Core77

Steve Portigal's got another excellent essay in the current issue of Interactions Magazine, entitled, "Some Different Approaches to Making Stuff" where he breaks down 5 paradigms for the process (or belief) in how stuff makes its way into the world. Here's the setup:

Business case studies are the ultimate in reductionism: A complex business activity rooted in a specific context of people, company culture, time, and place is boiled down to a few key ideas. Consultants, designers, students, and people who read Malcolm Gladwell are especially prone to this form of simplification. Don't get me wrong-these simplified stories can be helpful as touchstones. We just need to remember that they are often apocryphal archetypes more than investigative summaries.

With that in mind, I propose an incomplete framework for how companies go about making stuff (products, services, miscellaneous). In characterizing this as incomplete, I hope to hear about other approaches that will flesh out the framework.

It's an extremely readable and useful piece, so subscribe to the magazine, or get the whole article by starting here.

Want more Portigal? Check out the audio podcast he did on Lunar's Icon-o-cast--a great primer on design research and insight generation.