YR 3. Dexign Futures
a repertoire of my weekly reflections and activities from dexign futures class.
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wk one 9.4.16 — reflection
wk one 9.4.16 — in-class assignment
wk two 9.9.16 — in-class activity
9.9.16 — in-class activity
9.16.16 — wk 3 reflection
9.16.16— in class activity
wk 4— reflection
WK 5— Reflection
Peer Reviews
one
- I also discussed foresight and how we must be comfortable with ambiguity. Thinking about how I handle ambiguity makes me realize how much I’ve grown these past two years. I remember back in freshmen year where I felt so lost and uncertain, but now I’ve learned types of questions to ask myself to help those situations.
- In stead of discussing a specific school project, I discussed how foresight and these questions I’m starting to think about affect the way I carry out my design ethos.
- On the topic of applying foresight to my life, I am starting to think about how my current work life balance may extrapolate in the future if I don’t figure out a healthy method.
two
- They brought up epistemology, which I overlooked. I’ve known about this topic for a while, though I sometimes wonder if it’s almost a cop out. One could simply end a debate by saying “well, we don’t really know anything” and boom, there goes any further argument you could make.
- I appreciate this person’s drive to start a personal project stemming from this class. I think I might try tackling some stresses in my work life balance and personal life using the futures methods we’ve learned.
- I too want to explore the use of charts, especially since I am a communication designer and sometimes setting typography is not enough to properly convey a message. Instead, manipulating charts and graphs enhances the communication.
WK 6 — In class assignment
Generic futures exercise. Take one of your life scenarios and explore it through Dator’s four generic futures.
Life scenario I’ve chosen: Design and Illustration (visual design and tangible materials).
Growth: In a growth society, visual design in the form of tangible materials becomes more commonly used throughout media. For instance, the cut paper quality of facebook’s friendship memories video is popular across branding, advertisement, and other realms in design and is used very commonly. This is positive because the medium has a friendly, playful connotation, and so the audience is easily comforted when experiencing the creation. However, because the field is so popular, it as a result can get more competitive and require higher standards. As a result, many people who do this for fun feel pressured to hone their craft and may sometimes lose sight of their passion.
Collapse: In a collapse society, visual design for entertainment is seen as excessive and communities don’t have money to put towards them. Instead, companies must put money towards maintaining living necessities such as food, shelter, and access to information. However, this does not stop me from pursuing this craft because it is satisfying and brings joy to my life as well as people around me. In fact, it may inspire people to try working toward a growing society again, where we have the luxury to appreciate such entertainments.
In a discipline society, the government uses tests to control who and how many people get to enter particular industries. This regulates the job market and ensures that people are competent in their jobs. As a result, many people who enjoy visual design, but don’t inherently carry the skills or didn’t have the luxury of honing it at a young age are not able to pursue it as a career and can only attempt to learn in their own free time.
In a transformation society, artificial intelligence has displaced all jobs that maintain the function of society. Instead, people choose trades to practice and hone for enjoyment and everyone receive a set living stipend. Visual design, thus is not used commercially but only for enjoyment. See this video for where I got inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
Reflection
4 Futures Peer Review
Maggie: (because peermark locked me out) For both peers, they seemed to focus on similar fields whereas mine had a larger disparity between the two ends of the axis (visual design and aerospace engineering). Thus, it was difficult to create plausible quadrants. Nevertheless, there are similarities in how we view the current temperament of tech firms vs design firms (the former being high paying but stiff while the latter being just adequate while creatively free). There’s also similarities in how we think visual design would be rendered unnecessary in a collapse society, which is unfortunate because wouldn’t a drab world make recovery even harder? That was something I reflected on in my reflection.
10.14.16— Neue Year Neue Me
In which I decide to put everything in futures here because why not.
10.28.16 — New Years Resolutions Never Come True (also here are my reflections)
Friday, 11.4.16 — Education
- Future of education
- Free
- Different systems, such as emphasizing skills instead of subjects (STEM, test scores). Is there enough time in the day to do all of it and all of it well? → Perhaps make education more integrated in and out of “school” hours and a part of life.
- I’m not sure I think the “flipped classroom” is effective
WK 11— Wow
11.18.16— Free Services
There’s no such thing as a free lunch; someone is paying for it. And so, the question becomes, ‘why are they paying for it?’
- CMU makes Pittsburgh look good. Every 4 years it brings in a new crowd of people that give business to the surrounding stores.
- Public facilities such as trash cans and trash collectors are funded by government.
- How would these apply to education? Ex: spotify has ads and then you pay to opt out. So perhaps for education you’d be subject to advertisement or participation in studies or pay to opt out.
- Success measures: how do you know when you’ve reached your goal?
- To make a living you need to learn new skills, how do you pay for that when you have no income? Ref: humans need no apply
- This is not the first time we lived through this; it happened during the Industrial Revolution.
Business Canvas Model
Create a business model canvas for a service that could be offered for students. Working with Lucy and Chris, we chose free quality digital printing (inkjet)
Key Partners/Key Activities
- Printer providers: provide school with printers. Needs transportation of printers, and then people to set up printers. Need someone to contact for replacement parts.
- Ink providers: provide ink to schools. Also needs transportation of ink. Will need way to educate people on how to handle ink cartridges (instructions manual?) Need someone to contact for new orders.
- Paper companies: provide school with papers. School will need to specify variety of papers to purchase; perhaps purchase in bulk. Needs transportation of papers and someone to keep in contact for new orders.
- Studio space monitors/technicians (ccons): Need to be paid or volunteer time to monitor printing space; ensure there’s not issues or tomfoolery. Need to require skills to set up and maintain equipment.
- Facilities manager: needs training to acquire skills to maintain equipment, train ccons, and keep track of parts to order.
- Students/people who need to print: Need to be informed of basic etiquette, rules, and printing procedures.
Key Resources
- Internet
- Printed instruction manuals
- Word of mouth informations
- Respective company sites/contact information
Value Propositions
- Joy of helping
- Making money
- Investment in education
Revenue Streams
- funded by student tuition, taxes (in state schools), donors, fundraising
WK 11 (???) Reflection — Education and Normative Futures
After a week’s hiatus, we returned to the regularly scheduled discussion on the future of education. In particular, what are models we can think of for a future with free education? To contrast this prompt, Peter shared with us his knowledge: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch; someone must be paying for it. So, if someone is paying for it, the question becomes, ‘why’?” In our current culture, there’s few motivations outside personal gain. Then again, some may argue that even helping someone out to feel good about oneself is considered personal gain. Either way, we discussed various motivations for people or groups of people to invest in education for others. To do so, we compared existing free services’ revenue streams to see how it may work as an education model. There could be monetary gain or exchange of skills. For instance, facebook, spotify, and youtube offer free services while generating ad revenue. They gather information on your profile and viewing history to determine what kinds of information to target to you. Spotify and youtube even have “opt-out” options where you can pay money to get rid of the ads or obtain extra access to content. This is analogous to the intro to psychology class most design freshmen take, where students had an option to either put in extra work to write an essay, or could opt out by participating in psychology studies (their form of payment). This model is also shown in certain work-study financial aid packages, where students have a portion of their tuition covered in exchanged for working for the school. The downside of the latter is that students have less opportunities to invest in extra curricular or additional classes. Thus, this model follows the statement of “free education, but not all education is free”.
Thinking about the concept of “free” further intrigues me, because money was created as a way to standardize value for exchange of objects. However, the concept of “free” education suggests that perhaps we should revert that thousands-year effort and trade other things for knowledge. There is a gathering called the Burning Man in Nevada every year, where a temporary community is established and people can bring goods and skills to trade. The rule is that money is not allowed; instead, it is expected that participants bring their own offerings. In this way, people are not assigning explicit numeric value to things they gain and give. Similarly, there is a site called Simbi where people trade skills and services for each other. The name comes from “symbiotic”, where animalia and plantae coexist in nature to benefit each other. Not only does this method build rapport amongst strangers, but it also celebrates participant’s niches. However, I wonder the rate of effectiveness for this service. Simbi still uses a sort of value measurement with it’s internal currency. Thus, the role of “money” still exists in Simbi — it makes me interested in understanding economics more, and how we could trade goods without a set currency value.
While this topic does not relate to any project I’m working on, it does make me think about topics I care about and would want to invest time in as my career progresses. It also makes me wonder how we assign value to things, and whether those values are arbitrary. I’m currently reading a book called “predictably irrational” and I’m coming onto a chapter on how we perceive prices, so I look forward to sharing my findings in class.
Wednesday, November 30, 2018
- How can you measure something qualitative? If the goal is to create a beautiful interface, how will you know when something is beautiful?
- You could consider “beauty to what end?” Consider the function and the features that you care about and the features your clients care about. For instance, what is the goal of the website and where are the moments that need to be crafted?
Friday, December 2, 2018
- 5 why’s. Take something you know and keep on asking why you know that, and if you keep on going and you realize that you don’t know anymore, then you’ll see where the belief is coming from (world views, myths, etc).
- Group assignment: the future of education.
OLI
- experiential futures, similar to future casting in the media, provides stories of what the future can be. However, it expands upon that definition by suggesting futures can be expressed through other mediums (installation, performances, etc)
Reflection
FINAL WEEK
Body storming is acting out a scenario with yourself so you can prototype with people to see how it works.
Ex: the way McDonalds workers hands you a bag has been prototyped and tested.
