Cities as computer networks

Yesterday in class, we talked about analogies, and how they can be a useful way to explain and examine the systemic interactions of designs and society.

We looked at a specific example comparing the way that computer networks are similar to systems for transportation in cities.






We also talked bout how Twitter might be like Gilbert and Sullivan plays:



Geeze, it doesn't get much better than that :)

Freshman VS Grandmas

Diagrams, or descriptions of systems can be explicit or abstract. This degree of abstraction or explication lends itself better or worse to problem solving and problem finding. In order to see the differences, let's imagine two people making cookies:

Freshman cook: Follows a recipe

• explicitly defined
• uses measuring tools
• requires no expertise

The freshman has a very easy time making cookies if they have all the ingredients in their recipe, but if they are missing one, they cannot continue.

On the other hand,

Grandma: Follows a model for how food is made up

• Abstractly defined
• No measuring
• Flexible response to the context of the problem (missing ingredients)

But Grandma requires significant expertise to build up the model.

The type of diagram you choose to represent your problem space will similarly affect the types of responses and potential problems you can find. A more abstract conception of your problem will result in more varied, and open problem types.  Of course, the disadvantage is, like not cooking with a recipe, it's harder to learn.

Dancing + Augmented Humanity = Keepon?

Keepon is a robot which can listen to music, build an internal map of the music's structure (beat, number of beats per measure, etc). Then, it can create dance moves and perform them on the fly!!!



This year, we have students exploring dancing in society, as well as how modern technology can inform or enhance traditional crafts. I thought this was an unexpected example of both.

D-School Bootcamp Bootleg

This document is the D-school summary PDF that I took the techniques in class from. The techniques discussed range from the basic (brainstorming) to the specific (interview technique) with a lot of inbetween. Check them out, and try some in preparation for your next Pecha Kucha presentation.

Additionally, the website on which the file is hosted, is a great resource. Scribd is like Youtube for documents. Free to post, share, and browse, you can even download many of the docs in PDF for to read offline, or print out. You can also host large documents in PDF or DOC form to link from a blog once you lose access to catalyst after graduation. Occasionally, I have found transcripts of talks, or out-of-print books scanned on here as well, though their legality is probably questionable...

Yahoo Pipes: good for ... what?

For those of you setting up your first blog, you may have found the option for adding an RSS or ATOM feed. These are structured streams of data based on the posts on your weblog, but stripped of the formatting information, which makes them easy to access via mac mail, or a similar news reader (like Google Reader).

These streams are also easily operated on mathematically, to create new streams. Yahoo pipes is a bizarre and unique website to do just that. Basically, you specify a number of streams of information, and use different modules (similar to a module based synthesizer for music) to chop, filter, or recombine the streams into one large RSS. Then, you can publish that feed, as I have done with the most recent post from each of the DS student blogs, on the right of the page (if you don't see your site, I'm missing your RSS feed, so see me in class.)

Play around with the tool. It's not just for aggregating stuff -- imagine setting up hundreds on Craigslist RSS feeds that all searched for the electric guitar you wanted to buy...

The beginning for 2010 capstones

This marks the beginning of the capstone process for the seniors in Design Studies at UW. A group of 10 students will push their strategic muscles to the limit to develop new conceptual frameworks and strategies in projects as widely raging as gardens, social justice, and dancing. This weblog will catalogue the various sites, concepts, and resources we cover in class, to serve as a repository for them, and a roadmap for future students.