Design

Most screen sizes for professional accountants are of a high-resolution.

My Mentee made this as a design exercise. He made a lot of cards.

But most To-Do lists are not cards because they hide information, not reveal it.

Designers don’t necessarily build that new version of the world — engineers, contractors, printers and many others play their parts — but they do show the path forward for change. This is more powerful than most realize.

 I have seen a executive look at a mock and suddenly see a path forward for his company. I’ve seen an engineer say, “that’s not feasible,” and the exec reply, “But it’s right there.” The exec saw it, and now must have it. And it gets made.

Seeing really is believing.

Their idea was to transform the underutilized spaces of the hospital — the hallways and waiting rooms — into a kind of classroom. 

As an example, she points to the organization Noora Health, which was hatched in the Design for Extreme Affordability course by two med school students, an engineer, and a self-described “policy nerd.” Shadowing the families of patients in India, they noticed that health-care institutions did a poor job of educating family members about basic procedures to prevent infection, procedures that could go a long way toward reducing readmission rates. At the same time, they noticed that family members spent long hours waiting around hospitals with nothing to do. Their idea was to transform the underutilized spaces of the hospital — the hallways and waiting rooms — into a kind of classroom. 

A group of designers studied people with arthritis using a standard peeler and noted their difficulty with the thin handle. From these observations, the designers defined a new need: a grip that would be less painful for arthritis sufferers.

These are levers identified by DesignerFund.

I like to bring in people from different departments for our design meetings

One method David uses to imbue his design team with that kind of cross-company empathy has become a weekly ritual. He says, “I like to bring in people from different departments for our design meetings and ask them about areas where we can help. When the payroll operations team came in, our designers were shocked at how painful their workflow was for tax filings and had a lot of ideas that could help. Within a couple of weeks, our design team had improved the quality of work life for payroll operations, all while continually building a habit around proactive problem solving.”

Printing and displaying all of our prototypes in an open gallery

“At Helix, the design team is trying to find simpler ways to champion design by building transparency around what we do. By doing little things like printing and displaying all of our prototypes in an open gallery, inviting others for design reviews outside of conference rooms and in the open, and pinning up a big calendar of what’s next for us, anyone from any team can walk by and see what we’re working on...”

Bringing in researchers from a variety of successful startups

“There was a giant roadblock in selling the role because management had a million (seemingly) larger priorities.” So Stephanie decided to make her case by bringing in researchers from a variety of successful startups to present the impact their work had at their own companies—not only on the product but also on the company’s bottom line.

Area chart design

Charts are transparent, and not just transparent but there is a gradient in the transparency.

The outline is quite dark and clear. This makes the chart very easy to read - and great to look at.

Tooltip in Google Analytics doughnut chart is Quite Rich.