Innovation

I sometimes get asked about our name, why Analytic Design Group. People get confused and think maybe it has to do with site analytics. I will admit it is a little awkward, especially that confusion between analytics and Analytic. Every now and then someone tells me I need to rebrand, the name is just no good, they say.

I have been doing a fair amount of speaking at various groups and conferences lately and have noticed that while I am telling the story of some deep-dive research there are always some people in the audience who are shaking their head or giving a bit of a tsk tsk when I talk about the unexamined assumptions some of our clients have made.

There is talk of innovation everywhere. Governments and business are talking about ways to close the innovation gap, to stimulate the economy and growth through innovation. Within this talk there is a great deal of focus on development: developing new apps, developing new technologies, developing a culture of innovation.

The Kinect, for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, came out almost a year ago. It’s a control interface that uses only motion sensors and voice recognition to control the gaming console.

Most people give me an odd look when I say I took a class on “Science Fiction Prototyping.” It’s not exactly a clear term. Are you prototyping science fiction stories? Prototyping some other kind of fiction using science? Prototyping science with fiction?
Bingo!

The term innovation is often used, in conversations that I’ve been around, to describe product innovation. If you haven’t invented a new product or greatly enhanced a technology, then it’s not called innovation.

Last week Justin and I went to the University of Washington Human Centered Design & Engineering Corporate Affiliates Day. (See my post about that event)

It used to be a futuristic fantasy exclusively portrayed at the box office, where artificially intelligent machines guised as humans could walk, talk and ride motorcycles with one hand while toting a sawed-off shotgun in the other.

Crafting and reviewing at the overall design strategy of a product is one of those upfront actions that helps to get all involved parties to agree on a consistent look, feel and design philosophy for that product's interface. Identifying the various business goals, user requirements and technological constraints helps the team set reasonable success milestones.

With developments in computer vision technology such as depth-sensitive cameras, engineers are innovating new means of interacting with machines.