Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Create Extraordinary Products for Tomorrow’s Customers

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Jan Chipchase

With Simon Steinhardt

Harper Business/HarperCollins, New York, 2013, English

Nonfiction, Product/Industrial Design

ISBN: 9780062125699

From the Publisher. A global-innovation expert offers a new perspective on how consumers think and how to develop products and services that affect their everyday lives. Who are your next customers—not just the ones you are serving today but the ones you'll need three, five, or ten years from now? How do you figure out what goods and services will attract them in the future before your competitors do? According to Jan Chipchase—whom Fast Company has called the "James Bond of design research" and Fortune has called the "Indiana Jones of technology for the developing world"—most of the clues are right in front of us. The key is learning to see the ordinary in a revolutionary new way. As the executive creative director of Global Insights at frog, an award-winning global design and innovation company, Chipchase draws on everyday objects and patterns to show us how to see the world differently, from making a phone call to filling up a gas tank to ascertaining whether it's actually half-and-half you're pouring into your coffee. Chipchase is always looking for opportunities—gaps, anomalies, and contradictions—that will give his clients, some of the world's largest and most successful companies, a distinct competitive advantage, whether they're delivering the most low-tech bar of soap or the most high-tech wireless network.

In Hidden in Plain Sight, Chipchase takes readers on his journeys around the globe and shares his methods for identifying the unmet needs of customers. No matter where he stops—whether Cleveland or Kabul—his goals are the same: to spot and decode the routines of daily life and to help readers use the very same tools that he and his team use to see, and capitalize upon, what is hidden in plain sight today to create businesses tomorrow.

On 2 book lists

Emanuela Frattini Magnusson

On Emanuela Frattini Magnusson’s Book List

The ultimate guide to observing human behavior with an open mind. It sets the foundation through which to identify emerging issues and to build upon in order to problem-solve. An enlightened approach to understanding real human needs, and being better equipped to respond as a designer.

Donald Norman

On Donald Norman’s Book List

An excellent introduction to design research. The book chronicles the life of a design researcher who studies people by observing them in their homes, barbershops, and living quarters around the world. Chipchase is Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at frog design, working out of the Shanghai office. Steinhardt is Associate Creative Director of Editorial at the digital agency JESS3.

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