At a recent exhibition of the Singapore Design Festival I came across a great little product design idea – a tea “stick.

Essentially a combined stirrer and tea bag, it is a tube of gauze containing tea and a central stiffening rod terminating in a finger tab. A most elegant and simple idea.

Unfortunately it was meant to be disposable. “It’s only a small plastic stick” was …

Here’s an interesting concept from Leonard Mlodindow’s The Drunkard’s Walk – How Randomness Rules Our Lives: “… the human mind is built to identify for each event a definite cause and can therefore have a hard time accepting the influence of unrelated or random factors …”

In reality, every situation has a status quo – the more commonly encountered state. The usual behaviour, or quality, or ability.

Yelling at someone …

When I hear the digital divide I always think of Africa for some reason.

I found this photo today, taken at a conference in Copenhagen in 2005. It nicely sums up the digital divide that is closer to home. The invisible digital divide perhaps?

Data visualisation is the next frontier in design; fuelled by the overwhelming volume of information we are all inundated with daily, and the need for timely clarity and insights.

Ergo: A new breed of experts is needed. The T-shaped expert with huge amounts of communications and soft skills (empathy, listening skills etc) – who can provide just the right amount of deep expertise, surrounded by appropriate levels …

From Kate Carruthers’ blog:

MBAs, ethics, pledges and virginity – “as those young people mature and obtain hostages to fortune, how will they resist the forces of conformity in the workplace? How will they resist those little daily compromises that can culminate in real evil?”

Live local love continues – “The really amazing thing is how willing people are to share information, share goods, and …

Outliers: The story of success by Malcolm Gladwell, ISBN 978-0-141-03624-3.

Another interesting read from Malcolm Gladwell. Full of statistical patterns, facts and insights from a variety of fields from hockey to air crash investigation.

It takes 10,000 hours of doing something to master it. Both Bill Gates and The Beatles had about 10,000 of experience in their fields when their careers kicked off big time.
Little …

Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age by Tom Peters, ISBN-10: 0756617464, ISBN-13: 978-0756617462, is one of my all-time favourite business books. I’d go as far as to say it was the fundamental influence on much of my business thinking.

This book is noisy and exciting – filled with Tom Peters’ infamous rants about everything from innovation ot women in business. Not something I …

I go to a Friday morning ideas group organised by Natasha Golding. We talk about all sorts of interesting things.

In a session several weeks ago, Natasha drew this “circular spectrum”. We were talking about polar opposites (which branched off from another conversation about bipolar disorder).

My putting the two “polar opposites” at the same pole, this diagram neatly illustrates …

Have a look at Dan Roam’s site. He is the author of The Back of the Napkin – which is about how to leverage the power of visual thinking.

His site has some great presentations – doodle on a virtual napkin of course – on visual thinking. Definitely well worth a look.

I also liked how he used the same technique of …

I use the word stupid here in its original meaning. I am referring to design solutions that, no matter how you rationalise or understand the process, are just … stupid.

My laundry – essentially a dryer and a washer – is built neatly inside a tiny cabinet in my kitchen. Once opened, the door can be tucked neatly inside the cabinet cavity. A great …