Less is more manufacturing productivity
Recollections of an memorable project
Thinking about the concept of “less is more”, takes me back to a small and initially unpromising project that a maverick boss of mine persuaded me to get involved in many years ago. It provides an interesting example of counter-intuitive optimisation.
The scene…
There was a manufacturing plant which produced credit cards. The plastic cards were manufactured in sheets; this involved a lamination process which started with a “layup” of three plastic sheets and ended up with them laminated together as one sheet. The lamination was done in a press which was heated and then cooled; this caused the plastic sheets to melt slightly and to become welded together as one. To produce cards with flat and clean surfaces, each layup also had shiny metal plates on either side to produce a smooth finish.
The instinct … Read more…
Less is more!
There seems to be an upsurge of interest in the philosophy of “less is more”. A couple of recent articles about product design, in general and in a specific case, address relevant aspects of this phenomenon.
What do we know?
On one level, we tend to question: how can “less” be “more”? We know it makes no sense! This is true: it really does not make any sense, if all that we focus on is measurable, countable, sequencable information – the kind of information understood by the “left side” of our brains.
On a different level, we know that “less” really is “more”. Less complexity is more simplicity and fun; less distraction is more concentration; and so on. This makes sense when we are thinking about the whole picture – the kind of information which is handled by the “right side” of our brains.
At the moment and on this topic, there is a specific product which is exercising the minds of people who follow these things. Read more…
Social communication is with us
Liking LikeMinds 2010
A global local conference
How often does a great conference on an emerging subject attract local, national and global participants to a quiet corner of the UK? Not often, I suspect.
Nevertheless last Friday, 2010 February 26, it happened again at LikeMinds 2010! The first time it happened was in 2009 on October 16th. Back in February 2009, two people met having got to know each other using Twitter, the popular social media tool/service. Scott Gould is a Devon-based web and experience designer. Trey Pennington is an American social media and business consultant. They met in Exeter and set the date for a half-day event which became LikeMinds 09. A local conference centre was the venue. People came from far and wide to became part of the inaugural gathering. Afterwards, they knew that they’d started something and felt the need to repeat it.
This time, just over four months later. More came to LikeMinds 2010, in the same relatively small venue. The same loyal bunch of social media specialists came back and brought more with them. There was more buzz and activity. This time, it lasted a full day and was followed by a business-oriented summit event at a prestigious location.
It was good to be there. It was good to meet new people. It was good to get a real sense of what is going on in human social communication. And all of this in my local city of Exeter, Devon, England.
There is more to come on this conference! But to give you a flavour, here is the talk by Chris Brogan … after I’d had lunch with him!
And, I am sure, more LikeMinds conferences to come.
A better Java programming course?
Questions, questions!
What would a better training course be like?
In what ways would it differ?
For whom would it be better?
How would we know that it is better?
What would we measure?
Better for learners and providers
In general, whatever you are learning, all of these questions might be important to you. To a large extent, the answers depend on your needs and on the structure of the subject area. So, more specifically, my interest is in the answers in the case of learning to use a programming language.
In talking to potential partners who would like to be able to deliver a course on Java programming, I am struck by the absence of any discussion of what might make a course better than other courses. Naturally, there is discussion about the course being “better” for the training provider.
But in the end, the needs of the learner will surely dominate. So, of course, “better” must mean better in the eye of the beholder, who is ultimately the learner, although there may be two or more layers in between.
What is needed?
Having spent hundreds of hours training people in Java programming, it is clear to me that there is more than one way to approach the subject. Having spent hundreds more hours training people in object-oriented design for implementation in Java, it is also clear to me that the most generally used approach does not work at all well.
People who have completed a Java course, apparently without undue difficulty, can frequently manage to avoid understanding some important concepts.
So, a few years ago, I set out to do better. The resulting course has been the subject of my thoughts, from time to time, ever since. It seems to stand the test of time.
Improving the sequence!
For the Java programming course in question, I have modified the sequence in ways that are mostly subtle, but not always! As you may know, this is consistent with my belief that the sequence is the foundation of learning anything.
When the course is available, we can discuss the specific differences from a more normal sequence. But, in the meantime, I am thinking about what might be expected by learners and others, and about whether further changes are also possible.
“Innovation” is manageable!
This is news to many people and organisations. Many take the view that “innovation” happens somehow, and that it is fairly random, risky and unmanageable. But others are showing that this is not so.
The article, The manageability of innovation, describes that this is not unlike the situation in other areas in the past.
As the article concludes: there is a lot to learn and to do!
However, the main point is that the news is out …
“Innovation” IS manageable!
What are you going to do about it?!
Innovation: but which way?
The topic of innovation is generating considerable interest and an increasing quantity of communication traffic. So do we need yet more communication on this? Do we need more ideas? Do we need to learn more about managing innovation?
“Oh yes!” is the answer to both questions and, also, those two issues go hand-in-hand.
What is innovation?
Answering this question is important to understanding what we are trying to achieve and can also help us to organise the flow of information. Read more…
Go, Nokia, Go!
You have nothing to fear and everything to gain!
The mobile internet is becoming mainstream, so the smartphone market is booming. Nokia occupy the strongest position in the smartphone market, has loyal customers and a reputation for phones that, relative to other mainstream phones, are user friendly.
So what is happening?
This means that Nokia has one of the biggest opportunity in its history. Yet it is not clear that they see it like that. Read more…
Version inversion!
What happened?
I have a license to a software product which ran satisfactorily, but now fails to run on a newly released version of the operating system. Surely, unless facilities in the operating system have been withdrawn or there is a fault in the operating system: this is a fault in the product? Read more…
Social relationship management
So Twitter and LinkedIn are interconnecting. What is the background to this and where is it leading?
Twitter seems to have caught many people’s mindshare because it is fundamentally different from most other services; its asymmetric “follower” relationship is more complex and flexible than simple connections on LinkedIn or friends on Facebook. Other services are now following(!). Read more…
