Revista Chilena de Diseño » Tres cosas que se deberían saber antes de recibirse de diseñador

Finally after several month of delay my article was published on RChD (in spanish)

Revista Chilena de Diseño » Tres cosas que se deberían saber antes de recibirse de diseñador

RIP: A Remix Manifesto (or the left side of the rights)

This is a documentary about how we choose to experience culture. It is a tricky issue because we can either say that is a consumer good and feel free to consume it or we can just take it and use it as we please. the thing is, if we call it a consumer good means that is a product being offer to us, the one we trade so we earn the right to use its inscripted functions (the functions intended by the creator of that cultural good) until its life cycle, a close cycle, is over. by the other hand if is available to be taken and use, so it is public domain, means that it has an open life cycle and with this comes two different implications. first, the trade is open, which means that that cultural good is traded not anymore between the creator -or the mediator-and and individual, but the social space (the community within the scope culturally influenced by that ''good''). Second, the functions of the good itself are open; this means that in this case not only the intended functions are available but also any function that the good, by its properties, allows and also the functions that the user of the good can imagine.

All this becomes meaningful when we understand that one of the functions of any cultural good is to be a building brick for whatever comes next. Every cultural object, in the broader sense of the word, is a functional part of the future of that culture. This movie-manifesto is about what happens when we overprotect the cultural goods on which the innovation, which enriches the future, is fed.

''Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has wrestled in vain'' C.G.Jung

read today

James Dyson:Design what it should be

James Dyson, founder of Dyson corporation and responsible for the world famous machine looking vacuum cleaners, share his achievements and inspirations in a relaxed show-and-tell talk called ''the art of engineering'' at MIT. Dyson, graduated from the Royal College of Art, tell the story of how he went into engineering and how important it is not to be only a Designer or a Engineer, but to be a Designer/Engineer, and inventor as he said, and the relevance to make mistakes: ''...I think the schools got all wrong, they should be giving good grades to the ones that makes mistakes and learn from them.'' something that himself take to the limit, for his first cyclone vacuum cleaner he spend almost 5 years and did 5,126 prototypes!

The British inventor also criticized the definition of Design as a marketing tool arguing a more meaningful and systemic view that he inherit from one of his heroes, Buckminster Fuller, from whom also borrow the beautiful advice: ''...you see what needs to be done and do it.''

At he end of the talk, in Q&A, he discuss how he manage the creative processes within his organization and how he see the future regarding the rising of the new Asian productive power. Surely an invigorating example of how to make you way through with a huge accent on innovation.

The hard side of Opensource

Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.

Opensource is probably the most philosophically relevant idea coming from the computer sciences. Actually the idea of sharing knowledge it's, of course, not new but it the age on which patent and rights have drag the technical knowledge to a exclusive corporate corner sharing information about how things work it's a revolutionary endeavor. In a good metaphor expressed in this documentary the Opensource is compared with Gutenberg's movable type printer. Before Gutenberg the production of books were in hands of a few, mostly cleric,that controlled what could be read, hence what could be know, after him the amount and more important the variety of books explode given the people the chance of build themselves for themselves a body of knowledge to understand the world. Gutenberg's printer was a very important piece of Open hardware that boost society into a new direction.

Today we are confronting a similar scenario. We are surrounding by technological devices like cellphones, computers, consoles, mp-players, etc. That we barely know how to use and we are even less inform about how they actually works. This disinformation has huge consecuenses in a world on which the number of this kind of devices may be even bigger than the actual population. Think on what is lost every time that a computer or a cellphone goes to the trash, maybe the system as a whole doesn't work but, what about all those little parts that give life to that cellphone or that computer? what if we can do something with those parts? what if we can play and tinker with that old low resolution cellphone camera or that screen? what about the spinning wheel of that broken mouse or the optics of that old digital camera? the possibilities are amazingly wide. For doing that we need knowledge and tools, but as we know big part of the knowledge comes from playing with the tools and here is where Arduino comes into scene. this piece of very cheap and non-exclusive piece of hardware is the tool which allow us to start connecting all those little parts and give them a purpose, whatever this purpose would be. Here is the potential of this little device that have been revolutionizing the digital world, and the revolution consist on materialize the digital world itself for sake of fun, what purpose beautiful and productive than that.

Following fun and with the help of Opensource tools as Arduino and Processing amazing things have come to life like 3d printers that cost little more than a thousand dollars or new music instrument and a lot of new robots. Opensource tools like Arduino bring down the technical threshold of electronic devices world to a level that allow not specialized people to start to interact in a expressive and creative way with it, and the best part... in a social way too, because is not about what I can do and how I can make profit out of that (not only at least) but what We can do and how we take this thing into the next level.

Opensource means sharing knowledge, and sharing knowledge means better and faster understanding and develop of communities. It may not be new but as a movement based on the technologies that are changing the face of our daily living surely, is a philosophy to adopt.

Disruptive innovation techniques: DeBono's last child

Edward De Bono in his ''Lateral thinking'' said, ''the whole purpose of lateral thinking is to restructure the mind patterns, to disrupt them, to be able to see the things in a different way''. When I watched this presentation it gave me the idea of being reading a really good summary of De Bono's book. Here Luke Williams apply the notion of disruptiveness to three main areas: strategies, thinking and expectations and explain how the introduction of this concept can leverage innovation, hence success, in your company.

This talk is full with real business cases of Frog design (where the speaker is a fellow) and other business leader that relate this theoretical process with real successful innovations. One thing that I personally found really interesting is that the organizational processes to innovate are shifting their focus from efficiency and system theory to a more anthropological area, actually they are going into the psychology of the people involve in these processes. What DeBono wrote thinking in the improvement of the creative performance of individuals now is been taken as a way to improve organizational performance on innovation, in other words, how we can make innovation part of our organization process? or how we can build an organization centered on innovation? well...improving the creative performance of each person involved in the organization. But it is still a gap of going from the individual to the organizational level, and it is how we translate an mind process in a collective process. Again De Bono give us a hand in his book the "Six thinking hats'', but even when he manage to describe how to deal with the collective addressing of problem there is still an environmental issues to solve in order to empowered the creative processes in collective work settings, but that's another post.

For now it's good to enjoy a very dynamic talk, full of nice examples, of how to address the innovation through disruptiveness, a concept cast almost forty years ago that still remain fresh.

For more information of the speaker go here

and for his book in disrupt innovation go here

Designer! which kind? ....mm...Designer

Design is a common noun for a big amount of different occupations. As people who have a degree on design sometimes we feel a rather disappointed with common notion of Design that able to almost everybody to become a designer just by personal statement, and because of this we usually try to separate ourselves from the crowd saying that we are Industrial, Graphic, Product, Information, Interaction, Car, Yacht, Fashion, Furniture, Interior, Stage, Green, Red, Blue or else Designer; we are good on that.

In contrast with this recently a group of Design researchers has publish a paper on Design Issues that try to find common places in diverse disciplines of the design though a very simple methodology, conversation. They realize a series of workshops with a handfull of expert Designers (more than 10 years of practice) from different fields. From the fashion design to jet engine design and from furniture design to TV documentary. The first thing they found was that, although with some nuances, all the Designers talk the same language. When an engine Designer was put into conversation with a graphic one the only idea that needed an explanation was ''thumbnail'' and it was quickly grasped... by the engine designer. So language, I mean technical language, even through heavy specialization is a common tool.

Other interesting finding of the study was that we relate the idea of good design mainly with the acceptance and recognition coming from our peers, and only then with the user acceptance, sintitutional recognition or commercial success.

One big resemblance in all the stories told by the designers is the creative relationship with the material. Great deal of the time expended in the projects and the actual search -and find- of solutions goes through the hands and the direct contact with the material. Though the ''conversations'' with the material can be more or less physically attended, the direct experience and experimentation seems to be extremely relevant. In this way the lamp designer play with the glass to find out new shapes, properties and effects that can be use in the design as the engine designer, as well as the graphic one, includes the properties and qualities of the steel or the typography as constrains and capabilities that drives de design process.

The research unveils that in the communication area the main tool is by far the Sketching. Even when the computer techniques allow us to render projects more accurately (and more convincingly for the clients) than the hand, the sketching still prevail when it comes to capture and develop ideas.

The study also goes through the relationship with the final user and the big amount of energy spent in every design project on managing the uncertainty of collaborations with people and policies and as a conclusion stress the wide range of commonalities that bring designers together rather than split them around different technical, cultural and business context; and how much we need tools that make us aware of this and foster respect across the design world.

Even though this research found some really important insight of the design praxis, there are still some questions that should be address in order to bring about information on how designers are connected to each other further than the common places of the practice, which can also be found in others disciplines. We need to ask us about, how designers work out the difficult relationship between creation of new things (or stuffs as R.Gold said) and the renovation of the already existent things? Also, which are (if there are) the commonalities of our generative process in contrast with other creative areas? Learn about this can drive us to a more deep understanding of our discipline and its practical values.

Biomimética aplicada al desarrollo de modelos de negocios

Gunter Pauli on Biomimetism (Lift France 09, EN) from Lift Conference on Vimeo.

En este blog la verdad creo que nunca he publicado nada acerca de negocios, mas bien esta dedicado a temas de diseño, tecnología, ciencia y una que otra disvariación acerca de como desarrollamos y trabajamos en base a procesos creativos. Pero aunque a veces no nos guste el negocio es una actividad transversal a casi todas las otras.

En el diseño el negocio...bueno casi se podría decir que el diseño es negocio. Desde el diseño como la venerable herramienta de marketing, que permite a las compañias dar una expresión formal, percibible, disfrutable y por que no deseable a los idolatrados estudios de mercado, hasta el diseño de debate plantea conceptos radicales y exploraciones filosóficas y éticas que nos llevan a cuestionarnos importantes elementos de nuestra cultura y sociedad y aunque por lo general no llegan a ser consumidos por las masas, llegan a ser apreciados por las masas en los museos los cuales pagan grandes sumas de dinero por estos objetos y así permiten a seguir generando dinero y nuevos debates con nuevos objetos, es decir continuar con el negocio.

En cuanto a la Tecnología se podría decir que desde sus inicios ha sido parte de la estructura fundamental de el negocio. Cada avance tecnológico implica primero un esfuerzo por desarrollarlo, lo que conlleva -sino una industria- un negocio en sí, pero además producto de la innovación tecnológica (desde la incremental hasta la profundamente disruptiva) se abren nuevos espacios ya sea para profundizar un negocio ya existente o para generar nuevos negocios o incluso nuevas industrias.

Cuando se trata de Ciencia el negocio permite generar y suplir la infraestructura necesaria para desarrollar el trabajo científico. Y el resultado de ese trabajo científico, el nuevo conocimiento, sustenta el negocio de su divulgación, y por cierto los negocios que se surten de ese conocimiento como el desarrollo tecnológico.

¿Pero por que tratar de encontrar el negocio en todas estas áreas cuando el objetivo de este blog nunca han sido los negocios? Y es aquí donde el vídeo posteado se justifica. De hace tiempo ya es de mi interés la idea de estudiar y aplicar los conceptos extraídos de la naturaleza en los diversos campos del conocimiento humano, la biomimética. Y en función de eso me he dejado asombrar por como la ciencia y sus nuevas técnicas nos permiten conocer los secretos microscopios de las estructuras naturales o por la tecnología cada ves se acerca mas a la eficiencia en materiales y recursos del modelo natural y por como el diseño se nutre de la inteligencia geométrica de los organismos vivos para desarrollar nuevos elementos de nuestro mundo material. Pero hasta el día de hoy jamas me había topado con la idea -bastante lógica por lo demás- de que nuestro ecosistema podría enseñarnos como estructurar una metodología para llevar a cabo algo tan propiamente humano como el negocio. Hasta hoy hemos aprendido de las estructuras de lo más pequeño y lo más grande de nuestro universo, desde las partículas elementales que componen la masa hasta los procesos siderales que dan forma al universo. Pero resulta ser que hemos pasado en alto el equilibrio base que da sustento a todos esos procesos. Podemos saber como las plantas son capaces de levantar agua hasta más de 100 metros sin la necesidad de poderosas bombas de succión pero si no sabemos por que han decidido acarrearla tan arriba y cual es la función sistémica dentro de su entorno perdemos las nociones que nos permitirían aplicar de manera coherente ese conocimiento. En una ciudad donde viven millones de personas la cantidad de desperdicio producido puede llegar a ocupar un volumen peligrosamente cercano al de la ciudad misma, en un bosque o selva donde la cantidad de habitantes -seres vivos- puede ser significativamente superior al de una ciudad los desperdicios simplemente no existen. El producto de cada proceso es alimento del siguiente.

En el sobre gerrificado lenguaje de los negocios siempre se ha de contar con ''daños colaterales'' que simplemente no entran en la ecuación. Así el fantástico negocio del biodiesel por ejemplo a costado cientos y cientos de hectáreas en el amazonas para plantar soya para hacer combustible. Pero que pasaría si en vez de buscar ser ''el mas fuerte'' en los negocios "bioficaramos" su lenguaje para hacerlo mas equilibrado, para balancear la cadena de suministros con la de desperdicios. Si en vez de pensar del todo en la etapa como desperdicio de la vida útil de los objetos habláramos de su segundo estado como suministro. En el bosque el cuerpo del animal muerto es suministro del los demás vivos y del suelo donde cae.

Esta es la impresión que me deja Gunter Paulin en esta charla, en este mundo tenemos la capacidad para convertir casi todo en objeto de negocio, quizás sea tiempo de convertir el negocio en parte de nuestro mundo.

The Plenitude of Rich Gold

Some weeks ago I went in a local bookstore just to kill some time , and after take a quick look into the shelves a small green spine cath my attention in the design theorie area (after that I notice that theorie books even when it comes to design, are usually graphically bored). I take it from the shelf and just there another two things call my interest. First, all the cover was illustrated with doodles that looks like made by a school kid -a thing that I found clever in a bookshelf full of elaborated computer renderings- very warm and very beautiful. The second thing was ''foreword by John Maeda'' writen under the autors name, Rich Gold. Then when I went into the book, to my surprise I didn't found any pictures, any renders, any oversimplify diagrams, nothing but words..and CARTOONS! yes cartoons. Every chapter or section starts with a cartoon, and also every main idea on the book is stressed with a cartoon. There is a cartoon to explain the overstuffed enviroment in wich we live that Gold calls ''the plenitude'', there is also a cartoon that show clearly the four disciplines (and professions pursuit by the autor) that have the responsability of around 97% of the plenitude, there is a cartoons to explain the seven path of innovation, the five problems of the Plenitude and the seven solutions for that; and even for explain how the Plenitude of ones is based in the poverty of others.

After been exposed to that amount of quality information two thoughts came to my mind, cartoons rules and I have to reed this book.

The book is about thing, or better say Stuff. What it is, from where it comes, where it goes, how we can deal with it and why we need to be sorrounded by this thing call ''the plenitude'' (after write this post I'm not sure anymore if this book it's really about ''stuff'')

The Plenitude, Creativity, Innovation and Making Stuff

autor: Rich Gold (foreword by John Maeda)

pages:111

the MIT press

Building organs block by block

Building organs block by block
Analogy can go a little bit further than a create a juicer looking like a tin-tin spaceship, and a little bit useful too.
When everybody is thinking in cell printers to do 3D tissues structures -with everybody I don't mean you, me or the next door neighbour, but the biotechnology research community- a guy came with the idea of making bricks out of cells, like legos! and then he call this technique with the awesome name of ''micromasonry''. With this new concept Javier Gomez Fernandez (who has to be someones neighbour)put in every lab the the chance to build this kind of structures without depend on advance motion control technology. Big point for creative thinking in science.

Artificial foot recycles energy ...as a silicon gun!!

Probably the engineers from the University of Michigan weren't thinking about this when they came with the idea of storage energy through the same kind of mechanical device that makes the silicon gun works (looj at the hhel clutch in the upper picture), but the design analogy it's perfect. This hight-tech electromechanical prosthetic feet works (in the mechanical part) with the same basic principle that a silicon gun, a clever solution for a very complex problem and a really good sample of analogous thinking in the design process.

for the complete article with all the explanation follow this

for a video of the device working folow this

and for the paper who explain... everything follow this

Mirror system, or the empathy mechanism in our brains

Recently I came across with a video that introduces the idea that we have a neuronal mechanism that allows us to share the experience of other people just by look at them or heard them. This mechanism it's call the Mirror System. This neuronal device, that don't depend on any specific brain structure, was first found on monkeys as an unexpected neuronal response when some scientific team in Parma were studying the response of some neural groups related with conscious movement. The exercise was grab a piece of food, when the monkey grab it the neurons ''turn on'', the surprise was when the exactly group of neurons also ''turn on'' when the monkey saw one person of the team grab the food.

That found opens a complete new research branch in neuroscience and until now it has been prove that this system has incidence in motor, sensitive and symbolic system. This means that through the ''mirror system'' it can be trigger motion, sensitive and emotional responses in the subject that look or hear an action. This is why we make funny faces when we see a football player get kick by another, or why movies make us cry.

The mirror system it's the only mechanism that has proven to be fundamentally social, that means that it is a specific device to learn and behave socially. The thing that I see as a relevant issue here is that when you are worried about to understand human behaviour (like Design as a discipline it is) you have to be conscious about the importance of firsthand experience and above all, of observation; because this means that through experience and observe the human behavior you can easily address gestures, emotions and comprehensions that can drive conceptually and formally the develop of a project.

The relevance and functions of the mirror system go, of course, far beyond the field of design and can give us a knowledge greater than confirm a fact well know by experience (observation and firsthand experience are our best tool for design) and it can put us in the real and deep understanding of human behaviour.

more info:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01.html

From Art to Science...and back (Reuben Margolin's kinetic sculptures)

First of all, if it is anyone real follow this blog i would like to apologize me for the big time window between this post and the previous one. Now, i find this excelent example of the crossover between art and science. Reuben Margolin translate the physics of waves into the language of art with amazing results, big and complex instalations waving smoothly as a light water perturbation or as the peculiar gait of the caterpillar.

The crossing between Art and Science it's not new, but it is somehow one of the most interesting and revolutionary paths that the Arts is following these days. In the same field of kinetic sculpture we can find the amazing beach animals by Theo Hansen, but also we can count the phylosophical questioning made through hightech-interfaces by Natalie jeremijenko who put in evidence the nature of our relationships with other people, animals, the cities, and so on.

There is a lot of people working now in this area, bringing the concepts of science and using the new technologys to make some reflections about the world on what we live, and they are making amazing things. But also there is a few who follow the opposite path, from science to art, and they are discovering the big power who lies behind the human expression and how these knowledge -intuitive and irrational as usually is - can hold the keys of one of the most complex structures, the human behaviour.

amazing

Pranav Mistry, the invention sense

Pranav Mistry is one of that people that have the abitlity of play with the technology as if it was the most childish of the games. With a background in Computer Science and Design, Pranav Mistry gather together the understanding of the interaction between the people and the digital interfaces and the comprehension on how technology can improve our lives to give birth to some of the most radical devices and interfaces. This one of the guys who is shaping the future human-computer interaction... and it's going open source!!!

Martin Puryear, Monomaterial cultural explorations

http://video.pbs.org/video/1237794459#

Recently i've came to know the sculptor Martin Puryear (1941), he catch my atention with his wooden sculptures who resembles in a very subtle way some ''cultural bags'', objects that carry representative shapes and shades of an past moment in history, like a Wooden wheel or a ladder.

Another thing that realy grab me was the austerity of his work. Almost all his pieces are built in only one material, this can be stone or metal but above all wood. This artist fill spaces with objects that are wonderfully crafted in wood in wich ones you can recognize the most traditional techniques of woodworking. The relation with cabinet-making it's obvious in every joint. The cultural explotarion of his work goes through the objects into techniques, and put the ancient knowledge of woodworking into the lenguage of modern Art.

What i like of Puryear? the way he relates deeply with the material, the cultural and simbolic awareness of the comun objects. An also the way that he translate his wooden shapes into other materials.

Recomendantion of the week: Why 'Sleeping on It' Helps

By John M. Grohol, PSYD, PsychCentral.com

We're often told, "You should sleep on it" before you make an important decision. Why is that? How does "sleeping on it" help your decision-making process?

Conventional wisdom suggests that by "sleeping on it," we clear our minds and relieve ourselves of the immediacy (and accompanying stress) of making a decision. Sleep also helps organize our memories, process the information of the day, and solve problems. Such wisdom also suggests that conscious deliberation helps decision making in general. But new research (Dijksterhuis et al., 2009) suggests something else might also be at work — our unconscious.
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