Category Archives: Future of Work

A few lines here to review how we structured the workshop:

Day 1: We’ve set the conceptual part of the workshop (Vision, Ideas, Execution). I also showcased my work so you could all get to know me, what I was working on, what I was struggling with, etc. The idea was to get some practical day-to-day info  but also understand how I can help you and where I can’t…

Day 2: We generated ideas. We’ve seen that a quite productive way of generating ideas is to list problems and trends. But also in this case we talked about the “Consumerization of IT” and how we could think of ideas that may come from the consumer world to organizations (i.e.  a Whatsapp for companies, an IFTTT for employees).

Day 3: We reduced the scope of the exercise and we decided to focus exclusively in one problem: Meetings. Focus help us start the execution part. Now we only had one small problem to solve…

Day 4: We thought reducing the scope was going to simplify the work but we’ve ended up with lots of angles and ideas for solving meeting problems. So we splited the work as follows:

1. Rafael worked on the real real stuff, like walls, table (or non tables), displays, etc.
2. Gerda took care of the information that will be displayed in that room  and the interaction of the onsite participants with it.
3. Nazaret looked at way to introduce Feng- Shui principles to online or onsite participants seats.
4. Lucas worked focused on the recording and transcript of the audio.
5. Moushira and Martin worked on the interaction for remote assistants.
6. Furqan and Bert started focusing on the meeting preparation but ended-up discovering a very innovative way to “navigate” meeting information.

Day 5: Time to stitch all the pieces together and wrap up the exercise. We’ve realized some funny outputs. For example, the team that focused in the physical space removed the table from the meeting room and the guys working on its digital representation took the table as the primary focus and used it as a  UI metaphor. Also after showcasing some typical prototyping tools, one team decided that the best tool for them was Prezi… That’s interaction design!

Personally I’ve discovered day after day an amazing group of talented people that loaded me with a good dose of creative energy.

Thanks everyone for this really interesting week and keep up the good work. YOU are awesome!

Ok, today is recap day so here’s the summary.

The objective of this workshop was to help you navigate between this 3 different oceans (you know I like boats… so excuse my metaphor ): VISION, IDEAS, EXECUTION.

Vision: is about seeing the big picture. Identifying trends, changes in how people live, work, communicate, etc. It’s also about new things that technology will enable. Example: “Most employees will work from their mobile phone”. This is a vision.

Ideas: Most of the time ideas come from visions. But you can also have good ideas without any vision or “envisioning” skill. An idea is just a service, a tool or a physical space that doesn’t exist so far and may end-up existing. It’s an invention. Example: “A mobile app that will record a meeting activity and automatically create a summary for all participants”. This is an idea.

Execution: Is about putting visions and ideas to work. It’s about starting. It’s about prototyping, refining, building, testing. You get it…You don’t need examples here: just hands.

I’ve tried to prove you that:

1. Visions are important but they “expire”. You may have a vision today on how people will work in 5 years. It may be valuable today  but it won’t have any value in 5 years. At that time, if you were right your vision becomes an evidence (so no value). And if you were wrong your vision becomes absurd. So don’t focus only in visions because their value intrinsically diminishes.

2. Ideas are cool to have but we live in a world were there is definitely no ideas shortage. Even top venture capitalists are giving away ideas for free http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html . The idea guy doesn’t have a good reputation http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2188-theres-no-room-for-the-idea-guy . Plus you don’t really need an idea. If you don’t have an idea you can copy a good one. Yeah… I said COPY.

3. Execution is the only thing that really matters. It is the valuable part. It is what will make you end up not really copying but producing your own design (even if you started copying) . Investors only care about execution. Users only care about execution. While executing you’ll generate tons of fresh ideas. The only downside is that it takes time, effort, sweat, tears, focus and ultimately love.

So what are you executing with love today?