Within our personas and scenarios, the people and their stories are not arbitrary. They are stories of the lives of our clientÂ?s current and potential customers, and they serve as comprehensive guides to how our clients should interact with those customers, in the moment or over a lifetime, to profit their business. Three years ago, personas and scenarios were Â?a process stepÂ? in our iterative, user-centered development process, whereas today they are the platform upon which many of our insights are communicated, and our solutions are modeled. Over the past few years, they have risen in importance and become a primary tool for communicating data analysis, strategic business frameworks, new product and service concepts, and cross-channel brand experiences....

....Customer-centric discussions, strategy and results continue to increase their prevalence in the boardrooms. Personas are a clear, comprehensive, human way to tell those stories.

Experience Planning Group, edited by Parrish Hanna, "Customer Storytelling at the Heart of Business Success," Boxes and Arrows, 17 Jul 2005.

patterns are a designer's rules of thumb

In a general sense, patterns are a designer's rules of thumb, the intuitive principles, often unspoken, that guide design work. And just as our innate knowledge of grammatical rules allows us to speak fluently and create well-formed sentences, an architect's innate sense of patterns allows him or her to design fluently, to create well-formed buildings.

Max Jacobson, Murray Silverstein, Barbara Winslow, Patterns of Home, Taunton Press, 1992, p. 4.

“Life is too short for a man to hold bitterness in his heart.”

The recent UCI Track Cycling World Championships held near Los Angeles included a display honoring [Marshall "Major"] Taylor. It featured one of his lightweight racing bikes and his defining statement: "Life is too short for a man to hold bitterness in his heart."

Brion O'Connor, "Major Injustice," Delta Sky, July 2005, p. 70.

slightly disruptive

Make the slightly disruptive mindset sustainable. Artists keep what they call a “morgue”-- it is a journal of images, ideas, and sketches they gathered from all sorts of sources. They are able to refer to the journal in the studio for inspiration and ideas. Record your thoughts and ideas in a journal. Add stimulation from other observations--magazine articles, images, and ideas. The goal is to break your pattern of thinking and look at the same things you do everyday through a different lens.

Geof Hammond, Slightly Disruptive, a Play Red Paper, 2005. (PDF)

Misquoted

USA Today's Kevin Maney has an interesting piece today about some well known and oft-repeated technology quotes that he says simply aren't true. Among those for which he finds no evidence or outright counter-information, are:

• "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, founder of IBM.
• "Everything that can be invented has been invented." -- Charles Duell, U.S. Patent Commissioner, 1899.
• "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- Harry Warner, Warner Bros., as movies with sound made their debut in 1927.
• "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder, 1981.

There is one well-known quote which turns out to be true: "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." — Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment, in 1977. Now, next time you see one of these quotes, probably on somebody's PowerPoint presentation, you can call'em on it!

http://archives.trblogs.com/2005/07/not_what_you_th.trml http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kevinmaney/2005-07-05-famous-quotes_x.htm

Let go

Google recognized that users maintain control, and to win they had to become users’ preferred choice.

....

The Web’s lesson is that we have to let go, to exert as little control as necessary. What are the fewest necessary rules that we can provide to shape the experience? Where do people, tools, and content come together? How do we let go in a way that’s meaningful and relevant to our business?

Peter Merholz, "How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Relinquish Control," Adaptive Path, 21 Jun 2005

The Page Paradigm

On any given Web page, users will either...

- click something that appears to take them closer to the fulfillment of their goal,

- or click the Back button on their Web browser.

Mark Hurst, "The Page Paradigm," Good Experience Blog, 19 Feb 2004.

People don’t complain about paper when it can’t do something, but if software can’t do something then it’s “bad” or “useless” or “a waste” or “needs more features” or “crap” (yes, we’ve heard all of these things). That’s an impossible expectation to meet and a harmful assumption to make.

Jason Fried, "The right tool for the job," Signal vs. Noise Blog, 23 May 2005.

fuzzy concept

“There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.” - Ansel Adams

“Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.” - George Sand (1804-1876), Pearls of Wisdomed. J. Agel and W. Glanze, 1987

As quoted in Bob Baxley, "Shared Vision :: Organization Synergy for Effective Design," Presentation for About, With, and For, Chicago, Illinois, Oct 2004

unimpeded by progress

"The fire service in the United States is a 200-year-old institution unimpeded by progress..."

Joshua Davis, "The Fire Rebels, Wired, June 2005, p 153.

brilliant and conceptually simple

Paniccia's team came up with an answer that was both brilliant and, for those familiar with silicon technology, conceptually simple. Etched into the Intel laser chip was a silicon waveguide channel in which light bounced back and forth, gaining in intensity. The researchers implanted electrodes on both sides of the channel. When they turned on a voltage between the electrodes, it created an electric field that herded the negatively charged electrons toward the positively charged electrode, effectively sweeping them out of the way. As a result, the photons were able to build up unhampered, until they produced a continuous laser beam.

Robert Service, "Intel's Breakthrough," MIT Technology Review, July 2005