Tag Archives: design

Design, purpose, and practice

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I was having a coffee with a friend just outside of a Starbucks on a beautiful, sunny morning, when we witnessed a dog owner tie his dog to this post and head into the coffee shop..

“ATTENTION
PET OWNERS
DO NOT LEAVE PETS UNATTENDED”

A few things occurred to me:

  1. The sign (obviously) isn’t going to stop the behavior.
  2. The sign is at the wrong height… it should probably be at the height that the person would tie the dog to the post. (Which would also make tying the dog there more difficult as well as being more likely to be read.)
  3. The sign doesn’t solve the problem. Dogs can’t go into the store, and a pet owner will still leave their dog tied somewhere, so they can quickly grab a coffee.

I don’t know what the solution is? Even if the post wasn’t there, the pet owner could use the tree that’s just a few feet away… but I think it’s funny that the very post with the sign is the most convenient place for dog owners to leave their unattended pet.

I understand that this has potential to cause issues, with strangers (potentially kids) petting the dog, or other dogs passing by with their owners taking issue with the tied up dog. But is there something else that can be done? Is there a way to design a store line up that is dog friendly? Is there a way a dog owner could be queued in a line from outside the store? Could there be a location the tied up and unattached dog is less likely to be an issue?

The purpose of the dog owner is to respect the rules that dogs don’t come into the coffee shop, and so they leave the dog outside momentarily while they grab a coffee. The purpose of the sign is to stop unattended dogs from being a safety issue. This is a common practice with dog owners, and I struggle to think of a time that I’ve seen an unattended dog cause an issue.

So is this just an etiquette thing where owners of dogs that shouldn’t be left alone simply shouldn’t do so, and just forgo the sign? Do we need to have a sign to prevent stupidity? Or is this actually an important enough issue to warrant a sign? If so, what solutions can we come up with?

PS. I think it’s worth mentioning that I don’t own a dog.

Public spaces

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How would you reimagine building a public space for the future? How can parks not just be green outdoor spaces but gathering spaces? How can a library be about more than a collection of books? How can we make our cities more walkable? How can public schools be more innovative, less industrial?

I think back to my holiday in Barcelona, Spain, and remember how outdoor spaces felt like an extension to our AirBNB. The cafes, wide sidewalks, and public squares felt like a continuation of the living room.

As we design a future infused with AI technologies, how are we thinking about the livability of our cities and neighbourhoods? How are we thinking about public, social spaces? Our focus seems to be on technology, and how it will make work and life easier… wouldn’t that present us with an opportunity for more free time? More opportunities to enjoy our communities? How can we improve our public spaces so that we enjoy that ‘extra’ time in our communities?

How would you improve our public spaces?

Little inventions

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Imagine driving down a rainy highway without windshield wipers. Dealing with a painful hang nail without nail clippers. Always having to put on shoes with buckles rather than laces. Or even phones without touch screens.

I love seeing new, inventive products come out, like a tooth brush that brushes all your teeth simultaneously in 20 seconds. Everyone needs to brush their teeth. Almost no one does it extremely well or for long enough. Along comes this little invention to save time and be more effective.

Now I’m not jumping out to buy one. I’m not convinced this isn’t a little gimmick that won’t really do what it promises. But I just love seeing inventions like this come out. I like seeing how people solve little problems we didn’t know we had. Or problems everyone have and think there is no solution to.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but I think luxury is too. Humans are constantly finding ways to make life easier, and more enjoyable… and creative ideas abounds.

What’s a little invention you don’t necessarily need, but absolutely love?

Positively Subversive Leadership

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A colleague in my district was recently complaining that when she went to her staff to see what their needs were, they said they needed new desks. These are an equipment update that:

  1. Will require a fair percentage of the school’s expendable budget.
  2. Won’t help the school progress or move forward with their practice.

As such, my colleague was disappointed that this is what she’d be spending so much of her budget on.

I suggested that she only purchase tables for two students and not individual desks. This meets the need of replacing old desks but invites, if not almost forces, a different way of running a classroom. Students must be in pairs or fours, the tables fold to get out of the way, and they are usually on wheels which invites them being moved regularly.

Instead of randomly replacing desks in different classrooms, she could put all the new desks in one classroom, and distribute the still good desks in that room to where they are needed. Who gets the new double desks? The teacher that wants to have them. If there is more than one, she can have discussions about how the teachers will use them to help her decide.

Transitioning to 2-student tables provides so many opportunities for collaboration, and a teacher excited about using them will change their practice even if they already grouped students together often. This takes a school need and turns it into an opportunity. If someone else is asking for those same tables and the budget isn’t there for them, that invites a conversation about how single desks can be used together to achieve the same goals.

It’s not fun having to use a lot of your budget to replace old items, but this can provide a chance to upgrade in a way that invites a different approach. This is a way to take an expense and turn it into an opportunity.

Secret Origin of the Enneagram

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The Enneagram.

A shape that has been around for hundreds of years. It has esoteric significance and it has been used as a model for personality types for years.

But something is missing… and that’s the origin of this unique shape.

Not anymore. Joe Truss discovered, or rather uncovered, the following unique origin story of the Enneagram. Perhaps the Sufis of the past knew, but this knowledge was lost: The 2-Dimensional Enneagram has 3-Dimensional roots. Enjoy this short video to learn more: Secret Origins of the Enneagram.

“The Enneagram is a 3-Dimensional structure which manifests through the vertices of the icosahedron.” ~ Joseph Truss

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And if you think this is interesting, Joe has also uncovered the tetrahedral structure of our universe… if you know a physicist who can challenge these ideas, both Joe and I invite them to break this theory apart: We Live in a Tetraverse.

Please share with people whom you think might be interested.
Thank you.

The Nvidia omniverse

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The future is here. In this quick video Nvideo CEO Breaks Down Omniverse, Jensen Huang discusses a virtual space where robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) practice and rehearse their actions in a virtual space before trying things out in the real world. Specifically, he discusses car manufacturing and trying out designs of both machines and factories before physically building them, reducing rebuilding and redesigning time.

This is a game changer in the design of not just systems but in building physical things. The design phase of new products just got a steroids boost, and the world we know is no longer the world we live in.

We are now in an era of AI assisted design and manufacturing that is going to explode with amazing new products. Robots using AI in a virtual omniverse, trying out new creative ways to build new items faster, and more efficiently. Robots building robots that are tested in a virtual world, tweaked by AI, and retested virtually, tweaking the design of the very robots that will be building the new robots. Let that last sentence sink in… robots and AI redesigning other robots and AI… machines building and designing machines.

But that in itself isn’t the steroid boost. The real power comes from practicing everything first in this virtual omniverse world. Trying out the physics and dynamics of the new tools in an environment where they can be tested thousands and even millions of times before actually being built. This is where the learning is accelerated, and where things will move so much faster than we’ve ever seen before.

Products used to takes years of development to be built, but now a lot of that time is going to happen virtually… and with iterations not happening sequentially but simultaneously. So years of development and production design happen in moments rather than years. With the omniverse we are going to see an acceleration of design and production that will make the next few years unrecognizable.

It makes me wonder what amazing new products await us in the next 5-10 years?

Dear Grocery Store

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It’s time to enter the 21st-century and provide intelligent search in your stores.

Create an App that is a shopping list that automatically sorts products by the aisle that they are in. Have sensors that the app detects so that once in that isle, you can see right where the product can be found.

Yes, I know you make a lot of extra money selling stuff because people are searching, can’t find their products, and see other products to pick up, but here’s a better way to do it!

You have an extreme amount of data about what people buy together. Instead of relying on them accidentally stumbling upon something as they search, use the data you have:

1. Put things together that people have bought together on their past shopping experiences. There are hundreds of millions of orders you have already tracked on every receipt you’ve ever printed and stored. Yes, that might be challenging for someone who doesn’t use the app, however, you’re going to design the app so that it would be stupid not to use it.

Who knew that people who bought tacos also bought mango curry sauce… you do because the data says so. So, why not put them next to each other in the grocery store?

2. Use the bottom 1/4 of the App to a) suggest related items when an item is added to the list, and b) show related items or data-suggested items while looking for the next item on the list.

3. Personalize suggestions based on individualized purchase history. If someone adds taco shells regularly, remind them about taco shells or salsa the next time they buy ground beef.

4. Make the App features great. Make it ideal for other lists too, make it indispensable. Add features that might suggest other items if you are on a diet. Or let a vegetarian know that a sauce has meat products and suggest another one that doesn’t.

5. Don’t game this too much. We aren’t stupid. If we see that every item you suggest is by Kraft, or we see the same items again and again that your App is pushing to us for advertising kickbacks, we’ll know the App is made for you and not for us. Here’s a magical idea, don’t just say you put the customer first, actually put them first!

The days of forcing people down every isle for them to buy more products are over… or they will be for you if you competitor takes this App idea before you do.

Ashtrays and Newspaper Racks

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If you are Gen X, then at some point in your schooling you probably made your parents an ashtray out of clay. I did, and my parents didn’t even smoke. And if you were in a woodworking class you probably made some sort of newspaper or magazine rack, which was something your parents might have had in your living room. Depending on how good it was, this wooden creation may or may not have been as prominently displayed in your house as the ashtray. But these were a couple ‘practical’ things we made in school ‘back in the day’.

Both my daughters, who went to different middle schools, made gum ball machines out of wood, which used a mason jar to hold the gum balls. And I think for both of them the other option was a birdhouse. These were their versions of ashtrays and newspaper racks.

I bet most kids today will come home from school at some point with a 3D printed keychain. Most houses don’t have ashtrays, or newspapers or even magazines. Most parents wouldn’t know where to go to buy loose gum balls to put in a school made gum ball machine. Times change and so do the crafts students create at school.

Some of the other things students might (and do) create at school these days include: Apps, websites, and online businesses. These are the modern day ashtrays. A bit more practical, and a lot more relevant. That said, I hope kids still get a chance to work with clay and wood. I still want to see art that is 3D but not 3D printed. No one needs a newspaper rack or gum ball machine but bird houses can still be made.

There are cookie-cutter style ‘everyone makes the same design’ kind of bird houses, and then there are versions of the same project which are open to design thinking and personalization. And it really doesn’t have to be a bird house… just a hands-on creation using tools rather than a keyboard. But when I said, “I still want to see art that is 3D but not 3D printed.” I also should have mentioned that I want kids to also 3D print things.

The message of this little, nostalgic visit down memory lane isn’t just to say bring back the old hands-on projects, and do away with the new ones. Rather it’s to say we need both. We need students creating physical crafts, with their hands, at school and we need them designing new digital products with new tools as well. I’d be a bit concerned if kids today came home with ashtrays, but I’d still love to see them producing creative works that involve building and creating physical things with their hands.

I also wonder what the 2050 version of the school made ashtray will be?

Nature-centric design

I came across this company, Oxman.com, and it defines Nature-centric design as:

Nature-centric design views every design construct as a whole system, intrinsically connected to its environment through heterogeneous and complex interrelations that may be mediated through design. It embodies a shift from consuming Nature as a geological resource to nurturing her as a biological one.
Bringing together top-down form generation with bottom-up biological growth, designers are empowered to dream up new, dynamic design possibilities, where products and structures can grow, heal, and adapt.

Here is a video, Nature x Humanity (OXMAN), that shows how this company is using glass, biopolymers, fibres, pigments, and robotics for large scale digital manufacturing, to rethink architecture to be more in tune with nature and less of an imposition on our natural world.

Nature x Humanity (OXMAN) from OXMAN on Vimeo.

This kind of thinking, design, and innovation excites me. It makes me think of Antoni Gaudi styled architecture except with the added bonus of using materials and designs that are less about just the aesthetic and more about the symbiotic and naturally infused use of materials that help us share our world with other living organisms, rather than our constructions imposing a cancer-like imposition on our world, scarring and damaging the very environment that sustains our life.

Imagine living in a building that allows more natural air flow, is cheaper to heat and cool, and has a positive emissions footprint, while also being a place that makes you feel like you are in a natural rather than concrete environment. Less corners, less uniformity, and ultimately less institutional homes, schools, and office buildings, which are more inviting, more naturally lit, and more comfortable to be in.

This truly is architectural design of the future, and it has already started… I can’t wait to see how these kinds of innovations shape the world we live in!

Calculated Misery

I recently watched this TikTok, about ‘calculated misery’.

It starts off with the idea that social media platforms are going to work together to get us to pay or pay more for their services. It’s no longer enough that we have to watch ads to play along. I notice it when I watch YouTube on my phone and I’m regularly asked if I want to upgrade to avoid ads. Meanwhile I’m also watching more ads that I can’t skip after 5 seconds.

My Twitter feed is filled with ‘blue checkmark’ profiles where that check costs anyone $8 a month to have, regardless of if their content or expertise is valuable to me. And meanwhile, my checkmark-less profile is being viewed less often than those who pay.

Also discussed in the video is how airlines use calculated misery to upsell you. The carry-on suitcase I bought 15 years ago used to be good on any airline, now it needs to be checked on many of them. Leg room has been reduced, and while tickets used to include choice of seats, now that’s something you need to upgrade or pay more for to get. You want a meal or beverage on a 5 hour flight? Those used to be free, but many airlines charge for them now.

It used to be that the basic price was good enough, and upgrades gave you perks, but now it seems anything less than premium is meant to suck a little bit, meant to be just enough misery to make you want to pay more. Even amusement parks are doing it, giving people privileged access in lineups if they pay more. And it’s hard to be in line and watch others get priority over you.

We’ve moved from an era of customer value and service being a priority to an era where profits matter more. It’s a world where customers are made less comfortable, unless they pay a premium, and the benefits are really to shareholders. Essentially, services are getting gradually worse, and misery is creeping in… unless you pay a little bit more.