Strategic Design

Posted on by Four Hewes
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Caspian Design is a strategic design and innovation consultancy.

We are located north of Boston with technical and creative freelancers elsewhere.

We help you to create compelling, responsive, highly functional products and experiences, build new markets and business models.

We drive change.

Our design work and advising spans software, business process, industrial design, marketing and branding.

Our clients are found in business, technology, fashion, finance, nonprofits and institutions.

We work at the intersection of user experience, information architecture, usability, business analysis and strategy planning and ideation.

Lately most of our work is in web, mobile, and enterprise software application design.

If you have a product development or other customer-driven business solution in mind, we’d love to hear from you.

DeSOPA: great FF extension, bad dogma

Posted on by Four Hewes

DeSopa: a Firefox addon to easily bypass SOPA DNS blocking, Hacker News

I love this approach!

SOPA? DeSOPA, MF! Yes, run circles around these idiots.

Tamer, you also do a great job of explaining in passionately clear, objective terms, the SOPA agenda, the weaknesses of its assuptions and it’s dire consequences.

However, I strongly take issue with your own assumptions about the value of today’s internet services and the role of the internet in human progress. Don’t let trendy zeitgeist or wishful thinking undercut your excellent, commendable tactics!

Specifically, you say:
3) …we would not have many of the online services we take for granted…

4) …The internet creates market efficiencies that forces industries to adapt, thus pushing forward progress for humanity as a whole. … the Internet, built by the masses…

It is as foolish to take the internet for granted as it is to try to dictate to it. Foolish. YouTube, Pandora? Born yesterday. Primative.  Self-serving. Base and not very interesting. Not of lasting social value. Civilization can go on without them. Don’t fall into the internet’s own perspective of it’s own importance.

The internet is not an agent of human progress. Like the U.S. interstate system, it’s fundamentally a psuedo-military artifact of our economic system with lots of handy, nifty, shiny services built on top of it. Writing and the scientific method are agents of human progress. Rule of law and international treaties are. Pencils, optical lenses, printing presses, mass produced shoes, power grids, hair dryers, video tape, asepsis, the A-10 Warhog, carboratuers and the internet as clever technologies.

And the internet has been built by businesses, governments and a few stalwarts and visionaries, not the masses.

DeSOPA is a great response to SOPA. SOPA is dangerously shortsighted and fearful. Humankind is not at risk. The decentralized, accessible power of the internet ought to be fought for and advanced. Good work, man. Don’t get carried away. It doesn’t serve your cause.

Retail as user research

Posted on by Four Hewes

An illuminating commentary by Ron Johnson, Apple’s former senior VP for retail, from his new vantage as the CEO of J.C. Penney.

It would be easy for him to hold forth his laurels, rehashing the “business secrets” of Apple’s retail success: the lighting, the placement of service areas, signs, etcetera.

Wisely, Johnson advises his HBR‘s readers buy posing questions about broad business goals: what do the customers need? What sides of your business’ relationship with customers do you need to develop through the store?

For Apple, the stores provide customer support nonpareil. Here Apple make a silk purse of some of consumer computing’s worst weaknesses – their opaqueness, their inability to demonstrate to you specifically what they can’t do, their lack of self-understanding, especially of their limits. “face-to-face support”, writes Johnson, is “the very best way to help customers.” Through their stores, Apple turns the sales cost of  retail selling into customer and technical service advantages that their competitors can’t touch. One that people are “willing to pay a premium for”, in fact!

Product support is not every business’ opportunity – or need. So, Johnson boils it down further: any retailer is “…focused on building relationships and trying to make people’s lives better.” He coaches readers to discover how retail can best support their business’ goals: “…create a store that’s more than a store to people.”  “There isn’t one solution”, he points out. “…the retailers that win the future are the ones that start from scratch and figure out how to create fundamentally new types of value for customers.”

One function of Apple’s retail experience that is applicable across any business is  investigation of their customers. For Apple, that’s user research in it’s simplest form: their needs, feelings, budget, intentions, mental models, you name it. People walk in, pick up an Apple product and the staff starts asking them to open up. You couldn’t design a slicker survey or focus group of observation process. “… Their job is to figure out what you need…” Any good retailer does this every day as a matter of course with every customer. Bureaucratic businesses – large retailer like Apple and J. C. Penney, definately have to constantly, mindfully fight against their tendencies to be opaque, disinterested and impersonal with customers. So for their ilk, explicitly building this function into their retail process is key to effective retailing. Not incidentally, paying attention to what the customer wants is good service!

What I Learned Building the Apple Store
by Ron Johnson, Monday November 21st, 2011
Harvard Business Review Online Forum “The Future of Retail“

AXA’s Dominique Senequier: Refreshing frankness (FT)

Posted on by Four Hewes

Interrogatory interviews with business leaders are a dime a dozen and the format can be impersonal, leaving the reader with “answers”, but no impression of the person.

Last week’s news of HP CEO Léo Apotheker‘s ouster led me to investigate HP’s Board members, including Dominique Senequier of AXA Private Equity.

Amoung the citations was a short interview last year by the Financial Times‘ Emma Jacobs.Though her interview is a mere twenty questions, Senequier’s answers reveal a few personal qualities that inform her leadership. She is no-nonsense and confident while also ready to acknowledge her personal passions and her heartfelt values.

What are your three best features?
A long-term perspective; swift to act; ability to laugh.

What do you like most about your job?
It is challenging, inspiring and changing. You never stop learning from the people you meet.

When was the last time you lost your temper at work?
With myself, last month. It was over a missed opportunity. I very rarely lose my temper with other people. I think the ability to control one’s temper is a sign of maturity.

Has your job made your personal life suffer?
No. The trick is to be committed in all aspects of your life.

How do you want to be remembered?
A woman of laughter, spirit and heart.

(Senequier recently resigned from HP’s board. Apotheker sits on the supervisory board of her firm’s parent AXA, France’s largest insurer. Fellow board member and ex-CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman replaced Apotheker as CEO.)

Great job descriptions (HN)

Posted on by Four Hewes

I see many great job postings on HN, 37S, Prag and elsewhere, mostly for software  startups. Why do they stand out? They all are:

  • To the point.
  • Confidently informal.
  • Friendly, engaging, not intimidating.
  • Funny and enthusiastic.
  • Lacking self-promotional b***sh** and tired, empty career promises.
  • Offering contributing roles.
  • Offering a team of peers.
  • Expect you will bring your best.
  • Acknowledging you’ll learn on the job what you don’t know.

Most of all they addressed to peers and telegraph that a particular person (or team) is looking for an equally passionate, opinionated person to join in a meaningful work experience. They are refreshing.

Everytime I read one like this, I want to meet these folks, work with them, join their cause.

Until “mature” organizations get over themselves and talk to me this way, I’ll be looking to startups for challenging, rewarding, satisfying opportunities.

Here’s one I saw on HN this week:

“…You’ll be expected to punch above your weight class and grow into a team pillar, and will be rewarded as such.

You must:
- Get sh** done
- Thrive on responsibility and freedom
- Bulldoze through problems
- Not be an a**h***

A background in … is awesome, but not required. Just be ready to learn quickly.

We can promise two of these five things:
- Daily inspirational quotes read in-person by William Shatner
- Truly interesting and meaningful technical problems
- All-you-can-eat caviar breakfast, lunch, and dinner
- Weekend Lamborghini rentals
- An incredible team that will challenge and respect you (and drink with you too)

We…can offer market salary…, etc. just like everyone else. But what’s most important is the work you do and who you do it with. Everything else is just icing on the cake. …

What jobs grab you? Write about one that sticks in your mind and inspired you.

The web UX sucks

Posted on by Four Hewes

Well, I knew that. I just hadn’t thought about it for a while.

Just reading Joe Hewitt’s Twitter rant about web dev.

Clearly, I’ve got some catching up to do vis a vis the power of Cocoa.

I am ranting because I want to drop Cocoa and go back to the web, but I am upset about how much power I have to give up to do that.

@joseph_wanja unfortunately I would recommend Cocoa [rather than web languages] at this point. Wish I didn’t have to say that.

The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man, in TechCrunch, April 30th, 2010.

Going to YCNYC, Monday, Sept. 26th

Posted on by Four Hewes

I was still in the midst of a triathlon when I glanced at my inbox and saw YC’s invitation. Excellent! (No, I wasn’t racing, I put ON the race.)

Now I’ve cleared the decks of work. Just have to arrange travel and I’m set.

I’ve been a YC fan for a while and been slowly building my startup network and chops, so I’m psych’d to jump in with the big boys, network face to face with people I wouldn’t normally cross paths with, and put myself out there: growing NYC startups, VCs, and enthusiastic developers and designers. UX has been “maturing” and flexing its professional status, but the excitement is still in the garages, so I’m going to them.

Looking forward to lots of smart, engaged people and tons of learning!

Local Food has some root problems

Posted on by Four Hewes

I love fresh food. I love the best ingredients. I love farmers and their markets – especially in the midst of a big, industrial city.

Some things I just can’t digest, no matter how yummy they look on the plate. The Stale, carelessly processed dogma and fundamentalism, especially, leave bad tastes.

Up here in northern New England the best progressive cause that many”community” champions can muster is eating and buying local goods and locally grown food. This is pretentious on it’s face in this poor, undercapitalized region and half-baked economic strategy at best. Tierney’s discussion of long term global historic forces shows the patently weak thinking on which this well-meaning movement hangs its hat.

How progressive is it to deny the passage of time and all the changes – to the Earth, to peoples’ ways that time has wrought, and complain and fight for “the way life used to be” without a grasp of basic historical, scientific facts? It’s retrograde, not progressive, and it is not the path of social or economic innovation or sustainability, either.

I have no patience for these sorts of wishful alternatives. They waste precious attention, passion, money and time in the face of real social problems of hunger, inequality and unfair economic exploitation.

Better to educate people of how inextricably interconnected we all are – food, species, economies, cuisines – so when we look at our plates, our neighbors, strangers and social problems we solve root problems.

This article provides a rarely voiced take on the whole food-loving trend that I found provacative – and a refreshing cross-breeze against the sactimonious hot air of simplistic localism.

“The foods we consider local are results of a globalization process that has been in full swing for more than five centuries.”

…

The foods we consider local are results of a globalization process that has been in full swing for more than five centuries, ever since Columbus landed in the New World. Suddenly all the continents were linked, mixing plants and animals that had evolved separately since the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea.

What resulted, Mr. Mann argues in his fascinating new book, “1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created,” was a new epoch in human life, the Homogenocene. This age of homogeneity was brought on by the creation of a world-spanning economic system as crops, worms, parasites and people traveled among Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia — the Columbian Exchange, as it was dubbed by the geographer Alfred W. Crosby.

“The Columbian Exchange,” Mr. Mann writes, “is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in the United States, chocolates in Switzerland and chili peppers in Thailand. To ecologists, the Columbian Exchange is arguably the most important event since the death of the dinosaurs.”

Notes

NY Times, Monday, August 29th, 2011
The Local Food Movement Is Rooted in Globalization
John Tierney

NY Times, August 19th, 2011
Book Review: Seeds, Germs and Slaves
Ian Morris

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
By Charles C. Mann
Illustrated. 535 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $30.50.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
By Charles C. Mann.
Illustrated. 462 pp. Alfred A. Knopf, October 9th, 2005. $30.

Geographer Alfred W. Crosby
Wikipedia

Word of the day: Punctilious

Posted on by Four Hewes

PUNCTILIOUS

Definition from Merriam-Webster
marked by or concerned about precise accordance with the details of codes or conventions

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/punctilious

: marked by or concerned about precise accordance with the details of codes or conventions
— punc·til·i·ous·ly adverb

— punc·til·i·ous·ness noun

First Known Use
1634

Related Synonyms:
Synonyms: correct, decorous, formal, nice, proper, ceremonious, starchy, stiff, stiff-necked, stilted

Antonyms: casual, easygoing, informal, laid-back, unceremonious

Word of the Day: Codicil

Posted on by Four Hewes

CODICIL

Definition from Merriam-Webster
1: a legal instrument made to modify an earlier will
2: appendix, supplement

Origin
Middle English codicill, from Anglo-French *codicille, from Latin codicillus, diminutive of codic-, codex

First Known Use: 15th century

Related
Synonyms: afterword, appendix, addendum, excursus, supplement
Antonyms: foreword, introduction, preface, prologue