1st annual Contact Summit : The Evolution Will Be Social

The 1st annual Contact Summit is a working festival of innovation where the net's leading mindsand entrepreneurs can connect with the people who are building the social technologies of tomorrow. The net of the future will not be fueled by ads, but by people solving real problems through distributed, peer-to-peer solutions. This is the dormant promise of the Internet, finally coming to fruition.

Contact brings together recognized social technology companies like Foursquare, Meetup.com, Kickstarter, and Etsy, together with technologists, academics, artists, students and entrepreneurs. Participants include Dennis Crowley, Douglas Rushkoff, Al Orensanz, Steven Johnson, Clay Shirky, Dave Winer, Daniella Jaeger, Joanne McNeil, Venessa Miemis, Richard Metzger, and many others.

The day consists of a morning of "provocations," an afternoon of participant-led discussions, and a 2 hour long Bazaar and exhibitor space. Budding entrepreneurs can pitch their ideas and demo their projects with the chance of winning one of three $10K Innovation Awards to support and accelerate their mission.

copy via

http://contactcon.com/ October 20, 2011. New York, NY

Paola Antonelli of MOMA - Design At The Edge

Presentation:

Q&A:

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This lecture is part of Bruce Nussbaum's Design At The Edge lecture series.

Creative Intelligence

Bruce Nussbaum's lecture on Design at The Edge is one of my favorite.I'm not enrolled in it, but still feel obligated to sit in every Monday. Last week, Bruce mentioned to me that he is writing a book on what he calls CQ, or Creative Intelligence.

At Columbia Business School's China Business Conference, I introduced myself as someone in Service Design. A professor from Columbia respond with "Oh look at my tie."

I may have felt somewhat like IDEO's David Kelly when at a restaurant he introduced himself as a designer and his hostess asked "So what do you think of my curtains?" (1)

The Columbia professor did zone in on what I mean by design when he said "I'm sure there were many processes involved in creating the tie from Chinese silk, French pattern to be made in America."

This shows the gap between D-School to B-School that I traverse and that Bruce is helping bridge.

Bruce notes that the framework of Design Thinking, that "collection of behaviors is the heart and sole of creativity. It includes being attuned to the people and culture you are immersed in and having the experience, wisdom, and knowledge to frame the real problem and--most important of all perhaps--the ability to create and enact solutions" (2) But he poses the question in his new blog post on Fast Co Design about what creativity is and how can we measure it.

If CEO's have used Design Thinking as a process trick, how can we help develop the ability to convey creativity without making it a process trick? Why would we put creativity on a linear scale alongside IQ and SAT scores?

I agree that Design Thinking has opened the doors for creativity to wider application, but since it was "packaged as a process" it has begun to "actually do harm."(2) If we take creativity and boil it down to not just a package, but something on a linear scale, how do we keep it's veracity?

IQ stands for Intellingece Quotient and therefore CQ, Creative Quotient. As quotients are the result of division, why abstract Creativity into dividable dimension? It would be a very efficient way to rate and process individuals. But since "creativity emerges from group activity," how do we effectively measure the capability of an individual's ability to interact in a group and frame problems?

CQ will need to contain multiple dimensions.

How do we frame the and show an individual's "experience, wisdom," and ability to frame?

One thing for sure is that the model of a psychologist asking pre-defined questions and timing a subject's arrangement of colored blocks won't serve as the way for measuring creativity.

Howard Gardner said that when in China, students tell him "Now we have 8 things to be good at," referring to his theory of Multiple Intelligence. (3)

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Bruce's dream is that when his godchild applies to"Stanford, Cambridge, and Tsinghua universities. The admissions offices in each of these top schools asks for proof of literacies in math, literature, and creativity. They check her SAT scores, her essays, her IQ, and her CQ." I envision the admissions office will spend more time viewing the CQ than the other deliverables. Not just because it is the most engaging, but that because it is the most complex measurement and deepest deliverable. It might be like a portfolio with statistics, visuals and maps. Everyone's CQ will be as unique, if not more than an admissions essay.

I'm in the process of developing a deliverable to show my Creative Intelligence after a course with Carlos Teixeira and Robert Rabinovitz.

I appreciate if we could measure degrees of creativity and am excited to see how the concept of CQ forms.

Bruce at his Design At The Edge lecture series.

2. Bruce Nussbaum - "Beyond Design Thinking" Fast Company

1. IDEO's David Kelley on "Design Thinking" Fast Company

3. Howard Gardner. Presentation, 2010.

Bjarke Ingels at Parsons

Bjarke Ingels spoke at Parsons and presented his amazing works as well as a vision for the future.[singlepic id=646] See chunked notes for details.

Bjarke Ingels proposing that we're "not designers of 2d or 3d objects" but rather "designers of ecosystems" that "channel not only the flow of people, but also the flow of resources through economy and ecology."

Hedonistic Sustainability dragon symbolic of China swan of Denmark

Comparison between Shanghai and Copenhage relating Shanghai to Copenhagen, but Shanghai is not your typical Chinese city and has a history of being cosmopolitan with it's large expat community and growth from a port city. [singlepic id=642] World Expo collaboration with Ai Weiwei on the installation of the "Remote" installation for Little Mermaid

-Environment -temperature, natural airflow "creating a draft" using evaporative cooling from the pool inside

-Energy "entire system spent less energy than the coffee machine" "half art and half architecture" emphasis on how to "increase art quality"

-Tony stark's mad science expo (using a similar image as the first photo of the Danish Pavilion from the world expo)

"If hollywood starts ripping off sustainable architecture," maybe "we're moving towards hedonistic architecture"

Designing for Personas and Psychologies (my words) You can bike thru the whole thing in 2 minutes w out missing a thing. It's like desinging for Type A and Type B personalities [singlepic id=648] Architects "Architects are @ the center for [discussing how] to redesign the service of our planet so that it fits the way we want to live"[singlepic id=643]"The public discourse [has architecture] reduced to contemplating the final results" Maybe it is about process, process to build and post build, process to exist...instead of perish.

He looks at "coming back to the way the building is created for people." [singlepic id=649] Yes is more "Less is more." Mies van der Rohe - minimalistic aesthetic "Less is bore." -Robert Venturi "I am a whore and am paid very well for building high-rise building." - Phillip Johnson [singlepic id=660] Evolution "Rather than revolution against society, ... evolution with society" [singlepic id=669]-Drawing Darwin's evolutionary tree

evolution "a process of designing through excess in each generation." "a functional model and beautiful model" relating each evolutionary iteration to a "design meeting."

subspecies that spin off. his studios never throw anything out. it's an archive of architecture biodiversity you never know when [a previous project can be the answer to something new]

[singlepic id=652] Architectural Alchemy Similar to Jason Severs of frog reffering to some clients viewing design as "the dark arts" (see notes), and Valerie Casey of Designers Accord noting “the myth of designers as magicians” (see those notes) I am seeing that as a theme that keeps popping up in presentations, the mystique behind, or rather infront of, design.

Project in Denmark "Lively and diverse when you're building a city from scratch"

New York a vision with "an oasis in the city" [singlepic id=659]an animation of what New York can look like in the future.

Public Participation he notes most of his work is private commissions

ex 1: project for the Danish maritime museum

ex 2: city hall in capital of Estonia [I hear the US Embassy there is a palace.] [singlepic id=664]

created a "public service marketplace" -it contained 11 different departments - so they created a prous organizattion [architecture based off of the organization] -condensed village of public administration -the roof "invites the citizens" into what looks like a roof top lounge. -instead of a tower they proposed a "political reflection" -containing a giant mirror that shows an overview of the city -this "democratic parascope." also allows the people outside to see what the politicians are doing inside.

work in Kazakhstan

"linear library - the ideal sturcture" "so a circle combines linearity with efficiency" "a continuous loop of public programs warpped around an ideal archive" the exterior was created to be a mobius strip somewhat resembling the Yurt of the Kazakhs the center of which is a coutaryd which is entered before you enter the actual library.

when meeting with the president they saw a work of contemporary art that looked errily like their proposal. "rational and rigorous argument to create the most compelling argument"

greenlandic national art museum

on the waterfront of Nuuk, the capital city a loop that receives an imprint of the ground it sits on. "integrated withe the nature and the topography" the presnts an "unfoled section" view showing a singley linear view [realtes to concept of time experienced through a subjective path]

The  Big Picture [singlepic id=667]Loop City "what we need to do is not focus myopicly on the danish side, we need to focus at the Swedish side.."

"A holistic master plan" "We can connect the most desnly polulatted part of metroplitant scandifanvia" which also an area under extrem growth."

Binational metropolitan region connecting universities, resources.

[singlepic id=666]"The same size as the San Francisco bay area" [singlepic id=654]"The train system serves as an an energy spine for charging electric cars" (which are tax free in Denmark costing a 3rd of normal cars)"

Energy infrastructure

Social infrastructure [singlepic id=655]synergies - ex: excess energy from industry becomes heat for the public baths.

A waste to energy plant [singlepic id=673] Since there are extreme sports like race-carting around in the vicinity, BIG proposed a ski resont ontop of the power plant. You can use normal ski equipment on a to allow for a "hybrid of bikini skiing" In the winter snow can be "created by blowing air [or moisture] through the system with no energy expense." Excess water is drained thru the facaces to fill planters on the windows. He then presents the initial vision [see fist cellhpone pic] to design cities as ecosystms of buildings.

The chimney smoke isn't toxic, but does have CO2. 1/10ths of a ton of CO2 "One of the main drivers for behavoir change is knowledge." "If they dont know they cant act."

Pragmatic Utopia "Economically and ecologically sustainable" "You make it socially sustainable because it gives the city a public space and social function that would otherwise be nonexistent." "The vision of future cities." "Pragmatic utopian master plan for the future."

This is the slide he opened with, as well as the slide he closed with.  I think effective presenters plant a seed a the beginning of the talk and then refer back to it at the end.  This allow them to loop to a conclusion that you already knew but has grown. [singlepic id=671] [singlepic id=672]packed house. [singlepic id=674]more than 970 slides

More Bjarke Ingels Group - http://www.big.dk/

Many of his projects he presented you can see on TED.

Other pieces presented: the parking + apartment peice in Denmark -"the facade turns into a rasterized image by the holes drilled into the aluminum"

Thoughts As an architect he looks at multiple domains to develop metrics to create qualitative experiental and places. That is something most service designers don't do very well.

Space is gorgeous, has an emotinal impact. Service design we don't place emphasis on the changing the physical space. So there is a need to emphasise the emotion of the experience.

Q's [singlepic id=657]What more can we do? How unsustainable Chinese architecture and development is The emphasis for China to become a consumer culture. Green Energy in China. [my general Q's to expand on]

Guest Lecture by Bjarke Ingels at Parsons Original event information: March 10, 2011 6:30pm Kellen Auditorium Sheila Johnson Design Center 66 Fifth Avenue [singlepic id=640]Thanks to SCE The MArch program presents a lecture by Bjarke Ingels of BIG- Bjarke Ingels Group. Bjarke Ingels started BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group in 2005 after co-founding PLOT Architects in 2001 and working at OMA in Rotterdam. Through a series of award-winning design projects and buildings, Bjarke Ingels has created an international reputation as a member of a new generation of architects that combine shrewd analysis, playful experimentation, social responsibility and humour. In 2004 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for the Stavanger Concert House, and the following year he received the Forum AID Award for the VM Houses. Since its completion, The Mountain has received numerous awards including the World Architecture Festival Housing Award, Forum Aid Award and the MIPIM Residential Development Award. Recently, Bjarke was rated as one of the 100 most creative people in business by New York based Fast Company magazine.

Original event information via: http://sce.parsons.edu/2011/03/04/guest-lecture-bjarke-ingels/

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Luxury Education Foundation Behind the Scenes

More photos from preparation and the reception[singlepic id=207] [singlepic id=223] [singlepic id=224] [singlepic id=230] [singlepic id=219] [nggallery id=14]

Luxury Design Strategies LEF Final Presentations

LUXURY DESIGN + STRATEGYFor the past 16 years Parsons students have collaborated with MBA students from Columbia University to develop brand-strengthening design solutions for luxury companies.

This year, teams were chosen to research and design for Hermès, Bulgari, Maclaren, Loro Piana, Haviland. Each company had a unique case, requirements and goals. It is good to see more professionals and people from different backgrounds change their view of design from something of decoration to a force of actual function and meaning. Increasingly I notice more business schools getting involved in design. Like Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Stanford and Columbia.

[singlepic id=202] SITE Students meet at Parsons, Columbia University, and the offices of the companies’ chief executives for discussion and working sessions. [singlepic id=200] BOARD OF DIRECTORS: Barbra Cirkva, Chair Ketty Maisonrouge, President
ADVISORY BOARD: Assouline: Prosper Assouline, President & Founder Bulgari: Veronica Trenk, Managing Director Cartier: Emmanuel Perrin, President & CEO Chanel: Barbra Cirkva, Division President, Fashion, Watches and Fine Jewelry Christian Dior: Pamela Baxter, President & CEO Graff: Henri Barguirdjian, President & CEO Gucci: Laura Lendrum, President & CEO Hermès: Rober Chavez, President & CEO Lalique, Haviland, Daum: Maz Zouhairi, President & CEO Loro Piana: Fabio Leoncini, Managing Director, Luxury Goods Louis Vuitton: Geoffroy van Raemdonk, Acting President Luxottica: Andrea Dorgio, EVP of Wholesale North America LVHM Perfumes and Cosmetics: Pamela Baxter, President and CEO Maclaren: Farzad Rastegar, President

Special Thanks to Heico Wesselius and Andrew Cornell Robinson of the Design+ Management department of Parsons The New School for Design

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links + sources:
http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/luxury-education-foundation/
http://www.luxuryeducationfoundation.org/ [singlepic id=194] [singlepic id=195]

AIGA Design Educators Conference - Remapping the Curriculum

Part I: Remapping the CurriculumOne of Six Views of the AIGA Design Educators Conference Quotes by Jon Kolko

Shelley spoke on "Described the changing qualities of culture and society and the new demands placed on design educators in driving specialization toward fields like service and interaction design."

Christopher Vice - spoke on how "We must actively and aggressively reframe design education in order to best meet the challenges facing our world and culture."

"For most of the field’s history, educational programs in graphic design have taught students how to create artifacts. That involves a number of core competencies, including but certainly not limited to color theory, two-dimensional design, three-dimensional design, typography, composition, printing and prepress, packaging, digital prepress, logo and mark creation. But the world has changed, and professionals rarely focus exclusively on printed material. In the last 20 years, the overall landscape of design has shifted: — From single artifact-systems to design language systems, focusing on a unified visual and semantic message across multiple printed pieces — From one-way communicative artifacts, such as brochures, to interactive artifacts, such as software — From designed artifacts to “design-thinking,” where the focus of the design process is applied in the context of large-scale business, organizational or cultural problems — From commercial goods toward service, emphasizing time-based, human and more experiential qualities of designed offerings

Suggestions: 1. Recast the Foundation (good, because I only took one foundation class.)

2. Specialize and Differentiate I think we should also integrate the skills that are specialized and different. You need verticals ex: human factors engineering, typography. "— Focus on service design or interaction design. " "— Focus on partcipatory design" "— Focus on traditional design specialites"

We're not designing artefacts - maybe we're not even designing ways of thinking (as that may simply be impossible). We are designing methods of thinking, we design the pathway and the specific prompts within them.

Changing Design Education "increasingly questions consumption and advertising, which are at the heart of industrial and graphic design disciplines." "There is an increased demand for service-based jobs as our country re-evaluates economic sustainability. People are demanding quality, reflective and meaningful experiences in their world."

"The subject of design is the humanization of technology, and as long as technological advancements continue, so the pragmatic and day-to-day jobs of designers will continue to morph. And so must design education continue to evolve."

------------- Questions I pose, to myself and maybe prompts for others to think about: What is your vertical (deep area of specialization)? It may be something that can spread across a wide domain, or be applied to other domains.

How to make the game more meaningful and effective. How to make it more fun? We'll get to that after we address the basics. We must "dramatically revamp their courses or face irrelevance."  That is I am a test tube baby, a prototype generation for design education.

Cameron Tonkinwise asks, "If designers are innovative creatives why are they so very tame & lame when it comes to redesigning design education" (via Tiwtter @camerontw) Possibly because professors are scared of becoming irrelevant and design students are afraid of studying a discipline that does not exist yet.  Although, that would be parcipatory design for design education - crafting the discipline as you define it.  Additionally that would be creating the cirriculum as it is taught.  Some of the main barriers to redesigning design education may be based in the fear of it becoming an act of blacksmithing design education. Full text: http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=22988 Update Jon Kolko is now heading up the Austin Center for Design, which has a focus on social design and real world impact. They aim to create impact by "emphasizing creative problem solving related to human behavior, through the use of advanced technology and novel approaches to business strategy." Learn more about ACD here: http://www.austincenterfordesign.com/

Jon Kolko from Ix11

Service Design Conference 2010 – Cambridge

The first Service Design Network Conference in America took place in Cambridge on October 29th, 2010.  Held at the Microsoft R&D Center at MIT, topics included institutional healthcare, personal healthcare, personal finance, and mobile interaction.  The presentations and conversation also covered inhouse service design, service design as a discipline, and more theoretical models. [singlepic id=53 w=width h=height mode=web20|watermark float=left|right] more photos at the end of the post

Speakers Oliver King - Engine "As a co-founder and director of Engine, Oliver leads the private sector practice helping organizations to identify where, when and how they can provide better, more meaningful and valuable services.  In practical terms he works with organizations to help them formulate strategy and deliver service innovation by improving or interconnecting the things that their customers experience - from product to process and people."

Chris McCarthy - Kaiser Permanente "Chris McCarthy is the Director of the Innovation Learning Network (ILN) and Innovation Specialist with KP's Innovation Consultancy (IC).  In 2003 Chris partnered with IDEO to learn and import methods of 'design thinking' into Kaiser Permanente, and has co-led several multi-regional innovation projects which have since been implemented in dozens of KP and non-KP hospitals."

Lorna Ross - Mayo Clinic "Ross has 16 years' experience working in design and design research, with the past nine years focused on design for health and health care.  She is a graduate of The R0yal College of Art, London.  Prior to joining the Center for Innovation at Mayo Clinic last year as a manager of the design group, Ross ran the Design for Human Wellbeing Group at the MIT Media Lab Europe."

Lew McCreary - Harvard Business Review "McCreary is a writer and editor specializing in innovation-related subjects.  He is a contributing editor at Harvard BUsiness Review (HBR), where he previously worked as a senior editor.  Prior to HBR, he spent nearly two decades covering information technology - from a leadership perspective - for audiences of senior executives."

Robert Fabricant - frog design "Robert Fabricant leads multidisciplinary design teams fro frog design, a global innovation firm.  Frog's multidisciplinary process reveals valuable consumer and market insights, and inspires lasting humanizing solutions.  Robert is a leader of frog's health care  expert group, a cross-disciplinary global team that works collectively to share best practices to share best practices and build frog's health care capabilities."

Shelley Evenson - Microsoft "Shelley Evenson is a principal, user experience designer at Microsoft.  Shelley has been an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon School of Design, where she was also the director of graduate studies.  She teaches in the area of interaction and service design, including Designing for Service, Introduction to Interaction & Visual Interface, and Graduate Design Studio courses."

Monica Bueno - Continuum "A Senior Design Strategist with Continuum, Monica Bueno excels at developing innovative and socially meaningful solutions for clients.  An industrial and interaction designer by training, Monica is deeply committed to translating customer, business and technology research into innovative solutions that are desirable and relevant to clients and their stakeholders."

Peter Corbett - iStrategyLabs "Peter Corbett is the founder and CEO of iStrategyLabs - an interactive agency that develops creative solutions to clients' challenges and brings them to life in the digital and physical world."

Mark Jones - IDEO "As the leader for Service Innovation for Chicago, Mark works closely with service companies seeking to reinvent how they serve their customers.  Mark's extensive design background and his broad experience in qualitative and quantitative research methodologies allow him to uncover user issues and convert them into actionable design requirements."

For photos and details on their presentations and previous work, please see individual posts in my notebook. Source: http://www.service-design-network.org/content/about-speakers

[nggallery id=4] Photos I took during Day 1 - Registration [nggallery id=5] Photos I took during Day 2 - Conference

Check back at the SDN site soon for videos of the presentations.

Sponsored by Microsoft, Core77, AIGA

Luxury Round Table

By Luxury Education Foundation at Columbia University, New York. This year’s topic is  “New Paths to the Luxury Consumer: Social Media & More”, with panelists: ·         Pamela Baxter, President & CEO, LVMH Beauty and Christian Dior Inc. ·         Michael Bruno, President & Founder, 1stDibs.com ·         Emmanuel Perrin, President & CEO, Cartier North America ·         Horacio Silva, Online Direct, T: The New York Times Style Magazine

twitter hashtag: #lefrt10

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Visualizing Finance Lab

The Visualizing Finance Lab (VFL) explores the ways in which complex financial situations and dynamics can be explained through visual, metaphorical and narrative representations. The lab’s initial goal is to develop a vocabulary for describing illustrations and other visualizations of the recent financial crisis, and creating a searchable online database. These tools will assist designers and creative professionals to contribute more confidently to the discourses of business and economics, and establish a common language for artists, editors, and educators in building financial literacy and understanding. Members: Aaron Fry, Co-Director Associate Professor, School of Design Strategies, Parsons The New School for Design

Carol Overby, Co-Director Assistant Professor, School of Design Strategies, Parsons The New School for Design

Jim Osman Assistant Professor, School of Design Strategies, Parsons The New School for Design

Heico Wesselius Assistant Professor, School of Design Strategies, Parsons The New School for Design

Jennifer Wilson Assistant Professor, Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts [nggallery id=2] http://sds.parsons.edu/?cat=57877/