The history of innovation has many crazy tales – the patent office is involved in many. In 1836 the first U.S. patent office burned to the ground: despite all the great ideas in the building, they didn’t get around to fireproofing the building itself (An ivory tower lesson if ever there was one).
Anyway, the fist 10,000 or so U.S. Patents were lost in the fire – about 2000 were recovered but the rest were lost.
After the fire the Patent office began its numerical numbering system (giving up on the prior name and date system) – U.S. Patent #1 was granted to Senator John Ruggle of Maine.
The invention? Comically enough, a reinvention of the wheel. Ruggle designed a new train wheel that yielded more traction and prevented sliding.
The true first U.S. patent was for pot ash (no, not that kind) and granted in 1790. However patents in Europe date back hundreds of years earlier – but that’s another story.
(From NPR star John Lienhard’s new book, How invention begins. Review coming soon)
This week in the ux-clinic discussion group:
We’re a pair of UX folks (a designer and a usability engineer). We’ve teamed up to turn our team around, but despite our awesome talent combo, we’re spinning our wheels. The team had the good sense to hire both of us, but is fixated on tiny, short term, miniature UI developments. Big architecture work is added to the schedule easily, but all the UI bits are “tweak this”, “improve that”, or “provide a basic UI for new feature blah”.
Our team is smart and leaders are good – but they’ve never taken, or witnessed, a big bet on UI, despite the customer centric project goals. How do we use our powers, design or usability, to change our leadership psychology so that sizable UI/UX investments are part of the game?
– Superhero UX vs. the conservatives
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:
I’m a project leader in a research organization – as in a hard core blue sky R&D future thinking lab. We loosely organize around projects but our goals are the inverse of typical software: it’s the IP and the concepts we invent that people pay us for, not feature sets or code quality. Our releases to clients are vehicles for our concepts and research, but nothing more.
What I’m looking for are ways to apply project management skills to blue-sky, big think, projects. Can we improve the quality of our process and scheduling, or get more mileage out of the concepts we invent, but with a minimum impact on our ability to experiment, change directions, and go after big powerful ideas? What do things like specs, exit criteria and status meetings mean for a 100% proof of concept project?
- Flying in the blue sky
Copyblogger offers good advice on writing blog and other headlines with 10 sure-fire headline formulas that work.
And athough the post is a top ten list, it doesn’t list top ten lists among its suggestions, giving you a bonus 11th tip. How nice. And if you count the “..that work” ending, that’s #12. Lucky day.
Purely for entertainment purposes, here is a blog title I made based on applying all 12 suggestions to a single title:
The top ten surefire things everyone ought to know about how you can discover who else wants the secrets of little known quick methods that work for getting rid of something so you can be proud of yourself like a rock star.
Lets not try that at home please.
If you liked this, you’ll be happy to know it’s part 7 of a 10 part series on magnetic headlines.
CHI 2007 , in San Jose, CA 4/28-5/3 2007, is the big dog of UI conferences – it’s one of the oldest, largest and most comprehensive ways to learn about what’s happening in the HCI / interface design world.
The big challenge is quality presenters – finding qualified people willing to get up there and teach. It’s all too easy to get rejected at CHI as so many folks want to participate. But this year something is different: I’m one of the gatekeepers.
So if you have good ideas for sessions – we want you.
I’m the co-chair for both the management and education communities – so if you’ve been waiting to contribute in these areas, and waiting for a crazy person to be at the controls, now is your chance to make a run for it.
Here’s the run down:
Courses: these are 90 minute or longer tutorials. If accepted you’ll recieve a $700 stipend per 90 minute segment you teach. We’re in big need of qualified folks interested in teaching.
Panels: Run a debate or reality tv show inspired session involving multiple presenters. I’m hoping someone will improve on the panel format – better speakers, more challenging topics – and remember we did the live competition Interactionary as a panel session.
Workshops: Full day discussions for small groups.
Reports: short, less formal papers on developments you’ve made in design, methods or other topics.
There are other session types, and Deadline for most things is Sept 1st, 2006 but check here for details.
Contact me if you have ideas, especially if you’re interested in submitting something related to UX management or HCI education.