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

by Jan Chipchase, Simon Steinhardt

Overview

Hidden in Plain Sight by global innovation consultant Jan Chipchase with Simon Steinhardt is a fascinating look at how consumers think and behave.

Chipchase, named by Fortune as “one of the 50 smartest people in tech,” has traveled the world, studying people of all nations and their habits, paying attention to the ordinary things that we do every day an how they effect our buying decisions. 

Future-focused and provocative, Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Create Extraordinary Products for Tomorrow's Customers illuminates exactly what drives consumers to make the choices they do, and demonstrates how all types of businesses can learn to see—and capitalize upon—what is hidden in plain sight today to create businesses tomorrow.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062125699
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/16/2013
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jan Chipchase is the executive creative director of Global Insights at frog, where he runs global research and insights practice. He has more than twenty-five patents pending, and his research has been featured in leading international media, including the New York Times, the BBC, the Economist, National Geographic, and Wired, and his blog Future Perfect is read in 191 countries. In 2011 Fast Company named him one of the one hundred most creative people in business. He is based in San Francisco and travels extensively and frequently throughout the world.

Simon Steinhardt is the associate creative director of Editorial at the digital agency JESS3. He is the former managing editor of Swindle magazine, and he has contributed to and edited several books on global street culture and art, including OBEY: Supply and Demand—The Art of Shepard Fairey, The History of American Graffiti, and Art for Obama.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Crossing State (of Mind) Lines 27

2 The Social Lives of Everyday Objects 51

3 Riding the Waves of the Past, Present, and Future 71

4 You Are What You Carry 99

5 Calibrating Your Cultural Compass 125

6 A Matter of Trust 151

7 Finding the Essence 177

8 The Great Tradeoff 195

Conclusion 217

Appendix: The Eight Principles of Design Research 221

Notes 225

Editorial Reviews

Chipchase, executive creative director of global insights at Frog Design (now known as frog), has been described as a global design anthropologist. In his first book, written with journalist Steinhardt, he uses this anthropologist's curiosity and research experience to examine both the mundane and extraordinary: "scratching beneath the surface to find reality in bits and pieces... to see the world in a richer, more textured way." And Chipchase does indeed scratch the surface on a wide variety of captivating yet random topics, examining such disparate subjects as mobile phones, fast food, pornography, hybrid corn adoption, and the Amish. While he recounts many fascinating anecdotes about consumer adoption of products and services, status, buying behaviors, and technologies, the disjointed organization is distracting and may leave the reader wondering what point the author is trying to make. In the conclusion, Chipchase admits he did not focus on making a point, but rather aimed "to offer new perspectives that can help you bring the world into focus," and to motivate us to ask smarter questions. For nonlinear thinkers or those who embrace the ambiguity inherent in design research, Chipchase's work will provide a lively, thought-provoking, and often humorous read. Agent: James Levine, Levine Greenberg Literary Agency.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

…a lively, thought-provoking, and often humorous read.” — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher