Monthly Archives: December 2011

Human Centered Design – Moving from Research to Recommendations

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Skip Walter

I just finished teaching a User Centered Design Course in the University of Washington Human Centered Design and Engineering Evening Masters program. This course is project based and this year’s project was to create a mobile application for a smart phone … Continue reading →

Posted in Human Centered Design, Teaching, University, WUKID | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

User Experience Research

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Skip Walter

One of the challenges for professionals who decide they want to change jobs is to demonstrate that they have competence in the new discipline through the capabilities they developed in their previous discipline. A year ago, my daughter decided that she … Continue reading →

Posted in Knowledge Management, social networking, User Experience, WUKID | Leave a comment

Amazon Fire

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Skip Walter

Great Price.  Overall, a disappointment. Over the years, I have bought every variant of the Amazon Kindle.  On the other hand, once the Kindle app was on the iPad I switched all my reading to the iPad and gave away … Continue reading →

Posted in Amazon Kindle, ebook, iPad | Leave a comment

Working in Teams – Part 2

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Skip Walter

While I was at Aldus (now Adobe), we worked with an organizational consultant (Bob Crosby) to improve our organizational effectiveness.  One of the better tools that Bob brought to the organization was the Ask and Tell process for transitioning between … Continue reading →

Posted in organizing, Working in teams | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Working in Teams – Part 1

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Skip Walter

Over the years of managing and teaching, we regularly have to form teams to get something done.  Most of the time we just do it, rather than being intentional about it. When I am at my best, I remember to … Continue reading →

Posted in Ask and Tell, organizing, Working in teams | 3 Comments

Kids Say the Darnedest Things

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Skip Walter

As I was writing a previous blog about Russ Ackoff, I remembered the many wonderful interactions I had with Russ. While we were working on the Idealized Design of the University, Russ and three of his graduate students came up … Continue reading →

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Russ Ackoff on An Idealized Design for a University

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Skip Walter

In 1986, while managing Digital Equipment Corporation’s ALL-IN-1 $1B per year office automation development efforts, a colleague sent me a copy of Russ Ackoff’s Creating the Corporate Future (1981).  To paraphrase Russ’s famous introductory lectures on how he came across … Continue reading →

Posted in Idealized Design, Russ Ackoff, University | Tagged , , , | 21 Comments