Tag Archives: design planning

Tsunami of change – design, brands, marketing and the mobile phone

By | August 30, 2015

In the 10 short months since I wrote on the market forces influencing the global mobile phone market, and the implications of the democratization of innovation whose early, weak signals I could already foresee, matters have come to a head. I had written: The locus of innovation in handset design, product planning and market strategy… Read More »

New Market Analysis: It all boils down to Interpretation

By | September 13, 2014

This isn’t a new diagram for anyone familiar with my writing. Its a diagram I’ve been using to explain where my work fits into the innovation development process since I first saw it on Luke Wroblewski’s blog back in 2006. However, I’ve just been struck forcibly by the realization that there’s a very important piece… Read More »

Reflections on design thinking for government: empowering policy makers and stakeholders

By | January 20, 2013

Yesterday I came across a post on The World Bank’s blog, “Design Thinking for Government Services: What happens when the past limits our vision of the future?” Given that I’m in the process of writing a report on the role that human centered design can play in government, that too for a developed nation, I’d… Read More »

Mapping the path to prototyping an adaptable user centered design process

By | November 9, 2012

We’ve all seen the classic User Centered Design (UCD) process diagrams, mostly linear, that attempt to communicate the steps yet unable to capture the iterative nature of the activity simply due to the limitations on how many circular arrows one can add without losing clarity. When I first began exploring the process deeply for application… Read More »

Strategic Alliances can be an effective method of promoting innovation

By | September 14, 2012

Hybrid Organizations as a Strategy for Supporting New Product Development is the title of a research paper by Alison Rieple, Adrian Haberberg, and Jon Gander of the University of Westminster. A summary of their findings: This article focuses on strategic alliances, in which one firm (normally a large, multi-product corporation) obtains critical product-development resources, such… Read More »

Case study of design strategy failure: Whirlpool World Washer for emerging markets

By | September 13, 2012

This is a comprehensive study of the introduction of an automatic washing machine, the World Washer, into the Indian market, by Whirlpool Corporation in 1990. Conceived as an important part of Whirlpool’s global strategy in the late nineteen eighties, it was designed for the emerging markets of Mexico, Brazil and India. It failed dramatically and… Read More »

5 lessons from design planning for the bottom of the pyramid

By | September 6, 2012

1. Consider the design of the entire ecosystem in a holistic manner rather than the product alone The majority of industrial designers in studios and corporate departments around the world are tasked with the design of a specific product or application, isolated contextually, for the most part, from the larger ecosystem of the market primarily… Read More »

Understanding at the bottom of the design pyramid

By | September 5, 2012

source Before we can give form – and it does not have to be a tangible product but could even be a service, a business model or a strategy – to what we wish to do, its not enough to step back to just the function level, one must step even further back to envision… Read More »

Out of touch, out of sync: The future of American Design

By | May 1, 2012

Since I’m still in the mood to look back at the progress of the design industry in this past decade, let me bring up another article I’d spotted in FastCo as well. This one is from September 2011, titled “American Firms Now Embrace Design, But They’re Aging Fast. What’s Next?” written by FrogDesign’s Robert Fabricant.… Read More »