April 10, 2012 Blog

Greetings All! A lot happened over the Easter Week including further progress on our Cincinnati showroom. A great article on why design is never done from IDEO’s Tim Brown, Evernote’s CEO speaks out on the office of the future and how he helps bring it about at Evernote, how bad do you want that Apple product, and more. A picture below of our Resource Center renovation’s progress to wet your modern design appetite.

Rethinking design with IDEO ’s Tim Brown

Tim covers a lot of ground in this article, but a few items stand out and I thought were worth expanding on. It seems almost trite to say that the Kaizen concept of continous improvement has radically influenced design ever since it was popularized by Toyota in the US. However in this article he seems to suggest that this be personalized down to the individual employee level. This might be an extension of an idea that is way past its time and can yield significant business results as illustrated by several of our clients locally that have invested in on site facilities management personnel.

Continual tweaking done to adapt to each employees specific and changing needs can allow a strong facilities services program to pay huge returns. The return on investment to tailor their workspace to fit employees individual work style, ergonomic needs, and personal habits can increase employee satisfaction, the amount of time worked, and ultimately- employee retention.

Tim also discusses Big Data, Conscious Capitalism, and potential uses for incorporating design thinking into our Education system. All good stuff so please read on…

http://www.idealog.co.nz/blog/2012/04/tim-brown

How functional is your workspace at work? At home?

Is your workspace uncomfortable, flexible, inefficient, or just plain uninspired? You’re not alone. Check out a quick laundry list of office employee workspace concerns from ResumeBear…

http://blog.resumebear.com/human-resource-news/how-functional-is-your-workspace-at-work-at-home/

Five charged after Chinese teen sells kidney to buy iPhone

Not to make light of some very serious issues (organ theft and poor judgment in teenagers), however I couldn’t resist sharing this. And you thought you wanted that Apple product bad…

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/06/china-kidney-idUSL3E8F615320120406

69 percent of millennials rarely visit Facebook fan pages

An Infographic summarizing a paper from the 2012 International Public Relations Research Conference on Social Media. It is interesting that while 86 percent of millennials visit Facebook every day, they do so to browse other people’s profiles, not learn about brands. . .

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/a38fc09d-1492-493b-85a6-1ae1c08583a3.aspx