Storm clouds

Insane storm clouds earlier.

We had a huge downpour with terrific thunder and bright flashes of fork lightning.

Then this weird, surreal cloud formation drifted over us.

I was half expecting a large alien mothership to descend through the electric clouds and land in Tesco’s car park !

Spring

Spring has sprung.

Sunshine felt warm today. Spring blossoms are out and there’s a real feeling that winter is now, finally, behind us.

The cold, grey skies of January and February have departed for another year.

Thick winter coats return to the wardrobe. Warm socks to the drawer. Blankets to the cupboard.

Spring is here.

I love this time of year.

Spring and summer lie ahead and the cold, damp days of winter are gone.

In the Spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing.

– Sonnet 98
William Shakespeare

What the customer wanted…

I remember this classic cartoon. Customer requirements can easily be misunderstood, miscommunicated and mismanaged. I used it in a fair few presentations back in the day.

Understanding the problem your customer is actually trying to solve is crucial.

In 1969 Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt published The Marketing Mode: Pathways To Corporate Growth.

In it, he attributed this saying to Leo McGivena:

Last year 1 million quarter-inch drills were sold, not because people wanted quarter-inch drills but because they wanted quarter-inch holes.

Focus on the outcome the customer needs (the quarter-inch hole), not the means of achieving it (the drill).

Master your Time

The Indispensable Man

Sometime, when you’re feeling important,
Sometime, when your ego’s in bloom,
Sometime, when you take it for granted
You’re the best qualified in the room,
Sometime, when you feel that you’re going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow this simple instruction
And see how it humbles your soul.
Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it, up to the wrist:
Pull it out, and the hole that’s remaining
Is a measure of how you’ll be missed.
You may splash all you please when you enter,
You can stir up the water galore,
But stop, and you’ll find in a minute
That it looks quite the same as before.
The moral in this quaint example, is do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself, but remember,
There’s no indispensable man.

Saxon White Kessinger

Ronald Reagan

Diana Walker, a Time magazine photographer, took this photograph after Walter Cronkite interviewed President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office on March 3rd, 1981.

“After Walter Cronkite’s last interview with the President as the anchor of the CBS Evening News, there was a little celebration in the room off the Oval Office,” recounts Diana Walker. “White House staffers, including Vice President Bush, enjoyed a good laugh over a joke that has never become public.”

Just stumbled across a fantastic resource library from Narrative, a strategy and design consultancy based in Austin, Texas.

Useful guides to design research, facilitation, ideation, product design, synthesis, usability evaluation and more. See the full library here.

Priorities, priorities…

How to figure out what to eat first when your plate is too full….

Design Museum and The King and I

Lovely day up in town.

Had to try Apoy, the new Filipino BBQ place in Market Halls, just off Oxford Street.

A brilliantly simple menu of Filipino classics like chicken adobo, Pinoy pork barbecue, beef pares and chicken inasal.

We went for the pork BBQ and chicken inasal with garlic fried rice and a couple of dipping sauces. All washed down with sweet, tangy calamansi juice.

The pork BBQ was marinated in banana ketchup, 7up and calamansi – perfectly grilled and served with a side of pickled achara. Full of flavour and beautifully matched with the garlic fried rice.

We spied ube ice cream on the menu and it wasn’t long before I approached the kitchen to order a couple of servings, but it was all sold out !

Strolled across a windy Hyde Park and dropped into the Japan House to take in their exhibitions of Japanese art and culture.

The weather was against us, so we headed on to the Design Museum, a London gem tucked into a corner of Holland Park.

I loved the displays on building materials and construction styles. Amazing to see designs for houses made of wood, brick and even straw.

I was particularly drawn by the technology exhibitions. A series of displays which charted the design evolution from the mechanical typewriter to the digital wizardry of the iPhone.

We kept pointing to old phones and computers – ‘I remember those !’ ‘I had that !’

I loved the old ZX Spectrum microcomputer. My brother and I had one, complete with rubber keys. It plugged into the TV and a tape deck !

Fascinating to see the evolution of the telephone and the television.

Particularly, enjoyed the section on how they designed the iconography of British roadsigns.

As Margaret Calvert, the lead designer, put it, “Style never came into it. We were driving toward the absolute essence. We were reducing the appearance to make the maximum sense at minimum cost“.

Enjoyed a light dinner of dim sum and jasmine tea in Chinatown, before taking our seats at the Dominion theatre to see the King and I.

Fantastic performance of the Rogers and Hammerstein classic.

The stage set was brilliant and the music and dance routines were perfectly coreographed.

really enjoyable performance.