Course Evaluation

With out giving away too much and for the simple fact that this will get redundant after reading my DAAP course evaluation. I will say this, I have learned a lot about the Communication of design in the last 3 months, much more than I have in the past, and in a different way as well, from the lectures we have heard to the guest speaker that thought us a thing or two about graphics. I will always be referencing the course material here for years to come.

Blogging : as a design tool

I like being in the moment, catching things people say or do while acting out a story or situation out, because thats when it happens for me. The moment when my brain clicks and gets an idea, or an understanding. Its like the classic snap shot.

I think that being in the moment is key to understanding and interpreting systems, problems, and theories. Let me explain, being in the moment doesn't mean sitting at a computer or thinking and rethinking ideas over and over before you type them, its the sudden impulse that flies through your mind at the speed of light. The ah ha moment is, for me, when a brainstorm is happening, or an in depth discussion is going on. Its the connection you have with other people in the moment.

Just look at the snap shot, it has been said that in the day of the digital camera, those rare, hard to catch moments have been lost in the power up stage, resume from sleep or just the hold down the button for 5 sec. before it actually takes.

Blogs have killed the personal interaction for me, thus the ah ha moment. Well for now anyway.

Personal Eval

My work this quarter, for lack of a better term was rushed for this class. I have been taking 18 credit hours, 3 of which are another studio outside of the required. its just exhausting really. But, I did get to use a lot of what I have been thought this quarter over mixed Media to help drive and convey some trickier ideas that I had. I tend to lack in the area of final refinement on projects and presentations, the icing on the cake if you will, I believe this is from stretching myself to thin.

So as for evaluating my work and setting goals for next quarter they will be this, that I need to focus on one studio for the quarter so that I have the time and energy to ice the cake, and then eat it too.

Open Post : Frank

I was really excited over last weekend to visit Falling Water and Kentuck Knob in Western Pennsylvania. It struck me oddly that a visiting professor from Korea, that has been here for 2 months, has seen more iconic American Design locations in the US than I have. Pathetic right. So in an attempt to regain some designer street cred I took a trip up to have a look at these two famous designs by our's truly, Frank Loyd Wright.

The most interesting thing that I encountered, was my appreciation for Kentuck Knob over Falling Water. The two go hand in hand because they are but 13miles away from one another, yet K Knob is grossly over looked and often forgotten. To be honest, I didn't even know about it till my friend made the reservations and said that we were going there first.

Falling Water is out standing in every way imaginable. just the size of the cantilevered balcony over the water evokes a unique feeling all its own. The rooms are so typical of Franks demands to be more interested with what going on outside the house than in. It really has some great characteristics in its floor plan that really are nice and thoughtful. But, his over all design details are so, undergraduate. You can tell that this was a very early house that he was honing in on his stereo typical nuances that have yet been refined. A very beautiful house none the less, but K Knob was more refined and structured.

Kentuck Knob, a home later into his career is, I feel, at the center of Frank's all encompassing design details, nuances and philosophy. Though F W was more complete in that it had everything original to the house including furniture, tapestries and paintings, and anything else Frank could control them to buy, K Knob was more cohesive in its architecture and refinement and ornamentation. Sad to say the current owner of the home, and English Lord, uses the house as more of a reliquary for all his museum quality nic-nacs than anything else. The K Knob house is just built, designed and executed better then F W. But as a total package, since the K Knob doesn't have its original furniture or art work still in the house to round off the house, F W was by far better as a total tourist package, and K Knob a better representation of who Frank was as a philosopher of design.

Interview

This is a long conversation with David Parrot, over possible ideas for work stations this quarter. He actually mentioned a digital work station with out me asking him about one, it was cool, I knew then that I wanted to do it, good confirmation.

Dave thanks for looking this one over with me,

This is the Problem Statement:

Employing analytical design development procedures, design an

workstation for institutions for 2015. Both functional utility and

physiological utility must be carefully considered. They are to be

designed so as to impart the excellence of their manufacture and the

specific purse for which they are intended. It will be designed to

interact with the user's anatomy with the least amount of restriction

and physical stress. In other words, the workstation should provide

maximum freedom of movement and control based on the findings

determined by your analysis. Flexibility, convenience, comfort,

privacy, security, personal amenities, the advantages of user

adjustment of the workstation and all other features suggested by

analysis are now design challenges.

I am "behind" because I can't think of a direction, but I know that a

good direction is key to the success of a thoughtful design.

Andrew

That last bit, " a good direction is key to the success of a thoughtful design" sounds like it came in a fortune cookie, man.

Anyway, let's break this down:

Employing analytical design development procedures, design a workstation for institutions for 2015. What kind of institutions? Professional ones? Many (if not most) professionals work at a computer, but those who don’t might be more interesting. There are tons of problems with working at a computer all day, though, not the least of which is developing crappy posture and “office butt.” With your interest in fitness, this might be a good opportunity to interview some office workers (this is also an opportunity to get in bed, so to speak, with someone you’d like to work for when you graduate. By that I mean—If you’re going to interview someone, it may as well be someone you want to get your foot in the door with). Both functional utility and physiological utility must be carefully considered. This implies a task analysis and some observation (obviously the point of a project in “analytical design development procedures”, whatever that means). Who do you have available to you to observe? Is there a particularly underserved market that you have seen in your career? Model makers? Electrical engineers? Gamers? UPS package sorters? Airline Ticket Sales people? The TSA monkey who watches the X-Ray machine? A barista? A Subway employee? They are to be designed so as to impart the excellence of their manufacture and the specific purpose for which they are intended. This implies some materials and manufacturing research and offers tons of opportunities for integrating the concept with its execution—e.g. could a work station for woodworkers be made in kit format by the woodworker (or wooden boat builder!… talk about a bad ergonomic situation…)? This could have sustainable benefits in terms of flat packing, dematerialization, etc. while teaching woodworking at the same time… Maybe the final deliverable is not only an example of the work station (which you could actually build!) but also the instructions/book/dvd that is the real deliverable. (Look at the book Anthony Garay (a DAAP grad) published a couple years ago. His deliverable was the book, not the furniture.) It will be designed to interact with the user's anatomy with the least amount of restriction and physical stress. If you wanted to do some seriously impressive task analysis, you could actually video tape many users doing repetitive operations (like making sandwiches or coffee or using a computer) and overlay the video with indicators showing touch points, travel paths, etc. This would be seriously compelling and impressive data, but might not be that interesting in terms of the final product you’d produce. Also, it’s a pain in the ass. It has the benefit, however, of providing serious, rock solid buttressing to the argument you are delivering in your final concept. The downside is that the process is truly deductive. There will be one, final answer that is most efficient. Any attempt to introduce other aspects of design (visceral or reflective) will water down your argument. In other words, the workstation should provide maximum freedom of movement and control based on the findings determined by your analysis. Flexibility (castor wheels!), convenience, comfort, privacy, security, personal amenities, the advantages of user adjustment of the workstation and all other features suggested by analysis are now design challenges. To make this more interesting, you may want to focus on a work environment that’s less static. Something like an assembly line operation or the boat building thing or something else. This means the user will be up and moving and you can focus less on the tedium of deductive design and more on the inspiration of inductive design.

So anyway, you can go two directions, strategically: Deductive or Inductive.

If you want to answer the core of the assignment, I would go straight analytical (deductive)—do a robust task analysis using video or some method of marking touch points (e.g. wet paint on the user’s hands, etc.) and drive your whole design down a deductive path toward a final, efficient solution but, at the last minute, veer it toward a compromise that balances efficiency (behavioral) with aesthetics (visceral appeal) and meaning (reflective value). I would document all this too. That is, show the most efficient solution and show how you tweaked it to balance Donald’s Three Levels of Design to create a great, balanced product. This could be a traditional cubicle redesign (though there is a ton out there already) for an office worker, a barista’s stand, a commercial (or residential) kitchen, a painter’s easel for plein air (portability!) or indoor painting, a semi truck interior, etc.

You might start by looking into some of the foundational theory behind task analysis and that kind of thing, perhaps bringing the history into your work station in the form of a name or reference (for a little reflective value). (E.g. you might design a hyper efficient, barebones computer workstation for accountants and name it “Taylor”.) For a bit of history on the subject, check out the work of Frederick Taylor.

If you want to go inductive, look for a problem situation, (e.g. wooden boat building at home) and make an integrated solution driven by your observations of the process and user interviews (quotes!). Then create a balanced solution that solves the identified problem by balancing materials, reflective value, manufacturing, etc. E.g. a wooden work station kit that flat packs and can be shipped along with a boat kit and is made with similar materials and methods, allowing the user to practice the techniques (during the construction of the work station) and have an optimized work station for the construction of the real project (the boat, in this case). The same implementation could be applied to: electrical engineers (lots of soldering and assembly), model makers, wood workers, engravers, quilters, or any other hobbyist.

Within those strategies, you could go big and redesign the layout of a Starucks, Subway, a bar, etc. considering the entire interior as the work space. You can go non-traditional—think of unconventional work spaces—the semi truck cabin, a navigator’s station for round-the-world sailing races, an ROV pilot’s station, a tugboat wheelhouse, etc. If you want to go sophomoric (by that I mean, do something everyone else is doing and that only a sophomore would think is clever), there’s the dorm room work station/bunk bed, a wacom-specific computer work station for designers, a redesigned drafting table for modern tools (wacom, etc…. actually, I kind of like this one), the standard office cubicle, a home gym, a receptionist’s desk (designed to enhance sex appeal and efficiency simultaneously), a gynecological exam table (I can hook you up with a gynecologist), a dentist’s chair and work space, etc.

Those are my initial thoughts…

D.

Wow,

I just learned more in that email than an entire quarter with Steve D.

Bless you.

I love your insight into the difference on an inductive and deductive
responses to a workstation. I particularly love the idea of the user
building the workstation they are about to use and thus learning more
about the project they are going to do in the process.

The two main Ideas that I am vacillating between right now are a hair
stylist station and a Digital Artist/ I.D. station. I worked for four
years in a salon and I have strong ties in the industry. This could be
a good one to do. The Artist station was one I originally thought of
while I was working for Hasbro over the Winter Quarter, every one had
just received Cintiq's, yes even the Interns, and the desks were
really fighting their true potential.

With these two things in mind, I can see that doing an Artist/ I.D.
station could really blow for interviews, because lets face it, every
designer is going tot be comparing their work stations with what your
proposing?

I guess I am really worried that either of the two really speak to
what I want to do when I graduate, but should that even matter? Any
thoughts?

Andrew

To save space on the blog and more personal information from making it onto the internet I am going to stop posting the conversation here, case in point though, I learn a lot from David and am excited to be working with him next quarter

Post Project: Mixed Media

I love the more sketchy quality of the first group of drawings, they feel loose to me, even though most of what you are seeing is really the 3D model! I like the back ground too, it gave it a more, "marker render" quality that I was hoping for.
The second shot here has more of a rendered feel, I wish I would have tweaked the glow a bit more, and put in a harder part line to show that the pieces were the glow was coming from was a different piece of plastic all together. I think that would have taken the realism up a notch or two.

Strengths

I feel as thought my individual strengths come from my ability to look at a problem from multiple angles, and to look toward the future. To view everything as systems and networks that people interact with in different ways. Its easy to answer or to address one part of a problem, giving a half solution. This is what happens with products that fade away fast, they have only addressed one issue in the system, and have not looked far enough into the future to foresee possible problems in the future.

Now with this being said, am I a genius? Do I embody these things better than most? Um, yes and no. I have the ability to look at problems from multiple angles, I believe that, but I still am learning how to trouble shoot the future, and what its needs and systems will be like, but that is why I am in school.