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Entrepreneurial Education Program

Here’s an interesting concept from the Danish Group KaosPilot. It’s a school focused on creating entrepreneurs. I really like their values:

[...]the school is more than just a three-year Bachelor education in creative business design and social innovation. It is also an education with a clearly defined set of values that runs all through the education.

At a major seminar for the students, colleagues, board of directors and external partners in 2001 – the so-called POP-seminar held every 2 or 3 years – it was decided that the school’s most important values be identified. Six basic values and attitudes were outlined as indispensable to the educational program. They are:

• Playful – It has to be motivational, creative and constructive to be at the KaosPilots.
  Real world – the students and staff have to work with real problems, real people and real conflicts.
• Streetwise – the school must never be out of touch with what is happening at street level in our society.
• Risk-taking – the program and the staff must possess the will to be brave and take risks.
• Balanced – the school must strive for the right dynamic and balance between bodyand soul, between form and content and, not least, between human, timeand economic resources.
• Compassionate – human compassion and social responsibility must be the hallmarks of the school.

The formulation of these values proved to be an identity breakthrough for The KaosPilots and serves today as a quality filter for all decisions, projects, employment, arrangements, etc. The six values have proven to be resistant to the discussions arising now and then about supplementing or replacing them. So far, the students and staff have held on to these values as the school’s entirely unique and indispensable core values.

Smooth Santa

For a little fun, check out Smooth Santa. Absolutely hilarious. I love the raindeer singing and the jolly old man’s moves.

The Task Analysis Grid

One of the greatest challenges we face in the design field is communicating design decisions to other stakeholders (e.g. Business unit, Marketing, Engineering). We’re often forced to attempt this through a requirements document. Personally, I’ve yet to come across a requirements document that is usable and doesn’t take a couple of days to get everyone on the same page. So, we use something different – a task analysis grid (1.5MB PDF).

Each column starts out with a scenario, describes a task and is followed by all the sub-tasks necessary to complete the task. The sub tasks are colour-coded and prioritized from 1 (must haves) to 4 (some day in the future).

This is one of our most successful artifacts during the design process (next to personas and wireframes). A client once said that this artifact “takes our 60 page requirements document and distills it down to one page.”

Now, I can’t give away all the secrets, but essentially, this single document allows anyone looking at it to see the entire scope of a project, figure out what’s in this release (1) as well as what we’re planning for future releases (2, 3, and 4). It’s an extremely effective artifact for getting everyone on the same page.

So, have a look and I’d encourage you to leave your comments and discuss this below. And one last note, the final format for this prints out at roughly 3′ x 6′.

Related

• Mar 13th Task Analysis Grid – Illustrator template
• Feb 26th Task Analysis Grid – Excel template