U101: The Design Thinking Blog

This makes sketching really easy and enjoyable

There is an abundance of web drawing tools out there. But I like this one. It offers a limited set of options. You really don't need more. The lines and forms produced look really good and this is probably the essence of the Harmony drawing tool. You just save the picture you draw as png. Very simple.

Prototyping on your iPhone

 I just stumbled upon a very nice web/mobile application called Realizer. It allows you to upload sketches (single screens) of User Interface designs for iPhone or iPad to a web interface. You can then link these single screens by adding interactive areas in your sketch, such as buttons. Having finished your mock-up, you can download an iphone/ipad app to show the prototype to others on your handheld device. 

I think you could not only prototype mobile apps with this tools but possibly also other complex designs, such as Service designs. It's worth exploring further at http://realizerapp.com/

 

Google Wave

I was playing around with the new Google Wave application. I believe this is something the OU's SocialMe project wants to achieve, too. Its a convergence tools for any kind of collaboration i.e. meetings, brainstorm, organisation, synchronous or asynchronous. Similar to Google Docs, you can edit a document, which they call Wave at the same time others do. The same Wave can be used as a Chat by simply replying to a statement.Or you simply highlight a term or picture and start a conversation on this item within the document. And it is similar to Gmail, in that you can see all Waves in your inbox read and unread, and you see who is participant in this Wave, you can save it on folders and so forth.

Have a look, its quite amazing.

We should add this to our recommended list for U101 collaboration tools. Unfortunately, this might be too early for the first presentation as it is only in preview stage.

Sketchbook

Access Art supported by Barbican Arts Group Trust it looking for partners to trial Sketchbook Space. This is an online sketching application, as I understand. Maybe we could offer this as an additional resource to our students? Unfortunately, I haven't found a demo.

Design research tools

I stumbled upon a great list of mainly web 2.0 tools that can be used for design research, but it seems to me some of those tools can also be of use to our U101 students.
http://digitalresearchtools.pbwiki.com/

For example: Georgy could link to these resources in the element "How to work with others"
http://digitalresearchtools.pbwiki.com/Communication+Tools
http://digitalresearchtools.pbwiki.com/Share+information

We already have identified many of those links, but there are some new tools, such as:
"iSpring Converter:  free download converts Powerpoint to Flash so you can upload your presentations for easy viewing in e-learning sites or your Web site.  (Free)" Some students might be more comfortable using PPT for some tasks ... (I know people that draw in PPT!)
or
http://www.ecai.org/: which might be a helpful analysis tool for students in the Global Block.

Transfer of craftsmanship knowledge in e-learning

Chris Rust guided my attention to a research project in e-learning by Nicola Wood. She looks into designing "interactive learning resources to record and transmit the expert knowledge of skilled craft practitioners".

Her learning materials can be accessed at
http://foldingknives.designinquiry.wikispaces.net/

Her approach to teaching how to design a folding knife goes across all stages of the design process. She uses vodcasts, and design templates to support the transmission of such expert knowledge. Very interesting work.

Experience of an online conference

My first experience of an online conference was with ‘GLIDE08 Global interaction in design’.

I proposed 2 panel discussions, one based on a wiki and another based on this blog.

The organization of the panel discussions was difficult due to large uncertainties of how they could be conducted. Until the last moment I was uncertain about when and how the panel discussion would be hold. The organizers set up a wiki with presentations schedule, abstracts, links to full papers blogs and wikis for discussion. As soon as the schedule of speakers came out about one week before the event, I assumed that our sessions would be in a slot marked ‘asynchronous presentations’. Only at the day of the event I realized that the panel discussions were supposed to be held in parallel to the synchronous presentations.

The synchronous presentations were held via slide sharing software, which was a web browser ad-on. It opened a separate window with chat, voice, video and slide broadcasting facilities. The organizers opted to not using the voice transmission inbuilt in this software. Instead the participants were asked to dial in via a phone bridge. This caused problems for participants outside the US, because the bridge number did not work. We missed the first presentations. Then the organizers decided to open the software voice channel via the slide-sharing tool. The quality was not great (that was probably the reason for using a phone bridge in the first place), but at least we could hear the presentations. However, voice transmission was only one-way, so we could not ask questions. This condition animated participants with similar problems to find a work-around. We went to the wiki page of the speaker and commented or asked questions on the speaker’s abstract page. This allowed developing some lively and continuing discussions; similar to the one you would have after a session at a normal conference ends. It is topic centered at first but also included social elements. That was interesting.

Due to ongoing synchronous presentations and discussion based on those topics, our parallel panel discussions were not well visited. There might have also been confusion about where to comment - in the conference wiki page or on our blog pages. I believe that the discussion would have been more successful if we had been assigned a synchronous presentations slot.

All in all, it was an interesting experience. I thought it might even be carried over to U101. Did we ever think of having life-presentations from the faculty, other invited designers and students in a conference format? As I have experienced, such a format does encourage discussions among participants.

BusinessWeek Podcasts

I have lots of time listening to Podcasts since I started commuting. I found a series of Podcast interviews done by BusinessWeek called 10 Cutting Edge Designers.

Some are worth including in U101:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=151865609

One report is about an online design community called:
http://www.threadless.com/

T-shirt designs are submitted rated, printed, sold... We could either use it as part of an assignment (We always talked about T-shirt assignments!) or as inspiration designing our own community functions.

Search Engine and interesting blog

I heard about a new search engine today, made by exGoogle people, it is called cuil and my experiments with it have found it really useful. It takes images from pages too which gives it a different feel to any other engine. One of the things I found using it was the blog below from someone at the Institute of Design in Chicago which is interesting. Also discovered a video networking site where you can download the videos. The one below looked good but the sound quality was very patchy on my computer.

http://www.onlinebachelordegreeprograms.com/resources/topic-based-search-engines-and-databases
(This link replaces the link to "Cull" which no longer works but provides a list of topic based search engines provided by Alexandra Sawyer - October 2012)

http://dori3.typepad.com/my_weblog/design_education/index.html

http://vimeo.com/1269848

Gallery of Student Work

The RSA annually invites submissions from students for their Design Directions competition which:

"focuses on the role design can play in response to key contemporary challenges. The themes forming the basis of this year's projects include health, communities and creating a more inclusive society for older and disabled people."

The winning entries are displayed in an online design gallery which is instructive to look at to see how the products have been presented on the web (quite clunky in my view), and especially as it relates to OpenDesignStudio.

The winner of the Global Issue / Local Solution section is quite interesting in that it seems to sum up all the problems with this type of design for conventional design students: another [expletive deleted] product! This is were U101 could make a big difference (and perhaps we could get a few students to submit to this competition).

See the RSA Design Directions Gallery

See the winner of the Global Issue / Local Solution category