Martin Levins
I made up my mind to attend this event a few days ago, with a happy convergence of frequent flier and a free weekend at Starwood.
Last night Stephen Heppell (notes coming); today, at Canadian School in Hong Kong
We listen to Tom Kelley, the guy whose company was in part, responsible for apple mice (hopefully not the camembert model) and the iPod
His thing is innovation.
85% of CEOs in the US had innovation on their agenda, yet it's that important, but not urgent category that means you'll leave it and someone else will overtake you (lots of competitive words whenever people talk about this aren't there?)
He talks about the red queen effect (Alice Through the Looking Glass) where you have to run "twice as fast" that has come about as the world flattens, using his hometown, Akron Ohio, who had the monopoly on passenger car tyres and refused to innovate, now makes 0% of tyres for the US, then draws a comparison with the Sony/Samsung branding.
He mentions the Stanford Centre for Innovation & Learning as a showcase of his company's work, and the d.school started by his brother, using a right brained approach to education (less quantitative, more ethnographic)
We get a copy of his book, apparently.
He thinks that his Learning Roles are the most important, starting with the Anthropologist: rather than trying to make a laptop drop proof may be less valuable that watching how people use stuff and making suggestions as to usage and design.
In other words, don't rely on "how things are done", "seeing with new eyes" (Marcel Proust), or "Vuja De" - I've been here before, but I'm seeing it different. "Empathic Design" (Dorothy Leonard)
Not sure who discovered water, but I'm sure it wasn't a fish. Immersion can preclude observation.
Nice example of the logic telling the designer that kids need a skinnier version of the adult toothbrush, but kids hold the brush in their fist, not with fingers where adults have fine motor control. So, paradoxically, they need a fatter toothbrush than the adult.
Nurse shift changes weren't working, so lists were used, but they suggested a move to changeover happening in front of the patient. Much higher bandwidth as you don't need to mention that oxygen is being used as you can see that, and you don't need to mention that Ms Jones is morbidly obese, because it is obvious.
The Experimenter: such as WD-40 (Water Dispersal, 40th version), and over 5000 prototypes for the Dyson vacuum.
He talks about the usefulness of rapid prototyping, and the need to lower the bar, citing a surgical device design that started as a cobbled together idea (pictured)
The third is the Cross-pollinator, who is part student, part teacher. They invert the keeping an idea private as power.
NASCAR pit crews observed by surgeons as they saw the usefulness of having everything at hand when time is critical.
The logical conclusion is a "reverse mentor" similar to our engagement project.
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