Why not apply the same approach to overcome challenges in the nonprofit world? This project, funded by International Development Enterprise (IDE) as part of a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, sought to provide NGOs and social enterprises with the tools to do just that. IDEO, in collaboration with nonprofit groups ICRW and Heifer International, developed the HCD Toolkit to help international staff and volunteers understand a community's needs in new ways, find innovative solutions to meet those needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind. The HCD Toolkit was designed specifically for NGOs and social enterprises that work with impoverished communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The free kit, available for download here, walks users through the human-centered design process and supports them in activities such as building listening skills, running workshops, and implementing ideas. The process has led to innovations such as the HeartStart defibrillator, Cleanwell natural antibacterial products, and the Blood Donor System for the Red Cross — all of which have enhanced the lives of millions of people. The HCD toolkit has been used by organizations throughout the developing world, including Acumen Fund, AyurVAID, Heifer International, ICRW, IDE, Micro Drip, and VisionSpring.

    Combining tools, core principles, and plenty of humor, The Agile Samurai gives you the tools and the attitude to deliver something of value every week, and make rolling software into production a non-event. You’ll see how agile software delivery really works and how to help your team get agile fast, while having fun along the way.

    It’s both an onboarding guide and a survival manual, and I hope it will be useful to the field. It outlines the types of projects, partnerships, and people that civic technologists encounter, and the methods we can use to make lasting change. I focus on principles and sets of questions to help technologists find the right way to do the most good, starting with finding the people already doing the work. There’s also practical advice on how to build alliances with public-sector partners, what tech (and non-tech) skill sets are most useful, and how to show up in spaces dedicated to stewardship rather than profit. And my best tips from experience on how to introduce new methods and tools, and how to connect with others in the field and work sustainably on hard problems.In collaboration with the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University and its Digital Service Collaborative supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, I’m self-publishing in paperback and e-book. I’m grateful for their support!

    The 20 stand-alone chapters of this new work describe how technological failures result from the incompatibilities between the way things are designed and the way people actually perceive, think, and act. New technologies will succeed or fail based on our ability to minimize these incompatibilities between the characteristics of people and the characteristics of the things we create and use.This book is the quintessential 'must read' for all those who deal with technology in any fashion. From the frustration of an awkward ATM machine to the threat of accidental, nuclear Armageddon, Casey shows how the same crucial factors come into play told through the very eyes of those people who saw and experienced these things. No student of design, psychology, behavioral science, or technology should be without this book, and neither should any intelligent member of society who wants to know what goes on with the successes and failures of modern technology.Sit ringside to the action where compelling events unfold. The stories in this book will take you to airports and airline cabins, an amusement park, a fertility clinic, a pharmaceutical plant, an emergency dispatch center, the Olympic games, and a bank; to hospitals, spacecraft, ships, and cars. From the coasts of Peru and Monterey, in orbit aboard the International Space Station, the freeways of Southern California and the back roads of France, the battlefields of Afghanistan, and a nuclear fuel plant in Japan this is The Atomic Chef.

    You'll learn personal insights from thought leaders such as Steve Blank on innovation, Alex Osterwalder on business models, Nancy Duarte on storytelling, and Rob Fitzpatrick on questioning, among others.With detailed visual guides to over 20 strategic tools and 48 case studies and real life examples from large corporations such as ING Bank, Audi, Autodesk, and Toyota Financial Services, to small startups, incubators, and social impact organizations, Design a Better Business is the most comprehensive and practical guide on how to launch and sustain innovation as a discipline in your organization.http://www.designabetterbusiness.comFILLED WITH PERSONAL STORIES AND EXPERIENCES FROM 30 DESIGN PRACTITIONERS AND THOUGHT LEADERS8 CHAPTERS48 CASE STUDIES20 TOOLS24 DOWNLOADS7 CORE SKILLS30 DESIGNERS36 HACKS>150 VISUALS

    In fact, this one document can steer an entire organization when it comes to delivering on company strategy. This practical guide teaches you how to create an effective product roadmap, and demonstrates how to use the roadmap to align stakeholders and prioritize ideas and requests. With it, you’ll learn to communicate how your products will make your customers and organization successful. Whether you're a product manager, product owner, business analyst, program manager, project manager, scrum master, lead developer, designer, development manager, entrepreneur, or business owner, this book will show you how to: Articulate an inspiring vision and goals for your product Prioritize ruthlessly and scientifically Protect against pursuing seemingly good ideas without evaluation and prioritization Ensure alignment with stakeholders Inspire loyalty and over­-delivery from your team Get your sales team working with you instead of against you Bring a user­ and buyer-­centric approach to planning and decision-making Anticipate opportunities and stay ahead of the game Publish a comprehensive roadmap without over­committing

    True, some designers can perceive what their customers need or want, but in the era of artificial intelligence, augmented cognition, and "thinking" designs, intuition isn't enough.With this practical guide, you'll learn how different regions of the human brain create multifaceted and multi-model experiences. Once you grasp this concept, you'll not only learn how to collect the right data that customers need to understand an experience, but also how to put that data to the best use.Understand the inner workings of customers' minds to deliver competitive augmented reality, AI, and thinking productsLearn key brain systems involved in generating an experience through a product or serviceCollect the right data to understand the entirety of an experience and put that data to the best useLearn concrete ways to improve your products or services based on psychology and neuroscienceBridge the gaps between cognitive science, UX, behavior change, AI, and augmented reality

    Hidden in Plain Sight by global innovation consultant Jan Chipchase with Simon Steinhardt is a fascinating look at how consumers think and behave.Chipchase, named by Fortune as “one of the 50 smartest people in tech,” has traveled the world, studying people of all nations and their habits, paying attention to the ordinary things that we do every day an how they effect our buying decisions. Future-focused and provocative, Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Create Extraordinary Products for Tomorrow's Customers illuminates exactly what drives consumers to make the choices they do, and demonstrates how all types of businesses can learn to see—and capitalize upon—what is hidden in plain sight today to create businesses tomorrow.

    It offers insights about trade-offs that can be made and techniques for even the most unique design challenges. The book will help readers master agile information structures while meeting their unique needs on such devices as smart phones, GPS systems, and tablets.The book provides examples showing how to: model and shape information to adapt itself to users' needs, goals, and seeking strategies; reduce disorientation and increase legibility and way-finding in digital and physical spaces; and alleviate the frustration associated with choosing from an ever-growing set of information, services, and goods. It also describes relevant connections between pieces of information, services and goods to help users achieve their goals.This book will be of value to practitioners, researchers, academics, andstudents in user experience design, usability, information architecture, interaction design, HCI, web interaction/interface designer, mobile application design/development, and information design. Architects and industrial designers moving into the digital realm will also find this book helpful.

    But in today’s service- and software-driven world, “done” is less obvious. When is Amazon done? When is Google done? Or Facebook? In reality, services powered by digital systems are never done. So then how do we give teams a goal that they can work on?Mostly, we simply ask teams to build features—but features are the wrong way to go. We often build features that create no value. Instead, we need to give teams an outcome to achieve. Using outcomes creates focus and alignment. It eliminates needless work. And it puts the customer at the center of everything you do.Setting goals as outcomes sounds simple, but it can be hard to do in practice. This book is a practical guide to using outcomes to guide the work of your team. "Josh’s crisp volume brims with insight about how to fly at just the right level - the level of outcomes. If you’ve ever wondered how M your MVP should be, or how to get more R in your OKRs, this book will help." --Nick Rockwell, CTO, NY Times

    This environment of constant change will only accelerate in the future and traditional business leaders are ill equipped to deal with it. Just as we took our cues from MBAs and the military in casting the ideal CEO of the 20th century, we can look to design - in its broadest form - to model our future leader, the DEO. These leaders possess characteristics, behaviors and mindsets that allow them to excel in unpredictable, fast-moving and value-charged conditions. They are catalysts for transformation and agents of change. A hybrid of strategic business executive and creative problem-solver, the DEO is willing to take on anything as an object of design and looks at ALL problems as design challenges. Readers will learn not only why this form of leadership is essential to the success of modern organizations, but also what characteristics are best suited to this role. Through intimate conversations with leading DEOs, we explore the mindsets, communities, processes and practices common to creative business leaders. The book lays out--graphically and through example--how DEOs run their companies and why this approach makes sense now. We help readers identify these skills in themselves and their colleagues, and we guide them in using these skills to build, revive or reinvent the next generation of great companies and organization.

    And code. And code. You build only to rebuild. You focus on making your site compatible with almost every browser or wireless device ever put out there. Then along comes a new device or a new browser, and you start all over again.You can get off the merry-go-round.It's time to stop living in the past and get away from the days of spaghetti code, insanely nested table layouts, tags, and other redundancies that double and triple the bandwidth of even the simplest sites. Instead, it's time for forward compatibility.Isn't it high time you started designing with web standards?Standards aren't about leaving users behind or adhering to inflexible rules. Standards are about building sophisticated, beautiful sites that will work as well tomorrow as they do today. You can't afford to design tomorrow's sites with yesterday's piecemeal methods.Jeffrey teaches you to:- Slash design, development, and quality assurance costs (or do great work in spite of constrained budgets)- Deliver superb design and sophisticated functionality without worrying about browser incompatibilities- Set up your site to work as well five years from now as it does today- Redesign in hours instead of days or weeks- Welcome new visitors and make your content more visible to search engines- Stay on the right side of accessibility laws and guidelines- Support wireless and PDA users without the hassle and expense of multiple versions- Improve user experience with faster load times and fewer compatibility headaches- Separate presentation from structure and behavior, facilitating advanced publishing workflows

    Fortunately, results from the relatively new science of human visual perception provide valuable guidance. In Visual Thinking for Design, Colin Ware takes what we now know about perception, cognition, and attention and transforms it into concrete advice that designers can directly apply. He demonstrates how designs can be considered as tools for cognition - extensions of the viewer’s brain in much the same way that a hammer is an extension of the user’s hand. Experienced professional designers and students alike will learn how to maximize the power of the information tools they design for the people who use them.• Presents visual thinking as a complex process that can be supported in every stage using specific design techniques.• Provides practical, task-oriented information for designers and software developers charged with design responsibilities.• Includes hundreds of examples, many in the form of integrated text and full-color diagrams.• Steeped in the principles of “active vision,” which views graphic designs as cognitive tools.

    The book introduces an emerging domain of design that is of immense interest today not only to the academic design research community but also to those in the business community charged with the development of human-centred products, systems, services, and environments. There are no other books with this focus and coverage currently available.

    Words make software human-centered, and require just as much thought as the branding and code. This book will show you how to give your users clarity, test your words, and collaborate with your team. You’ll see that writing is designing.