Gamestorming Click With Me Now - share the web 7 Resources Every Designer Should Know It’s essential for designers to stay on top of the ever-growing list of galleries, apps, and tools that can be found. But at this point, there are so many great design resources on hand that sometimes it can be overwhelming to attempt a survey of them. So instead, let’s focus in on the ones that you’ll really find yourself returning to, day after day. Inspiration Get a Broad Scope: Designspiration Although you can browse through images from any creative field, such as architecture and photography, everything in this huge compendium of inspiration can be brought back to great design. Narrow in on a Specific Subject: Pattern Tap When you’re designing a web page, it’s important to be aware of the past and current trends and practices. Hone UI Details: UI Parade After getting a sense of what’s out there in terms of general and specific design inspiration, you’ll also want to look around for ideas on those specific elements that make a site a pleasure to use as well as look at. Tools
What Are Your Values? - Decision-Making Skills Training from MindTools Deciding What's Most Important in Life Find out how to identify your values, in this short video. How would you define your values? Before you answer this question, you need to know what, in general, values are. Your values are the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work. They (should) determine your priorities, and, deep down, they're probably the measures you use to tell if your life is turning out the way you want it to. When the things that you do and the way you behave match your values, life is usually good – you're satisfied and content. This is why making a conscious effort to identify your values is so important. How Values Help You Values exist, whether you recognize them or not. If you value family, but you have to work 70-hour weeks in your job, will you feel internal stress and conflict? In these types of situations, understanding your values can really help. What job should I pursue? Tip: Defining Your Values What were you doing? Why were you proud?
Brains, Behavior & Design These reference cards are helpful when becoming familiar with basic behavioral economics concepts. This tool is by no means a complete or comprehensive collection of all behavioral economics concepts; they are a selection meant to provide enough depth and coverage to help establish a foundation. Terms on the reference cards are categorized into four decision-making factors and four decision-making shortcuts. Each category includes an index card that provides an overview of the category and suggestions for related design strategies. Introduction to Reference Cards All Reference Cards top
Business Origami – The Centre for Citizen Experience Jess McMullin Business origami is paper prototyping for systems design. It uses simple paper cutouts to represent the different parts of a system: the people, the locations, the channels used and the specific touchpoints where interactions occur and value is exchanged as a particular scenario unfolds. These cutouts are arranged on a horizontal whiteboard, which allows participants to show relationships in the system. I got introduced to business origami over dinner at Weatherhead business school with a visiting Japanese researcher. Despite the language barrier, we really connected talking about different methods for service design. Update: August 4, 2011 – It looks like the Hitachi Design Centre team now has a brief page up on their site about business origami (Japanese). Here’s a quick slideshare over view of how the components work together. Business origami works best in a workshop setting, with multiple people from different areas of the system you’re exploring.
LEGO SERIOUS PLAY - BUILD YOUR WAY TO BETTER BUSINESS Text Analysis Tools Definition: Text analysis software enables users to determine the frequency with which words or phrases are used, create concordances, view words in context, and otherwise study patterns in texts. Tools: Resources: caqdas Networking Project: "We provide practical support, training and information in the use of a range of software programs designed to assist qualitative data analysis." References: Evaluating the Quality of Electronic Texts, Lisa Spiro, director of the Digital Media Center at Fondren Library, Rice University. See Also: The Investling Theory Of Everything We learn a lot in our lives. Unfortunately, we tend to forget a lot as well. Apparently I’m an engineer. But if you ask me to derive a formula for pultrusion from first principles, you might be disappointed. So how are we meant to remember all those great lessons and insights we gain through our work and education? That was the thinking behind our Investling Theory Of Everything (TOE). Any time we read a great book or article, if we hear an amazing podcast or get to idea jam with a bright spark, we try and record the essence of the insights on our TOE. Then, with any key planning sessions we have, the TOE is brought out to jog our memories regarding the particular stage of a business or project that we are at. We also use it as a form of induction for new senior management, as a learning tool for friends and staff, and as a way to spot the areas where our knowledge needs reinforcing. Navigating the TOE: If you jump in and have an explore, you should figure it out pretty quickly.
Design council interactive business tool - prototype Canvas collection I - A list of visual templates - Andi Roberts I have been using in my coaching, facilitation and training work,the very well known Business Model Canvas from the best selling book Business Model Generation, pretty much since it came out. Off the back of that, I got involved in the crowd sourced follow up book Business Model You (spot my photo in the contributors section!). More recently I have been using the template from the book Value Proposition Generation, for work around account planning and product / service innovation. Overall using canvasses is a good thing, but they do have their downsides: Since working with these, I have seen quite a few different canvas variations pop up. Here is a non definitive list of canvasses I have come across. I claim no copyright nor ownership to any of these. Be aware that some links may now be dead as it is a while since I created this. Developed with an eye to adapt or create new business models, this is the .canvas that started off the canvas craze. Another canvas resource from Nick Brown.