Interesting Links for 15-04-2012

[andrewducker]

• Working at Valve sounds awesome.
  (tags: valve work technology games business )
• Cheaper hardware and software mean you can attend a wedding at 5am (in your pyjamas)
  (tags: awesome technology internet telecoms BenWerdmuller )
• Want Breakthrough Ideas? First, Listen To The Freaks And Geeks,and People Who Are Not Your Customer
  (tags: design research

Comments

[skington]

I love that they found a way to have the picture and dialogue out of sync in the Godzilla script.

[laplor]

The article about where to find breakthrough ideas may have changed my life. It gave me an excellent light bulb moment.

Thank you.

[andrewducker]

Really? Care to share?

[laplor]

I'm preparing to start a small business in the service industry (organizing/cleaning).

As I've been defining my market and considering how to advertise and so on, I've been looking at it all wrong.

I have been looking at the people who currently hire cleaners and wondering why they hire private versus hiring the large companies.

I should be looking at who doesn't hire a cleaner at all. I don't want to have to compete hard against more established providers. Not only is that not my style, but there could be advantages to networking.

It would make more sense to look at, and talk to, the people who don't hire cleaners now, and find out why. Also to talk to people who have tried other services and stopped using them.

For example maybe there are hoarders out there who are too embarrassed to have cleaners come in - but these are people my particular set of talents and experiences can help the most.

The article is a jumping-off point for thinking outside the box on designing services/product/market.

[andrewducker]

That's a perfect example! Thanks for sharing it.

I chatted to Julie about this, because we've both considered getting a cleaner, but been worried about a few sticking points. Grabbing a random website (http://www.thehomecleaningco.co.uk/) what I'd really like to see added (apart from a better designed website) is a FAQ, with things like "I'm worried that a cleaner might steal my things." and "I'm embarassed about how untidy my home is.", that said nice reassuring things, at least letting me know that they had thought about these issues. Because it's things like that which have prevented us from using a cleaner before.

[undeadbydawn]

I am now quite tempted to contact Valve.

in fact the only thing stopping me is that they ain't local.

Breakthrough ideas:
the one thing that consistently gets me through projects is a bloody-minded insistence on doing things that are not in the specification. There has to be something people aren't expecting, but which makes total sense and is functional. As a result, people tend to remember my final submission not because the end result is amazing [though sometimes it is], but because there are cool things happening that no-one else thought of.
most recently that was changing the text colour in a C++ project. Very simple, attractive, and made the output both more interesting and easier to follow.

I need to get a *lot* better at this. In terms of both the ideas and the execution. And, of course, encouraging team-mates to do the same.

[kurosau]

The article isn't right though, even if the author did stumble onto something interesting. Comparing psychology to fiction doesn't work, they're two distinct fields. And while we might get there with psychology/biology, in studying things like selfishness, conflict, and biological altruism, and then comparing them to theories of mind, that stuff is all basically in its infancy compared to fiction