by Dwayne Phillips The rumors are that Apple is building a wristwatch. Will they learn from the experience of Texas Instruments? Apple is supposed to be building a wristwatch. Some call it the “iWatch.” Here is just one of hundreds of posts about it. This has happened before: a really smart, really successful tech company […]
Apple, Texas Instruments, and the Digital Watch
February 25th, 2013 · No Comments
Tags: Culture · Design · Success · Technology
Setting Limits on Tasks
October 29th, 2012 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Some tasks don’t deserve a lot of time to complete, despite how much time I would like to devote to them. I find items that limit my time on task. Some tasks are worth only so much time. Regardless of how much I like the task or how much I feel the […]
The Geek’s Perfect Jacket
April 9th, 2012 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips I have a new Scottevest jacket. It has 20 pockets, and I love it. This is a first for this blog – a post about fashion. Well, I think it is about fashion. It is also about utility. I now own a ScottEVest Standard Jacket. I looked at these on the Internet for […]
The Flip-A-Coin Technique
March 5th, 2012 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Binary decisions – choose either A or B, nothing else – can be difficult. Tossing a coin, but not looking at it, is a useful technique. I learned this technique a few years ago at a conference. You are confronted with a decision with two choices: A or B. You are uncertain […]
Tags: Design · Judgment · Play
A Great Christmas Gift
January 2nd, 2012 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips I receive a Fiskars tool for cutting open those annoying plastic packages. I often find that the best Christmas gifts of my life are (1) unexpected and (2) inexpensive. Such happened this year. The photo here shows such a gift from this year. It is a cutting tools from Fiskars. It cuts […]
Starbucks and Design
August 10th, 2011 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Looking for design ideas? Visit a Starbucks once a week. I love to look a new designs. Designs are plans for solutions or solutions themselves. One of the reasons I loved walking a thousand miles down a road was that I saw how people solved problems with buildings, pastures, fences, vehicles, and […]
Hardware, Software, and Design
August 4th, 2011 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips One of the differences between hardware and software is that hardware requires some design before building begins. Software, however, can begin at any moment without design. I was a bit surprised the other day at work, but people were debating the differences between building hardware and “building” software. (I guess that is […]
Tags: Design · Differences
Whatever Happened to Tracing Paper?
May 9th, 2011 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips I reminisce about tracing paper. When I was a kid, I would trace things. Now that I think about it, I recall tracing some things when I was in graduate school working on a PhD. Whoa. Anyways, I would trace things. These things were for school projects most of the time, but […]
Tags: Change · Design · Family
Return on Specification Investment
February 3rd, 2011 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips How specific should a system specification be? How many resources should the spec consume? I propose a measure to help answer these questions – the Return on Specification Investment. A few years ago, I was reviewing a specification for a system that someone in the office had written. I came to one […]
Tags: Communication · Design · Requirements · Systems · Technology · Work
When in Doubt, Call It a Thing
October 4th, 2010 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes I am stuck for a word while writing. Experience has taught me to put “thing” in the blank and move on. The right word will come later. There we were, writing a proposal. Three of us were gathered around the keyboard, one typing the words, the other two contributing the words. […]