Free UC Online Innovation Class

Coming October 7!   (Background and Video)       Full Announcement in Browser

FREE University of Cincinnati Innovation Class

In this FREE seven-week Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), participants will learn the tools necessary to generate new ideas and quickly transform those concepts into viable new products and services. The “Innovation and Design Thinking” class will combine and contrast both the business and engineering aspects of innovation.

There are no admission requirements or prerequisites, and participants who successfully complete the course and enroll in a graduate degree program at UC Lindner College of Business or College of Engineering & Applied Science will earn two free graduate credits for their work.*

REGISTER TODAY Here FOR INNOVATION & DESIGN THINKING

Next Big Thing in Design

Design has recently been brought to my close attention.  Tim Brown writes about his book in Linkedin:  " ... In my book, Change By Design, I chronicle the end of Design with a capital “D” and the rise of “design thinking,” a more collaborative, human-centered approach that can be used to solve a broader range of challenges. Design thinking harnesses the power of teams to work on a wide range of complex problems in health care, education, global poverty, government — you name it. By taking this more expansive view of design, you’re able to have much greater impact. ... " 

See also his Ideo blog, which has this and related posts.

Randy Pausch Design Lessons

Collaborative design lesson from Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon  Particularly interested in the nature of collaborative design:  " ... This week will mark the fifth anniverary of Randy Pausch’s death. Randy was a passionate educator and mentor, and in his final years, he gained worldwide recognition for “The Last Lecture,” as well as for the bravery he publicly displayed facing a terminal illness. ... I was one of many graduate students he taught at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (the ETC), which he co-founded. His lessons about the role of collaboration in design – and more, about how to collaborate effectively – have profoundly influenced my career and work as a designer, including my work with startups. Here are three of Randy’s lessons that I think are essential for anyone who hopes to build products for a living. ... ' 

Looking for Active Design

Sites scrape lots of information to get better understanding of the user.  So why can't this information be used to create active interface design, and a better personalized experience?  Good guest post in GigaOM.

Failure of Design Thinking

In Innovation Excellence:  Interesting thoughts on the failure of design thinking.   A little muddled, but I do think there must be a stronger combination of business, quantitative/analytic and design thinking to get to useful results.   What I saw in the enterprise did not do this well.  " ... What will come next after Design Thinking will be an evolution of how Design Thinking will be integrated towards business and becomes a process with synergy. A holistic process that combines the user and the market, analytical and intuitive, deductive, inductive and abductive. What will complement more from Design Thinking will be how strategy, leadership and culture can be fully integrated into the system with synergy which will have a dominant effect in shaping the future of business in innovation. .... "