Thursday I had a product overview discussion with one of our customer advisers. Before we got into the nerdy stuff we of course spoke about the economy. His company sells industrial products so you can imagine the the situation. It is amazing how inner connected their world is. They sell to the likes of the big_3, but they also buy major components from GM. But it goes even further than that, they could loss more than 20% of their suppliers if the big_3 go under…
Product development is even more inner connected. We all know that there is only 6 degrees of separation between poeple. I would bet this number needs to be recalculated, as the Internet has most likely reduce it. But will it ever reduce the number to what it is in product development? I don’t think so. Why, you may ask? Well, at Vuuch we have been researching the inner relationships or connections of “Design Discussions”. These are the random discussions that take place between team members while they go about their days design tasks. The reason we don’t call them conversations is that a conversation is verbal and a discussion could use any communication method. The distinction may seem meaningless, but it seems design discussion are greatly electronic… Go figure, right, you are reading a blog! Lets get back to degrees of separation - It is a simple fact, that everything in a design project is related. Well maybe not everything. Although we have not calculated an official number you can bet it is damn near 2. Or at least you will have a feeling of what it is in your environment. What I mean is that if I decided something in my cubical, it will have an affect on close to everyone on the team. And if you and I decide something in an email discussion, there are many people who are affected that have no idea about what was just decided and they will most likely find themselves in the next team meeting saying – “Boy i wish i knew that”. Wouldn’t it be great if Outlook told me what everyone has done that ruined my day?
