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Startups, This is how Design Works

Startups, This is How Design Works

A fascinating article about startups and what parts of design they should value most.

Halfway through, the author, Wells Riley takes a fascinatig sidetrack to explore how about 85% of the Apple product lineup has been modeled off Braun since the big manzana was founded.

He gives us a concise insight into Dieter Rams‘ Ten Principles of Good Design, and speculations into how Steve Jobs applied them to make our lives working with computers n times less painful.

His real point seems to be that small startup teams should be sure to include a creative founder, someone who can manage the image of not just the product, but the company and it’s other products for cohesion and success!

What I think is actually more important than actually trying to get someone on full-time in a start-up, is to recognize this sort of creative mind early on and at least get their advice, and then hire when possible.

But I think he might be suggesting is blue-sky/best-scenario when your best friend who you are starting your company with is also a world-class creative. Then you have nothing to worry about!

Anyway, very cool page, enjoy Wells’ message.

In honor of Friday end of day, here is ‘Staying in Anthem’ — which is actually my favorite LMFAO parody of all.

A nerd tells his friends to go out without him, and shuffles with ghosts, chases cats, drinks triple sec, tests out his new booklight, and a whole lot more. Hilarity.

This was originally posted at College Humor, but that’s all I’ve been able to find out about it. I play this every Friday night as we stay in and organize our toothbrushes, learn new phantasmal dance moves, not unlike the hero of this video!

I really like this video called ‘Kickball‘ which is a classic nerd-saved-from-the-bullys animated short.

It’s Dana Terrace‘s third year project at SVA, and very well done!

Last night I stumbled across Quantum Legacy, a super fun space battle that’s absolutely gorgeous, has cinematic cameras, great controls, and is really easy to get sucked into for far too long..

It also has a great low-pressure .99 donation iAP, which unlocks a couple of extra levels, and the approach is so casual and non-confrontational (unlike most iAP games these days, which make you want to not install games at all) you want to give them more money for more content, rather than pissed off about getting suckered into another virtual good purchase.

And there are two survival levels after donating, which still rock after you’ve beaten the game and gotten the few upgrades available.

Try it for free on your iPad or iPhone by clicking here!

And make the $.99 donation! They deserve it, and will hopefully expand the game with support.

I just came across ‘The Blueprint of We‘ — a fascinating process for negotiating agreements of all sorts between groups large and small.

This technique forces everyone to recognize and agree on issue before they get thorny, sometimes eliminating them altogether. It uses Google Docs as a collaboration tool for everyone involved to share their input, then everything is merged in a group meeting, in person or remotely with agreement by all parties.

The mission statement from their website, located at http://www.blueprintofwe.com states:

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Amazing time lapse from Richard Bentley. He photographed 1 – 2 sequences per night for two weeks from some great vantage points.

(Looks best in full screen!)

Here’s version 1.0, from last year…

Amazing plugin for Firefox from Mozilla called ‘Collusion’ tracks all of the web trackers that follow you as you browse the web.

It’s fascinating to watch the web of weird and unrelated sites / bots / trackers unfold in a massive web of connections.

Mine looks like this, after just half an hour of browsing through about 10 sites total.

Learn more and download the plugin here