In this interview, we talk with Doug Look, who’s a strategic designer for Autodesk Labs. The labs are interesting because they’ve built a strong, engaged, community around closed-source software. In this interview, we specifically cover:
· Using an online “Lab” to engage the community in closed-source development.
· Does open-source tackle interdisciplinary problems well?
· What does an interdisciplinary team in action look like?
Continue reading…
You would have to be living under a rock to not notice Apple’s ascendancy as of late.
And one of the clear elements of their ascendancy is that they have a clear vision for usability and peak customer experiences. Notice I didn’t say “peak corporate experiences” but that is a topic for another post I’ve got planned…
Most people seem to point to this focus on peak customer experiences as being driven and shaped by one person – Steve Jobs.
So here is the question.
Do you need a Benevolent Dictator to create great out of the box experiences that extend for the lifetime of the product’s use by an end user?
And is this true for both OpenSource and Closed Source projects.
The folks at the humanized blog had a great post up about this that motivated me in part to put up a post on our blog.
But in addition this is a question that has come up quite frequently in our interviews and is the highlight topic of an upcoming one soon to arrive on the blog.
So what are your thoughts?
I’ve got my own two cents on this which is that you do need one regardless of whether it’s an OpenSource project or Closed Source.
But I’m curious what other folks think as well…
