Sustainable Product Design

How to design sustainable Products?

I am interested in sustainable product design. I encountered a good resources on designing sustainable products, well here it is for your green pleasure. It is from Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and design and innovation firm IDEO, Aligned for Sustainable Design: An A-B-C-D Approach to Making Better Products. The objective of this report is to educate companies about how to create internal and external alignments that will allow them to achieve their sustainable design goals. But first….

Why design sustainable products?

At least one of the reasons is cost. Companies are already made to pay for recycling these products. Soon consumers will also pay for their waste. For example, recently in Toronto the city has started charging the building owners for the waste they produce. City is encouraging the building managers to do more recycling.

In the past one really do not have to care about which box you through your coffee cup in, waste or recycling. But now you must care.

Product Life-Cycle and Product Re-Cycle

A good product designer must think about all aspects of a product life cycle. May be we have think of products not in terms of cradle to grave, but rather from Cradle to Cradle.

del.icio.us Tags: Sustainable Product Design,BSR,Green Product Design,Green Books,Cradle to Cradle,Biomimicry,Sustainable Design,Green Product Manager

Talking about what matters to you.

Its been a little while since my last post. I have been up to quite a lot. Here are some of these:

1. Comedy Improv
2. Product Management
3. Contact Improv
4. Capoeira
5. Usability of things
6. Walks around the High Park
7. Influence Strategies

Visual Thinkers ! this is for you.

Are you like me?

Do you describe ideas more visually using back of napkins and small sticky figures, boxes and arrows. There is no idea big enough or complex enough that can not get some help from few lines, words, and pictures. I love to draw concepts.

As part of Product Management responsibilities sometimes this communication skill becomes handy. Development teams, marketing, sales, quality control, and executives they all need to be involved in various elements of my work. I have saved hundreds of hours of useless frustrations by walking up to a whiteboard and drawing few lines and sketches.  Goodness, people love when you just get their idea and rest of the energy is focused on more productive aspects of discussions.

I came across this wonderful technique – sketchcasting by Richard Ziade of Basement.org. Its just amazing and extremely simple. I have already started using it as part of my work and personal life.

Here is the technique in action, where he talks about Product Management trap (double treat for you product management fans out there.”

 

I am currently doing my sketching using mouse and pocket PC, I know its not a convenient way, but till I get my tablet PC its serving my needs.

I will post few of my sketchcasts soon.

 

Tags: Product Management sketchcasting sketch.basement.org Dilawar.com Communication Visual Thinking VizThink

Evolutionary Design, or design using evolution – a work in progress

Lets say we met in 1995, and you just got your first email address. What would have been your response if I asked you, “so what do you think this Internet thing will be like in next ten years?” I am sure you could have predicted the whole www web and its changes, and web 2.0, and Google, and YouTube, and Facebook,……. Right!

May be you would have, but I could not? Future is pretty unpredictable.

Now, lets imagine we had a product called Evoneng, the worlds first evolution engine. To use Evoneng, you just put a product, an idea, or a phenomenon in front of it ask it to tell you, what it sees in say 5 years, 10 years or longer. Instead of just crystal balling, it uses the well tested process of nature’s evolution.

EvonEng might have come up with various combinations and we could have predicted trends like global village, social networks, return of craftsmanship etc.

Good idea for some science fantasy, right!

Not really. Its already happening.

Something on these lines is already being developed. I was researching more information on this idea to see what is out there. Here are my references (finds) so far:

Evolution and product design:

http://www.icosystem.com/articles/business/Bonabeau…

Evolution used in game design: Spores

Its a very good example of how evolution is used in game design. Its a bit techy and full of game design jargon but you can appreciate the basic theory and how its implemented in actual design.

Evolution in game design at gamedev.net

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1…

Hunch: Eric Bonabeau’s Hunch: is using evolution as part of discovering things.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/17397/

and here is Eric’s company that uses evolution, exploration to find drugs for the pharmaceutical industry

http://www.icosystem.com/apps_marketplace.htm

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Next steps

Seeing the interest of so many of you in this subject I have decided to put a detailed post or an article very soon. Check back soon or bookmark this page. For those a bit more technical souls you may click here to subscribe to my RSS Feed.

Keep creating.

Tags: Evolutionary Design Evolution Eric Bonabeau EvonEngine New Product Idea Product Management New to Market

Wiki and Product Management

“Don’t ever answer the same question twice”, this is the advice Jeff Lash gave to product managers on his blog, How to be a good product manager.

Pragmatic Marketing framework also suggests to get out of firefighting mode (tactical) and become more strategic.

If we need to accomplish this objective we may use Wiki. Wikies could be a good source for product managers to post information about products, sales processes and collaterals and allow the sales team to find it at a centralized place. Sales team can edit and hence share their experiences, and hence create a collective knowledge about product, customer, and market dynamics.

Think of a scenario in which Sales discusses their “secret” tactics to use the promotional material to get a “close”. Think of that being part of new-sales execute informal training. Think of it being done by the very people who are in the marketplace. So a tone, voice, language and style more conducive to sales teams.

Now take this further and think of a production/development manager adding a comment to the discussion highlighting the methodology, the technique, the production value to that discussion and editing that in the Wiki. So sort of closing the knowledge loop. Sort of behind the product’s front end scene thing.

Now imagine a Finance guy adding further a financial commentary as to what is more financially viable in all effective sales methods. A phone call – yes. A visit to customer’s head office in Milan – no. A conference call to customer’s head office – well may be.

Hence it starts a dialogue and its not being managed (read: labored) by a single person. The collective wisdom of groups, in this case the whole company, is building it up.

Lets think of it as Product Management 2.0, a more social, democratic use and creation of information.

 

 

Tags: Wiki Knowledge Management Sales Product Management 2.0 Marketing Collaterals System must work Social Media Tools & Techniques

Let us drink to Marketing 2.0

Wine is a good social lubricant. It allows and encourages dialogue and so are  the blogs.

Conversations, Dialogue and Interaction are necessary for a company to find out what its customers are thinking.

I came across this story about Stormhoek using blogs to communicate with its customer community.

I have to confess I am not a expert when it comes to wines. Except for Shiraz, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon I do not know a lot about wines. I am often confused as to what goes with which food and mostly stick to our hostesses’ recommendations.

Stormhoek has targeted this group of people who are not gifted with great wine-knowledge. And where can you find these customers who do not follow conventions or don’t even bother to know about them. Well, what else can more represent this group than blogs and bloggers. And that’s exactly where Stormhoek went.

They sent a bottles of their wines to a group of bloggers. Who subsequently discussed these in their blogs: opinions good or bad started a dialogue. And the rest, as they say in show-biz, is a history.

Interestingly I found out about this story while I was reading a blog: gapingvoid and then later on I heard this podcast for the background story.

So next time when you are looking for newer, more social (read web 2.0), interactive, and cost effective ways to promote your products do consider blogs.

Blogs are not only an effective way of stating external dialogues but also they will facilitate an internal shift in the way we look at our markets and customers.

This customer-company dialogue is the first step in Product Management 2.0; eventually it can lead to the customer becoming the creator or at least the co-creator of your products.

 

Tags: Product Management Co-Creation Stormhoek gapinvoid.com Web 2.0 Marketing 2.0 Product Management 2.0 Markets are Dialogues

GPS your friends in to Facebook

Are you thinking about building a cool product for iPhone? Are you thinking about building a Facebook application on iPhone?

What about if we use iPhone’s GPS capabilities with Facebook application. So next time when you meet someone on the street you can see their profile on your iPhone, just because you are in the same location and you both have decided to accept “Add Friends” request on your iPhone.

Makes you think, right? Good. Now here is another idea.

Live Expense Tracker- an application idea for iPhone.

I use my bank card a lot to pay for things. I am often surprised to find out my balance when and if I look at it. I would like to see my expense/cash status in realtime.  That can allow me to make only needed purchases.

iPhone Application idea:

Build an iPhone application that allows to track expenses and real-time synchs it with cash in my checking account. You may incorporate iPhone’s GPS capabilities into it – for example track where the purchase was made – location etc.

Do you know in some countries you can use your cell phone instead of a credit card?

How to get new product/application ideas?

A good technique to to find what might happen next is to look at the slightly advance markets, in our case its European cell phone market.

 

Sources for new ideas

Look at these cool companies with some interesting products, that can stimulate your creative juices. Jambo, Jambo Mobile

Want some great source of new product or company ideas. Check out

• Trend Spotting: Trend Wacthing
• New Ideas Spotting: Springwise

 

Technorati Tags: iPhone,Steve Job’s Revenge,Idea,New Product Development,Trends,Mobile Wireless Revolution,Apple,Facebook,Facebook Application,GPS,GPS Application

iPhone Adventure

Before you start hating me, let me clarify, I don’t own an iPhone yet. But waite,  I find this very interesting iPhone owner’s adventure “30 days of iPhone“.

Apple’s iPhone is much more than a phone with iPod in it. It has the potential to become a platform for plethora of new services and products. Business Week recently analyzed the iPhone phenomenon in a very insightful article  “Steve Job’s Revenge.”

Tags: iPhone, Trend Watch, Apple, Steve Jobs, Product Management, Businessweek.com

Product Management 2.0

Everything now a days is affected by Web 2.0.

I blogged about Enterprise 2.0 in my last post. I have been thinking about changes in the product management space due to social networking, collaboration, YouTube and others.

In a series of posts I will explore how product management is affected by or should be affected by Enterprise 2.0, Marketplace 2.0, and Customer 2.0.

Too much 2.0’s but hey lets use the metaphor till it serves.

Tags: Product Management 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Marketplace 2.0, Customer 2.0

Pandora of harmony

Ever wonder how a band creates its unique “sound” or what makes a particular song so distinctive?

My favorite online radio, Pandora.com, has created a free series of short recordings (also available as podcasts) to give an inside look at the techniques musicians use to put their signature on the music they write and perform.

I am in awe for this wonderful, new feature they have added. 

What a smart add-on!

What a great add-on to their already great product – a glue for a true community building.

Take a note you all – web 2.0 enthusiasts, marketing managers, brand managers, music buffs, and owners of (stupid) miles programs at various companies. This is a a way to build a community.

Listen to Pandora.com, listen to musicians tricks and techniques podcast.

 

Tags: Web 2.0, Radio, Pandora.com, Sound, Music