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

Work vs. Play

Yet another talk about how IDEO work. This time related to the value of Play at work, with good examples of how a relaxed but focused environment where failure is tolerated can drive design teams to a successful delivery of solutions in complex situations.

''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.

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.

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

What we can lean from what we have forgot

The great tragedy of our era will not be ecological, but ethnographical

''...Biologist suggest that perhaps 20 percent of mammals , 11 percent of birds, and 5 percent of fish are threatened, and the botanist anticipate the loss of 10 percent of floristic diversity, linguist and anthropologist today bear witness the imminent disappearance of half the extant languages of the world.'' '' Of the 7000 languages spoken today, fully half...will disappear within our lifetime.''

-Wade Davis. The Wayfinders, Why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world

The Ethnosphere, humanity's greatest legacy is in extintion danger. With the disappearence of the half of our own diversity we will loss also the half of our history, of our spirituality, and the half of our knowledge on wich we can stand upond to face the challenges of the future. Challenges like the climate change and the lost of biodiversity, because when these voices fade out it will fade away too the cultures wich have develop and conserve the most extensive knowledge about how to live in a true and simbiotic relation with nature.

the next video it's a sample of a lecture given by Wade Davis, for the complete lecture clickHERE

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

What are the discussion on Design by these days?

fig 1

Some days ago I read in WYSIWYW a really interesting and visceral post about Design & Art. This relationship has been discussed (above all in design schools, I have never hear an artist say a word about that) since the beginning of the design as a discipline, and to be honest I’m quite tired of hear arguments going in both ways, and I agree when the people from ''Sindicato de la Imagen'' says Art is Art and Design is Design, get over, don't lose more time in nonsense.

But this closure leaves us another question: what is the discussion in design by these days? And, what are the topics of that discussion?

Design, as any other consolidated discipline, has several components that converge to give substance to his theoretical and practical body: Methodology, Ethics, Technical issues, Aesthetics, Relation with the industry, Connection with other disciplines and Cultural relevance, just for say some. All these components can also be analyze by them self to find new areas to debate and to extract polar concept that define the extension of the discussion. For example, if we look the arguments in Methodology we can find ''Design thinking'' as one of the mayor driver of the praxis by these days, but also we can find ''Problem solving'' (coming from engineering) as one of the most common approaches to design. In other areas like Aesthetics polar concepts can be a little more diffuse, and they can go from naturalism (Bouroullec) to new rationalism (Lehanneur), from the nostalgia (Hayon) to the material and structural efficiency (Grcic) (fig 1).

In the same way of analysis we can find polar concept in Ethics. Today in design every day we can contrast the Super luxury -of cars, yachts, interiors, electronics, high-end audio systems, clothes, watches and almost a endless list of product focus on give pleasure and social relevance to his owners- with product and projects focus on solving social issues like education (OLXC), Health (Lifestraw), shelter ( rectionhousingsystem), energy ( ceramic jiko). Social focus has permeated design even further than poverty issues to address health and social behaviors in the developed world (NYC Condom).

The word Design its use today almost as a synonym of innovation, and in this relationship lays the Cultural relevance of design. As material culture dynamo, Design has the responsibility to innovate, but innovation can also be decompose in the polar concepts of Incremental Innovation and Conceptual Innovation. The difference lies in if the innovation comes to improve something that already exists (incremental) or introduces a new way to achieve a desire effect. For example you can design a new washing machine in which you can wash color and white clothes at the same time without worry about the white clothes get stained in the process, which would be a really good improvement in washing. That would be an incremental innovation. But if you make yourself the question: why do we need a big and complex machine to wash our clothes? Or even better, why do we need water to wash our clothes? You can find some new ideas on how to clean the clothes that can drive you to develop new objects and process of cleaning, which would be a conceptual break through, a conceptual innovation. The main difference between this two ways of innovate is the physical product of them. In incremental innovation the most of the cases ends in a new variation of a pre-existing product (like a better washing machine), but the product of conceptual innovation usually is a complete new item, that open a new branch on the technological tree (like self cleaning surfaces).

Another big difference between incremental and conceptual innovation it’s the risk level, improve an existing product it’s a safer road than develop something complete new one. But that is a subject of business rather than design, as it is also the scale of the production. Design is –and this it’s my position- in the solution, not in the repetition or the scale of the production.

The discussion on today Design it is a lot bigger than we just talk here, and we have to be aware that this isn’t a light conversation about taste or how improve the business strategy. This is about what to do in a discipline that every day has a more relevant role in society and culture.

This conversation should continue and I think one good introduction is this video where Tim Brow talk about different aspects of Design and Design thinking.

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!!!

Mathieu Lehanneur, object-ivness and user comprehension

Mathieu Lehanneur -French designer- who claims for a Design informed by Science to understand our real needs -like silence- and develop products with wich we can relate, and even achieve symbiotic dependences (for good, fortunately). It's also a good example of new areas for design and the richness that multidisciplinary work brings to design.

http://www.mathieulehanneur.com/

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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