[business of design] Midpoint

Blog on what you think your midpoint grade should be in this class. Be specific about what you’ve done or not done to earn that grade.

A difficult task for this week's business of design blog. Regardless of my midpoint grade, I know I would want to have me on my team!

My teamwork: I played a significant role in our start-up, Matchbox, earning the most funding on Pitch Day (woo hoo!). Our team is lucky in that we have team members with complementary skills and we all work well together. As project manager I have been responsible for keeping our team organized, motivated, and focused during our meetings; our level of preparation played a major role in our success on Pitch Day. I also believe I have been a solid resource for other teams. I have spent time listening to pitches, offering feedback, and talking through potential problem areas.

[interaction practice] final project

(Going back and doing some blogging catch-up this week from the fall semester. Also, eek gad, how is it already the mid-point of spring semester!?) 

I'm not going to lie, this class was a source of tears...more than once.

Learning a programming language is really hard, but getting through it and building something you're proud of is pretty awesome.

[business of design] Amanda Palmer: The Art of Asking

Don't make people pay for music, let them. In her TED talk, Amanda Palmer from the Dresden Dolls focuses on using the internet to have a direct connection with her fans, both monetarily and socially. Her message of don't be afraid to ask for what you need resonates with me. In her talk she mentions that artists and musicians particularly have a difficult time asking for help, but I think it goes far beyond artists and musicians.

Mary Jane Bellis

Mary Jane Young Bellis 

19 April 1923 – August 1978

Mary Jane Bellis was my maternal grandmother. She was killed in a car accident in 1978 and I never had the chance to meet her her. In my history of design class our first major project is to research a relative we did not have a relationship with and to create a project based on their life.

[IxD Studio] Collections, 2

The collections project continues.

I found that most of the letters in my collection report everything to be “fine.” Knowing a bit about the history, it is pretty safe to say that everything was not fine. This week I tried to focus the display on the idea of contrasting what people write or say versus what they actually mean. I think reporting that things are just “fine” is a knee-jerk reaction because, generally, people don’t want to burden others with their personal struggles.

[Interaction Theory]

Have you experienced a technology that has truly disappeared? Describe the experience and why the technology disappeared. What replaced the technology in the forefront?

One technology that has truly disappeared in my life is the technology behind search engines. It is hard to believe that Google has been around for just about a decade and a half.

[IxD Theory] interactive distance and autonomous cars

Pick an interactive product you use regularly and discuss how the interactions would change if you suddenly interacted with it from a very different distance. Besides the actual points of interactivity, how would the product as a whole change as a result of the new interactive distance?

In the (slightly racist) explanation of Edward Hall's Proxemic Theory, Em Griffin gives us an understanding of Intimate, Personal, Social, and Public distances. I believe our current driving experience is generally an intimate experience between driver and car. We interact with our car at less than 18 inches and our main way of judging the space is through touch and smell. We're not operating our cars with our voices, and certainly not operating them with our eyes.