What's New
Top Categories
See All
- Strategic Innovation (64)
- Experience Design (63)
- Art and Culture (62)
- Technology (59)
- Industrial Design (51)
- Web (43)
Top Tags
See All
Ethnography, Explorations
There are an uncountable number of business-related sites, articles, and books that use the phrase ‘real world.’ You can get an endless number of books or services offering insight into ‘real world’ business problems. You can go to a business school for ‘real world’ learning. You can get...
Ethnography, Experience Design, Featured Articles, Strategic Innovation
We recently had a learning zone workshop with a group of kids in our office. They were in two separate groups of 3-5 and 6-8yrs, each group with unique exercises to complete. Not to mention how exhausting it was running after the younger ones, I also realized how much more imaginative they are comparing...
Articles, Ethnography, Experience Design, Strategic Innovation
The opportunity to become an “Innovation Strategist” catches people’s attention. Since our initial posting for the role in Toronto, we’ve received over 120 resumes from dynamic, brilliant young individuals all interested in joining the Idea Couture team. From the outside looking...
Articles, Ethnography, Experience Design, Service Design, Strategic Innovation
As you might expect, the terms Innovation and Design Thinking come up pretty often at Idea Couture. It’s not very often I have to intellectualize the terms, but earlier this week, I ran an internal workshop outlining the foundations of design thinking as it relates to facilitation [side note -...
Ethnography, Featured Articles, Featured Explorations, Strategic Innovation
In a recent blog post, Grant McCracken suggests it is the job of designers to conduct provocation and innovation through pie. He points to Project M as the source of this uniquely American metaphor with its Pie + Conversation = Ideas/Ideas + Design = Positive Change equation. As a first step towards...
Ethnography
I hate the word “consumer.” But I’m not sure what to do with it. It drives me crazy when clients talk about “the consumer” like they’re some kind of other species out there foraging for nuts and berries in Wal-Mart, Rite Aid or the shopping malls of America. If only they could find the perfect...
Articles, Ethnography, Experience Design, Featured Articles, Industrial Design, Service Design, Social Change, Strategic Foresight, Strategic Innovation, Technology, Transportation Design, Uncategorized
To address better ways of integrating Transportation in Urban environments requires a very wide-angle perspective lens in order to view the whole scenario of life in an urban environment as well as those in and around the emerging world. It requires that we put ourselves on the same streets of the...
Ethnography
We’ve been running ethnographic projects at Idea Couture since go. Almost three years ago, when I first joined what was then a five-person team on the fifth floor of our building, I was jettisoned into the field on a CPG project designed to examine the role of the kitchen in people’s lives. Since...
Ethnography, Explorations, Uncategorized
I just came back from my first Idea Couture business trip. They sent me ‘down South’ to Austin, Texas and part of my job was to familiarize myself with the culture, customs, and styles of the city. My goal was to research and soak in as much of the lifestyle as I possibly could; but how do you become...
Ethnography
A recent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describing how consumer feedback (or lack of it) impacts the design of cars once again reinforces how ethnographic studies trump focus groups in concept development and testing. It points out that the 2010 Ford Taurus and Buick LaCrosse were designed with...
Recent Posts
January 27, 2012
January 20, 2012
January 16, 2012
Noodleplay delivers.
Select from the menu below:
Copyright 2008-2010 by Idea Couture Inc. All rights reserved.
Ask a person what an Innovation Strategist does and they usually give you blank stares or buzz words. So who are you and what would you say you do here? Here’s a quick list of responsibilities from the inside of an innovation firm.