think carrie, think!

It’s my last week here, and, so that other people don’t think I’ve just been slacking off all summer, I got asked to do a couple of presentations this week about my work over the summer.

I gave my first talk today to George Galambos, an IBM Fellow (from Canada!). The presentation went well. In fact, right after the presentation he walked my mentor and I over to Robert Morris’ office, where he talked a bit with his secretary.

So now on Friday afternoon at 3:00pm, I will be presenting my work to the head of IBM Global Services Research.

That’s pretty rockin’.

Someone please, please tell me that the registration site for DUX2007 is looking insanely horrible only on my machine on both firefox and IE.

*EDIT* It seems that they have since fixed the site. Well, in the way that now it’s at least… readable. Thank goodness.

I’m in the middle of packing/cleaning the apartment. For one, my mom is coming tomorrow, and plus, I’m leaving in a week and figure I won’t really have that much time to lounge around cleaning or packing during the week.

Anyway, while packing I found the pamphlet I picked up when I went to Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s IDEO Selects exhibit. I leafed through it briefly because my attention span is worse than that of a goldfish. I noted that the three lenses that they chose to frame the items in the exhibit were inspiration, empathy, and intuition. “While we could have chosen any number of lenses, these three neatly distill the design thinker’s sensibilities as he or she solves a problem.”

Contrast this to something I read earlier in the week from Jeanne Liedtka (whom I quoted earlier today): “Great design, it has been said, occurs at the intersection of constraint, contingency, and possibility – elements that are central to creating innovative, elegant, and functional designs.”

Inspiration, empathy, and intuition. Constraints, contingency, and possibility. (oh my!). All important to designers. But the two groups seem to be somewhat disparate, no? Not that I’ve had time to dissect this thoroughly, but I find it interesting that IDEO chose to showcase their design exhibit from the first group’s frame of mind, while the business director described design from the other frame of mind.

That is all. I’m tired.

After working here for a couple months, I’ve naturally drifted towards reading a lot of articles on bringing design thinking into management. Because my brain is a bit fried from the work I’ve been doing this week, I’m going to cop out from expressing my opinions for now and instead share some interesting pieces I’ve gathered from some of these articles. A lot of these articles have got me thinking whether or not I should rethink my thesis essay topic. Being that my current topic deals with the exploration of classical music notation (or scores from film soundtracks, I haven’t yet decided) as a means to discover new service notations, it would be a big shift of topics. But most of me knows I’m a musician at heart, and it would be nice to dive into that area with respect to interaction design. Anyway.

On bringing design simplicity to business strategy

“What if we used the Little Black Dress as a model for business strategy? We would end up with strategies that would be neither incomprehensible to all save their creators, nor banal and self-evident. They would eschew the faddish and focus on enduring elements, incorporating a versatility and openness that invited their ‘wearers’ to add adornments to fit the occasion at hand. Perhaps most importantly, they would emphasize our positives while acknowledging our flaws–all in the service of offering us hope for a better (thinner) tomorrow.” -Jeanne Liedtka, executive director of the Batten Institute at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business

On Design Attitude

“We were working at a large table, and Matt was leaning far onto it, marking the final changes. As he pushed back from the table, we were joking about how tedious the process had been and how glad we were to have it over. As we joked, Matt gathered all the sheets of onionskin and the marked up floor plans, stacked them, and then grabbed an edge and tore them in half. Then he crumpled the pieces and threw them in the trashcan in the corner of the room. This was a shock! What was he doing? In a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “We proved we could do it, now we can think about how we want to do it.” -Richard Boland Jr. and Fred Collopy, professors (Information Systems and Cognitive Science, respectively) at the Weatherhead school of Management at Case Western, while working with Matt Fineout from Gehry Partners

On Risk

“We’ve found that this traditional, negative definition [of risk] doesn’t exist in the lexicon of most designers. For them, risk isn’t a measure of ‘the downside’; instead, it is a measure of upside and opportunity. If the risk isn’t great enough, designers might well ask themselves, “why bother”?” -Diego Rodriguez and Ryan Jacoby, IDEO

Yesterday at lunch, I made myself yet another salad from the salad bar in the cafeteria. My salads are getting boring, due to the fact that the options at the salad bar never really change beyond the occasional switch from parmesan to cheddar. But 1: the salads are way cheaper than anything else in the caf, 2: the salads taste way better than anything else in the caf, and 3: salads are generally good for you. So salad it was. But then I realized what ingredient was missing from the salad bar that would make my lunches so much better: avocado.

A member of the cafeteria staff came out to refill something at the hot bar. I realized this opportunity, and with a huge smile, went up and asked him if he had any avocados.

“I’m sorry, what?” he says.
“Avocados,” I replied, “for the salad bar.”
“Ohh. No, I don’t think so. But we have some in the back, I can get some for you.”
“No, it’s okay, if it’s too much trouble…”
“Of course not, let me run back and get some”.

He grabbed a bowl and headed back to the kitchen. A minute later, he reappears, half an avocado sliced and presented neatly in the bowl. “Avocado!” He smiles. I smile. And after thanking him a thousand times, I go on my merry way to eating my (yummy) lunch.

Now today, when I was making my salad for lunch, the same kitchen staff member came out to fix something at the hot bar… so naturally I asked him again if he had any of those avocados out back. He laughed and said of course, grabbed a bowl, and went back to the kitchen.

He reappeared with the bowl, this time with an entire avocado, still in shell, sitting in the bowl. He hands it to me, and says “One dollar. You still want it?” I laughed and took it. I wonder if he’ll give me an entire avocado tree tomorrow. More likely he won’t even be there tomorrow.

[in case anyone was wondering: avocado in Chinese translates literally to 'butter fruit']