It's been long since I've read an article about marketing. Although it's a field I respect, I've been losing interest in it, specially in the way "social-media experts" write and talk about what marketing is or should be. This article I found, however, is about the stagnant role of marketing in the traditional business model of japanese companies. It's an interesting read, specially because the author explains this great idea of implementing a 'Consumer Marketing Office' model. That's innovation in both marketing and japanese society right there.
If Japanese companies cannot shift their thinking, a 21st century remake of Hollywood movie The Last Samurai might be titled The Last Engineer. A man of great moral purity … but few customers.
Sometimes the solution doesn't lie in the user. There’s a big difference between giving users the solution they want, and designing the solution they need.
When I found this article I thought it was just another post about the Flappy Bird phenomenon. It was not.
This is a long read, with an approach like no other, about our damaged human-existence and its relation with stupid mindless games: "Tiny flowers that betray their simplicity by divulging endless fractal blossoms."
Playing Flappy Bird is like fixing an unfixable drawer pull, one that will never reattach correctly, one that you know will never do, but persisting in the face of such torpor nevertheless.
Someone in Colorlib gathered the Olympic logos from 1924 to 2020. There are some really interesting logos in the list, specially the first ones when they weren't using colors for each continent. I liked these ones: Roma 1960, Tokyo 1964 & Munich 1972.
It's february and I already know this is one of the most interesting features I'll read this year. An insight into a professional Starcraft player like no other.
In the competitive StarCraft scene, “Foreign hope” it’s a weirdly xenophobic mantle passed ingloriously to the best professional players born outside of South Korea.
The “foreign hope” label carries an added charge in Scarlett’s case, as she is a transgender woman thrust into a hypermasculine subculture comprised mostly of young guys.
Having exploded yesterday after these news, the Internet surely doesn't need another post about Satya Nadella being named the new Microsoft's CEO. So this is actually just a suggestion on reading Microsoft's official statement about him. It's a great (and brief) read.
Family, curiosity and hunger for knowledge all define me.
— Satya Nadella
Today everyone is talking about Facebook Paper, and that reminded me about Julie Zhuo, Facebook's Product Design Director. Last year I started to follow her posts on Medium; her blog is titled "The Year of the Looking Glass". She provides great insights on the thinking behind (and approach to) design-processes and workflows. Reading her is a must.
This is a brief post on how she uses Facebook.
Food for thought about Dribbble's community approach to design.
The article criticize that designers showcase projects aimed to impress, rather than solve real business problems. Although that's a valid argument, I would argue that the main goal of Dribbble is exactly that: to impress. When you're looking for style, mood & technique, Dribbble is a great directory of portfolios.
If you're an UX Architect, or a problem-solver (or you have one in your team), Dribbble is a great place to look for someone to team-up with.
I've always considered branding as a really tricky and ambiguous field when it comes to pricing it. On one hand you have logos with huge research and budget behind them that end up failing, and on the other you have those happy low-cost accidents that end up being a big hit. Just like art, it's a field that works in mysterious ways. Check this list to see what I mean.
Although this article is great in terms of giving us an insight behind the process and ideas of Tesla's dashboard-touchscreen, I find myself really against the solution they are offering. It's a huge board with lots of options that, while it might work on a website or an app, no one should encourage its use on a car.
It would be a great project to come up with different solutions aimed to keep the driver with his/her eyes on the road while controlling various features of the Tesla. That's an interesting UX challenge right there.