I.D.milano Product Design

Humour

hot air balloon The Balloonist

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a man below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man below replied, “You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 10 metres above the ground. You are between 40 and 42 degrees north latitude and between 58 and 60 degrees west longitude.”

“You must be an engineer,” said the balloonist.
“I am,” replied the man, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost.”

The man below responded, “You must be a manager.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist, “how did you know?”

“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are exactly in the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.”

Dilbert 10 Reasons to become an Engineer

At I.D.milano we work in the field of Industrial Design, but most of us are engineers. These days fewer and fewer young people are attracted into engineering fields. We would like to do our bit to reverse this trend.

So, in no special order, these are 10 good reasons to become an engineer, or to be happy about being one. Its taken us a considerable amount of time to find this many. Please, feel free to distribute to your sons (daughters will naturally shy away) if they need some encouragement regarding career decisions.

1. You can create lab reports and make excessive use of words like, “hence”, “thereupon”, and “furthermore”.

2. Every morning, you can get a kick out of choosing whether to wear blue or brown.

3. Reading Dilbert is ten times funnier when you’re actually living the joke.

4. You will have a ready-made excuse for not having success with women – “...but, c’mon I’m just an engineer!”

5. Save loads of money by keeping your car running years beyond its natural 5 year life.

6. No problem if you are tall, short, fat or thin. When you’re an engineer, any shape is OK because no one cares!

7. Get true appreciation from your peers regarding your flamboyant comb-over.

8. Listening to music on MP3 players is cool. The MP3 format uses Fourier transforms to compress recorded music. You studied Fourier transforms at University. Ergo, you must be cool. OK, tenuous logic, but I’m struggling to find 10 reasons here.

9. One day you’ll retire and then you won’t have to watch everyone’s eyes glaze over when you tell them you’re an engineer!

10. Enjoy revolting fellow engineers by adding to the bottom of your corporate email signature, “...by the way, I’m not wearing any underwear today”

"Great" Britain
I received an email recently from a client who was curious to know how “Great” Britain came to get its name. I did a quick survey and found that there are a large number of people who don’t know of the reason for the “greatness”. In the process, I heard numerous suggestions, but no correct answers… Some believed Britain could be Great on account of her large numbers of foul-mouthed lager louts or, perhaps, her tasteless, upper-class twits? Others thought “great” might refer to her rich history of military victories over most of the rest of the world. There again, how about her vibrant, multicultural urban culture? Or, maybe great refers to Britains’s green and pleasant land with thatched cottages, canals and tweed jackets? How about the literary and artistic genius of the Brits? Unfortunately these are all wrong, wrong, wrong!

What makes britain great, what makes her shine out among western countries, what put the “G” in “GB” are sweets. Britain is the only place to live if you have a sweet tooth. In fact, No other country in the world comes close when it comes own to what Americans call “candy”. Its not just that Britain makes a few good sweets. Its her depth of commitment to the culture of sugary comestibles that has earned her the title, “Great”. As a nation, sweet eating has long been put ahead of dental hygiene. While newsagents and cafes in any other country might have a small selection of Mars bars and chewing gum by the cash register, Britain has thousands of dedicated sweet shops serving the nations addiction to sugar. Just the names of of British sweets conjure up a myriad of powerful taste sensations; Parma violets, Pineapple chunks, Blackjacks, flying saucers, sherbet fountains. So the next time you happen to be passing through heathrow, don’t forget to stop into WH Smiths for some fruit pastilles, a curly-wurly and some turkish delight. If your mouth is already watering, you can even order by mail – Mrs. Brown offers a fine selection of Great British sweets.

How to Get Ahead in Business
If you’re just starting out in a big corporation, you’ll soon find out that to get ahead, what’s critical is not all the good work that you do. What’s important is getting noticed and giving the appearance of doing good work. Here are some useful tips to help you get promoted…

1. Always carry some paperwork with you when you wander around the office – A0 and A1 rolled-up drawings are especially impressive
2. Remember to walk very quickly (like you’re about to break out into a jog). You may not be in a hurry, but it makes you look like you have important things to do
3. When managment is present, talk quickly and more loudly than is necessary in a fake, self-important, deep voice – a posh accent is not absolutely necessary, but might help.
4. Clothes: wear whatever your boss wears, even if they are of the opposite sex.
5. On every business email, copy as many people as you possibly can. Promotions generally gravitate towards those who send out the most emails.
6. If you can make it into the office first every day, great. But, if so, make sure you get the most visible parking spot and spend the first hour or so walking around greeting everyone else so that you get credit for your early arrival.
7. Use any excuse (babies, birthdays, xmas,... fridays) to send out email greetings to the rest of your group. You can use these as valuable self-promotion exercises.
8. You don’t need to have an important job function. Its how busy you appear that is important. Try multi-tasking when managers are watching you and take it easy the rest of the time.
9. Bring your laptop home every night even if you only use it for Youtube or MySpace. Everytime you’re seen arriving at or leaving work with it will give others the impression that you’re a keen worker.
10. While you idle away the day listening to music, don’t wear headphones. Use a single speaker headset with a microphone and sing along with the song every now and then. Casual observers will believe you’re engaged in discussing critical business issues.

The 6 phases of Product Development
Filed under: Silly, Company, Design — Colin @ May 31st, 2007 Edit This

successChances are that if you’ve done Product Development in a large company, you’re familiar with the 6 phases of product development shown below. While not acknowledged or endorsed by major corporations, it rings true because the combination of big business and stressful situations tends to bring out the worst in people.

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment (confusion)
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Innocent
6. Praise and honors for the non-participants

The reason that I bring this up, is to add a nice little plug for I.D.milano and other independent Product Development consultants. By outsourcing development, companies can remove the negative elements 2 through 5 and, essentially go straight from Enthusiasm to Praise and honors for the non-participants. A large part of the reason why clients often have more success when they outsource is not because consultants are any better than employees (though, of course, we might be). It is because of the following…

A. The very act of outsourcing forces the client to create a product brief and negotiate a realistic schedule.
B. Outsourcing projects also, to various degrees, outsources intra-company politics.
C. Ad hoc Marketing requirement changes that often leads to a paralysing circular design process can be practically eliminated.