Chasing the Human Web
October 11, 2009 by Tech Trends · Leave a Comment
Creating a querySelector for IE that runs at “native speed”
August 28, 2009 by Tech Trends · Leave a Comment
Are You Missing Out on These Two Great Values?
August 25, 2009 by Tech Trends · Leave a Comment
Startups Jobs/Opportunities for you
August 24, 2009 by Tech Trends · Leave a Comment
Morpheus Venture Partners (MVP) adds successful valley entrepreneur to team, announces new batch of 10 startups
August 16, 2009 by Tech Trends · Leave a Comment
Interview: Neal Dikeman Co-founder of Carbonflow on web technology’s role in addressing climate change.
July 27, 2009 by Tech Trends · Leave a Comment
Interview: Neal Dikeman Co-founder of Carbonflow on web technology’s role in addressing climate change.
July 27, 2009 by Tech Trends · Leave a Comment
Subject To Change Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World Adaptive Path on Design
July 21, 2009 by Tech Trends · Leave a Comment
The world in which we live and work is subject to change without notice, and succeeding amidst that uncertainty requires continuous improvement. The key to creating successful products and services in a rapidly changing world is not resistance to unexpected change, but the flexibility to adapt to it. With that in mind, Subject to Change presents ideas that will help you improve your work designing products and services that provide great experiences for your customers.
Praise
“Short, but powerful. Easy to read, yet profound. I’ve been searching for just this book: the one perfect book that summarizes the essence of modern product design. This is it. The lessons are as powerful as they are simple: The product is NOT the goal. Successful products are systems. Focus on the experience. This requires empathy, agile product management, real understanding of the target audience. This book practices what it preaches. I will use it in my courses for MBA students. You should use it for, well, for everyone. Short, simple, persuasive, and powerful.”
Don Norman
Author of Emotional Design and Design of Future Things
Co-Founder Nielsen Norman group
“Customers don’t care about how innovative you are. They just want to be happy and satisfied. Learn from Adaptive Path a passion for finding and solving the problems that will matter to customers no matter what the future brings.”
Scott Berkun
Author, The Myths of Innovation
“Wake up. The future of business isn’t about flying cars and robot butlers. Creating the future is really about changing the way your company connects with its customers. Use this book as your guide.”
Jeffrey Veen Design Manager, Google
“Subject to Change presents complex, challenging ideas in simple, compelling language, with illuminating examples and no shortage of memorable phrases. At once authoritative and nimble, the book itself is an example of the kind of experience the authors admire. No matter who you are, it will change the way you think about design.”
Michael Bierut
Partner, Pentagram
Author, 79 Short Essays on Design
“The principles set out in Subject to Change are essential for the design of any product, but especially relevant for the fast-moving world of web software. It used to be the case that a software product was designed once, and refreshed every couple of years. Software is no longer a product. It is a process, a dynamic service that evolves as it responds to constant interaction with its users. The essence of Web 2.0 design is to create a dynamic framework that harnesses the collective intelligence of customers in such a way that the software becomes almost alive. This terrific book teaches the mindset required for this new kind of design.”
Tim O’Reilly
Founder and Publisher, O’Reilly Media
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars The folks at Adaptive Path know their stuff
I just finished reading Subject to Change (yeah, I just put the book down) and I think it’s a great and easy read on experience design and innovation.
I’m convinced the folks at Adaptive Path sure know what they’re talking about because they were able to write a book that’s less than 170 pages and be able to provide very good and conscise insights on customer/user research, agile methods, strategy and experience design.
The authors submit that qualitative data and research is as important as the quantitative methods (e.g. usability testing & evaluation versus interviews and observation). My key takeaway is really the importance of context for you and your customer when developing new services, interfaces and customer touch points.
The book does cite a lot of Adaptive Path’s experience in dealing with companies and it highlights how they were able to help them to be more customer-centric and adopt a design culture. I wish there were more specific examples on how they went about in doing customer research and implementing design strategies. The authors are able to make the topics “industry agnostic” and work even if you’re not in the IT field.
Subject to Change reads very much like a blog because there are very short sections and chapters, but that makes it easy to put the book down when you want to reflect on the points the authors are raising.
3 Stars Advice and Advertisement
I got this book about product marketing because I wanted to gain insight on the marketing of my own product http://www.code-roller.com so I was a little frustrated by the overall direction and focus of the book which is to motivate the reader into hiring Adaptive Path. All four authors either currently work for or have recently worked for that marketing company. According to the on-line edition of the book, there are twenty eight references to Adaptive Path in the content.
While light on theory, the book does give good advice. This advice is mostly in the form of what not to do. This most probably reflects Adaptive Path’s pain points in earlier engagements with customers. Don’t use competition as your main driver. Don’t depend on novelty. Don’t get stuck on research or reporting. Don’t get stuck on product design. Don’t over-engineer. Don’t get too confident about what you think your customers want.
If there is only one important take away from this book, then I believe that it would be this. It’s all about the user experience. What you should be focusing your design efforts on is the user experience. What you should be focusing your strategy on is the user experience. The only thing you do that your customers care about is their experience of your product or service.
They heavily advocate using an Agile methodology. They agree with early prototyping, failing fast, and continuous customer involvement. They are lukewarm on the SPARC model.
4 Stars Subject to Change is a great book for shifting your mindset in customer service
‘Subject to Change’ is a valuable addition to the modern business person’s bookshelf. I should note that this would be an especially great tool for marketers and publicists, research and development teams, as well as application developers.
The Adaptive Path team took a fungible approach to writing this book, as an organization that is interested in anticipation of the ever-changing needs of the expectations of their customers.
In the late Nineteenth century, inventions and innovations were largely based on new advances in technology available at the time. The kludgy inconvenience of these early technologies were simply ‘part of the experience.’ This book sites Eastman’s Kodak Camera as perhaps the first example of a company having the foresight to anticipate a customer’s needs. Until then, photographers were hobbyists, scientists, and tech geeks of the age. Eastman’s brilliant vision of making technology more accessible to the rest of the populous with the philosophy of “You press the button, and we do the rest,” was a great bridge between the customers who wanted to take photos and a company that could provide a service. That service being the development of the film, processing the plates, and mailing the finished photos to the customer.
The book uses this model to encourage shifting our traditional business mindset to anticipate our customer’s needs while developing software, hardware, or other devises. By empathizing with the target audience, and my making yourself a part of the audience yourself, you may wish to create an experience for your users that has the potential to seamlessly integrate with their lives. When marketers or designers use the traditional mode–that people are sheep–without valuing the feedback of the audience, innovation will grind to a halt. I emphatically agree with the Adaptive Path on this theme. As a publicist, I value customer feedback as much as I value my own creative ideas.
Another great specimen, and perhaps a more modern one, is the iPod/iTunes Music store. The mp3 player was already invented, but Steve Jobs created the experience of browsing music and buying music for the device, anticipating the customer’s needs. One could also argue that the iPhone is also the product of this school of thought, combining the need for a cell phone with the music player experience, all in one well designed device.
I have a niece with juvenile diabetes, and this book gave me a peek into the development of something that she uses every day to enjoy a happy life. There is a relatively new medical product developed called an insulin pump. I can testify that she is much happier using this pump than her previous regiment of daily shots. When developing this pump, diabetics tested a mock-up of the device, and offered feedback as to what would work for them. The developers of the pump changed the design of the belt used while swimming or in the shower, as well as other practical concerns. A side-note is that I was reading this section of the book while my nieces were happily making sandcastles and going in and out of the water! Without the user input, the device might be uncomfortable and unwieldy and certainly not easy to wear at the beach. This reminds me that the first undergarments for women were made by men, but the true innovations in practicality and comfort came when women started designing them!
In conclusion, this is a great book and I have started personally to rethink the feedback I am getting from my customers to be more empathetic. Empathizing with a person’s needs in the present and the future will prove to be a better model to provide easy to use, and enriching technologies, customer service solutions, and ingenuity.
4 Stars Good choice for an intro to experience-led design
In an accessible tone, Subject to Change articulates what should now be taken for granted in product design: that products designed around real peoples’ needs and desires will win over those engineered to meet theoretical expectations. Using Adaptive Path’s experience as examples (and perhaps emphasising the consultancy’s achievements more often than necessary), the authors make an easily-digestible case for implementing an experience design strategy in favour of blindly over-engineering complex products.
The book suggests that engineering-led product optimization improves but doesn’t innovate. On the other hand, placing real customers at the center of the design process is shown as a shortcut to delivering more relevant, useful and successful products.
Adaptive Path are arguably thought leaders in this space, and the style of writing here shows their desire to advertise the company’s experience. The reader is perhaps reminded too often that the successes in the examples given were due to Adaptive Path’s involvement, and that adopting their processes in particular can help any product designer. This doesn’t add credibility to the case studies, because someone buying an Adaptive Path book is likely to already be satisfied with the authors’ credentials before reading.
Subject to Change will resonate well with designers of all disciplines, but it’s perhaps other departments that would benefit the most by considering the adoption of an experience-led strategy. There may not be a great deal of new thought contained here, but as an easy-to-read introduction to the merits of customer-focussed design, Subject to Change would be a useful addition to an engineer’s or product manager’s bookshelf.
5 Stars Provides basics for designing products for web software and competitive advantage alike
SUBJECT TO CHANGE: CREATING GREAT PRODUCTS AND SERVICES FOR AN UNCERTAIN WORLD provides basics for designing products for web software and competitive advantage alike - but to limit it to computer collections would be a shame. It’s the college-level or public library collection specializing in innovative business solutions who will find it a powerful discussion of strategy and futuristic thinking processes, packed with real-world examples.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Hardest Job Interview Questions
July 18, 2009 by Tech Trends · Leave a Comment
Getting Started with Arduino Make Projects
April 23, 2009 by Tech Trends · Leave a Comment
Getting Started with Arduino Make Projects
This valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open-source electronics prototyping platform that’s taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino gives you lots of ideas for Arduino projects and helps you get going on them right away. From getting organized to putting the final touches on your prototype, all the information you need is right in the book.
Inside, you’ll learn about:
- Interaction design and physical computing
- The Arduino hardware and software development environment
- Basics of electricity and electronics
- Prototyping on a solderless breadboard
- Drawing a schematic diagram
And more. With inexpensive hardware and open-source software components that you can download free, getting started with Arduino is a snap. To use the introductory examples in this book, all you need is a USB Arduino, USB A-B cable, and an LED.
Join the tens of thousands of hobbyists who have discovered this incredible (and educational) platform. Written by the co-founder of the Arduino project, with illustrations by Elisa Canducci, Getting Started with Arduino gets you in on the fun! This 128-page book is a greatly expanded follow-up to the author’s original short PDF that’s available on the Arduino website.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars A bit too basic
This is a good introductory overview book but lacking in details. If you’ve already done the blinking light demo, you’ve done about 90% of what’s in this book. It does cover an overview of the board, installing the IDE, wiring up the LED demo and does a pretty good job.
Unfortunately past that, it’s just a quick overview of some of what you can do with it, not how to do these things. (which is what I was looking for)
If you bought an Arduino (or are considering buying one) and are now thinking I do what now? Then this book is probably for you.
4 Stars Getting Started with Arduino
As other reviews have stated this book is worth the price -for beginners. It is not a difficult read and does a good job drawing the reader into the exciting world of microcontrollers. There are many other more in-depth books on the subject but if you are a newbie, this is the book for you.
I gave it 4 stars because there are a few code examples that could have been better explained, but it is still completely worth the price.
5 Stars Best book for getting started with an Arduino!
If you’re new to electronic circuits and micro controller programming, this book is a great introduction. It walks you through step by step creating basic circuits and programming the Arduino to activate LED’s, accept input from various buttons and sensors, and even interact with data from the computer. It’s a must read for any beginner!
3 Stars Too Basic For A Software Developer
This is a pretty good book for someone who is completely green to both hardware and software. It gives a rather basic rundown of what most of the Arduino board’s pins are used for, explains how to hook up a few different basic components, and holds your hand through some fundamental software concepts.
Again, this book seems aimed at someone 12+ years of age with no prior software or hardware experience. If you have either hardware or software experience, you will most likely breeze through this book in an hour or two and toss it to the side, never to open it again.
5 Stars Fun for tinkerers
I love Make magazine. It captures the excitement and joy of tinkering, experimenting, and modifying things for fun. This is an experience I have had over and over through the years, beginning in my early childhood. I was that one kid that always took all of his toys apart, usually putting them back together with “improvements.”
I have learned so much from doing things this way, probably more than I have learned from books. I am a book lover, but more than that, I am a tinkerer. I’m never content with knowing theory, I have to get my hands dirty and experiment, often before I bother to learn the theory.
It is this very personality trait that caused me to enjoy a book I read this week, Getting Started with Arduino. The book is published by O’Reilly as part of their Make: Projects series. There is also an accompanying website dedicated to the project.
The book begins with a description of Arduino. This is an open source electronics prototyping platform designed for experimentation and learning. It was originally begun as a way to teach designers how to build prototypes of the projects they are designing, along with simple embedded software development. It turns out that is is a really fun-sounding hobbyist platform, too. I’ll get to the “fun-sounding” bit shortly.
The book is written in a way that an interested, but completely inexperienced person should be able to pick it up and read it, comprehend it, and begin to use the platform. I think that is possible. The text gives a clear and easy introduction to electronics without bogging down the casual newcomer in the details. In the long term, you would certainly want to study in greater depth from other resources, but for a person just looking to get started actually doing something, this book is ideal. It describes the Arduino hardware, gives an introduction to programming that is easy to follow and should allow any reader to play along with comprehension.
This is where I was unsatisfied: the software IDE and hardware drivers are easy to install and run on Windows and MacOSX, but not on Linux. There is a link in the book to a page that gives details of how to install on Linux, but it is more complicated and may turn some potential users off of the idea. I know that it’s ironic for a tinkerer to not want to tinker, but remember, the target audience is people who love to get their hands dirty without knowing or having to figure out the details in advance. There are links on that page to instructions for installation in various Linux distributions, but all that I checked were at least one release out of date. As I write this, I’m running the 64 bit version of Ubuntu 8.10, but the most recent Ubuntu instructions were for 8.04. Could I figure it out? Of course, but these missing details are disappointing.
My final evaluation is that the project looks like a lot of fun, and the book really is an enjoyable read. I can think of several uses for the hardware without even trying and it would probably be a blast to play around with. I will watch the project and hope to see the usability and interactability with Linux made/kept more up to date. When that happens, I’m in. In the meanwhile, you will probably find me at the electronics surplus/reclamation shop or the swap meet and garage sales for looking for my potential victims, I mean, experimentation platforms.
Finally, I realize that most people use Windows, and a growing percentage, especially among geeks, are using Macs. I’m not an operating system zealot and don’t wish to disparage those platforms or the author’s choice to support them primarily. I just have a different preference and prefer to put my time and effort into things that work well/easily with my preferred OS.
