Archive : April 2011

Developing apps for kids. Is there anything we can learn when developing other digital products?

I was searching for interesting presentations or videos about work by digital agencies for automotive clients in the last year or so, and I couldn’t find any. Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places (if so, I’d be grateful if you could point me in the right direction), but it got me thinking – was Fiat Eco:Drive, which was launched in 2008, really the last exciting thing that happened in that field?

At Made by Many, here are some of the re-tweetable things we've said recently (more below the fold):

I was struck by the parallels between Jonathan Harris' new project Today and the experience of using Instagram.

Not so long ago, Neil Perkin invited me to speak at the event he was arranging to take place at Google UK HQ. Neil was keen to explore what Agile Planning means and the event, named FireStarters, brought together a 100 or so planners to share in the discussion. What followed was an excellent evening that included Mark Earls giving us What She is Having and many breakout sessions on various themes over beers. Neil has a great write-up on his blog.

This was a great chance to expand on the Lean Startup based approach we are using at Made By Many and introduced at Planningness in NY back last September. Since then we have learn't alot and the presentation I gave (embedded after the jump) introduces what I think can become some best practice for developing "Lean Agencies", agencies built from the ground-up to search for innovation. 

This week, we're going to look at a set of videos that are related to design. They're all very different from each other, but all equally worthy of your attention. 

When working in a team on a design or a vision, it’s pretty likely that lots and lots of assumptions will be made. They can be anthropological - “people will act as ambassadors”, “our users will share this” or “people will want to submit their stories, ideas, photos or limericks to our hub”. They can be economic – “This won’t cost much” or mechanical – “Yeah, of course our CMS can do that”.

Assumptions are seductive because they propel the project forward, they allow us to just bat away risk and move forward, like a juggernaut, unstoppable. They are exhilarating because it feels like you’re calling the shots, living on the edge or flying by the seat of your pants.

As I'm sure you'll have noticed by now, we're pretty cosily ensconced in the lean salon over here at Made by Many. Lean methods help us create awesome services that people want, but they also hit a nerve because they're all about continuous learning and we like nothing better than learning new things. So following on from Nicki's confessions of a lean virgin last week, I thought I'd share a few stories from our experiences of putting lean principles into practice.

Over the past few months we've been working closely with Skype to develop a service for teachers who use Skype in the classroom. Skype started this project after seeing teachers using Skype in innovative ways, for example to carry out cultural exchanges and bring experts into their classrooms.

Daniel Howells is a web designer, developer and founder of London-based web design and development agency kulör as well as founder/curator at siteInspire. He is also the person behind the rather useful calendar for design events, Creative Everyone. I thought it would be interesting to ask him a few questions about design - a subject he is clearly very passionate about. Here's what he had to say:  

The conventional wisdom is that Google will be or is the big challenger to Apple in the mobile computing market, but it turns out that we've been digging in the wrong place all this time. The way I see it, the real competition is going to come from Amazon.

Recent announcements from Amazon make me more certain than ever that they will shortly be launching a Kindle-branded phone and tablet based on Android.