Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 6)

SM: Previously we talked about cell phones and the problems that have developed over time with their hazard to driving. Could the Mendini analysis be applied to cell phones? BK: The Harvard Medical School has concluded that cell phone drivers kill 2400 people a year in the United States which is serious. Several states have

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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 5)

SM: The human factors movement then becomes a definitive note in design history? BK: The human factors movement becomes a very big deal. Part of the reason is the increasing rise in competition from China, India, and other parts of the world after the turn of the millennium. Silicon Valley design services are getting extremely

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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 4)

SM: Did the design tools come about that time as well? BK: Design tools came just a little bit earlier. I believe IDEO was the first consultancy to make a really major investment in CAD and CAM. They developed a culture of rapid prototyping, which CAD supports well. IDEO policy was such that you never came

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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 3)

SM: Is that how they got the idea for the roller ball itself, or were they prototyping an existing concept? BK: The idea for the roller ball preceded them; they were just trying to figure out how to make it work. Back in the 1960s, when Doug Engelbart was working for SRI, he built this

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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 2)

SM: While you were going through your career transformation, design was also transforming. I am not going to ask you to go through 20th-century design in two seconds, but what was going on with design at that time? BK: Good, because that would take at least four seconds! Design has been meandering for about 120 years.

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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 1)

It’s 8:45 in the morning and I have just sat down for a cup of coffee and a chat with Barry Katz. A bit whimsically, he describes himself as a “dyed-in-the-wool humanities guy”; however, it is very easy to see past his humility and recognize his tremendous passion and intellect within. He is a historian

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Marvell: “A product cycle company”

By Vijay Nagarajan, Guest Author As part of our coverage of the mobile chip vendor space, we looked at Qualcomm, InterDigital, Broadcom and Texas Instruments in great detail. We now move on to another interesting and aggressive fabless semiconductor company – Marvell Technology group. Earlier coverage on Marvell can be found here, here and here.

Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 4)

SM: Your vision was to move beyond the traditional print model, and rather be the center of a lifestyle. JH: I also saw us as building a personal publishing platform. Yes, we have consumers doing all the beautiful cards, books and calendars, but we also have lots of small businesses, charities, schools, non-profits, jewelry manufacturers,

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