domingo, 16 de julio de 2017

How to Unlock Insightful Conversation

6 Tips from IDEO Designers on How to Unlock Insightful Conversation - IDEO U

1. Always say yes to an offer. Whether the other person offers you a glass of water, snacks, or even a tour of their home, you should always accept.

2. Wear generic clothing. Oftentimes, clothing can communicate social status, or reflect personal taste that others may disagree with.

3. Treat people like partners in research. The people you interview aren’t just research subjects or data points.

4. Leave comfortable silences. When it seems like the other person is done speaking … you should create some space by just nodding and writing things down —it gives the other person room to continue speaking beyond…

5. Take the spotlight off the other person. …we like to bring provocations into research sessions. …sketch out rough concepts to show the other person, and ask them for feedback.

6. Try very intentionally to fall in love with each person (even if it’s just a little bit). Even if you don’t naturally click with someone, you can always find something you truly appreciate about them, whether it’s their voice or their passion for the topic at hand.


sábado, 1 de julio de 2017

En educación, no tiene sentido establecer políticas en torno a algo que va a desplazarse en otra dirección…


“Aprender a programar debería ser obligatorio” • Tim Cook en MIT tech review | appletalk:entremaqueros
Los robots, con el tiempo, van a ocuparse de la mayor parte del montaje. Probablemente no tiene sentido establecer políticas, universidades públicas y escuelas vocacionales en torno a algo que va a desplazarse en otra dirección.

Mi opinión es simplemente que la gente debe tener valores, y ya que las empresas u organizaciones no son más que una colección de personas, por extensión las empresas deben tener valores. Esos valores son fundamentales para la toma de decisiones, las miles de cosas que se nos vienen encima. Tenemos la responsabilidad de crear empleos en las comunidades en las que vivimos.

Growth is getting hard…

 from intensive competition, consolidation, and saturation by @andrewchen


Growth is getting hard from intensive competition, consolidation, and saturation


"
The reason for the above is that there are multiple trends – happening right now – that impede growth for new products. These trends are being driven by the biggest players – Google/Facebook, et al – but also by the significant leveling up around of practitioners in design/PM/data/growth.


We’ll look at a couple trends in this essay, including the following:
  1. Mobile platform consolidation
  2. Competition on paid channels
  3. Banner blindness  = shitty clickthroughs
  4. Superior tooling
  5. Smarter, faster competitors
  6. Competing with boredom is easier than competing with Google/Facebook
These trends are powerful and critical to understanding why all of a sudden, entrepreneurs/investors are starting to get into many new fields (genomics, VTOL cars, cryptocurrency, autonomy, IoT, etc) in order to find new opportunities.
…When the App Store first launched, competition was easy: Boredom. Mobile app developers were taking time away from easy, ‘idle’ activities like waiting in line, commuting etc. But today, acquiring a new app user means stealing a user’s time from their favorite existing app. As we’re near the end of the cycle, companies have moved from non-zero sum to a zero-sum competition. …



How the industry is evolving, in response
The above trends are troubling for new products, and especially for startups. All 6 of these trends are scary, and they’ve emerged because we’re at the end of a cycle. There’s a variety of natural monopolistic trends (like app stores, ad platforms, etc), where everything with related to growth and traction is getting harder.
If companies want to stay in the mobile/software product categories, they need to evolve their strategies. I’ll save a deeper discussion for a future essay, but here are some observations on what’s happening:
  1. More money diverted to paid acquisition
  2. Deeper monetization to open up channels – especially paid
  3. Creation of paid referral programs to complement ad buying
  4. Personalization features that rely on lots of data to amp up targeting
  5. Products trying to deepen differentiation by solving hard(er) problems/tech
"