My new mission statement is an invitation to create

I believe in observation, collaboration, and the open-minded following of ones’ heart and nose. I blog in part to find like-minded collaborators who want to create good work together.

I share hunches and ideas here while they’re still forming – something I don’t often get to do in traditional academic publishing. It’s silly, but this feels risky at times. But my hope is that my little half-ideas can find life out there by combining with yours. I want to talk about design, innovation, and the social context of the creative process – and maybe some day help each other create high-impact solutions to meaningful problems.

Please share your thoughts, questions, and half-baked hunches, whatever they are.

Posted on by Caneel Joyce in Analysis / Ideas 2 Comments

Where Good Ideas Come From

Steven Berlin Johnson at South by Southwest in...

Steven Berlin Johnson at SXSW 2008 (via Wikipedia)

On November 2nd I will be chairing a free event in London about creativity and innovation.  Steven Johnson, best-selling nonfiction author of Mind Wide Open and Everything Bad is Good for You will be presenting his latest book, Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation.

I am super excited to meet Steven Johnson, whose writings have inspired my own thinking about how technology is shaping the future of human creativity. He’s been one of my modern intellectual role models since I read his 2005 post and New York Times Book Review essay about how he uses DevonThink to mine his past creative ideas and prior research and to write books (more on that below*). I love the sophisticated and far-reaching way that SBJ analyzes and predicts how emerging tools, innovations, and trends will impact human behavior. Read more

Posted on by Caneel Joyce in Appearances 6 Comments

Creative Current at Future Human Salon

Creativity gets people riled up. That was one thing I learned as a panelist at “Creative Current,” the topic of Wednesday night’s Future Human salon, run by Bad Idea magazine and held at The Book Club in my lovely neighborhood of Shoreditch.  The other panelists included Paul Epworth (2010 Brit Awards’ Music Producer of the Year, of Bloc Party / Florence / Plan B fame) and Tiger Savage (former Creative Director at M&C Saatchi, recent creator of Tigers Eye consulting). Read more

Posted on by Caneel Joyce in Appearances 4 Comments

We Three Haas OB PhDs in London

The Summer issue of CalBusiness, the alumni magazine for the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, just came out. It features a profile of myself, Margaret Ormiston (Asst Prof at the London Business School), and Connson Locke (Asst Prof at the London School of Economics with me).  The article is about Read more

Posted on by Caneel Joyce in Appearances Leave a comment

Experience Design Builds Brand Relationships: The Apple Store Retail Experience

Apple Store Fifth Avenue

Apple Store Fifth Avenue, by highstrungloner on Flickr

Experience Design (aka XD or ED) is a field of design that focuses on the creating the broader experience of using a product/service/space/process, rather than narrowly focusing on its functional features.

To witness the power of Experience Design in retail, walk into an Apple Store. The shopping experience is impeccably consistent with the product experience (using a Mac): intuitive, beautiful, thoughtful, simple, and approachable. Read more

Posted on by Caneel Joyce in Analysis / Ideas 2 Comments

Make Your Readers Love You: 5 Lessons from Pixar

Link: Make Your Readers Love You: 5 Lessons from Pixar

This post from Copyblogger describes five clever “rules” derived from Pixar for “making readers love you.” I think they’re rock-solid recommendations for managers, bloggers, writers, and commercial artists of all kinds:
1. Be consistent and build trust
2. Take the time to do things right
3. Tell a story that connects
4. Know yourself, your product, and your team
5. Now, make it your own

Posted on by Caneel Joyce in Inspiration Leave a comment

Periodic Table of Mad Men

I am obsessed with the fantastically feminist phenom show Mad Men.  Don Draper is cool as can be and Joan is a sort of anti-hero (I love her to death but I am so glad I don’t have to be like her to be strong in the workplace).  I love this periodic table (found at flavorwire – link below).
Spolier alert for Mad Men and Sopranos!  Revealing details to come….
Element Pb (Peggy’s baby) was the most horrifying moment of television I had ever watched- well, that and when Adrianna got shot in The Sopranos.

Periodic Table of Mad Man (via Flavorwire)

Posted on by Caneel Joyce in Inspiration Leave a comment

Quote: Love, Age, and Beauty

There is a certain age when a woman must be beautiful to be loved, and then there comes a time when she must be loved to be beautiful.

Françoise Sagan (#quote in NYTimes.com article)

Posted on by Caneel Joyce in Quips & Quick Asides Leave a comment

Designers: Think you have a good eye for color? Get proof…

How good is your color vision?  Arrange these tiles by hue to find your score – http://bit.ly/by7gz8 (based X-Rite’s official FM100 Hue Test).
Brag: I got a perfect score (a zero), which pretty much made my week.  Guess the Color Theory class I took in the UC Extension design certificate program a few years ago paid off….  or maybe it was my compulsive color-arranging of clothing, books, and iPhone app icons (practice makes perfect).
Friends who are designers and visual artists seemed to score between 0 and 10.  Aesthetically sensitive non-artist friends reported scores between 10 and 25.  Share your reactions to the test – and your score if you like – below.
Take the X-Rite Color Challenge
Posted on by Caneel Joyce in Inspiration 2 Comments

A Passing Thought

The market for something to believe in is infinite

Hugh MacLeod (via nuradical) #quote

Posted on by Caneel Joyce in Quips & Quick Asides Leave a comment