What is Digg?64 Comments
- Quirked, on 01/01/2008, -1/+21That's fine and dandy, but businesses don't hire like that, so people that may excel at that type of thinking are mostly out of luck.
- scheeniyil, on 01/01/2008, -0/+13I agree with you that hiring doesn't work that way. The answer may be to bring in "outsiders" as consultants to the core team. In a past life as a video game developer, we used to bring in kids to try out the games; it is amazing how much we learned from this exercise.
- TheFinaleofSeem, on 01/01/2008, -0/+9Engineers often make unusable products because they don't think of the end user. It's not their knowledge that's the problem, it's that they assume others have roughly the same level of knowledge.
"The more knowledge you possess the less you think outside the box."
I'm sure a lot of Diggers would love to believe that, considering they shoot their mouths off all time like they know something. - lukas88, on 01/01/2008, -0/+9We tend to undervalue a remote control with 52 buttons on it because we don't take the 20 minutes necessary to see what those buttons could do. How much more attractive is it to imagine that the real answer is so simple and just out of reach? Whatever happened to "10 percent inspiration, 90 percent perspiration?"
- Zarokima, on 01/01/2008, -0/+9http://xkcd.com/309/
- boflaade, on 01/01/2008, -0/+7It's called "The Rut" and many big thinkers avoided it. Einstein, da Vinci & Newton for example. The beat of a different drummer or to beat a different drum can change the perspective or create a different perspective.
Can you Digg it? No, I don't think so. - syroncoda, on 01/01/2008, -1/+7the way i see it... have lots of knowledge about lots of topics but not enough to fill your brain completely so thats all you think about. then you'll see connections across everything and then pursue them accordingly.
- Dumbledorito, on 01/01/2008, -2/+8Uh... by this logic, George W. Bush should have been the greatest president of all time.
There's a cutoff point to where ignorance is even remotely an asset. If I have a medical problem, I think I'll seek out someone with a degree in medicine rather than someone who, say, specializes in cleaning out sewers. - gtewallace, on 01/01/2008, -0/+5Hiring practices is not the only mechanism to get a continuous flow of "outsider" perspectives - creating an open culture, as open source software (and some hardware) companies do is an extremely effective way to institutionalize this practice. And, I think it's not a coincidence that there there is a strong correlation between openess and innovation.
This practice is not limited to technology companies. Just read the book Wikinomics for more about how "old economy" companies leverage openess to innovate faster and better. - Pake, on 01/01/2008, -1/+6I've never had to read anything like this in college. Everything I've been given for the past 4.5 years has always been the same old rehashed ***** where they try to tell you that only people with degrees are capable of accomplishing anything. Then I get the beauty of going to work where the engineers w/ Ph.D's get their asses handed to them left and right by people who just use commonsense. Makes for a good balance, but the best mixture seems to be a lot of commonsense people and a few engineers rather than a bunch of engineers and a couple commonsense people.
- Mononuclear, on 01/01/2008, -0/+5because Jessica Alba is naked in the background?
- bloodmoney, on 01/01/2008, -0/+5Have you ever had to write software designed by "outsiders"? ***** hell, it's like when Homer Simpson designed the car the horns all over it.
- InspectorGadget, on 01/01/2008, -1/+5Headline is redundant. Innovative ideas by definition are not common.
- boflaade, on 01/01/2008, -0/+3Isn't that typical thinking?:)
- craznar, on 01/01/2008, -0/+3Then there is people for whom there is no box.
Either way, if you don't think in the box - getting a job is damn hard. - known, on 01/01/2008, -0/+3Isn't this Wisdom of Crowds?
- bat-21, on 01/01/2008, -0/+2I have a question for all the engineers. Why does my microwave oven have a clock? Seriously, why? I can't program it ahead of time like the coffee maker (yes I read the ***** manual. It doesn't have that feature). I can't disable it. If I don't set the time, it blinks. With my luck, the one time I say "***** it. I'm not setting that clock", someone will come over, see the microwave's blinking display and have a seizure. My old microwave didn't have this "feature" and it worked just fine. Now all of them have clocks. What's the point?
- Bossa, on 01/01/2008, -0/+2It reminds me the movie "BIG" with Tom Hanks
- mindovermat, on 01/01/2008, -0/+2i wouldn't call that out of luck...
- andywirtanen, on 01/01/2008, -1/+3I wonder what you could have accomplished if you brought the kids in earlier in the process. A lot of the best products are created with input from the people that will use them (imagine that!). In user-centered design, we call that participatory design.
- BDOUG, on 01/01/2008, -1/+3I see both the problem and the solution summarized by the article. I think there's a lot of "truisms" to what the author and her interesting subjects are trying to convey. Sadly, in most of the places I've worked (including a research lab, where you'd think an out of the box mentality would be a prerequisite) there is the tyranny of the egotistical hierarchy to deal with. There is a conservative lack of flexibility that seems to permeate a lot of the business culture in the USA these days. Basically most bosses I've worked for want to take the safest route to success and don't want feedback or ideas from the underlings, they just want us to carry out their "vision" which most of the time is some recycled idea with maybe one minor twist on it. All of the good intentions they had when they looked at our resumes and hired us for our brain power seem to go out the window once a deadline looms or a grant is going to run out. As a pal of mine once put it: they'll spend a dollar to make two, but they won't spend three dollars to make ten dollars. They're just too risk averse.
- Shady77, on 01/01/2008, -0/+2Hey, I'm an engineer and I can't imagine life without those 52 buttons!
Kidding aside, while I agree with the bulk of the article I have to take exception with the "telling sentence" brought forward by the submitter. In all of the places I've worked engineers have known better than to design products in the sense implied by that statement. We bring in usability and interface specialists to accomplish that part of the design, which we then test with end users, and we engineers focus on how to implement the interface efficiently (and safely and sometimes even reliably). - lOvOl, on 01/01/2008, -0/+2In my job I have to be creative and innovative and one way I keep my mind fresh is to not spend too much time actually working. Of course, there are marathon work sessions when an important deadline needs to be met, but in general I find that in my job it is easy to become obsolete if you spend too much time working all the time.
I do a lot of reading and studying of random intellectual interests not just because I find it interesting, but because I know my mind will easily become dull if I get stuck in the same old routine of work everyday.
But most importantly, some of my best work-related ideas came from studying topics which had nothing directly to do with work at all. If I had spent all my time just "working", those great ideas would have never come to fruition. - DeFex, on 01/01/2008, -0/+2But they must !. all the really creative people who work at hollywood KNOW you cant be creative unless you use a macbook, and push it in your shows.
- neko6, on 01/01/2008, -0/+2It's called "featuritis" - the tendency to shove a feature wherever possible. They kinda think "hey, having a clock is a feature that doesn't cost us money to add because the display and mechanics are already there, so lets add it!"
- MaverickJGR, on 01/01/2008, -3/+4This reminds me of the book 'the wisdom of crowds' the author argued that dumb person and expert will probably come to better decision than 2 experts. Massive simplification but thats the jist. Perhaps the lesson is just to actively seek to put diverse teams together.
- bowe, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1With the ever-important sound-proof bubble. This guy talks about what you're saying http://ecofootprint.blogspot.com/2006/10/design-be ...
- boflaade, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1Marketing an invention takes education. Inventors are not always educated and many inventions don't enter a market. Poor farmers are usually the best inventors, even though the invention rarely leaves the farm.
- schnikies79, on 01/01/2008, -1/+2No, I know what those buttons do, but I will never use them.
Why would I need to zoom during a movie? - boflaade, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1Long sentence but the point is made. Following the "usual" pattern is out of necessity but not free thinking.
- jgzman, on 01/01/2008, -2/+3I have found the 'zoom' button handy to test the color-guns on my TV. I can zoom so a red object fills my screen, and be able to tell if my red is broken, or if I'm just seeing things. Same for blue and green.
As it turns out, my red is, in fact, broken in the top-right corner. Also, I am an engineer. - scheeniyil, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1Well, explaining the concept of the game to the kids at the design stage would probably have had positive reactions; bringing them in after the game was designed and implemented brought about a whole new dimension to our thinking - the playability, look-n-feel, reaction times, etc.
- Cedargrove, on 01/01/2008, -1/+2As a musician this is why I don't listen to recent 'popular' music.... that and it sucks, heaven forbid I ever write anything that sounded like Good Charlotte or Fergie, and this is my promise to you Diggers, if I ever do write music like that I will keep it to myself and allow no one to hear it.
- andywirtanen, on 01/01/2008, -1/+2Why not have the kids help shape the concept of the game? I understand that sometimes you have a clear vision (e.g. a sequel), budget, and timeline, but I think getting their feedback is critical at every stage of the project. Good to hear it helped toward the end.
- Spoomeister, on 01/02/2008, -0/+1OR... people who excel at that kind of thinking, found other things to do with their lives, and have a job and/or career that is meaningful and rewarding to them, via different standards.
- jgzman, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1What do you do, and how do I get a job doing it?
- eldridgea, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1Article on one page:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/business/30know. ... - inactive, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1My company manufactures archery equipment. Some of our engineers ar MIT (and other fancy school) graduates, and some are archery nuts that the MIT graduates taught engineering concepts to. All of them use the products for fun.
- inactive, on 01/02/2008, -0/+1This effect is the source of the ever present danger of those in the ivory towers to believe their own BS.
This is why any culture that suppresses descent and social commentary is doomed to fail.
History is awash with these failures, most all where heavily influenced by fear, greed and hate.
We should continue to remind ourselves how the Greeks unleashed the synergy of democracy unto humanity and understand the inevitable consequences of straying too far from this ideal. From our current vantage it seems like a dimming star on some far horizon. I hope we can find our way back. - vdog, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously.
- Charles F. Kettering
Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it.
- Stephen Vizinczey
So am I doing a bad thing by getting a diploma in ICT? - s1mph0ny, on 01/02/2008, -0/+1From the looks of most products on the market, there's a non-engineer designer behind it already. In all three of the next-gen video game consoles (as well as the ps2slim, psp, and ds) looks are put ahead of function, at least in the case designs. Examples such as the xbox360 getting 65mm instead of 80mm fans, the analog stick being nearly unusable due to it's position on the psp... the egg-shaped ps3.
Of course, all of these devices sell better than just about any other consumer electronics device, so it may be a wise business decision to ignore the engineers. I'd have to guess that things would go better if we valued their input; microsoft would have saved billions by following their engineers, and the psp might sell some games if it was more usable as a video game system. - vermicin, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1First, how I loathe the term "featuritis," and it probably doesn't apply in this case. Maybe scope creep or second-system effect.
But, the real reason it's there is because wall space is limited in kitchens. And people like to know the time. So, you can take up wall space with a clock somewhere, or you can combine it into a device that's plugged in all the time and already has a digital time readout.
No, it's not programmable for any automated event, it's just handy. I don't freak out if people don't set the time on them properly, but I will silently judge them.
And, they still make microwaves with a turn-dial time setting. Just get one of those. - secrity, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1There are microwaves available that do not blink if the clock is not set. My GE XL-1800 is perfectly happy to not display the time if the clock is not set. After a power outage, it displays "Press CLOCK" or something like that; pressing CLEAR/OFF shuts the clock display off. Granted, it probably should say "Press CLOCK or CLEAR", but at least the clock can be turned off.
- oldgal, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1Mixing paradigms along with collaboration of folks from varied backgrounds and knowledge bases can yield very innovative results. Unfortunately much of corporate is handling diversity by making everyone the same which sort of precludes innovation.
- andywirtanen, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1I don't think my 90 year-old grandfather is going to spend 20 minutes to figure out a remote control. Even if he did, it will probably take him longer than 20 minutes because the terminology is confusing.
The bottom line is that 52 buttons are not used by the average user. The other buttons get in the way of the normal use cases. I like Logitech Harmony remotes (e.g. 880) because they seem to meet the needs of everyone. Remotes that ship with TVs or DVD players should have a clean interface with the advanced functionality in a well organized menu hierarchy (yes, that's perfectly ok). - JQP123, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1After spending thousands of hours learning to deal with the intricacies and nuances of a decidedly user-unfriendly computer operating system, some people can't imagine any other possible design and don't understand why everyone else doesn't appreciate jumping through hoops the same way they do.
- Quirked, on 01/03/2008, -0/+1I wish I could manage that.
- Herostratus, on 01/01/2008, -1/+2I'm one of those thinkers and willing to relocate. Anyone wanna hire? 50k to start 6 figures if you like my work.
- Spoomeister, on 01/02/2008, -0/+1"It's not their knowledge that's the problem, it's that they assume others have roughly the same level of knowledge."
Insert joke about fans of open source here. - boflaade, on 01/01/2008, -0/+1Make your own or invent something that isn't a microwave but does the same job. Is a microwave part of your thinking scope?
-
Show 51 - 62 of 62 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is