think carrie, think!

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.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 4th, 2007 and is filed under business, design, life.