Category : Design Management

Audi has a reputation as the “designer’s performance car”. Audi has long been venerated for their relentless attention to detail and sublime ergonomic design. Sitting behind the wheel of an Audi is different from almost any other luxury performance car. They somehow manage to pull of a practical, no-frills vibe, coupled with an almost Apple-like design sensibility. As a matter of fact, I’ll just go ahead and go on record by saying, that in a world of “we want to be the Apple of (insert industry), Audi actually is the Apple of automakers. Or put another way, Apple is the Audi of consumer electronics.

In a piece titled “Sense & Drivability”, in the October issue or Fast Company, Jason Feifer broke down some of the subtle ways that Audi…

My usual approach to project management, is making sure that we’ve planned for everything that our team has to do, and when we need to get it done by. But recently I’ve been realizing that it’s just as important to identify what we don’t need to do.

In a takeaway from The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World by Chris Guillebeau, the Startup Daily recommends creating a “To-Stop-Doing” List:

“Write down all the things you are doing that are draining your energy and are not essential to reaching your goals. Take advantage of the fact that stopping is easier than starting.”

So what kind of things do you need to stop doing? With each new…

Miranda July: The Future on Nowness.com.

I love this idiosyncratic solution from Miranda July, an offcut from her latest film, The Future. If often seems like a battle to be productive these days, with all the sources of distraction, entertainment, and information. Todd Henry refers to it as The Ping in his recent book, The Accidental Creative.

The Ping is that little sensation that occasionally prompts me to check my email or social media accounts. It’s the impulse to mindlessly surf news sites instead of doing something productive… it even has a life philosophy for me: “something out there is more important than whatever is right here.”

I use various software apps and online tools to help facilitate my…

As a Project and Community Manager – I hold myself to the high challenge of facilitating a more productive workplace, and also preserving a healthy team morale. From maintaining an online task management system, to creating a balanced schedule, hosting weekly meetups to hash through project progress and setbacks, and trying in earnest to preserve time and space for our team to create and think, these are just a few ways we aim to get closer to an efficient and happy workflow.

I recently found affirmation and inspiration in a recent Harvard Business Review article, “Being More Productive,” featuring best practices and advice from David Allen, a productivity consultant and the author of the best seller Getting Things Done, and Tony Schwartz, the author…

Last week I talked about engaging in life’s work. But how do we make sure this actually happens? We take time to schedule meetings, calls, and deadlines, but how do we make sure we’ve reserved enough time to think and do the work?

“We’re so busy being “heads down” on our to-do lists, that we fail to spend time being “heads up” to explore the possibilities.”

Josh Linkner, an expert blogger for Fast Company addresses the issue head on in his recent blog, The 5% Creativity Challenge. Inspired by Bill Gates’ “Think Weeks,” Josh encourages us to schedule two, one-hour think sessions each week, just 5% of a…

Do you offer your customer products, services, or solutions?
 Can your customers clearly understand what you do and self select where they belong?

Typically, most tech startups begin with a core product or a service. A singular idea that they test, market, and sell to early adopters. It becomes the foundational product/service the business is built on. As they gain traction and customers, they naturally transition from startup to the next stage of the business life cycle, growth.

At this point, most companies have developed additional products, services, and features from what they originally offered, and it’s here that their foundation enters a state of change. Growth is the time to…

I’ve often considered myself part of the minority – I actually like meetings. Throughout my years as a Project Manager, I’ve learned that the best interactions with clients and teammates, that result in the most clarity, are those that are face-to-face. But as a lean shop, running on a tight production schedule, it is absolutely essential that when we have meetings, that they are the right meetings, with the right people, and with the right agenda.

In the panel Your Meetings Suck and It’s Your Fault, Kevin Hoffman, User Experience Director at Happy Cog, shared this comical but realistic equation on the “cost of meetings”:

X = meeting time 

Y = adjustment time 

Z = number of attendants

Q = Hourly wages

((x+y)*z)*q…

Admittedly, I went to this SXSW panel on March 12th, SUPER-Talented: A Conversation with James Gunn, Ellen Page and Rainn Wilson, because of the star power. But I did walk away with a relevant lesson or two in my back pocket.

The script for the movie SUPER, released in April 2011, had been finished since 2007, but in the thick of the recession it was difficult to find funding. With some patience and diligence, writer and director James Gunn was able to partner up with and cast Rainn Wilson, and soon after secure marquee stars Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, and Kevin Bacon. These actors were essentially working for pocket change, motivated by a…

I’ll admit it – I’m a recovering design process deliverables junkie. Historically, the generation of process maps, usability audits, wireframes, site diagrams, application flows, mental models, task-level scenarios, user stories, standards documentation, conceptual frameworks, content audits, navigation maps, and countless other examples of design ephemera, were so central to the work that we created for clients that we began to view them as the work we were creating for our clients. In reality, as important as many of those deliverables may be, they are just means to an end. The end – is a finished product that customers want to purchase and use and a solution that meets or…

For years now, KA+A has been using 37Signals’s Basecamp product to manage our projects and improve collaboration with our clients. On several occasions a colleague or client has even asked me to share how we’ve successfully implemented Basecamp, and how it might work for them. Which is why today, I want to share with you a great tool I’ve found to improve the way we use Basecamp.

With the advent of a particularly complex project, I began to have my doubts that Basecamp could handle it. The need for Gantt charts was especially desired, so that I could get a good handle on where each task was taking place in time and space. Fortunately Basecamp has a large following, so there’s a plethora of third party companies…