Ideas out loud

For all ideas that deserved to be shared! 
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July 13, 2009

A really cool way to visualize complex problems | mondaydots: why dots

To see more examples and uses go to: mondaydots.com

Jeff Monday, author of Mondaydots.com, gives us a great way of visualizing complex problems, concepts, issues, solutions, or whatever in the form of dots.

The use of dot's encourage the presenter to follow a follow some of PresentationZen and Slideology fundamentals such as Restraint, Simplicity and Naturalness. By only using Dot's the presenter is encouraged to ensure lot's of Clean Space to allow the audience to focus on the movement, action or story of the dots. There also needs to be a sense of Harmony in the presentation by letting the dots tell the story as opposed to bullet points, clip art or other notorious 'death-by-powerpoint' elements.

Finally, I believe dots is an excellent method of communication because of the inherent simplicity of a dot(s) and its ability to convey potentially complex messages in a more easily understandable manner.

I look forward to your comments.

Filed under  //   design   mondaydots   presentation   presentationzen  

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July 12, 2009

How to Become a Better Manager … By Thinking Like a Designer | MIT Sloan - Design Thinking

A nice little read. Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds, two of my favorite authors of presentation and design, provide some insight into how managers can use some of the principals and concepts of design in their daily roles. The main takeaways for what managers can learn from designers are:


Garr:
  • Embrace restraint
  • Take a risk
  • Question everything
  • It's not about tools, it's about ideas.
Nancy:
  • Hierarchy
  • Balance
  • Contrast
  • Clear space
  • Harmony
One of the best quotes from the interview is from Garr, answering the question What are the most common problems a non-designer manager is likely to stumble into when he or she is trying to think like a designer?, "In business we are all scared of being called "too simplistic." People confuse simplicity, which is hard to achieve, with simplistic, which is easy and usually lacks value."

Thoughts...?


Check out the article here: sloanreview.mit.edu or check out the slideshow by Garr for some further points and visuals.

Slides (in PDF) from Safari Webcast
View more documents from garr.

Filed under  //   design   presentation   presentationzen  

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