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Beyond the flat digital map: what’s next for digital map services
Babylonian map of the world, dated around 6BC. Source: Wikipedia The map has come a long way since the Babylonians carved pictographic maps of their surroundings on large chunks of stone. Ever since the appearance of the first digital maps many companies and products have appeared with the mission to produce better quality, more complete…
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Cracking eggs
They say you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. That’s true. You can, however, make an omelet without smashing eggs and getting egg-shells throughout the whole meal. The act of breaking the eggs open is a controlled, thoughtful act. It’s not panic. When you’re working on a new product strategy, fixing a…
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The Product Definition
The Complete Product Owner Act I: The Product This post is part of the “Complete Product Owner” series. A product owner is the owner of a product: so it makes sense to start our exploration of the product owner role with defining the actual product. What is it? What does it do? What value does…
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When you want something done right…
“Well, you know what they say… when you want something done right, you have do to it your bloody self.” My dad used to say this all the time. In fact he still does. How often have you heard it said? A key turning point for a new manager is, I think, the realisation that…
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The Complete Product Owner
The product owner is possibly the most misunderstood, or at least the the least understood, role in agile software projects. Just about everyone you talk to, whether a current practitioner of the role or just someone who works in agile projects, will give you a slightly (or greatly) different description of the role, its scope…
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Good Design is…
In the 1970’s renowned German designer Dieter Rams defined ten design principles that embodied his view of design and product development. He said: Good design should be innovative. Good design makes a product useable. Good design is aesthetic design. Good design makes a product understandable. Good design is honest. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design…
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Consistency is not a rubber stamp
Stop signs are always red. Exit signs are green. Play buttons are triangles. These are patterns and norms that, when appropriately leveraged in a design, can help communicate expectations and function. It doesn’t matter if you are an interface designer working on a software UI, a software engineer writing code or a manger preparing a…
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Urgency isn’t panic
What’s the difference between a cheetah and a gazelle? One is the hunter; the other, the hunted. One stalks and sprints with total precision, unwavering focus and ultimate confidence. The other flees in uncontrolled panic. When we’re exposed to pressure within an organisation, it is normally in the form of a risk or a threat:…
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Where Conference 2012 – Highlights
The Valley’s preeminent conference for Location-based services, Where (formerly Where 2.0), was on again at the start of April in San Francisco. The usual suspects were in attendance, with the likes of Google, ESRI, MapQuest and Foursquare holding prominent positions on the exhibition floor and presenting several keynotes. I was there of course with Nokia…
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We’re not a factory
Factories must be awfully dull places. Factory workers working on a production line follow a strict process. Work is divided out into narrow and highly controlled portions. The guy working at machine #1 is an expert at machine #1, but not at machine #2 or #3. But that’s ok; if he stays focussed on his…