Among other things

My 15 minutes worth of brain inventory...

1. The most interesting thing happening that I see is companies and individuals alike leveraging information in fascinating ways. I think that this is fundamentally possible because both companies and individuals can leverage the use of databases, the web, and dynamic - interactive content to create interfaces that can quickly aggregate huge amounts of raw data, and that massive amounts of people can access almost simultaneously. Combine this with ever-faster and cheaper equipment (a la 'moore's law') that can be linked via networks and you've got a never ending source of raw data that is always getting delivered in different ways, at faster speeds, and in higher resolutions. The results of which I see in some well documented phenomena (freakonomics, flat-world, long tail theory, etc.).

Some examples of this ...

a. "crowd sourcing" - using the contributions of MANY (100's, 1000's, +++) to develop or inform responses to specific, complex, or ill-defined problems. This is not demographic modeling nor a method for survey development. The key here is using the unique perspectives, interests, and applications that individuals have to better inform a designers decisions and to do so in a way that maintains the rich individuality that people bring. Fundamental to this idea, of course, are the widespread forums, bulletin boards, email lists, and websites that attract people from around the world almost constantly. This, in effect, provides many people with 24/7 'experts' for feedback and ideas. Something I find fascinating about this is that communities of professionals or even "affinity associates" can almost always find one another.
i. some good examples for crowdsourcing are sites that support coding applications such as macscripters.com codeproject.org actionscript.org ... there are MANY of these sites. I think that this works well with programming applications because the 'code' can easily be cut-and-pasted into a web-form. A few minutes in the forums on any site like this can show how easily people can find answers to vexing problems AND how many solutions there actually are to a single problem.
ii. large companies use similar tactics & strategies to develop their products. Again, this has occurred most often in 'developer communities' such as Apple's Developer Network and MSDN (Microsoft) where the company can actually 'seed' the community with buggy or incomplete products and elicit responses from people who are both experts AND zealots. More applicably, companies like Lego have actually leveraged the global community of users to re-shape their products and redirect their marketing efforts. Patricia Seybold's book "Outside Innovation" has a decent case study on how Lego and Texas Instruments were able to work together to create a new product for their market and a new market respectively.

b. The prior point brings to mind the value of 'hacking cultures' that have developed around a variety of interesting product lines and industries. Different from 'innovation', hacking is done by a single user or small group who found "an itch that they couldn't scratch" in dealing with a given product, tool, or system. The key here is that the 'hack' is often so particular that it only suits a VERY small group of people or a VERY specific goal. Often amateurs, hackers are experts but often in a non-traditional way or from a non-traditional background. These kinds of people have developed knowledge through intimate use and thus have a unique understanding of a product. In the past 10 years companies have begun to find the value of these types Again, techies have been doing this for years and are probably the most robust group, but the idea hacking has also been critical to a broad range of industries including:
i. agriculture
- wine making in soil selection, splicing, and x-pollination
- crop selection
ii. car & motorcycle design
- the origin of the term "chopper" comes from the culture of motorcycle enthusiasts who 'chopped' their bikes down to the bare essentials, making them original and faster. This resulted in an uncomfortable ride but also gave the bike a sense of personality that can be attributed to the rider. Think hell's angels and the so called 1%'ers.
- in car design this has, of course, been going on for a long time with the low-riders, buggys, jalopies, hot-rods, and even in the way that demolition derby enthusiasts modify the car's shell to strengthen the car and protect the driver.
- more recently, this kind of hacking or modding (a derivative kind of hacking) has hit the mainstream in the form of mass and moderate customization by companies such as:
... Mattel in association with FAO Schwartz (custom hot wheels)
... Cooper USA's Mini which allows slight modifications pre-sale
... BMW with so-called "open-source" design... I think that this might go better in the next point.
... can't remember the name but I know that there is a company that let's you choose from a wide variety of parts and paint jobs to make your own car.

c. Open Source Design & Development has also become a significant part of the common cultural lingo and, mainly in software development, has proven its worth in the design of interesting, useful, and well-functioning tools. Open-source design takes a very particular kind of leadership to be successful in that the problems that come with I.P. seem to often get in the way of the goal. I think that this is in direct conflict with our current understanding of product and business valuation where intellectual property is often more valued than physical property. IBM still makes a lot of money on what it calls defensive patents, and of course, the wealth of actual patents that it has. Companies are always wary of letting people in though and the licensing models are messy. That said, I think that some interesting approaches coming from start-ups. Bottom line, open source is an interesting idea but it is very difficult to leverage effectively without getting tangled in a licensing net.

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Some less (half?) baked thoughts....


2. A second direction that I find to be critical is an investment in thinking about the 'design process' which has elicited some very valuable methods for designers and a kind of standardization (or stabilization) of terms like user-centered design, 'wizard of oz' prototyping, persona development, narrative and use-case scenarios. These may seem like old hat but I think that it is becoming a much more acceptable rationale. I also think that the broader acceptance of these methods can be attributed, in part, to the wide range of "profiling" data that is available through the web and through data wholesalers.


3. Support industries... With so much activity now relying on data and 'uptime' (the time that your computer is not broken) a wide range of support industries have sprouted. These include call centers, tech support consultants, data warehouses, data wholesalers, and of course, web hosting operations. Many of these companies are service oriented