full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Tony Fadell: The first secret of design is ... noticing

Unscramble the Blue Letters


My first tip is to look berdoar. You see, when you're tnkialcg a problem, sometimes, there are a lot of spets that lead up to that problem. And sometimes, a lot of steps after it. If you can take a step back and look broader, maybe you can cnahge some of those boxes before the problem. Maybe you can combine them. Maybe you can remove them altogether to make that better.

Take tastermtohs, for instance. In the 1900s when they first came out, they were really simple to use. You could turn them up or turn them down. People understood them. But in the 1970s, the egenry crisis struck, and customers started thinking about how to save energy. So what happened? Thermostat designers decided to add a new step. Instead of just turning up and down, you now had to program it. So you could tell it the temperature you wanted at a certain time. Now that seemed great. Every thmrtsoeat had started adding that feature. But it turned out that no one sevad any energy. Now, why is that? Well, people couldn't predict the frtuue. They just didn't know how their weeks would change season to season, year to year. So no one was saivng energy, and what happened?

Open Cloze


My first tip is to look _______. You see, when you're ________ a problem, sometimes, there are a lot of _____ that lead up to that problem. And sometimes, a lot of steps after it. If you can take a step back and look broader, maybe you can ______ some of those boxes before the problem. Maybe you can combine them. Maybe you can remove them altogether to make that better.

Take ___________, for instance. In the 1900s when they first came out, they were really simple to use. You could turn them up or turn them down. People understood them. But in the 1970s, the ______ crisis struck, and customers started thinking about how to save energy. So what happened? Thermostat designers decided to add a new step. Instead of just turning up and down, you now had to program it. So you could tell it the temperature you wanted at a certain time. Now that seemed great. Every __________ had started adding that feature. But it turned out that no one _____ any energy. Now, why is that? Well, people couldn't predict the ______. They just didn't know how their weeks would change season to season, year to year. So no one was ______ energy, and what happened?

Solution


  1. thermostat
  2. change
  3. saving
  4. tackling
  5. future
  6. steps
  7. thermostats
  8. energy
  9. broader
  10. saved

Original Text


My first tip is to look broader. You see, when you're tackling a problem, sometimes, there are a lot of steps that lead up to that problem. And sometimes, a lot of steps after it. If you can take a step back and look broader, maybe you can change some of those boxes before the problem. Maybe you can combine them. Maybe you can remove them altogether to make that better.

Take thermostats, for instance. In the 1900s when they first came out, they were really simple to use. You could turn them up or turn them down. People understood them. But in the 1970s, the energy crisis struck, and customers started thinking about how to save energy. So what happened? Thermostat designers decided to add a new step. Instead of just turning up and down, you now had to program it. So you could tell it the temperature you wanted at a certain time. Now that seemed great. Every thermostat had started adding that feature. But it turned out that no one saved any energy. Now, why is that? Well, people couldn't predict the future. They just didn't know how their weeks would change season to season, year to year. So no one was saving energy, and what happened?

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
interesting happened 2
comfortable shower 2
mary anderson 2
hard drive 2
worked people 2
thermostat designers 2
drawing board 2


Important Words


  1. add
  2. adding
  3. altogether
  4. boxes
  5. broader
  6. change
  7. combine
  8. crisis
  9. customers
  10. decided
  11. designers
  12. energy
  13. feature
  14. future
  15. great
  16. happened
  17. instance
  18. lead
  19. lot
  20. people
  21. predict
  22. problem
  23. program
  24. remove
  25. save
  26. saved
  27. saving
  28. season
  29. simple
  30. started
  31. step
  32. steps
  33. struck
  34. tackling
  35. temperature
  36. thermostat
  37. thermostats
  38. thinking
  39. time
  40. tip
  41. turn
  42. turned
  43. turning
  44. understood
  45. wanted
  46. weeks
  47. year