A friend recently asked me: “you can help others see patterns in situations, and find clear ways through difficulties. So how come you can’t do it for yourself?” (I am going through a what-do-I-want-to-do-with-my-life phase…)

Many designers find it hard to design for themselves. The removal of many of the constraints associated with clients, plus working with personal, emotionally-charged requirements, can be debilitating for a designer.

The same situation exists …

I registered to attend a TEDxSingapore event last week.

The form wanted three things people should talk to me about on my name tag. These would be the three things that matter most to me.

Design Thinking
Business Innovation
Empowerment

That was a good moment of clarity. These are the things I am most passionate about. I know “Design Thinking” and “Business Innovation” are in the description of my blog, …

I spent much of today on a high speed train to Hiroshima. The rail network is incredible – both in its comprehensive coverage and its efficiency. How do they do it? What powerful political/cultural drivers must exist to commit to this level of effort ad quality? And at what cost (beyond the financial)?

The rail network aside, Tokyo is also an incredibly wired city. The …

“Small thoughts subversively strip away the fire of imagination, the generosity of the collaborative spirit, and that the halo of every dream.”

Small thoughts is publishers who try and grab more and more and give less and less. Always citing how costly and risky their business is, how it is such an honour they chose my work, and how hard it is. So I should take less of a …

It’s New Year’s resolution time soon. Why stop at a mere one-liner resolution when you can write a manifesto? Some useful references below:

Manifesto TV
Creative Creativity E.piphanies.com
Conjure Crafts

Have you noticed how superheros in movies always have their match in supervillains with equivalent powers?

The supervillians are an essential part of the superheros. They are defined by how they face their nemesis.

Similarly in real life, when we gain new powers, we attract new challenges. We attract new allies and new enemies.

Yes, this is supposed to make acceptance easier…

The Art and Science of Pricing by Havi Brooks

Using resonance to set a price: “You feel it or you don’t. And your goal in setting your prices is that your right people — the people you really want to serve — feel it too. They get that “mmmmm, yeah, that’s exactly what it should cost” vibration.”

In other words, listen to your body when setting a price. …

Three students, a iPhone app, 15,000 people inspired to do a small good deed a day.

Subscribers to the free application are prompted daily with a “DoGood”–a simple task from conserving water, to turning out a light, to beautifying the world. When they’ve accomplished their good deed for the day, they click the application’s “done” button.

The program tallies how many users are fulfilling that day’s deed, and users can …

Reframing is a useful technique to deliberately derail our entrenched thinking patterns and flows, so as to enable us to see a given situation from alternative perspectives.

Dev Patnaik documented three kinds of reframes:

Step out of your own perspective and see the world as it sees itself. (Walk in someone else’s shoes) See the world in a way that’s completely different from anyone else. (Read between the lines too …

“Greed is a game played with logic only and no morals.” Scarlett Thomas.

I spotted a few books in Borders recently that dealt with clinical techniques to achieve various ends without dealing with the moral aspects: How to get women, How to win wars, How to get power…

I can’t remember the author unfortunately. And subsequent visits to Border yielded no illumination. If you do please share it below.

Anyway, …