Week 2 Origination

This week in Origination we reviewed the first chapter of  Laws of Simplicity. We then had a quiz to answer the following questions;

• What does the acronym SHE mean according to the book? 

Shrink - if an object is small we expect less from it so by simplifying the size of something it can produce unexpected pleasure from what we initially considered insignificant ie. (IC) chip technology. Also making an object appear lighter or thinner gives the idea of simplicity.

Hide - By hiding things makes things appear simpler. Electronic are best at hiding their complexity, ie computers allow the user to open and minimize screens opening several applications while only looking at one screen. All the background processing and data transferring is unbeknown to the user.

Embody - perception of quality, this can be actual with the product being made from highest quality materials "or the quality can be perceived, as portrayed in a thoughtful marketing campaign."(Reference: Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda).

• In your words define ‘humanist technologist’ 

After breaking up the two words and defining each i have settled on the thought that a "humanist technologist" is a person that works with and makes technology for the benefit of man-kind.

• How can you apply the notion of reduce to your own design process? (give a specific example) 

An example where i could reduce my design process is the idea for my exhibition. I have decided to do my exhibition on Timor Leste's Tourism. There are lots of things that i could use to display and promote Timor. By simplifying it I can narrow it down to one or two things that stand out and will encourage the viewers to think "what else could there be in Timor to see?". 

• From what you have read in Chapter 1, explain the relationship between complexity and simplicity (give 3 specific examples from the book OR your own experiences)

Complexity and simplicity can be seen as the same as what Ying is to Yang. If you only had complexity it would take up peoples time to learn, control, understand and execute. Also if you only had simplicity things would become boring and waste the power of human minds because it wouldn't be stimulated. By having both it creates a balance where each aspects helps the other so that there is less time wastage and keep the mind stimulated.

Three examples:

• Computer - lots of processes and data transferring the user is unaware of
• Website - pages and hundreds of lines of code written for functionality and style
• Car - driver learns simple functions of driving a car but engine and parts moving under the hood to allow it all to happen

Thinking game:

To demonstrate how verbal communication contributes to only 7 percent of comprehension of information and that majority is derived from emotions, gestures, posture, tone ect, we conducted an activity. The activity required us to divided into pairs and each person to write two tasks that we would communicate to our partner in a non-verbal way and only allowed gestures, sounds, tone of voice only. This activity was hard because out of habit we want to talk to give clear understanding and also people interpret different movements/gestures to different actions. An example of this is my word was "lighting" my partner had already guessed the word light so i made the common gesture to lengthen the word (one used in charades where your hand move from being close to one another to further apart), this gesture however did not communicate the same thing to my partner where he ended up guessing i meant "long light". Hahaha was quite funny, whereas another student watching next to us understood my gesture and guessed the word correctly.

After this group activity we watched the following video about IDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM

• What type of organisation is IDEO? 

IDEO is fundamentally a product development firm. Examples of their work can be seen in Free Willy (the 25ft mechanical whale) and the first computer mouse for Apple. They are a group of eclectic people having employees with different education backgrounds such as linguist, marketing expert, phycologist, biology major ect. The project leader Peter Skillman states that people of IDEO are "not actually experts at any given area [they're] kinda experts on the process of how you design stuff."

• What are the different processes they employ in design research?  

The have all employees post up their ideas on a wall and take all the good aspects from each one. The boss employee people that will disagree with him and not listen to him in order to give a varied result. They also go out into the public to ask their opinions because no one in the group is or could be a professional in designing and functions of a trolly. 

• How did they define the range and scope of the problem?

IDEO use a new method called crowd sourcing which "is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community"(Reference:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing). By using crowd sourcing they can ensure they get a variety of suggestions that need to be covered and that nothing is left out of the end result.

The last thing we did in class was brainstorm all the different elements that will need to be covered in the exhibition. After that we got into pairs and grouped the elements into categories we thought would be best work together. My partner was Helene and here are our grouped elements:

Group 1:

Funding

Advertising/Design/Identity/Course Promotion

Invites

Entertainment

Group 2:

Location/Lighting

Transport

Navigation

Group 3:

Media/Content/Presentation

Resources/Materials/Equipment

Group 4:

Setup/Tear down/Volunteers

Catering/Crowd/Security/Sausage Sizzle

"That's all I have to say about that. " Forest Gump...