Cuene.com

Month: November 2005

  • What about business informing design?

    (Cross-commented on the Peterme.com site)

    Great post on peterme.com discussing the importance of business metrics (and the user behaviors they measure) as a tool to frame-up and catalyze design brainstorming. I’ve seen how this process can work to both generate some design ideas, but more importantly, convey to business leaders that the design process is rooted in, ahem, reality, that the design/creative process is actually trying to drive business value.

    I can definitely see how this approach helps the design brainstorming process. But, as a "business guy" and not a designer, I see this process as helping in at least a couple important ways:

    1) communication and collaboration between the two teams – This should ultimately help produce a better design because it gives the teams a common language to use to solve site and design challenges.

    2)Design Solves Problems – this process makes explicit the assumption that design is about solving problems: for the user AND the company. I feel like this might be the most valuable insight for us business weasels. Design should be a part of the earliest product/solution development discussions, to understand what behaviors are implied or important to the success of the product/solution.

    Link: peterme.com: What about business informing design?.

  • Windows XP and and 3 iPods

    I just added a couple more tips in the article cuene.com: 3 Ipods, One Computer. it’s working pretty well now….

  • Born To Run: Soundtrack of My Youth

    I can’t wait to pick this up. I must have listened to this album a gajillion times, since it was my brothers favorite album and I shared a room with him growing up. I think I know all the words on the album, even though I haven’t listened to it in about 15 years. It just sounded so big, so rich, and quite literally, a whole different world compared to my small town Wisconsin upbringing.

    And, by the way, what did you accomplish when you were 25?

    Link: Amazon.com: Born to Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]: Music.

  • Slow Leadership

    The title of this post is misleading. While I’m sure there are plenty of slow, short-bus riding bosses out this,  Slow Leadership is not about them. It’s a blog focused on techniques to slow down the thinking process, to step out of the hailstorm of data, distraction, and media that makes it hard to process anything, much less the important stuff. the working assumption is that the speed may not be the best principle in making decisions. I just found this site this morning (thanks to Communication Nation!) and I’ve read a bunch of posts. Really insightful, and especially timely for me.

  • Great stats on the decline of Mainstream Media & timshifting

    At  The Long Tail. However, internet advertising and consumption keeps it’s steady march.

    Nothing on tv consumption, though, and the “time shifting” impact of Tivo and DVR. I can’t remember when I last watched a major network tv show in “realtime”, without skipping over commercials. Like most users of DVR, i’m happily free for the most part. When I have to watch a tv show that’s not recorded, I typically pause it and go do something else for 10 minutes so I can watch without the commericals. Awesome. Even Cooper and Eli don’t really “get” commercials, but the few times they are forced to sit through them, the boys see the commericials for what they really are: little short tv shows in between the long tv shows.

  • Stripper+screenwriter+cyclist=Good

    I like cycling catalogs like a hooker loves blow. Free & frequent. I hoover the pictures of the bikes and bikers , thinking of a different life where me and my cool, fit friends smile like dufus’s as we pedal over the rockies on a glorious spring morning. I pore through every spec, every measurement, every detail. Of the bike parts. I don’t notice the models usually, except to wonder occasionally if a) they’ve ridden a bike in the last 20 years b) they hate the feeling of being covered head to toe in oh-so-colorful lycra. But, as I was flipping through the latest World Cycling Productsions catalog, I noticed a face that looked familiar (except for the hair).

    Do you see the resemblance?