How Do We Create Value for the Design Community?

This is the ques­tion I am try­ing to answer this week­end. The Design Man­age­ment pro­gram at SCAD is con­sid­er­ing cre­at­ing some type of pub­li­ca­tion. One of my class assign­ments is to fig­ure out the best way for this to be done.

I am very inter­est­ed in how we can cre­ate val­ue in the design com­mu­ni­ty with knowl­edge shar­ing — par­tic­u­lar­ly by means of inter­ac­tion through online net­works.

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Four Case Studies for 2011 — Core77

Today I stum­bled upon these four case stud­ies on Core77. Enjoy!

Four Case Stud­ies for 2011 — Core77.

Hello 2011!

Wow. I can’t believe I have not post­ed any­thing for four months! Since start­ing school, this blog has moved to the bot­tom of my pri­or­i­ty list. I don’t like to just repost infor­ma­tion with­out writ­ing a lit­tle to go along with it. How­ev­er, with no time to work on any­thing that was not direct­ly relat­ed to class, this meant I end­ed up post­ing noth­ing at all. If I am going to con­tin­ue keep­ing up with this, I need to let go and feel com­fort­able with sim­ply post­ing a link along with a line or two of explanation.When I start­ed this blog last June, I said I want­ed this to be a place for me to gath­er all the arti­cles, videos, inter­views, books etc. that I find inspir­ing. If this is to be the case, I need to start post­ing again right now. I need to get back in the habit of col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion that I can ref­er­ence later.I guess this can be my new year’s res­o­lu­tion.

Change By Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

Today I final­ly fin­ished read­ing Tim Brown’s Change by Design, after start­ing the book at the end of April and tak­ing a long break. I was too dis­tract­ed by my future plans— fig­ur­ing out where I would be mov­ing this fall and how I would get there— so I just put the book aside.

I’m glad I wait­ed to fin­ish this book until now, when I am here in Savan­nah about to begin my class­es. I start­ed over from the begin­ning and was able to retain more infor­ma­tion the sec­ond time around. It is also excit­ing to know I will start learn­ing more about design think­ing this week and will start on my path to a more reward­ing career. It is no longer a dream or a far off plan. It is a process that begins now. Read More

Designing A Difference: Smallbean’s Solar Suitcase

Design­ing A Dif­fer­ence: Small­bean Part 1 from Design Muse­um Boston on Vimeo.

A team at Design Muse­um Boston is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Small­bean, a non­prof­it cor­po­ra­tion based in Boston, to devel­op the next gen­er­a­tion of Smallbean’s solar suit­case. This video doc­u­ments phase one of the redesign, which is still in progress.

Phase one focused on under­stand­ing the impor­tant work that Small­bean does in the devel­op­ing world, includ­ing spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion regard­ing the solar suit­case. The team first need­ed to iden­ti­fy and under­stand all the issues, then they orga­nized the issues accord­ing to user touch points. A visu­al map was cre­at­ed based on those user touch-points. Read More