One of the most interesting design posts I’ve read in a good while was about how Apple design is inspired by 60’s Braun design. Apple’s Jonathan Ive has taken Dieter Rams‘ designs and updated them beautifully for everything from product to user interface design for Apple.

Braun T3 pocket radio and Apple iPod

Braun LE1 speaker and Apple iMac

What products have inspired you? I’ll never think the same way after seeing the the multitouch on the iPhone, and how it’s been adapted for the new Apple MacBook Air. Surely there must be more examples out there. Tell us what products have made you stop in your tracks and say “brilliant”.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Creativity, Design , Product Design ~ No Comments
Written by Will Pate

The prototyping process is a great opportunity for creativity and fun. The fun designers have during this stage is a good indicator of how much fun people will have with the final design. When it comes to video games, the Wii has shown that fun trumps core features like graphics and processing power.

I had my first chance to really play with a Wii a few weeks ago, and I was blown away at the simple joy of playing Wii Sports with the Wii Remote, both of which are bundled with the Wii system. They felt like they had been designed together to work in beautiful harmony. It turns out they were, through a process of rapid prototyping and fun.

“So we really had a whole range of different sample controllers, for each of which we were tailoring specific prototype software. As Tennis was one of the games born out of that, it wasn’t actually the result of a clear intention to develop something specific….Once we’d produced it, it was immediately apparent how well it worked.
- Katsuya Eguchi, Producer of Wii Sports

So it seems that the Wii Remote was chosen as the controller for the new gaming system partly because of how fun it was to use with the prototype games created for it. They were so fun, that their attention turned to how to turn the prototypes into real games.

“During the development of the Remote, we did a range of trials to see what it was capable of. The prototype software we used included things like a baseball game…Wii Sports came about as a result of our discussions about how to turn these into fully-fledged games.”

It seems a little risky to bundle prototype games when bringing a new system to market, but it turns out that because the hardware of the controller was prototyped along with the games it worked quite well. And the fun the developers themselves had building and testing the prototypes is apparent in the final product.

“Well, it was quite fun. Actually, it was a lot of fun! How can I put this…? It is much more fun to get new controllers one after the other, and then develop software as the inspiration takes you, than it is to try to think of new things to do with just one conventional controller, as we have up to now. ”
Keizo Ota, director of Tennis for Wii Sports

So how does play and fun factor into your prototyping? Are you having enough fun with what you design?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Product Design ~ 1 Comment
Written by Will Pate

So I am a digital information junkie. So what does every good GB hog need ….a big ass external harddrive. Enter Western Digital with a kick ass product that has made this byte junkie very happy. My WD Mybook 500gb external drive.

Here is the deal on this fine little piece of hardware. It works. Simple. Exactly the way it should work. I was moving files on to it in 10 minutes. I now have a place to work with my home movies, store my pictures, manage my music and still have room to back up all my documents via the automatic backup. All that and it looks pretty cool too.
This isn’t so much an article on the fast speeds or any other technical spec. It is more about the design of this device that I find so impressive. Here is a hard drive company that went from making a boring product that most people never saw to making a consumer facing product that is really good.

How did they do it you ask? IDEO.
As it happens that I was checking out the website of my favorite company in the world. That is a pretty big statement I know, but if you look at what the company is all about it you will understand the cool stuff they do. IDEO has great thinkers, they look at all the possibilities and not just focus on the most obvious solution. The break processes down to the core and design around what is truly important. The user.

They go into detail about the success of the product on their page. There is interesting talk about how they went about the design process. The way they design is truly impressive. They have honed the process to an art form. (They created IDEO Method cards to help others in the creative process.) There is a lot to be learned from this company and how they continually push the boundary and have created many of the products that we have today. They tell a very eloquent story.

“Aesthetically, My Book merges usability with distinctive detail to speak to Western Digital’s brand values–reliability, simplicity, innovation, design, and personal excellence. To make the drive’s inner workings as transparent as possible, a single button on the face of the design illuminates to indicate power and processing. The drive’s peripheral venting represents Western Digital’s brand values in Morse code. Finally, the drive’s monochromatic hue allows it to recede into the background.” Link

It is like poetry for the digital age.

I really like what they have done and you should check out the selection when you start considering where you are going to store your digital stuff. Lets face it DVD’s and CD’s just don’t cut it for media file storage. I think you will appreciate the thought that has gone into this product and how well it does what it is supposed to do.

Cheers,

Scott

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in ConceptShare, Product Design ~ 3 Comments
Written by Scott

A while back we posted that we were setting up ConceptShare Labs as a way to engage the ConceptShare community in shaping the direction of the product. The community driven ideas filtered up from the needs of our users. When we introduced our first group of users to the workspace we weren’t really sure what to expect. The group consisted of a wide variety of users.

• Graphic Designers
• Architectural
• Engineering
• Software developers
• Product designers
• Web designers
• Print & Pre-Press

The goals for this project space

• Engage our users in the direction of the product
• Continue to improve upon the user experience with great tools
• Prove ConceptShare as tool for innovation

Once the workspace was created we simply posted design mock-ups along the product road map. We found that the flexible nature of ConceptShare made the discussions very relevant. Users from around the world didn’t have to sync to the schedule of EST. It was interesting to see how quick on the trigger some users were; we would post new designs and users would instantly come online after getting the notification email. We would start the discussions generally with a general description of key features, from there questions and suggestions began to grow.

As we made changes new designs would be uploaded replacing the older design. Starting the review process again. This drastically reduces the time between iterations. What would have taken many months of back and forth via email and meetings were completed in weeks.

Features being Discussed

This is a look at the concepts within the workspace. Once features were implemented concepts are moved to the completed folder, resulting in a clear experience. (Drag-and-Drop Folders are a graduate of the Labs)

A typical discussion in ConceptShare Labs

The users really took to using ConceptShare to discuss the new features. The ability of CS to structure discussions around specific elements of a design ensured that users were able to discuss fine elements of the design. Layering of comments keep users focused on the discussion at hand and away from comments and markups of other discussion items.

Users discuss the crop tool idea. You can notice that this was one comment of three on this particular mock-up

Continuous Innovation

We have more then one workspace underway in ConceptShare Lab. We are ready to roll out the GUI Upgrades 2 workspace to more users with the next evolution of GUI improvements. We also have other projects that we are working on quietly with the internal team. The flexibility of ConceptShare allows us to work internally first and then open up the workspaces to more people when we are ready.

We have some interesting stuff that is going to come out of the Labs in the coming month or so. These should prove to be very interesting to our users and greatly extend the use of conceptshare by ……oh wait that is another post.

The Result:

We have completed 11 features thru this process and it has proved to be incredible. We are very committed to this process as it has allowed us to be incredibley agile as we develop. We are a small team so the ability to have a feedback loop that is so accessible and instant makes the process faster. By integrating the feedback loop tighter to the design process we were able to take fast steps getting feedback needed along the way. This is a stark contrast to older styles of design where the design might get a lot further along in production before getting feedback.

We accomplished the goals that we had set out for this workspace.

• We had the conversations with our users giving them a real stake in the next generation of features.
• We created some incredible new features that have greatly added to the effectiveness of ConceptShare as a tool for business.
• We demonstrated that ConceptShare works as a tool for innovating.

We look forward to the release of the next round of GUI upgrades to the community. There’s lots of things that have been asked for that and we are really excited to let them loose on the ideas.

I hope this article is helpful, I wanted to give you some food for thought about how a different approach to the design process worked for us. Opening up for feedback early, coupled with the proper tools create a very fast development cycle. Think how this can apply to your product, your users, your designers.

Cheers

Scott

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in ConceptShare, GUI, Ideas, Innovation, Product Design ~ 1 Comment
Written by Scott

Guy had an interesting featuring a visual periodic table of elements. It’s pretty neat in that it interactive but would be nice to post on a wall as well. Man, is there really that many visualization methods? Maybe one day ‘ConceptSharing’ will be on that table. I think it would fit nicely in the “Concept Visualization’ area under Interactive Concept Visualizations…But thats just me.

From blog.guykawasaki.com: 

“ Check out this excellent compilation of visualization methods called “A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods.” This came to my attention via a convoluted path from BoingBoing (who thanks Mike Love) to Seth Godin to Acorn Creative. Ralph Lengler and Martin J. Eppler created it. You might also enjoy reading their paper, entitled “Towards a Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management“

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Ideas, Product Design, Visualization ~ No Comments
Written by Bernie

Are you listening to what they are saying? Do you give them a voice in your products direction? Do they get to see what is coming down the pipe? I hope you are able to say yes. I think that there is a very valuable resource within user groups. Listen to what they are saying. Not only do we tell them what is coming down the pipe we literally put the red pen in their hand to give us feedback so that we can build a better experience.

We are using ConceptShare to innovate ConceptShare. Enter ConceptLabs, the home of innovation at Conceptshare where we have opened the doors to our customers to innovate the product on an ongoing basis. This isn’t a space where we put our vetted ideas up for the ceremonial rubber stamp by the users …. this is where Bernie, Chris and I go to look a the latest screens for any of the upcoming additions that we are making on a regular basis. We look at it this way …who knows knows more about what ConceptShare should do then our users? Who better to give us feedback on the next iteration or the next really cool tool …. I can’t think of a better group to be asking then the people who are using the product every day.

I am sure there are a few people who would cringe at the idea of opening the doors to clients so early in the process. But we see it as being the best way to get the real ideas talked about before we implement them. It really echoes the way that we developed ConceptShare; we were on version six of the interface design before Chris ever started coding.
So how can your company take advantage of this? Create a workspace that is dedicated to client feedback. Invite your “Rock Star” users. Show them what you are thinking of doing. This is a different approach but it works. Our users are more involved, they see our progression and they genuinely want to be involved in it. So innovate with your users ….they will appreciate it.

If you are using ConceptShare to innovate your site or product please let us know we will be profiling power users in the coming months, we are always interested to hear how you are using ConceptShare.

Cheers

Scott

PS:if you are interested in joining the ConceptShare Labs …..let us know via email to feedback (at) conceptshare (dot) com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in ConceptShare, Innovation, Product Design ~ 2 Comments
Written by Scott

Ok, ConceptShare has launched now, so there’s no more excuses to send designs by email anymore right?. (Free to try)

I have learned alot watching people using ConceptShare what I found most intriguing is that the design is now being used to initiate conversations. People now are just getting an invitation with a link to a workspace with a bunch of visuals and then they just start talking. - no verbal cues - no phone calls - Its an interesting thing to watch. If you show any one that walks by a few logos and ask what do they think, you will get an answer. For some reason people feel very comfortable giving opinions on visuals rather then obligatory politics or world issues. Visual feedback is usually easy for people because it is in their gut, it’s personal, yet they know they won’t be judged by it. And it’s faster for them to point out what they don’t like about something rather than write a story about it.

A lot of people from an outside perspective that hear about ConceptShare in passing like to say, “It’s neat but not sure I would use something like that, I’m not a designer…”. Trust me I have invited alot of these people into a ConceptShare workspace, and they have ALOT to say once they are in there. Almost anyone can make comments about usability of both interfaces and objects. Comments about color choices, ease-of-use, hard to read text, wrong language. You don’t have to be a designer to play, just a human. Sure, designer to designer feedback is always good but remember wisdom of crowds?.With email alone people are reluctant to share early designs or concepts. I say screw that. Put stuff up early and often. Scan sketches and post them. Do anything… just start a conversation. You would be amazed and how fast and how far you can take simple ideas when you have the frequent evolving feedback of others.

Have fun,

Bernie

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Ideas, Innovation, Product Design, Usability ~ No Comments
Written by Bernie

We are running at a rapid pace lately and we all wear many hats here and I had to quickly make up a postcard for a upcoming Trade show. I want to talk about 3 services (including ours) that make this really fast (and cheap) for us and how we use ConceptShare to develop them.

I have been using iStockphoto.com recently which is a great social stock art service. High quality photos at good prices. I usually have several tag lines in mind and a few vision ideas. I start browsing with some various keywords and save several to my light box in istock. At this point I have a lot of photo ideas now in my light box and I need to start incorporating them in some layouts to see how they workout. Now I don’t want to commit to any one image until we decide which direction we are going to go in, so I just copy the web preview image from istock. It has the watermark which is ok for now because the look/headline I want to develop first. I do wish they had a save comp like Comstock has for registered users. I just need something to get the idea across. It doesn’t have to be big just lose the watermark. But it’s all good, I start assembling some of the concepts in Photoshop and then I upload them into ConceptShare so I can share them with the rest of the team to help me make a decision. The comps are fairly low res, partly because the photos comps are low res but its just to help me narrow down some ideas and pick a few to develop more. I probably won’t purchase one until we are down to the final 1 or 2 tops.

ConceptShare enables me to setup a project with several concepts and I start adding some initial comments explaining where I was going with the creative choice. This will be the project where all visual design work related to this postcard will reside. I will upload the finals here as well for proof reading as they develop. New people added to the spot will see how the entire piece developed and be able to read the comments to see how we got here. Once I added a few people to the space I await their feedback and go onto something else. It takes less than an hour before the first few comments start to come in. They are very helpful in eliminating some of the choices. Some comments involve larger logo placement, headline changes and some color changes. I make some of these simple changes to the low res comps and upload them again. During the process one of the members is actually working from home. We have very little actually dialog besides ConceptShare comments and chat window.

As we get close to the final we have already gone through 4 rounds of new uploads with about 8 concepts inside of ConceptShare. The whole process happened over a span of about 4 hours. Which really isn’t bad because thats from start to final and I was able to do many other things during the time between uploads. It is very productive and I can see whats happening if I choose to, unlike email or other methods. As the design and headline was finalized I now feel comfortable purchasing the highres istockimage and assembling the final layout. I upload the final print ready version to ConceptShare for one last once over then I am ready to send them to the printer.

I have fallen in love with Overnightprints.com, a fantastic service that enables me to upload any print ready art or design using their wizard (which i don’t use really but good for non-designers). They print almost immediately and ship out next day in some instances and a few days for a bit cheaper. Some local printers wouldn’t even take the file til the week after. The print quality is amazing and you can proof right away. They do brochures, business cards, letterhead and post cards. They are a great service and I ecommend companies of all sizes giving them a whirl.

Have fun,
Bernie

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Business, ConceptShare, Ideas, Product Design ~ 8 Comments
Written by Bernie

No turning back now …..http://www.conceptshare.com is now live for everyone to see.

Of course it is not finished …..it will never be finished …it is growing ……We will be adding lots in the coming weeks.

cheers

Scott

BTW: Demo videos are hard to do in one take. Pardon my mistakes.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in ConceptShare, Innovation, Product Design ~ 5 Comments
Written by Scott

I love great products. I feel a sense of accomplishment when I get home and the thing I bought is as good as it thought it was. Nothing burns me more then having one pulled over on me.

A few weeks ago I needed a new drill to do some work around the house I headed over to the local Canadian Tire …(they sell alot more then tires)

As I looked through the different drills i found a skil drill and I figured the price was right and i looked pretty dam cool.

What they did right

• they put a light that actually works ….lights up the work area
• they intergrated a removable stud finder
• they intergrated a removable laser level
• arrows that tell you which way the drill is going

What is the one thing i would change in version 1.1

The light goes on when the trigger is pulled. That being said the light should go on before the bit starts turning….

Here is to great product design and having no excuse not to do the work around the house.

Cheers

Scott

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Product Design, Usability ~ No Comments
Written by Scott