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| March 10 th, 2006. Issue #12 |
| Summary |
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| IDers Hit the Road |
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| ID must be one of the few places in planet earth where time is compressed, people measure the passing of time according to deadlines, and there are no seasons, only sessions. Yes, believe it or not we are half way through the semester and even though many classes should be over, and we all should be more relaxed, these last two weeks have been really heavy. Next week's break should be a time to recharge and prepare for B session. Be on the lookout for socialID's events too. That t-shirt design party sounds like a good chance to explore new, creative design methodologies. RecruitID was two fabulous (say it with Zach's accent) days of meeting, greeting, a little schmoozing, inspiring talks, presentations and informal close encounters of the design kind with many companies. We could feel everybody's excitement about the internships we all dream about for this summer or this first job after school that we certainly would not mind to land. Indeed it has been a fantastic opportunity both for first timers and an engrossing experience for the others, independent of the goals of the whole event. If we were to thank everyone who helped, the list would be enormous, but special thanks go to Jereme Dumm, Kristy Scovel, David McGaw and the administrative staff for their tireless efforts. Actually, I think they eventually did get tired, but they worked hard anyway. Thank you. This intersession week has probably been the busiest we have seen lately with so many classes wrapping up, lecturettes, presentations and of course people arranging last minute travel plans and starting to pack their bags. An informal survey yielded that this next week, IDers will sprawl all over the world. We have heard people will go to Costa Rica, Miami, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Tortola and even Kentucky! Undoubtedly people here are curious and want to expand their minds with rich experiences, but maybe most importantly, people want to get away from their fabulous desks and flexo lamps with whom they have shared so many deadlines and assignments for the last 53 days. Happy deserved holidays all! Your editors, |
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| ID News |
| socialID: T-shirts & Dodgeball | |||
ID T-Shirt Making Party! Friday, March 24, 7 pm
Ever been so frustrated with the printer at school that you wish you could slam it into submission with a rubber ball? Er...even if you haven't, come out and join one of ID's two Dodgeball teams! Intramural games begin the week of March 27 and will last for about 7 weeks. You have the option of joining either a Sunday afternoon or Thursday evening team, and the per person fee will be around $30-$35. WE NEED MORE GIRLS! Please email joycec@id.iit.edu if interested. back to top |
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AWF 2006 gearing up |
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| Planning is well under way for the 2006 About, With, and For conference on user research. In the weeks after spring break, opportunities will arise to take part in deciding the theme and content of next year's About, With and For. Stay tuned… FYI: Check out last year's conference site. www.aboutwithandfor.com |
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| insideID |
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THE SHORT: THE LONG: Anyways, hope to see you there, Eric Niu |
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| Recent events |
| recruitID: Huge success! |
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Our collective hats are off to the great work of the recruitID crew. For three days last week, ID was full to the brim with recruiters from all over the design world. Representatives from a huge list of companies came and lto check out ID's unique methods and work. Among them were people from: This impressive list is even more amazing when accompnied by the numbers. Over three days, about 40 companies held over 600 interviews with about 120 students and alumni. Patrick Whitney, ID's director, has commented on a few of the more well-known blogs about the event with some very nice comments and insights into the great demand for ID students and the new way of thinking and working that they bring to an organization. ( Designobserver.com , Businessweek.com) Also, he called it "wildly successful" saying further, "Several of the visitors told me how impressed they were with the people they were interviewing and the overall event." We at the newsletter agree. The open interactive fromat of the conference was very conducive to casual interaction between students and interviewers. Great student project presentations showed off ID's best work. The cocktail reception Monday night allowed for was a fun way to get to know the attendees in a more personal setting. Our keynote speaker, Craig Sampson from IDEO, was another highlight. He spoke to his work with some large institutions especially in health care, and design's ability to "meaningfully improve the lives of people" while "significantly improving a client's business." He broke down the health landscape into a biological metaphor of DNA, protiens, cells... and on up through family, culture and planet, and pointed out important sites of recent innovation and where there is still room for improvement. The recruitID team is already thinking about next year and has sent out a survey to ID students in the interest of self-betterment, be sure to fill it in if you got it..
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| InDesign Tutorials: Lecturette with David McGaw |
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Tuesday, David McGaw put together an incredible demonstration of how to organize and construct presentations in InDesign, noting some common pitfalls and how to steer clear of them in presentations. His masterful tips taught us how to maximize design awesomeness while minimizing time wasted and team frustration while juggling in-progress documents among a team and across platforms. As a quick recap of the show's highlights: back to top |
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| Aaron Marcus Speaks |
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Every semester during the week between the A and B sessions there is one week of short, intensive, guest taught classes called "intersession." This semester, the renowned communication designer Aaron Marcus is teaching a class on interaction design. Today he spoke during a lunchtime lecturette about one of his research interests, cross-cultural interaction design, an increasingly important topic as more and more companies work internationally. If you are alarmed, amused or even frightened by the hat he is wearing in this picture, then his point is proven. He wore it to illustrate the different reactions people can have to the same stimulus across cultures. His lecture, entitled "What? So what? Now what?" was a must see for those unitiated in the topic of cultural design factors as it surveyed some of the most important work in the field. The work of Geert Hofstede in cultural design factors was discussed at length as it was a main source of information and inspiration for Marcus' own research with his firm AM+A. Besure to check out the next lecturette from Motorola's Sung-Gul Hwang. The announcement is above in ID News. back to top |
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| Showcase |
| Competition in a Cart |
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This semester, the Foundation Product Design class is working on a very unconventional project. They have entered designboom.com's "Shelter in a Cart" competion. They were to design an alternative to the typical shopping cart used by many homeless with a focus on the users needs. When faced with this problem, many people see, accurately, that you cannot solve the most important problems of homelessness with a new cart; however, just as with IDEO's Deep Lift Pump it is possible to improve people's lives in simple yet meaningful ways through design. The class' professor, Wonjoon Chung, spoke with us about it. How did you choose this project? What design methods are you teaching during this project? What are some advantages of a competition instead of a normal assignment? Whatdo you think is the most difficult part of this topic? The foundation students have been working very hard on this project. Late nights and hours in front of the Rhino machine (computer) have been par for the course. "Even though my final result may not be perfect, it has been a good problem to work on," says one Foundation student. "I hate Rhino," says another. Wonjoon is a Ph.D candidate studying “Collaborative Prototyping in the Product Definition Process” He "hopes to finish" by 2007. The goal of his study is to develop a methodology that guides prototyping activities to improve its effectiveness in the product definition process. It aspires to help to facilitate better team communication, to create innovative idea generation with interdisciplinary team members (including users) and to reduce risk, time and money at design industry. In addition, for academia, it will help to establish a pedagogical guideline of rapid prototyping activities in a design curriculum for teachers and students to achieve desirable performance with prototypes in their curriculum. |
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Is Target's Pill Bottle Good User-centered Design? |
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ClearRX This query first occured this past summer as I was working in Silicon Valley. I went to Target with a fellow colleague to pick up a few items. ClearRX had just recently been released and we were both excited to see it in person. Although neither of us needed a prescription filled, we approached the pharmacist counter and asked to see the new design. The pharmacist on duty was helpful and immediately produced an empty bottle for us to examine. As we stood there, discussing our awe and amazement over what we thought was a fabulous piece of work, it became more and more apparent that the pharmacist had something to say. When my colleague asked what was on her mind, she replied with a somewhat surprised, "Do you really want to know what I think?" We assured her we did and were met with an outpouring of frustration related to the new design. While she immediately agreed it was better for consumers, she complained that the bottle was designed in a way that made her job significantly harder, even claiming it took her twice the time to fulfill prescriptions. More specficially, she complained about the inset area in which the label needed to be applied. If not applied just right, it was impossible to insert the info card. That led her to then complain about the card itself. She noted that it took significant time to make as they needed to be folded "just right" and could be easily ruined. By her reaction, it seemed clear that no one had ever asked her what she thought about this tool which she used more than any other. We left in a bit of a daze. How could this triumph of user-centered design be so poorly thought of by its primarly user?!? Over the next several months, I visited three other Targets in the Bay Area of California and Chicagoland. Each time I head immediately for the pharmacist to see if I could get them talking about ClearRX. Two of the three had almost nothing to say, probably as a result of me being a bit too direct in my questiong. The third opened up a bit and expressed similar sentiments to the complaints of the original pharmacist I talked to, also citing the much longer length it took to fulfill prescriptions. The Meaning of "User-centered" This is in an important distinction many so-called "user-centered" designers fail to realize with issues as a result. Being user-centered means focusing on every type of individual who might come in contact with some product or service being designed, not just the consumer buying it. It means viewing products being worked on in the context of manufacturing, shipping, use by sales and retail employees and, finally and importantly, by consumers. Many designers utilize "journey" frameworks in their work in an attempt to consider each way in which a product or service might be used. In this same line of thought, it is important to consider the "journey" of the object or service itself and each of the user-types with which it may come into contact. Working with pharmacists and prototypes on the job itself could have led Target to release a design that was loved not only by consumers but also pharamacists themselves. |
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| IDers: Past and Present |
| With every newsletter we will try to bring to you a profile of a new ID student as well as one from the past so we have the chance to get to know each other better. Our aim is to reflect how varied and interesting every member of the ID community is and how much we can learn from each other, as well as to bring the whole ID community closer together. If you are interested in being profiled, or know someone who would be willing, drop us a line (e-mail below). |
| new IDer: Josh Kaplan |
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My name is Josh Kaplan. I am 29 years old and an MDM student in Planning, Class of Winter 2006. I was born in Louisville, KY, grew up un Cincinnatti, OH and have lived in Syracuse, NY, Detroit, MI, and , most recently, Boston. I Went to Syracuse University to row (crew racing) and ended up stumbling onto Industrial Design as a major. Before that I grew up in Cincinnati eating Skyline Chilly and misbehaving. Married?: Yes, I'm the sappiest husband I know.Children?: Not yet but soon. We're going to name our children “Time” and “Money” because that's what they are going to take from us. Politics: No. Religion: Never. How did you end up at ID? What were your motivations for coming? Where were you working? What are your first impressions about ID (people, faculty, the space, the city..)? What do you think you can bring to the people here at id (culturally, socially,..)? Slang expressions and some non-work/school related conversation. Is there anything amazing from your culture or where you come from that you think people should not miss? Which are the designers or thinkers have impressed you the most lately
or you are following now? What are the websites you could not live without? What kind of activities are you planning to do in your free time in case you have any while at ID? Is there anything you think everybody should know about you? back to top |
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| Old IDer: Phillip LaFargue II |
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My name is Phillip LaFargue. I just graduated
from ID in December in the Communication Design Track. I have a degree in literature and experience in radio and film, and I went through the Foundation program.
Where are you now? What do you do? Are you doing what you thought you would do while you were a student? What are the skills learned at ID that you use the most in your current job/life? What hard times did you have ID, and what got you through them? If you could have changed one thing about ID while a student, what would it have been? What was the most valuable class that you took while at ID? What book are you reading now? Any favorite Chicago spots to recommend? Restaurants: Bars: All good WP spots. What other advice do you have for current and/or future ID students? |
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| of Interest |
| Around town: Topolobampo |
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We have a new restaurant critic this week. Woo Jin Park is a big fan of nice food. Having lived now in LA, SF, NY and Chicago, he has seen, and tasted, his fair share and is kind enough to share his opinions with us.
Perhaps the biggest adventure in eating at this fancy Mexican restaurant is not experiencing the much ballyhooed exotic dishes of chef Rick Bayless, but getting a table. Chef Bayless offers two dining experiences at his location—the more casual, reservation-less Frontera Grill and the dressier, good luck getting a reservation Topolobampo. As a last minute decision on a Wednesday night, my friend and I decided to try to get a seat at Frontera Grill (On a previous Tuesday, the estimated wait was 45 minutes.). However, this time we got lucky and sat immediately at the bar, where you can secretly order from the Topolobampo menu. |
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| Observed |
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| Where the logos of defunct companies go? to the logo graveyard.. http://www.logorip.com/ -Ping Mag. An eZine with the newest and craziest trends in Japan | ||
About engageID |
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