Cognitive Friction

Hey! UCD! if you are going to advertise on Facebook, at least check your spelling before posting:

Conficius Institute? Doh!.

This is a cheap shot, I know, it’s so easy to make this sort of mistake. But these details matter, especially in Ad copy, and it’s just as easy to get it right.

If you’ve ever done any card sorting, you’ll know what a pain in the ass it is to make notes during the session and to analyse the data afterwards. There are a few decent spreadsheets for data analysis in circulation, but if you want a fancy dendrogram from the data too, then you’re going to need more than Excel. I’ve used XSort for card sorting, as it does away with the index cards, the note-taking sheets and the spreadsheets, while providing excellent stats on the sessions and a dendrogram to boot. Today, the app was released for free download, so if you are running OS X, go get a copy. It was always pretty cheap, but now you have no excuse.

You can download XSort at xsortapp.com.

Today I’ll be heading up to the Black North to attend a lecture at the Queens University of Belfast entitled Design Thinking for Innovation: Treat Your Company, Your Team, Your Products as Prototypes. It will be delivered by Michael Dearing, an associate professor at the Design School at Stanford University.

Michael Dearing has an impressive track record at eBay and a lot of fascinating research interests around design innovation for new product development, web-based businesses and user experience design. I must say I am really looking forward to this, as design thinking and innovation in organizational behaviour is a real interest of mine too. I’ll be sure to blog my notes on the train home.