07 important lessons from this lecture:
Tag: product design
99. How To Start A Startup: How To Build Products That Your Users Will Love
89. How To Start A Startup: Growing From Zero To Many Users
67. Damien Sterbecq on Strategic Planning & The Collision Between Uber and The Parisian Taxis
Business Director of Brand Activation and Digital for Cb’a, Damien Sterbecq has 20+ years experience helping brands succeed in product packaging, retail and digital: the three main consumer touch points. (more…)
People learn by comparison.
They learn by comparing new things to the things they already know. That’s why redefining a category is much easier than creating a new one.
When you position your product in an existing category you’re essentially saying “it’s like something you already know but better”.
When you try to create a new product category you’re essentially saying “it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before”.
That’s a provocative statement, but hard to learn by.
Joshua Porter “How to redefine a product category” (via peterspear)
If you want to produce special work, it’s worth collaborating with special people.
Having the courage and determination to focus on one subject or area of expertise gives you the solid foundation that is absolutely necessary if you’re to come up with a truly great idea, one that will be key to your future success.
Too many creative people think they don’t need to specialize, that they can have lots of ideas in lots of different subjects all of which are going to be great.
It can be easy to settle on something that feels right. Something that seems to make sense of all the confusion.
You’ll feel relief when you get to this point. You’ll think you’ve cracked it. You’ll feel good.
But then you have to take a step back from what feels really good and ask:
But is it great?
To create great work you should be making up your own beliefs as you go along, changing them one day to the next, always pushing against the boundaries of current thinking, trying to escape the confines of conventional wisdom.
In the end, everything is connected and the more connections you make the more interesting your work will become.
Stay open to new ideas, new places, and new people will feed your creative soul.
Lack of inspiration may be just another way of saying lack of experience.
Juxtaposition is the art of placing together a number of contrasting objects or ideas, usually two.
Used effectively, it captures our imaginations immediately, making it one of the most valuable techniques any creater can employ to dramatize their message.
And it’s at its most potent when these two objects are as diametrically opposed to each other as possible.
For most of us, anger amounts to stress, and the worst type of stress at that.
But for artists, anger can be a positive force.
If focused and channeled into a piece of work, it is capable of producing something of great profundity.
You can’t be good at everything. The skill is to work with someone who is good at what you are not.
Don’t confuse innovation with novelty.
You may have successfully designed the latest shiny object for people to get excited about…at least until a new shiny object came out.
And that’s the reason product features are more a novelty than an innovation. They are added in an attempt to differentiate, but not reinvent.
It’s not a bad thing, but it can’t be counted on to add any long-term value.
Novelty can drive sales, but the impact does not last.
Start With Why by Simon Sinek
Rather than simply stating the facts most advertisers typically embed their message into creative contextual devices that evoke feelings and bypass rational resistance.
This is why advertisers use stories, poems, slogans, songs, jokes, pictures, symbols, characters, roles, and metaphors.
They are particularly ripe marketing tools, because they lead the imagination and evoke the feelings that strike at our heart not our head.
7 unconscious errors we make when buying brands by Douglas Van Praet
Running a crowdfunding campaign isn’t just sitting back and watching money come in – it’s a full time job in itself. You have so much to handle because you have to simultaneously manage all aspects of the project – design, brand, promotion, social networking, press, etc.
Listening and being engaged with what people are saying about your product, brand, service, etc. is crucial, especially when trying to raise funds.
Staying active in the comments section and inbox was definitely instrumental in getting funded and continues to be a great way to stay in touch with pledgers.
Break things.
All our life we’re told to make things. Breaking things is a process from which you can learn so much more if you decide to learn from somebody else whose done something great and break it and take it apart.
Loss Aversion: we hate losing what we’ve got.
When we copy, we justify it. When others copy, we villify it.
Most of us have no problem with copying – as long as we’re the ones doing it.