Sounds simple enough? Well, it is (not exactly rocket science)…but it requires that you have a well defined goal which isn’t always that easy. It’s important to set the right goals as well, though, so be visionary but try to be realistic at the same time!
First you have to overcome some of the typical obstacles for setting your goal:

    a) thinking “how will I/this fit in with what I/we do now?”
    b) believing that the road to your goal is too difficult to follow
    c) lack of self confidence: “other people are better than me” *

* NOTE: True, there are people that are better than you, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for you. And it especially doesn’t mean that you don’t have anything interesting to offer.

OK – got your goal set up? Great.

Now to a very important part: try to visualize your goal.
So for example if your goal is to code and release a Top10 featured iPhone app, you should be able to close your eyes and visualize your app on that Top10 list, see the star ratings and the number of positive reviews, read the “1$ for a limited time only” price tag, see the “top downloaded app” badge etc. etc. And most importantly: try to actually feel what it feels like to have accomplished exactly that.
I know it sounds a bit like something taken out of a self therapy handbook…and it probably is. But I know it works. It makes you more goal oriented.

The final step is easy: look at your options and evaluate against what will get you just at tiny bit closer to your goal – and make the right choice!

Good luck :)

A good example is something that has existed in web sales for a very long time: sites giving away free shipping if your purchases reaches a certain amount. I for one, find myself filling the basket until I reach the free shipping limit, and to me this proves, that it’s possible to work with incentives that motivate certain purchase behavior.
I’m sure this could be exploited in many new ways especially if combined with some of the social media services.

But I think there’s another part of ‘design for behavior change’ that could be equally exiting. It could be a great mission for product design companies to make products that have built in incentives towards the purchase (e.g. the purchase contributes to global causes, or to local community causes like a new playground) and at the same time motivates the customers to a certain new behavior through the design of the products (e.g. doing something great with your kid, getting more exercise, reduce waste or conserve energy). Of course the product should also fill a need and meet a market, but that goes without saying.

Maybe this could be a path to success for some?

For those of you reading this at work (or other places where playing a video with the sound on is not a very good idea), I’ve extracted the eight tips:

1. You gotta be yourself
2. Get active on at least the top three major social networking sites: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
3. You gotta provide awesome, awesome content
4. Be smart with your time
5. Be consistent
6. Promote others
7. Connect face-to-face with individuals
8. Thank others as much as possible

This is great stuff for those of you who are just beginning to use social media strategically.
Anyways, here’s the video – enjoy :)

Year of the tablets
Once again, Apple will raise the bar for consumer electronics by introducing a functional tablet computer, and once again everybody else will try to catch up.

Android attack
Nokia and SonyEricsson will bite the dust, accept defeat and put Android on most of their phones.

Netbook craze no more
Due to the evolution of processors, the ‘netbook’ term will fade away as most low-end laptops are lightweight, have a long battery life and a processor capable of handling what most full-fledged laptops of last year could.

eReader niche
eReaders will remain a niche product as more and more people want hybrid gadgets that do more than one thing.

Electronic Bicycle Gadgets (EBG)
2010 will bring the introduction of consumer level electronic bicycle equipment; GPS location services and electronic locks will be the first practical implementations.

Free GPS maps
Pushed by Google and Nokia, the largest GPS players will feel forced to give away their map updates for free and will have to quickly find new revenue streams.

Clash of the Titans
Now that Google has launched its own phone, has its own OS (mobile + desktop), has its own browser etc. etc. they are well positioned to gain market shares from Apple, who in turn will respond by accelerating development of Google replica services. The old enemy – Microsoft – will not be the focus of attention (until they start having success with their products during 2011).

Power (control) to the people
We’ll see the introduction of connected power monitors for private households; once households can track their day-to-day power consumption and compare with neighbors and friends it will accelerate the awareness of cutting power consumption an largely contribute to reduced CO2 emission.

Sunny LED bulbs
Finally, LED bulbs that emit natural looking light will come at price points that makes it a worthwhile purchase.

And – completely off-topic – here’s a bonus non-tech prediction for you…

Bicycle revolution
A new, revolutionary product will be introduced on the market and will greatly improve everyday life for male bicyclist all over the world, making a bicycle ride more safe and more enjoyable. ;)

If you’re the type, like me, who likes numbers and plans (*), here are some tips from the top of my head…

Guide to creating good business cases:

• do proper market research
• find realistic market numbers
• be specific about your assumptions
• build a proper model that can be reused for future products
• build various business cases based on the model

Now, insert your business case numbers into your overall business plan:

• be specific about your different cost elements
• create a profit & loss (P&L) model
• build a cash flow model in order to track your financial situation
• create a sales model with input from your business cases

…go sell!


:)

*) and even if you’re not, you should seriously consider reading into these things if you’re a start-up company – feel free to ask me questions using the comments feature!

It’s always interesting being introduced to a work domain that you haven’t been in previously. Trying to understand how people think, work and interact in the product design community makes me see a lot of weird things going on. One of my first realisations was that a great deal of product designers are designing stuff that never reach the public. Maybe they see their design as an art form more than a practical tool in the development of a product…maybe they just like to show their design to other designers which in turn will acknowledge their designs.
It’s not entirely unlike the open source computer programming community: people share code pieces that are so far from being a proper program, that you really have to live within the community to appreciate it. It’s essentially raw pieces of code, just like raw pieces of design is just that: an unfinished part of a greater whole.

For me, the design is just one of many important steps in a product development process. I understand and acknowledge the importance of design … but at the same time you have to acknowledge the equal importance of e.g. production, sales and distribution as parts of a product development process.

And I shrivel each time I hear someone say “great design” when seeing some crappy 3D design sketch rendering and when that design sketch is being promoted as the next big thing. C’mon let’s focus instead on the successful designers – let’s find the designers that have successfully managed to make great product designs that resulted in great products that you can buy. After all…the product is the goal, not the design, right?

When making industrial design products you’re very likely also trying to innovate or even invent new concepts (unless you’re solely into ’styling’). And while that is certainly the goal for many, and although ocassionally you stumble upon some true innovative concepts, in my opinion you’re most likely looking at “micro innovation” or – more plainly – improvement.

Improvement in products is important, because when you, as a consumer, are replacing a product with a new one, you expect added features – you’re looking for that piece of innovation that justifies the purchase. The case is clear when you’re replacing something that is a commodity: replacing a bicycle is much more fun if the new bicycle has some added feature that the old one didn’t (e.g. drive belt instead of chain).

And it’s also why it sucks so much replacing your old laptop with a new one: it’s fun to feel the added speed when you open your favorite apps to begin with, but very soon you start feeling sorry you spent €2.000 on something that’s essentially identical to what you had before. Unless it comes with some innovative feature (Apple did it right when they introduced the magnetically attached power cord “MagSafe”).

I really don’t believe in new products that just look better and don’t bring any improvement to what the product needs to do and to the people using it (unless what you’re replacing is fugly). So basically: Improve your products or don’t sell any!

Why the HELL is Microsoft always making almost-there-but-not-quite products?!? They did a GREAT job updating Office 2003 to Office 2007, but why didn’t they fix these things:

• They created great new menus, but why did they remove the option to customize them? Don’t they like expert users?
• Adjusting table column widths in Powerpoint is a living hell
• Rendering of said tables is way off in certain resolutions/zooming levels, which is annoying (see picture)
• If a dialogue box is open in Powerpoint (e.g. the custom color dialogue) then for some reason the Windows show desktop shortcut (Windows button+D) doesn’t work…WTF is up with that??? And if same dialogue is open, you can’t open another Powerpoint file (you even receive a nice message saying this…see picture). This is freaking me out!
• If a dialogue box is open in Outlook, then all hell breaks loose…e.g. try double clicking an e-mail address in a received e-mail (as if to see more data on that sender): if the sender is NOT in the exchange address book, a dialogue showing the e-mail address (again) appears, and all other Outlook windows (open mails, calendar etc.) become locked – and they’re not even visible using the ALT-TAB shortcut! Come on…!!!
• Now try right-clicking any file in your Windows Explorer, choose “Send to” and “Mail recipient”…three amazing things happen:
  1. A new mail is created with the file attached, but somehow Outlook refuses to insert your default signature…instead it adds some stupid text stating that you should check the security of the file as well as adding the redundant information that is the name of the file. This is done, I should add, in plain text format regardless of your setting to use HTML in new e-mails. If you want the e-mail to look normal, you have to format it and insert the signature yourself.
  2. All other Outlook windows become locked, so if you wanted to attach another file that was sent to you in an e-mail, you can forget about it.
  3. If you realize the above point and decide to save the new e-mail (with the attachment, in plain text, and without the signature) in order to access the rest of your Outlook, then forget about finding the saved e-mail in your Draft folder as is normally the case. No, instead Outlook chooses to save it as an unread message in the Inbox folder which makes absolutely no sense at all. OMFG!

And the list just goes on and on and on.

As much as I acknowledge the impact that the Microsoft Office suite has had upon today’s way of doing business, I wish that the people at Microsoft would stop assigning interns to the Office development and start paying attention to the details. It’s all in the details, guys…one day you’ll get it.

It’s a well known fact that ideas that are kept in the drawer never reach their potential. Ideas need to be brought out into the open, discussed, elaborated upon, shown to people, tossed and turned etc. etc. until the idea transforms into a business opportunity, a product, a concept or whatever.
This proces of refining the raw idea into something usefull is being optimised in a variety of ways. A common buzz concept is crowdsourcing which intend to reduce the risk of creating products that people don’t really like. Another concept is userdriven innovation which is similar and by no means a new invention – except maybe in the product design world where designers traditionally have been sitting behind closed doors crafting their designs without any interaction with the end consumer.

One startup that builds on these new concepts is quirky which call themselves a ’social product development company’.

The idea is brilliant and also very simple: a) submit your idea, b) pay a small fee, and c) let the community (i.e. registered users) decide which product to take into production (they are currently rallying votes for product # 5).
If your idea is chosen, quirky and the rest of the community will help develop, build, and sell the product and part of the revenue goes back to you and other users that influenced the product.
There’s a lot more to the concept, so go check it out!

It’s all about sharing your idea, and making money. Excellent concept – and perhaps one for you to transform to the European market?
Or maybe just submit your 4-year-old-idea-in-the-drawer and make tons of money?