundries)
Typography's Role in the Newspaper Recession

To cope with rising costs, The New York Times Magazine cuts pages, but packs in just as much content with a new typeface.

(tags: typography nytimes redesign)