Idea Sandbox: The 5 Stages of Acceptance

Paul Williams reviews the book What A Great Idea! 2.0 by Chic Thompson, which he describes as "chock full o’ bits of wisdom that help with creativity and creating new ideas."

From The Idea Sandbox:

Chic points out that killer phrases “are as inevitable in the innovation process as ideas themselves.”

He adds, “psychologists have siad that the human reaction to a new idea unfolds something like this, which we could call the Five Stages Of Idea Acceptance.” I’ve turned this list into a handy graphic suitable for framing.

The door-lock analogy is pretty accurate… You can have four of the five locks open, but the door is still closed until all five are unlatched.

Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People.

When I was a bachelor living in Chicago, my mom called one evening: "Your brother has a question for you."

She put 8-year-old Josh on the phone, who was curious if I still owned that 200-foot climbing rope. "Why? What's your plan?"

He was trying to solve a unique problem: How to connect a long rope from the 75-ft pine tree in our yard to the roof of the house in order to slide down it as a zip line.

(NOTE: Josh has been to the emergency room more than anyone else in our sprawling, adventurous family!)

Point being:

1. "Problem-solving kids" are great,
2. They need some skills and models to help'em,
3. And society needs lots more of them!

Continue reading "Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People." »

23 & Me & Mr. Chimp

Like my daughters, like my mom--even like you!--I share a vast amount of DNA with the chimps, apes, and bananas. The consumer genetics testing company 23 & Me has a great Flash animation introduction to genetics.

Click to read more ...

GOOD Magazine’s Infographics Now Archived on Flickr

From Flowingdata.com:

You know all those infographics that you like so much fromGOOD Magazine? Well they're all in one place now in their Flickr archive. Head on over to view all 80.

ID On-line: The Material City - New York, Mayor Bloomberg & Design

How the Bloomberg Administration's push for design is changing the face of New York. A Conversation with First Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris.

full article >>

The Product Failure Bin

ABOVE: "Wacky Hybrid Appliances" from This Old House On-Line

My family used to have a gag gift that would show up every Christmas in someone's gift pile. The "Boob Bath Mat" never failed to shock and awe.

Each year, it seemed as if the victim never saw it coming.

Lots of time and energy goes into products that never see the light of a showroom floor. So, how did this monstrous mash-up product ever make it to the marketplace?

Someone--a team of someones, in fact--had to propose the idea, design it, send the specs to a factory in China, produce a catalog layout, write sales copy, coordinate the shipping, etc.

Since innovation is being touted as our only way out of the eco-financial desert of Western Civ, we had better get smart about finding, designing and deploying good ideas.

Click to read more ...

Colorbrewer 2.0

© Cynthia Brewer, Mark Harrower and The Pennsylvania State University. www.axismaps.com

When building maps and information graphics, choosing the right colors to help designate variables--whether population, temperature, or campaign dollars--is a time-consuming challenge.

How does one choose colors that are effective in communicating data, that can be read by the colorblind, that can be considered print fiendly and/or "photocopy-able" ? 

The folks at Penn State have built Colorbrewer 2.0, an effective tool to swiftly aid in the process.

Once a palette is chosen, this free on-line tool allows for easy export to ArcGIS (a mapping app), Excel, or any Adobe product. You can also simply copy and paste the RGB, CMYK or HEX values.

One Million Monkeys Typing

From Pop!Tech Blog:

The Theory: Given enough time, a hypothetical chimpanzee typing at random would, as part of its output, almost surely produce one of Shakespeare's plays (or any other text).lya Kreymerman and Nina Zito, creators of One Million Monkeys Typing, think so, too. On their new community story-telling site, members collaborate on writing a story (perhaps even a novel), without the pressure or obligation of ever completing the story by themselves.

Founded on the simple premise “read, write, publish”, the project encourages members to create new segments for “story trees”. Before beginning a new story, you must first contribute to a few existing stories. Once you’ve become part of the writing community, you receive permission (or in One Million Monkey terms, a “seed”) to start your own story tree.

The idea of one million monkeys typing is derived from the infinite monkey theorem. Community members are considered “monkeys,” with a designated number indicating the order in which they joined the site.

Home + Housewares Show 2009...in Cartoons!

  

From Core 77:

Every year, tens of thousands of people mob the International Housewares Show in Chicago, touring through the latest, greatest, and sometimes-lamest homestuff as far as the eye can see. This year,Lunchbreath and Fueledbycoffee walked the show for Core77, preparing an illustrated "Fieldguide" for designers and housewares fans, and rendering (literally) their experiences, insights, paradoxes, and yes...some great finds soon to be stocked in a store near you. Enjoy!

(via Twine)

Wordle Goes Mainstream

A century of most popular baby names - top 50 by decade

Yesterday's post commented on Fast Company's recognition of the importance of visualization skills. In their commentary, FC posted screenshots and video of word-images created with Wordle.

These Rorchschach-like wordmaps are fun, easy and effective to create with this (free) java-based web service. Many websites (including ours) now use the resulting images as navigation, sitemaps or splash screens. The Wordles give the viewer an instant impression of themes and importance ideas through font size and color.

I was blown away to see a Wordle used on the front page of USA Today as a feature article--not on the tool or on data visualization, but used as a graphic to illustrate the shifting trend in baby names!