U101: The Design Thinking Blog

Design in a Nutshell

Clive Hilton's hard work and copious sweating have all been worth while, with the release of Design in a Nutshell on OpenLearn.

Have a go at the interactive quiz or just browse through the videos on YouTube:

 

So, which design alter-ego are you?

 

New blog design

Now the blog has gone all modern and vertical - maybe we should go for a wee student competition to (re)design the header ... ?

Anyone up for that ?

& in other news, you might be glad to know that there is actually a website dedicated to the ampersand.

That is all.

Jugaad

[Photo: Sundeep Bali]

Came across this very thought-provoking article, What Falls to Hand, on creative and innovative re-use of resources. 

What really struck me abou this were the cultural aspects attached to it. which the author calls Jugaad:

Indians have a word for such startling ingenuity in the face of adversity. It’s called jugaad (pronounced joo-gar), a colloquial Hindi term that roughly means “doing more with less.”

And in Kenya:

What is known in Kenya as jua kali, or entrepreneurial spirit, has enabled people there to envision heaps of worn-out tires as the feedstock for the soles of sandals

Orin Mexico:

Consider the concept of rasquachismo, the Mexican cousin of jugaad. Among Chicanos, it has traditionally referred to the “worldview of the have-not,” in which a work-around solution to a practical need “suggests vulgarity and bad taste — tackiness,” writes Jose Anguiano. [3] But in recent years musicians and artists have celebrated rasquachismo with pride, even swagger.

In the UK, post-war Britain viewed re-use and making-do as a reminder of austerity during the war, leading to the explosion of product, interior and fashion design in the 60's and 70's. The cultural attitude to re-use did vary but the predominant view was one of 'new is better'. As with any social pattern, this has ebbed and flowed, but ultimately, our entire economic model is premised on the continual replacement of objects - not their efficient repair, re-use or re-purposing.

The article also explores the dangers of romanticising views of re-use due to necessity:

Other critics argue that raising jugaad to a national virtue is a symptom of neoliberal economics and the privatization of public responsibility. To laud the poor for their "adaptive capacity," writes Oxford professor of geography Craig Jeffrey in The Guardian, is in effect to suggest that if “barefoot entrepreneurs” are able to "'pull themselves up by their own bootstraps' there is little need for the state to wade in with things like effective training, cheap credit, and a decent public infrastructure.”

So, as with many other aspects of creativity and innovation, the psychological, social and cultural aspects are the real drivers here - and the cultural differences might provide a clue to the 'flavour' of jugaad. Fischer sums this up beautifully with this:

This extensive innovation infrastructure emerges from a more fundamental cultural ethic: people are taught from childhood to improvise by acknowledging — even honoring — scarcity and finding the possibilities within it. Everywhere in my travels in India, I encountered evidence of this mindset. A sign above the trashbin at a highway McDonald’s urged patrons to return unopened packets of condiments to servers.

 

'The end of User-centered Design?' ...

A really intereseting talk from August de los Reyes (@augustdir) questioning user-centered design.

 

I think there are some very strong points in here - and the headline of the end of user-centered design is certainly just that. This, if you like, considers human-centered design rather than 'users' - like the tool analogy, the word user is an abstraction of the thing we design for, not the thing we need to design for.

I can see lots of interesting links here...

openIDEO release their University Toolkit

openIDEO have just announced their University Toolkit to encourage universities engaging with openIDEO:

We've been blown away by the university stories you've shared with us, so to help support your efforts to bring OpenIDEO to even more campuses, we're excited to publish our OpenIDEO University Toolkit – a short, fun guide for OpenIDEO newcomers and veterans alike.

 

It's definitely not as extensive as the IDEO Toolkit for Educators, which is a real shame, but it's interesting to see their basic process enshrined in there: Inspiration, Concepting, Refinement, Evaluation, Realisation.

Art Pickings website

Ok, I have a soft spot for Brain Pickings so I couldn't help a shout out for their new site art pickings.

This piece by Todd McLellan is really nice:

Normal service will resume shortly...

 

Design of Play

Some nice thoughts about the design of children's play areas in this article: How to Design the Perfect Playground

RSA Shorts

It seems that the RSA have increased their animation portfolio and have started RSA Shorts.

Here's one on extroverts and introverts:

 

And one on brainstorming :

 

(I think there are a few caveats required in that one...).

It is worth looking at the talks themselves to get the full detail (here and here). One of the problems with quick shorts like this is that you can only get so much information in...

Quick creativity exercise #113

Taking inspiration once again from the superb Brain Pickings, have a go at book spine poetry :

Dundee,

a mathematician's

apology on metaphysics

towards a new architecture

A bit obscure, but good fun. Give it a go...

Quick creativity exercise #73

As with all these exercises, don't think about it (yet) - just give it a go.

1. Find a photo - any photo with a person or animal in it.
2. Stick a speech bubble on top (electronically or just cut out a bit of paper)
3. Now walk away from the image and have a cup of tea.
4. If you're reading this after you read the last point then you haven't had a cup of tea - go and have a cup of tea.
5. Go back to your photo and add some text to the bubble.

At this point, I could point out that this activity activates a whole range of brain regions to connect visual memory to emotional interpretation and language functions. I could also point out that it does introduce certain graphic communication skills.

But in reality, it's just good fun...