Object of the Day

Object of the Day is a daily blog by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum aimed to help you discover a different object from the collection every day.

I did a post as part of my summer internship, which you can see on the website here, or read below.

Collection Connections

Posted by Rachel Sakai on Friday July 05, 2013

As a new member of the Digital + Emerging Media team here at the Cooper-Hewitt, I've been spending a lot of time learning about our various projects in process. One of the most enthralling resources I've encountered so far is the collections database. Try it out, if you haven't already; you'll see why it's so satisfying to explore. Here's an example. I started browsing with the "random" link and it brought me to this collage for a textile by one Alexander Hayden Girard.

Ok, so the collections database has lots of pretty pictures...but so what? Well, the great thing about the collections database is that it exposes relationships and allows you to make connections. Rather than seeing the Girard collage as an isolated object, I can see it in a variety of contexts. For example, if I click on "Alexander Hayden Girard," I am taken to a page that gives me information not only about Girard, but also people and organizations he has collaborated with and other objects he is connected to. Here is where it gets interesting. I can see the collage in context by viewing it alongside the other objects designed by Girard within the collection, and I can start to answer questions like "is this piece typical of Girard's style and work?"

Or, instead of looking at other objects designed by Girard, I can take a broader view by clicking on the link in the Period field. In the case of Girard's "Design for Textile-Quatrefoil," the period is Postwar. Here I can begin to understand what else was going on in the world of design when Girard made this piece.

I see a lot of objects in the postwar period were designed by Tommi Parzinger, who is he? Repeat, repeat, repeat… No man is an island, and no design is created in a vacuum. The collections database has a long way to go but it is making huge steps towards revealing context and connections between the objects in our collection.

visual icons for interactivity

My co-worker, Aaron Straup Cope, reminded me about the work of Timo Arnall today. Arnall's work on graphic language for touch resonated and inspired me to sketch out some graphic language ideas of my own.

Talking / Connecting

Let's see if I can keep it up.

democratization of design

A classmate showed me The Noun Project.

I love it. You can search for any noun and find its corresponding icon, all free to use (with attribution) or under the creative commons license.

 Thesis in the field of democratization of design?? It's worth exploring.

[IxD Studio] The Water Project

The last project in IxD studio was to envision the future of water and to share that vision.

My group (Shaili Das, Ramune Rastonis, and Vida Riahi) decided to look at the future of the oceans. We wanted to create a space that would cause people to consider the way their choices impact the environment, without being judgmental or preachy.

'Oceans' is a pretty vast subject; given the scope of the project, we needed to keep a narrow our focus and create something simple. We wanted to create a sensory space where people could take a minute to sit, contemplate, relax, escape, and be mesmerized. Our inspirations were, not surprisingly, mostly aquariums.

[IxD Theory] Reflections

Reflect on how this course has affected your perspective as a designer. What has changed? What has stayed the same? In what ways are you more confident and what gaps do you still feel you have?

Hi Arna,

Thank you. Interaction theory has been one of my favorite courses this first year in the grad design program at CCA; it has been instrumental in helping me define where I want to go and why I came back to school in the first place.

[IxD Theory] Frontiers

What is the next frontier for connectivity? What will make it stick?

For many of us in developed nations, technology constantly demands our attention. It's hard to imagine being much more connected that we already are, but increased connectivity seems unavoidable. Since our dependence and desire for connected devices will only increase, maybe the answer is to change the manner in which we connect. I hope that the next frontier for connectivity will be ubiquitous computing. One definition of ubiquitous computing that resonates with me is "machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs."

[Business of Design] Reflections and wrap-up

If you were teaching this course next year, what one thing would you add and what one thing would you subtract? Please explain why you would do these things.

I would take away the Indigogo campaign. It is great to know how to manage a fundraising campaign like this, but I'm not convinced that the experience was as beneficial enough to make it worth the time spent on it. The fundraising campaign doesn't take cultural differences into account (Indiegogo had trouble with international credit cards, for one) and it's not clear to me why all of our fundraising went to Architecture for Humanity. It may be a great organization, but it would be nice if we had some say in what we were raising money for rather than being told top-down who we were raising money for.