For the readings of the week for October 11th to 25th, I decided to try something different. Using a service called bubbl.us, I laid out the articles and my thoughts on them into a mindmap, instead of the usual list. Let me know what you think about this - if you like it, hate it, etc. Here’s a list of the articles for those of you who absolutely hate it or want to read the articles before looking at the mindmap.
UPDATE: CNJ told me the mindmap was cumbersome. Which isn’t surprising. So I’ve updated the links list and basically transcribed the mindmap into the link list below.
- San Diego Zoo’s New Exhibition: Innovation by Jessie Scanlon
San Diego Zoo and Jump associates came together for a project in which Jump helped design a way to stay current, relevant, continue interest and growth for the zoo.- Using design to solve the problem:
- Asking the right question: part of asking the right question is framing the problem correctly. You have to give a team a good amount of area to explore, but not too much. It’s a huge part of the design process but feels a little like a “dirty secret” of design.
- How much research is there in this area?
- Thinking processes that go into this aren’t well documented - we usually just start projects with a brief.
- If we do consider the question, it’s done by a senior, experienced designer using their “intuition” about a question (in my humble experience).
- Notes:
- Projects go badly when the question isn’t right.
- Iterating on design project designs: editing, changing, adapting questions as you’re engaged with a project.
- Asking the right question: part of asking the right question is framing the problem correctly. You have to give a team a good amount of area to explore, but not too much. It’s a huge part of the design process but feels a little like a “dirty secret” of design.
- “Corporate psychoanalysis”
- Basically this is competitive analysis
- They transcribed their analysis into a visual representation - a 2x2 matrix.
- Visual layouts like these help us “see” better -
- What are the patterns?
- Where are the gaps?
- Visual layouts like these help us “see” better -
- In my work, I call this an “audit.” When I work with a new client I spend the first week or so examining everything I can so I can understand the organization more deeply. In some cases, this changes my idea of what the question should be. I make sure the question I’m solving has the biggest potential for impact - or in other words, I’m solving the most pressing problem.
- Using design to solve the problem:
- A Problem-Solver’s Guide to Copycatting by Dan & Chip Heath
- An article about problem solving in general.
- Focused around synthesis: connecting together two or more unrelated ideas.
- Where to look for synthesis?
- Pattern-matching: who else might have to deal with a similar set of problem constraints?
- To do this well we need an awareness of the world around us.
- Pattern-matching: who else might have to deal with a similar set of problem constraints?
- Getting out of our own heads: we can’t assume we know everything, we have to be open to new ideas.
- Biomimcry is the zoo’s unique take on this.
- Zoologists can help pattern-match to your field.
- Where to look for synthesis?
- Face-to-Face Socializing Starts With a Mobile Post by Jenna Wortham
- Foursquare
- location-based: broadcast your location to friends.
- game mechanics: changing behavior, mayorships, and helping businesses build customer loyalty.
- social: “This feels normal” for the younger generation. We can user this tool both for connecting with businesses and new people, as well as our friends.
- Foursquare
- Forecast for Microsoft: Partly Cloudy by Ashlee Vance
- What happened to Microsoft? They’re not in the spotlight any more
- “They are trapped in their own psychosis that the world has to revolve around Windows on the PC,” says Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, … “Until they stop doing that, they will drag their company into the gutter.”
- Lots of R&D going on within Microsoft right now - they’re trying to figure out what their long-term bets should be
- cloud computing
- mobile
- “I want us to invent everything that’s important on the planet.” - Steve Balmer
- Bureaucracy and slow business development
- Good ideas getting sucked down
- Lack of empathic design: the xbox was so successful because it was created by gamers for gamers (just one of the ways to achieve empathic design)
- Changing landscape of tech: it’s not about corporations anymore, it’s about consumers
- Apple and Google driving sales to corporations through consumer demand
- Empathic design/human centered design is becoming ever more important in this industry (it’s no longer just about features)
- Mindset between Apple tablet versus Microsoft “trying to do too much” with Vista - see Doug’s post
- What happened to Microsoft? They’re not in the spotlight any more
- Training to Cimb an Everest of Digital Data by Ashlee Vance
- Education
- How much do we teach for industry?
- If we don’t teach for industry, where do students acquire these skills? How do universities make sure graduates acquire these skills?
- What is the relationship of education and industry?
- Not an easy question to answer…
- How do we prepare students for the future?
- What is the role of universities in the larger “ecosystem”?
- country: wealth, quality of life
- economy: market, growth (innovation and technical competence)
- Making sure our education and teachings stay current
- Effort of the teaching population:
- tenured teaching
- “getting comfortable”
- continued exposure to academic and non-academic breakthroughs & happenings
- Effort of the teaching population:
- Data
- In the past CS didn’t have to deal with this sheer quantity of data… but now there are massive amounts of data to be processed
- New computers and networked computers can process lots of data
- Google and other web services are generating tons and tons of data
- In the past CS didn’t have to deal with this sheer quantity of data… but now there are massive amounts of data to be processed
- Education
- Be lucky - it’s an easy skill to learn by Richard Wiseman
- This is all about seeing the world around you as it really is
- seeing gaps
- noticing
- Being open to new experiences
- You never know where you’re going to end up till you’ve been there.
- This is all about seeing the world around you as it really is
- An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All by Amy Wallace
- Pattern-Matching: processing our patterns well; correlation does not equal causation.
- A larger question about rationality, methodical thinking, understanding science and statistics
- How can we help well-meaning people understand situations when they’re upset?
- Not having a reason for what is happening is hard
- Feeling like no one is listening
- How can we help well-meaning people understand situations when they’re upset?
- Self-Destructive Behavior in Cells May Hold Key to a Longer Life by Carl Zimmer
- Proteasomes and lysosomes suck up and destroy old cells, turning over the resources to build new things
- proteasome
- keeping control over the levels of proteins available to a cell
- lysosomes
- energy storage
- continue cell building even if you’re not getting enough resources (dealing with famines)
- proteasome
- This is called “autophagy”
- It helps to keep cells in working order
- finding and destroying destructive/mutated cells
- preventing diseases such as cancer, Alzheimers, etc.
- As we get older autophagy begins to slow
- We get more diseases
- “We’re very excited because this network of genes may apply to a number of diseases.” - Dr. Andrea Ballabio
- It helps to keep cells in working order
- Proteasomes and lysosomes suck up and destroy old cells, turning over the resources to build new things
