A curation of ideas on design,
digital & disrupting education.

First Fast Follower And The Myth of First Mover Advantage

By On May 13, 2012 In Business & Entrepreneurship With 2 Comments Permanent Link to First Fast Follower And The Myth of First Mover AdvantagePermalink

I watched a short Stanford entrepreneurship lecture on Udemy.com today given by Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur. In the second section, Steve comments briefly about ‘first mover advantage’ and why the difficulties of being the first mover can hinder, rather than hurt your startup. This is for reasons like having to spend a lot of time and effort creating the market and educating users, and learning hard lessons when testing assumptions that no one has ever tried before that don’t end up working (which slows you down). Instead, Steve suggests that being the first mover might not be as good as being the first best executer:

It doesn’t mean you never want to be the first mover, but the historic Stanford ‘first mover advantage’, I think, over the last decade or two, has found out to be a divide by zero problem; It’s just wrong. You don’t always want to be the first mover. In fact,  you typically want to be the first fast follower. And if we take a look at all the companies that presented here this semester, you’ll find out that they were all incredibly great fast followers. Was Amazon the first mover? How about eBay? How about Google? Were they the first movers? No. None of these guys were first movers. They were first best executers, but they certainly were not first movers. – Steve Blank

I’ve heard seasoned entrepreneurs offer the advice that, as a founder, you should assume that, at any given moment, there are 2 or 3 teams out there working on something close to, or exactly what you’re working on and that execution is the real differentiator that determines success in the end, which is why execution matters so much. For a variety of reasons, I find Steve’s words very comforting.

How Might We: Create A Community That People Asirpire To Be A Part Of?

By On May 12, 2012 In Branding, How Might We... With No Comments Permanent Link to How Might We: Create A Community That People Asirpire To Be A Part Of?Permalink

This morning I put together this little mind map on my iPad using Adobe Ideas. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what a learning platform specifically tailored for creatives might look like, and how we might (HWM) create an online community for that platform that people would aspire to be part of. Given that the core of great branding is the expression of the right values, I started brainstorming there, asking myself “what types of values and traits might provide a good foundation for growing such a community?”. That exercise produced this. It’s incomplete, but I thought it was worth sharing.

If you had a place where you learned online with others, what type of community would you be proud to be a part of?

Mind map by Steffan Antonas

Learning Web Design, Web Development & iOS Development Online with Treehouse

By On May 11, 2012 In Method & Craft With No Comments Permanent Link to Learning Web Design, Web Development & iOS Development Online with TreehousePermalink

Like many web designers and developers, I’m almost completely self taught. I started years ago with books, manuals and blog posts because that’s all that was really available. Now we’ve got an overwhelming number of choices when it comes to learning. Im a visual learner, so I find that video works best for me learning this stuff. Being able to watch someone show you how something complicated is done is so much faster, easier and enjoyable.

For the last few months I’ve worked my way through 38 badges on Treehouse, which has been great. At an average 6-7 minutes per video, and about 5 videos per badge, that’s around 20 hours of content. I’ve learned a lot, and the fact that the content is delivered in a thoughtful, structured way has really made the experience good. Continue Reading →

On Curiosity, Rigor, and Learning As You Go

By On May 10, 2012 In Creativity, Getting Things Done With No Comments Permanent Link to On Curiosity, Rigor, and Learning As You GoPermalink

In this 30 minute video, Photographer and filmmaker Andrew Zuckerman shares some lessons from his time creating the Wisdom project, in which he interviewed “elders” around the world, including Chuck Close, Bill Withers, Jane Goodall, Frank Gehry, Massimo Vignelli, among many others. Zuckerman talks about the anxiety we feel as we start a new projects, how fear can help us get things done, and the importance of honesty and good, old-fashioned hard work (surprise, suprise). You can thank the99percent team for this one.

Process Is Not Magic

By On May 10, 2012 In Design, Downloads With No Comments Permanent Link to Process Is Not MagicPermalink



Today’s post is a link to a free wallpaper design illustrating a quote by Charles Eames comes from the CAMP creative studio in southern California. This is what I’ve got decorating my desktop right now. It’s making me smile. Download it here.

Three Tools For Quick User Interface Prototyping

By On May 8, 2012 In Design, Prototyping With No Comments Permanent Link to Three Tools For Quick User Interface PrototypingPermalink

This week I’ve been doing some research on prototyping tools. A discussion about these types of tools and what works best came up in a recent meetup I attended in Boston for web/UI designers and it sparked an interesting debate. Some people preferred to start designing straight in Fireworks or Photoshop, others preferred paper and pencil first, and then some people liked a few tools specifically built for rapid prototyping. While everyone had their own preferred method, I think we all agreed that succeeding in the prototyping stage is about speed, pure and simple. Quick and dirty beats slow and pretty every single time. That said, here are 3 prototyping tools that did get discussed:

Keynotopia

This is the one I would naturally gravitate to. I’m firmly in the “quick and dirty” camp, and this tool is the simplest and is the least expensive. Keynotopia is a large collection of user interface design templates that enable you to prototype and test your site or app ideas using Apple Keynote, Microsoft PowerPoint, or OpenOffice Impress – it’s almost all drag and drop, and if you understand page transitions, you’re already on your way to mastery. Plus, you can export your prototype as a clickable pdf, which is super handy. The templates include thousands of wireframe and high fidelity vector UI components, designed from scratch in Keynote, Powerpoint and OpenOffice, and are fully editable and customizable without needing additional design tools. Again, at $49-$99, this one is the cheapest of the three.

Here’s a video demo of Keynotopia:

Antetype

Antetype is an app that’s relatively established in the marketplace, and there were a few strong advocates in the room who praised it. While the learning curve is a little steeper than Keynotopia, this one is definitely better suited for more complex projects and designs. At $289 USD, you’ll have to decide how feature-rich you need the tool to be to get your job done. Students can also score a copy for $49, which is very reasonable.

Here’s a demo of Antetype:


Axure

Axure was the big boy of the 3. At $589, you’d have to be prototyping a lot with it to justify the cost, but again, there were a few happy users in the room who had good things to say about it. This tool’s learning curve seemed similar to Antetype’s and it’s clearly suited for more complex demos that require a bit more care in look and feel. If you’re in to adding visual details like rounded corners, gradients and shaded buttons, this could be your best solution. Although, I think everyone in the room I was in agreed that at this stage of the game spending a lot of time on gradients and shadows often hurts you more than it helps. That’s your call.

Here’s a demo of Axure:

If you know of any tools like that you find useful? Please let me know in the comments. I’d love to have a chat about it.

On The Creation Economy

By On May 3, 2012 In Business & Entrepreneurship With No Comments Permanent Link to On The Creation EconomyPermalink

For the last two years, Wired has held an annual “Disruptive By Design” business conference. A few days ago, Wired posted a number of great videos from the conference online at Fora.tv.

One of the videos is a 19 minute interview with Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler about the status of the “creation economy”, and some of the misconceptions and challenges the Kickstarter team is dealing with. It’s always interesting hearing what founders are actually seeing vs. what you see in the media.

I’m admittedly starry eyed about Kickstarter and I’ve backed and followed a number of projects, which has been fun and rewarding, so getting to see a more personal and authentic side of one of the Kickstarter founders made for a great morning commute watch on my phone.

WIRED Business Conference: The Creation Economy from WIRED on FORA.tv

Sneak Peek

By On May 3, 2012 In Journal, Projects With No Comments Permanent Link to Sneak PeekPermalink

You may have noticed that I gave my blog a face lift this week. I’ve been having some fun working on a redesign of my site for the last few nights and I’ve been rebuilding the live site as I go. The redesign is something that I’ve wanted to do for ages now, and it’s finally getting done. I spent a lot of time this past year with my nose in design books and learning how to code better while building sites for others. Now that I’ve finally gotten around to it, I’m really enjoying the process of designing for myself a bit. I’m only a few days in but I thought it would be fun to share a sneak peek of what I’ve been working on. I’m using a fantastic baseline grid by Teehan+Lax for the design, which is free to download. The main site is going to look a lot like the blog does now – minimal, grid-based and oh-so Helvetica Neue.