RecruitID is just four weeks away!

This spring’s recruitID will be held on February 26-28 and already includes a great list of attendees. Additionally, we are happy to announce that Tom MacTavish from Motorola will join us as our keynote speaker. As always recruitID is a forum for design and business professionals to meet students from the Institute of Design and discuss methods, offerings, innovation planning and employment opportunities. This spring’s event will be held over three days to give companies the opportunity to connect with more students.

• Company representatives are responding enthusiastically to our invitations. Be sure to check the ID wiki in coming days to see who has registered for the event.
• Registration for RecruitID is still open and alumni and others who receive this message are encouraged to participate in this great event.
• The Spring 2007 Resume Book will soon be sent to everyone on the invitation list, at the same time it will also be available for download from the recruitID website.

Please let any of us know if you have questions about recruitID. We’re looking forward to a fantastic couple of days.

Your recruitID co-chairs,
Alexis Baum and Andrew Buhayar

Upcoming Events

Internship panel discussion

This Thursday, February 1, insideID will be hosting a panel discussion to let IDers share their experiences and advice about the internship process. Come from 12:30 - 1:30 to hear about when and where to look for internships, how to market yourself to potential employers, even what to wear to an interview, all from your fellow classmates. Featuring: David McGaw, Zachary J. Paradis, Lauren Schwendiman, Joyce Chen, Eric Niu, Steven Babitch and many more. Thursday Feb. 1, 12:30pm - 1:30pm Nathan Room, 6th floor.

Job search lecturette

On February 15th, insideID is happy to reintroduce Douglas Look (M.D.M class of 2006) to ID. He will be sharing his insights into the job search process from the M.D.M. perspective as well as from his days hiring and interviewing staff at his architecture firm. Today, Douglas is working at the Doblin Group and will surely have lots of great advice. Thursday Feb. 15, 12:30pm - 1:30pm Nathan Room, 6th floor.

An Interview with Chuck Owen

by Jeremy Alexis

In the previous article, we documented Chuck’s first interactions with the Institute of Design, his scientific and engineering work at Purdue University, and his time spent running the operations of a Destroyer in the U.S. Navy.

Part 2: The transformation of ID

So, let’s pick the story up again in 1961, when Chuck, fresh out of the Navy, returned to Chicago. As you may remember, he intended his first undergraduate degree to be in design but, at the time, ID was in a period of transition and the curriculum would not have provided him with the right mix of science and creativity that he was looking for, so he went to Purdue and then enlisted in the Navy.

His years in the Navy only reinforced Chuck’s initial belief that design was the appropriate career for him. Despite the extra time required, Chuck fully intended to get a second undergraduate degree. However, while Chuck was on the deck of a destroyer, Jay Doblin had arrived in Chicago and taken over as director of ID.

As was common at the time, the new director gave tours to prospective students. During one of these tours, Jay convinced Chuck that an undergraduate degree was not his best choice. Rather, Chuck should enter the newly created Master’s program, which at the time was a Master of Science program. Chuck would finally get his education in design.

It is worth taking a moment here to talk about Jay Doblin and how the design community perceived him in the early 1960s. Chuck notes that Jay was “misunderstood and undervalued.” When he took over as director, over half of the ID faculty quit and moved ten minutes West to UIC’s design program. The design community had always respected Maholy, even though he had strong ties to industry. This “dual citizenship” did not hold true for Jay; he was seen as a “crass commercial designer that did stuff for Sears.” In reality, Chuck notes, Jay was actually far ahead of his time. He was laying the groundwork for design planning when most designers were still solely focused on aesthetics.

While Chuck was at ID, Jay gave a presentation at a design conference in Canada. The title of his speech was “The U.S.A. theory of design.” As you can imagine, our friends in Canada were not too happy about this title, and did not want to listen to an overbearing American designer lecturing about the unique value of American design. But Jay surprised the reluctant audience - many of whom were likely there not to cheer him on, but rather to denounce U.S. design, by revealing that the acronym stood for Utility, Social Meaning, and Aesthetics. It was at this conference that Jay first used positioning maps and semantic differentials to describe design and a design process. The ID community now takes these maps for granted (there were seven different maps in one of my lectures last semester!), but at the time it was a breakthrough in design thinking.

Chuck finished his MS degree at ID and worked on many interesting projects, including a device that allowed employees in a warehouse to count inventory accurately using only one hand (this is important when the other hand is used to drive the forklift or keep you from falling off of a elevated walkway). Chuck accepted a job with IBM in California and was looking forward to the pleasant weather and generous salary, but just before he left Jay convinced him to stay for an extra month to help put together a course on design methods. That month of preparation turned into a semester of teaching the course. In the end, Chuck never made it to California.

Chuck stayed at ID because it afforded him the opportunity to create a scientific basis for design. This new approach ultimately changed the way design is both taught and practiced. In the late 1960s and early 1970s computers were changing how disciplines like economics, biology, and design were understood. All of a sudden, people could use computing power to make calculations that were once impossible. This also meant that new processes and theories were required to take advantage of this computing power. It was under these conditions that Structured Planning emerged.

One of the pioneers in this new field of applying computing power to design problems was Christopher Alexander. In his seminal book, “Notes on the Synthesis of Form,” he demonstrated that design problems can be represented as graphs, and that it was possible to show complex linkages between insights. In the same way that Chuck walked into the propulsion room on the destroyer and recognized the opportunity for increased efficiency and value, Chuck recognized that there were some improvements to be made to Alexander’s theories.

Chuck convinced Alexander and his colleagues to send him the punch cards that ran the programs used in “Notes.” After running the program a few times, Chuck recognized that the equation for creating the clusters did not always work. He went to work on a more reliable equation and ultimately created the program VTCON, which provided a more robust way to create a series of clusters from a group of insights.

Over the years, Chuck continuously improved the program, eventually adding RELATN as a means to create the function structure. He also built the process around the software, including such features as “design factors” and the “means ends” analysis.

It was Chuck’s class that originally attracted me to ID. Someone from my high school had gone to ID (when there was an undergraduate class), and was part of a team that won the Sony competition. From what I remember, he landed a job at Sony after graduation. For someone drawing bricks (yes, that is what I did for two years in architecture school), I was excited to find out that there was a school that taught a rational approach to design that created (from my perspective) some really cool products. More importantly, you could then get a job where you did something you enjoyed and got paid enough to live on - not common qualities of architecture jobs at the time.

Years later, after having taken the Structured Planning Workshop, and then taught students at ID (who were taking the class at the time), I still view the process with the same sense of awe as I did when I saw the renderings from the “TV Command” project. Having practiced design planning and design strategy for a few years, I can tell you that you will probably never be hired to conduct a full “structured planning” project. However, it is hard for me to remember a single professional project that did not borrow and benefit from this process. This process connects ID students to the past, but also shows us a way forward in the future.

At the end of our interview, Chuck began to talk about the future. He noted that Maholy was experimental, and Jay was experimental. He feels that we should never stray too far from this spirit of experimentation: it is the one thing that connects students past, present, and future.

Thanks to Chuck for granting me this interview, and thanks for the student crew for publishing it.

Demo Ditty: Sustainable Development

by Joyce Chen, Enric Gili Fort, and Mark King

First-years and MDMs alike have been asking us what our Demo project is about and how it’s progressing, so we’d like to demystify this six-unit culmination of the MDES program by offering what we hope is the first of many brief status reports given by second-year Demo students to the ID community.

Our work last semester focused on framing the problem of sustainable development and green housing in Chicago, understanding the needs of home buyers and dwellers, and generating concepts to address the shortcomings from both and industry and user perspective. We conducted extensive research on the building industry, interviewed a variety of stakeholders, collaborated with IIT’s architecture department, held a concept generation workshop, and applied a great number of the frameworks that have been bestowed upon us in Business Frameworks, Design Planning, Design Planning/Synthesis, and, yes, even Structured Planning (our final concept deliverable last semester was a solution structure of 63 system elements!).

Some of the more interesting findings we uncovered and will address this semester are:

• The real estate development industry is risk-averse, causing it to be very slow in implementing on the faster-growing trend of sustainable and LEED-certified architecture and design.
• The business model of developers is focused on short-term gains; they are not involved with the life of the building after it has been inhabited.
• As a result of this disconnect, developers end up delivering an offering that is generic and bland at best.
• Stakeholders involved in various phases of the life cycle of a building, from construction to living, perform in silos.
• The knowledge and communications barrier between builders, real estate agents, and home buyers keeps the public largely uninformed about energy efficient housing.
• Current housing offerings do not adapt to changing needs of dwellers over time.

In this second phase of the project, our team will focus on assessing the value of the concepts that were generated in the first phase. We will test the prototypes with stakeholders, iterate on the concepts, and evaluate the viability of each refined concept against an implementation road map. The goal is to develop a design plan and basic business model for a sustainable housing development in Chicago, a system of product and services that will enable and encourage environmentally sensitive dwelling in an urban setting.

We hope to share more of our process, findings, and pretty drawings with you in a future presentation session at ID. In the meantime, you can download and read the unabridged versions of our Industry Context and User Insights reports.

Idiom

by Amy Palit

Last semester the Introduction to Design class was given the assignment of researching and presenting various periods of the Bauhaus movement. My group was assigned to research the history of the Institute of Design, which was founded as “The New Bauhaus” in 1937 with László Moholy-Nagy as its inaugural director. The school was closed a year later for lack of support, reopened as the Chicago School of Design, and became the Institute of Design in 1944.

We were interested in showing the progression of student work over the years, so we thought that the ID archives, located on the main IIT campus, would be a good place to start. The collection spans from 1937 through 1955 and was rediscovered only seven years ago by the IIT’s university archivist. Not only is there student work, but also all sorts of fliers, handouts, and publications from that period. We had a lot of fun combing through the pieces. If you can find the time, it is well worth the trip to look at the archives firsthand.

Some particularly eye-catching pieces were a couple of old editions of ID’s student newsletter, then called “Idiom,” dating back to 1949. The archives collection is a bit sporadic, so it’s uncertain how long the Idiom lasted, but the two issues that we do have are gems. As far as the engageID team knew before, the newsletter went back only as far as 2003; needless to say, the team is very excited about the discovery.

Remember, 1949 was during an age before PCs and word processing. The newsletter is a typed 8-page booklet with occasional ink drawings. The cover has the Idiom logo, hand drawn and shaded with pencil. The articles discuss ID events that the school no longer does: an auction and dance sponsored by the Student Council to benefit the ID scholarship fund, and another one that discusses “Operation Amigos,” a program for summer study at the University of Mexico and travel throughout Mexico. There is even a fun page with a cartoon, a limerick, and jokes. “Miss Ann Tony’s Etiquete Colyum [sic]” doles out important advice such as how to keep a husband awake at movies (use a pin discreetly). This long lost issue of the ID newsletter provides great insight into the students from almost 60 years ago. They had a sense of humor, probably appropriate for their time, but seem as involved in creating meaningful experiences for the student body as today’s class of IDers. Most insightful of all was the announcement at the bottom of the last page that calls for students to submit anything of their choosing to be published in the newspaper. The last statement is a warning that we should all heed: “This newspaper survives only as long as you take an active part.”

Although it is great that the collection was rediscovered, it is sad to think about all the student work and other documents that have been lost over the years. Furthermore, the archives that are accounted for are only to be found in the back of the Galvin library on main campus, by appointment. It would be nice if a display area was available to show the collection to the design community. One would assume that, with modern technology, the work of current ID students will be preserved, but that is not necessarily true. Hopefully this is another lesson that we can learn from.

New IDer: Alexander Troitzsch

MDes, Design Planning, Fall 2008

My name is Alex Troitzsch, a Design Planning candidate for Fall 2008. I am 35 and am from Germany. I’ve lived in Aachen, Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Hamburg, Orléans, and now Chicago. I have been a DJ and music producer and also worked in media system design. Married: No. Children: None. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Protestant.

How did you end up at ID? What were your motivations for coming? Where were you working before?

After working for more than 10 years in the music business (DJ, music producer) I decided to join in 2002 a program of study called Media System Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt.

MSD is a fully project-oriented, interdisciplinary program of study that combined the fields of economics, design and computer science with the aim to develop innovations in the field of new media. The program fascinated me, because it provided insights into structured innovation processes, what allowed me to reconsider my self-taught operation and production principles. Beneath my studies I worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (virtual reality department), in a trend research marketing consultancy and in a company specialized in knowledge management systems based upon semantic networks. One of my favorite professors at university was an ID alumni. I liked his lectures a lot, because they were very different compared to the others. He called my attention to ID and its design planning track.

A few weeks later I contacted ID and flew to Chicago to get my own picture. What I saw, was simply amazing. I was very cordially welcomed by the students and attended some presentations which were outstanding. I also met Vijay Kumar, professor at ID for strategic design planning and was impressed by his thoughts. Back at home I prepared my application and suffered a couple of weeks due to that test called GRE, which is a acid test for foreign students. Finally, I received that letter from ID which said that I was in, at that school in Chicago formerly know as the New Bauhaus. A great honor for me as a German!

What are your first impressions about ID (people, faculty, the space, the city)?

At ID I found people at all ages with magnificent backgrounds and experiences in a variety of fields. Students are ambitious but open minded and they are willing to share their knowledge what I appreciate a lot. It’s like a big family. Some of many benefits at this school. I’m in my first week at ID while I write these lines but I can already tell that the program of study perfectly fits upon my former experiences and education and that the teaching is excellent. The space in which the school is located is convenient, every student has his own desk in a great building. ID is a very demanding school but it also provides space for new ideas and personal inputs. And yeah, Chicago is a great place to live. Lots of opportunities, lots of culture ... a good choice so far!

What do you think you can bring to the people here at ID (culturally, socially)?

Openness and "Deustche Gründlichkeit" ;)

Is there anything amazing from your culture or where you come from that you think people should not miss? (music, culture, design, food, cities, beliefs)

Porsche, sausage, Beethoven & Hamburg

Which designers or thinkers have impressed you the most lately or you are following now?

Art Brut, Camille, Hot Chip, John Maeda, Jonathan Ive.

What are the websites you could not live without?

Probably Google, Wikipedia and this one: http://www.dict.cc

Some other links I appreciate a lot:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/
http://www.mocoloco.com/
http://www.gizmodo.com/
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/
http://www.levitated.net/daily/indexCategory.html

What kind of activities are you planning to do in your free time in case you have any while at ID?

I want to explore Chicago as much as possible while I’m here. The art, music and club scene seems to be intact. I’d like to visit museums, check out the world famous architecture, eat a lot of steaks and definitely see the Bears one day. I also would like to do some more sports, some jogging or inline skating. Or maybe in summer time some sailing on Lake Michigan. Traveling would be another thing I would like to do while in the States. Maybe travel to Vegas or to San Francisco. A longer trip to South America would be fantastic, but ...

This blank space is for you to tell people whatever you want about you. Thanks!

Hey, if someone from Germany or Europe wants some further information about ID, just don’t hesitate to contact me!

Past IDer: Lucas Daniel

MDes, Design Planning, Spring 2005

My name is Lucas Daniel, a Design Planning graduate from Spring 2005. I am 32 and was born in Atlanta. I’ve also lived in Los Angeles, Oakland, and now Chicago.

What are you doing now that you’re done with ID?

I’m an analyst / designer at Gravity Tank. Basically that means I’m setting up the context of our client programs, helping to define the opportunity areas from a business and user perspective, and working with designers to frame recommendations. I’m also teaching an undergraduate intro to design class at IIT and co-advising the planning demo at ID.

What was your background before coming to ID?

I was an interaction designer at Hotwire.com in the Bay Area (back when that dot com thing was in full swing). Before that I was an editor for Web Techniques magazine. Before that I was working for a small cultural impact studies firm working on reports about Southern California Indian culture.

In which ways and dimensions you think ID has changed your career?

ID was instrumental in helping me bridge the divide between an anthropology background and design practice. When I backed out of a career in anthropology academia, design felt like an entirely new thing. I first got into design freelancing with photoshop and html, and I was definitely a “little d” thinker. The context of what I was working on was without a bigger picture or overall narrative. ID really helped me hone my analytical skills and open my perspective up to “big D” Design. All the skills and theory I learned in anthropology were entirely applicable to framing a design problem in a specific context. Putting even small pixel changes or form details in the context of an industry shift or a business metric or a specific user type became such an eye opener to me. It felt really good to come full circle.

Can you imagine what would you be doing if you had not attended ID?

I probably would have been attracted to the analytical lure of Information Architecture and continued in dot com circles. Or ditched it all to go to culinary school or documentary film making or something like that.

What are the skills learned at ID that you use the most in your current job/life?

The best skill I came away with from ID was my ability to iterate. As a writer and editor, I was very comfortable shifting around the tone or content of an article. With design, though, it was much more difficult. Working as a interaction designer at Hotwire.com, I would become pretty attached to my work, and would defend it wholeheartedly. ID helped me see the similarities between writing and design, by constantly asking me to churn the same concept or story week to week. By the time I got to Demo, I was pretty comfortable editing out whole pages and tweaking concepts. This has paid off immensely in my current job. Iterating is one of the cornerstones of Gravity Tank. Everything from research discussion guides to formal concepts is iterated at least 5 or 6 times before it is project-ready. Being comfortable taking criticism from your team is huge when all of your work is collaborative. I can still be bull-headed about defending my work sometimes, but it’s a skill you never stop working on.

What was the most valuable class that you took while at ID?

The economics of product design taught by Chris Conley (and I’m not just kissing ass because Chris is my current employer). It was a great class to connect what we do as design innovators to the impact on day to day business. Connecting a design mind to the inner workings of business is huge once you get into the real world and are sitting with account executives and marketers who are practically evaluating your recommendations. Being able to have a conversation about the metrics of an industry (ARPU (average revenue per user) in the telecom universe, for example) and knowing how a new service impacts that makes innovation grounded and attainable.

Which member of the faculty influenced you the most and why?

I was most influenced by Chuck Owen, because he demonstrated how design is not this specific set of skills that come from a specific pedigree and set of experiences. Prof. Owen approaches the design process as a mathematician and evaluates steps in the design process as mini-problems. He showed me how design is just the constant iterative ability to break down problems, however small or massive, and systematically come up with ideas to solve them, and then do it over again. It’s amazing, because unlike math, there is no absolute. The beauty for both math and design is in the process.

What hard times did you have ID, and what got you through them?

The hard times were definitely difficult teammates. Potbelly seemed to solve everything.

If you could have changed one thing about ID while a student, what would it have been?

I would love to have worked on the problem of class size. Our class was the first class where class size was doubled. I remember seeing the shock on Larry Keeley’s face when he first walked into the Nathan Room and saw 50 students. Classes went on until 11 some nights, we were unable to get quality feedback, and the whole process just felt so industrial. I’ve never understood how you can double the number of students without changing anything about the resources you throw at them. And it’s not an impossible problem to solve. I’m sure all of us have gone through the undergrad intro class where there were 150 students in one lecture and then several break out classes, each with a teaching assistant. It’s a problem that has several solutions, but for some reason, the school has yet to address it.

What’s the best anecdote you have from the time you were at school (professor or student related)?

The best anecdote is probably about my own naivetŽ with product design (of which I had 0 experience). I was in Michael McCoy’s foundation product design class. The final project was to make a piece of furniture. We were encouraged to make as many prototypes as possible. So, for some crazy notion I decided to make a full scale foam core prototype of a coffee table. The problem was that I hadn’t thought through the structural support of the legs. So I cut all the parts out, spent hours assembling everything, and the minute I put it on the floor it buckled and the foam core snapped. I tried 8 different kinds of glue and epoxy (probably damaging several brain cells in the process) but it was clear there was no hope. So I trashed the whole project (weeks of work) and started fresh the next day, with only 5 days to the final deliverable. The result was a full scale wood coffee table that I still have in my apartment that is extremely structurally sound. It felt great to fail so wholeheartedly. But, only afterwards.

How many nights did you sleep at school?

0. Although I did have a couple of all-nighters.

What is the last book that has impressed you the most?

Stephen Johnson’s “Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software.” This book is a fascinating exploration of how complex organized systems work and a fun, must-read for fans and students of Chuck Owen / structured planning. Stephen is now applying it to the Web in an inside-out Google kind of way. Bottom up vs. top down. The Web site is outside.in.

What other advice do you have for current and/or future ID students?

Spend most of your time and energy getting a good internship. Schooling should be for you. Work experience is what matters to others.

Nike to design high performance valet parking tracksuits

by Knil Phight

CHICAGO, IL - Beaverton-based sporting equipment powerhouse Nike (NYSE: NKE), in a surprising move aimed at furthering its core purpose “to experience the emotion of competition, winning, and crushing competitors,” recently announced its intentions to open a new product division focused on developing competitive gear for working professionals that “squeeze competitors’ necks and outperform them at any cost” in the insane world of B2B.

The first product they will launch is none other than a valet parking uniform, and what better place in the world for its debut than Chicago – the city that has the peculiar feature of dedicating and wasting hundreds of thousands of square footage as parking space. What in New York are saturated with cabs and limos and, in San Francisco, bums and bikes, on any given Friday night, Chicago’s streets welcome hundreds of Schaumburgian SUVs and, in hospitable reaction to such a visit, herds of valet employees park these behemoths and jog back through the streets - soon to be donning the latest technological gear.

The new Fall/Winter 2007 collection was presented last Friday night amidst a crowd of cheering and enthusiastic valet employees, some who had waited at the doors for hours in the bitter cold. Several Chicago restaurants, including the prestigious Charlie Trotter’s, closed for the evening in anticipation of a logistical nightmare in the absence of their valued parking staff. The waiting crowd was hopeful that this new outfit “would change their career as parking pros as they know it and hide the sweat circles in their shirts forever.“

The improvised runaway was placed in the playground of the Ogden Elementary School near the intersection of N. State and W. Walton. Nike’s public relations department selected this symbolic spot because, at nights and especially over the weekends, gas-guzzling Hummers and other fancy cars get parked where kids usually play during the day. Valet employees all over the city, and especially the ones that have been fortunate enough to work in that area, have a distinct emotional attachment to this location: many of them highlight its “colorful, innocent and naive ambiance” while others see “its dispersed layout of games and structures” as a “challenge that forces you to perform at your maximum level in order to keep children’s fantasy-inspiring playthings intact after a high volume evening.” Truly tear-jerking.

The American Valet Parking Association has reacted very positively to the announcement and, according to their spokesperson, “can’t wait to see the Printemps-Ete 2008 collection, which promises to respect the traditional waitstaff aesthetic [red vest, white shirt and black trousers] but with an ultra-steroided 1984s Ben Johnson look that will certainly give it more style while increasing comfort. Hopefully, this will allow the valet business to increase its brand image and professionalism, and—why not?—enable our members to charge $30 per every two hours instead of the current $16 fee.” Markets have reacted favorably; at the end of yesterday, Nike shares had risen $2.47, a whopping 3%, and are now at $98.53.

Around Town: BIN 36

by Lynam

With friends in town and it nearby, BIN 36 was on the menu over the weekend for dinner and drink. Seating was relatively prompt for a Saturday night. As such, there was no idling at the wine or cheese bar to report on. But that raises a good question that apparently someone once asked—why would you have a single wine and cheese bar when you can have two bars, one especially attentive to each?

For your reference, the cheese bar is to the immediate right when you walk in. If you stand there waiting for a drink by habit, you might get ignored. The bar’s a bar for standing, and lingering is toward the back of the room.

Dress code: None. The range includes casual, business attire—formal and casual—and your basic InStyle style. Go as you are.

The food. Started with the BIN 36 Market Salad. That’s “mixed greens, goat cheese, roasted beets, hazelnuts, [and] red beet vinaigrette.” Killer, and well portioned. For dinner on an IDer budget, you could happily make a meal of this with a little cheese plate accompaniment. Good thing for me because the Wild Mushroom & Chive Crepes that followed reaped disappointment. Prepared with gruyere cheese, and a Madeira-mushroom cream sauce, and of course its being a crepes dish, it seemed an easy win. Alas, it proved too rich and too froo-froo (ie, small) for my taste. When they say “crepes,” plural, they mean “crepe,” singular but cut in half. I do not recommend sharing this, despite its being under the “shared plate” menu.

Dessert won points for thinking outside the box. Crispy Chocolate-Rosemary Triangles, with rosemary syrup and pine nut ice cream. This came as chocolate filled pastry, and the chocolate was an appropriate dark pudding or custard. The pine nut ice cream made a smart pairing. Rosemary’s being such a strong flavor, ask them to skip the syrup; it goes too far on an otherwise surprising and tasty dessert. A pad of salted butter might also bring the bite together.

The service? Not great this time. But anyone can have a bad day, and I will give it another whirl soon with any interested IDers, because it is nearby and, incidentally, the subject of a new research project for my Communication Design class. Synergy.