Nur Ahmad Furlong

Blog

  • New School Business Idea no.1: Web 2.0 worker Spaces for rent

    Ok this is something I have been thinking about for a while now and I’ve just decided to go with it. I’ve got an overactive imagination and my mind just won’t leave me alone sometimes. There are times when I can’t even get to bed in the early hours and just have to jot down some ideas before I can get some rest from the continuous mental processes happening up in here.

    I have ideas on a daily basis, ones which I think are great and just have to be acted upon, but a host of reasons prevent me from acting, mostly procrastination and lack of motivation or just feeling bogged down by earning an immediate living. I’ve decided to document these ideas and share them, to see how others react, see what kind of feedback I can get and maybe if I can find some interested parties to collaborate or invest in them or just as a bouncing board.

    IDEA # 1: Mobile Office for knowledge/web 2.0 workers

    With so many of us taking the plunge into self employment or just being on the go and out of the office it has become increasingly difficult to find the right places to meet with our clients or peers, to sit down somewhere and get some work done away from our couches & beds at home and to just have a place of refuge when the creative juices are being dried up by our dry surroundings.

    Onto the scene walks the office away from the “home” office (This is my idea). Imagine a few centralised spaces where you can go, pay a small fee for an hour or 2 or 3, have some coffee, plug in and do what you do best. It’s designed to suite the modern knowledge worker, it allows for booking spaces in advance, you can take your clients there. There’s an open plan area for collaboration, brainstorming, networking & the like, as well as some private or more quiet spaces for concentration or to cut yourself off from the world.

    They offer office services like faxing & printing, places to plug in your iPod and watch the latest TED talks or listen to your favourite podcasts. They sell the latest gadgets which keep us drooling on a daily basis. They have a few techno savvy guys & gals to help with any glitches & bugs. Maybe they even have a few in house businesses running, which offer supporting services to the knowledge worker community like people who know how to set up blogs, wiki’s etc.

    You can go and have a video conference, shoot or record something for your latest podcast. It’s a web 2.0 worker paradise. Think it’ll work? Anyone got anything to add?Anyone got some moolah to throw at an idea like this or know some open minded investors? Jump in and throw your 2 cents or 20 million at this idea. Lets see what we come up with. If anyone’s got connections at any of the big malls or centers maybe get them interested in the idea. I’m sure they wouldn’t sneer at getting peeps like us interested in spending more time in & around their malls.

    Does anyone know of something like this which really exists? If so and it’s based in Cape Town I’ll by you a coffee & a Muffin if you point me to it in the next month. 🙂

  • What is Design?

    Being a Designer, I’m always looking to better define & redefine what I do. I continuously return to the root of the matter in a search for greater meaning. When asked to describe what “Design” is, people inevitably respond in completely different ways. This is so, because the subject is so vast and can be understood from so many different perspectives depending on ones experience, education, profession and so forth. Do a quick google search asking the question What is Design, and you’ll see what I’m on about.

    The following video will introduce you to the problem, and why we need to rethink our perception of what design is.

    [youtube 3mxbLd9r4Sc&rel=1 – What Is Design?]

    My Quick Definition

    My own personal definition of design has changed over the years. As a junior I thought of design as a commercialized visual art form, though today I see design more as: “Taking a series of steps to arrive at a solution to a specific problem.” It’s something of a process and even though I’ve stated the aim is arriving at a solution to a specific problem, many times the design process reveals the real problem, one which is different to what was initially perceived as the problem. It’s more about process, strategy and innovation than Art, though let me not open up a can of worms on the definition of the word Art just yet.

    The word Design can be used both as a Verb (to describe an act or process) and as a Noun (to describe the resultant product, object, image or solution).

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  • Eco-friendly organisation – why kill trees to keep yourself organized?

    I’m always excited when I see new products attempting to make life easier, simpler and more eco-friendly. The more beneficial a product is to the user and to the environment the higher it ranks in my book. Having hunted around for quite a while for the perfect organisational tools, this latest find seems really promising and very nicely designed for modern living as well.

    Introducing the Jot-it Eco friendly desktop write board designed by cocoa living:

    Eco-friendly write board for note taking - by cocoa living

    Basically it’s a plastic base, with another plastic sheet on top which allows you to insert a template between the 2 layers. A note taking template, calendar (perpetual template maybe), a task organising template, or you could customize your own template. The beauty is that you can quickly jot ideas, rough ones without wasting paper and without cluttering up your desktop with scraps of paper you’ve jotted all kinds of random stuff on.

    Jot-it Write board process

    It’s not perfectly designed. You aren’t able to use multiple templates simultaneously, it seems a little clunky to carry around, though it has been designed specifically for your desk and not your pocket. According to the review on Yanko Design the plastic makes a squeaky noise when you write on it so there’s a few bugs which need to be ironed out. The basic idea though is what makes this a good find and I can see this being modified and upgraded to be an extremely useful device. I’ve started thinking about how I can modify my hipster PDA to make use of this white board style note taking, not paper wasting and easy to delete entries.

    The flexibility of of this tool is easy to spot. Using it in the classroom situation, in a design agency, in & around the office, next to the phone at home, just about anywhere where you need a quick & easy way to jot down notes.

    Jot-it write board modified for the classroom - eco-friendly education

    So head on over to www.cocoaliving.com and see if they have a product to suite your specific needs, or you could devlop your own eco-friendly write board system like I hope to do using a few low cast elements from your local stationery store. If you do please tell me about so I can give it a try.

  • Every problem can be solved by following the right process

    Having & following a process is something I keep trying to enforce when I take on projects of all types & sizes. Following a process from start to finish gives us a way of planning our specific activities at any point along the course of a project and tailoring those activities to that specific aspect of the project. A process gives us a clear idea of what the next step is, and helps us assess what percentage of the project has been completed. Some processes can be as simple as: think – decide – do, or as involved as some design thinking processes used for more detailed projects. A nice design thinking process breakdown I found on wikipedia looks like this.

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