Defining design

Start with a look at Apple's product design evolution.
Then visit Core 77, and read about how to define the word "design."


The short version:
Good designers share these intangible skills, useful for cross-functional teams:
1. Interpretation: Many designers are multi-lingual in different fields, they are fluent in consumer trends, marketing, manufacturing, and technology.
2. Tangibility: Many firms are plagued by 'smart talkers' who sound good in meetings, but get bogged down in abstract complexities. Designers are good at 'making it real.'
3. Synthesis: Not only do designers specialize in being generalists, they tend to be good at making new connections, pulling together threads from different fields and integrating them into a new whole.
4. Resolution: Good designers are smart at turning knowledge into action—they solve problems, resolve tensions, draw tangible and practical conclusions, and hit deadlines. Designers (and copy editors, I might add) live by real world limits.


Advice, for designers and all:
1. Adopt an agile perspective
2. Spot gaps
3. Make new connections
4. Teach yourself
5. Expand the industry.

"There is no one future waiting to happen," Gary Hamel said, "the future is something you create, not something that happens to you."

Political links added

Tech President and Open Congress are pretty interesting, in a geeky sort of way.

Backfence, from the horse's mouth, and LoudounExtra, from a resident

Mark Potts, the founder of Backfence, gives lessons for the next generation of hyperlocal websites.

As a counterpoint, it's worth visiting Loudoun Extra and reading Scott Karp's take on it. He lives there, and is one of the many online pundits these days telling us how to do our jobs. But he lives there, so his perspective is intriguing.

If you're like me, you might be a bit tired of "experts" focusing on the kind of work we do every day. (Have blog, will opine). Cutting through the noise to get to the knowledge isn't easy. I hope these links help.

Harry Potter and the Driver of Traffic

So "The Naked City's" transformation into the Potterblog has been highly successful, and I'm loving the content.
Reminds me of one cynical definition of a leader: Find out where the crowd is going, get in front of it, and say, "Follow me!"
In this case, I love where the crowd is going.
But as we focus on driving traffic, the old journalism ethics still apply: Just getting out in front of the crowd and giving them what they want can skew our coverage. One comment at the potterblog reflects this, but with bitterness.
"Congrats, Mary. You've gone from an active blog with 90+ posts discussing important issues that affect those who live and love Charlotte to one of hundreds of blogs that blather on about a book.
Why?
Is this part of the 'dumbing down' that the Observer (and most of McClatchy media) is doing? You know, more articles on paris Hilton and big pictures of kids and puppies that readers send in rather than good reporting on stories that affect people?
The results on your blog speak volumes for McClatchy/Observer's approach. You used to get 50+ posts and now you get 10...maybe."

Group psychology: It's intriguing that the potterblog draws more traffic, fewer comments. Some of the posters who regularly argued back and forth at the blog are upset that the conversation has gone elsewhere, but indications in the past were that many lurkers at the blog declined to enter the posting fray. What are the group dynamics of this? Is it a male/female thing sometimes? An age thing? How does a blogger engage the quiet readers and get them to post? Should a blogger even worry about that, as long as the traffic is coming?

Pro-Am Journalism

This week, Wired's online site is publishing the inaugural project of Assignment Zero, Jay Rosen's "pro-am" journalism project. It was an experiment in building an Internet newsroom with professionals and citizen journalists working together.

As an editor on the project, I'm probably a bit biased. Most of the heavy lifting was done by Rosen and a group of 3 or 4 people who pulled everything together. That, of course, is a danger of opening up the floodgates to anyone: Someone has to control the gates.

But, it's an interesting topic. I learned a lot about some of the "crowdsourced" projects taking place online -- from iStockphoto to collaborative stock picking.

For more information, see Assignment Zero’s site.

News to Use

So, text alerts aren't just messages about boring traffic reports or sports scores. I just got an alert from the News-Press of Fort Myers, Fla., (for which I thought I'd opted out, but that's another story) that's really important news.

Text of the message:

All four 11:59 p.m. showings of "Harry Potter" for tonight at the Bell Tower Shops have sold out.

UT-Austin Conference: Journalism and Citizenship

Thanks to cyberjournalist.net for this link:
University of Texas conference starting Friday on Journalism and Citizenship. Pretty impressive looking list of scholars who'll be speaking. Good stuff's sure to come out of these discussions. Including:

“What the Blogger Knows: The Emerging Knowledge Practices of Personal Journalism”
“Media on Media: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Professional Mass Media and Bloggers”
“History Writing 2.0: Journalist and Citizen Agenda-Setters in the Coverage of Hurricane Katrina’s Anniversary”
“Important News but Complex: How the Web Generates Public Interest in and Understanding of Science, Health and Technology”