Welcome to Conspire’s Fun Friday Links, a weekly collection of interesting discoveries from around the Web. Most of the time, the goal is to get you thinking differently about innovation, collaboration, business culture, and life in general. Other times, we may toss an infographic or fun video your way. Submissions are welcome, and you can send them to conspire@mindjet.com for consideration.
Crowdsourcing Innovation Creates New Kinds of Inventors
With every emerging trend comes the desire to take advantage of it — and the need to effectively manage how you do. From NWIRC:
“With crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, consumers are starting to direct more of what is produced. This shift in consumerism is making it easier for anyone with an idea to get their concept onto the market, and the popularity of shows like Shark Tank are turning more and more people into inventors. However, not everyone is cut out for making it as an inventor and not every idea is worth pursuing. These changes are also creating new classes of inventors.”
5 User-Centered Design Principles From Top Tech Companies
The beautiful thing about user-centered principles? They’re applicable to a number of product development processes, from concept to delivery. From User Testing:
“Before you start designing anything, the first thing you should do is stop and ask yourself, “What problem are we solving for our users?” You could create the most beautifully designed product with more features than anything else on the market, but if it doesn’t solve a specific problem for your audience, it’s not going to be useful to anybody.
Focus on serving your users needs first, rather than your own internal goals or bottom line. Start by identifying the problem you’re solving and exactly who you’re solving it for. Then focus all of your creative energy on building a solution that makes your users’ life better, in a way that almost seems magical in how easily it solves their problem. Serve your users first and the rest will follow.”
INFOGRAPHIC – Employee Performance Reviews: Productive or Destructive?
It’s universally accepted that performance reviews are the medium through which most people find out how they’re doing (and whether or not they’ll be getting a raise this year). Still, most employees find them intimidating and awkward — so is it really the best way to communicate feedback? From Find My Shift:
“Why do employees overwhelmingly dread their annual performance review with the boss? Quite often, this discussion is tied to the decision of whether an employee will receive a pay raise. What’s more, many of the points a manager makes about an employee can feel personal, even subjective, and not reflective of his or her true performance over a year’s time.
It’s up to managers to make the dialogue in the annual performance review as employee-friendly as possible, even though the odds are already stacked against both manager and employee. A different kind of process altogether can benefit employees and empower managers to feel more successful in appraising employee performance.”
The post Fun Friday Links: Crowdsourcing Inventors, Influential Design, and Destructive Reviews appeared first on via @Mindjet's Conspire #ideasquad.