• Editorial
• ID News
  • International Dinner Iron Chef Face-Off
• Recent Events
  • Design from India: Lecturette by M P Ranjan
  • Spanning The Globe
  • SocialID: The Cubs won??
  • SocialID: Improvisations Workshop
  • Lecturette: Sketching Seminar
  • Lecturette: Design Visualization Tools Workshop
  • InsideOut: Human Centered interviewing
  • Explorago Scavenger Hunt
• Showcase
  • What is ID?
• IDers: Past and Present
  • New IDer: Erik Crimmin
  • Past IDer: Ruben Ocampo
• Of Interest
  • Spotlight on Technology: Tabblo
  • Observed Links

The about, with & for conference is one of those moments of the year where the atmosphere at ID gets more intense, hazy, irritable, exciting and stressful. Let us tell you why:

On one hand the conference that dozens of students have been putting together voluntarily for the last half year, including summer months, is finally happening. By giving a look at the program, it looks like it will live up to the expectations of what some have called the best design research conference in the US, if not the world.

On the other hand more than 30 new students are starting to experience, and try to get used to, the ID perfect storm: an unusual period of intensity that sucks at least 80 hours a week of your life in the form of classes, meetings, papers and conferences. This adjustment obviously takes time, but as they will learn, is just a matter of getting used to it and trying to not to fall sick before the semester ends. But honestly, you don't really want to miss the scoring phase of Chuck Owen's Structured Planning, do you?

If all the work is not enough to break their will to do anything fun with the rest of their time, this year it looks like most of the IDers are reaching previously unprecedented levels of over-achievement. People are just committing to way too much stuff: besides AWF, all the student associations have organized great events: socialID has organized pub nights, improvisation workshops and a baseball night at Wrigley Field; insideID has organized interesting lecturettes and brought a lot of interesting speakers like the fabulous Prof. M P Ranjan from the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India; the recruitID crew are streamlining the must-go recruiting event of the semester, and more and more companies keep on attending year after year; last but not least our engageID editorial team that have been working hard to bring you the best stories and pictures about what is being cooked around ID.

The most amazing part of it: all these initiatives for the students have emerged from within the student body itself, using exclusively the time that it is already so scarce for all us.

The one, two or three years that you end up spending at ID are probably not the easiest ones you are going to have in your life but, after being part of this swarming community of individuals and realizing how lucky you are, it would certainly be one of the most memorable and something to be proud of.

your honored editors
Alex Cheek and Enric Gili Fort

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Upcoming: International Dinner Iron Chef Face-Off
October 20th, 2006.

Do you have secret culinary skills that you never get to show off because, well….you likely don't have time to cook?  You know, knife skills, omelet-making skills, or a penchant for late-night baking?  Do you love eating out in Chicago and know where to find the best ethnic foods and ingredients?  Do you love eating, period?

If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, then bring yourself, your appetite, and a dish (purchased or homemade) to the 1st annual Institute of Design International Dinner Iron Chef Face-Off on Friday, Oct 20 at 7pm.  Prizes will be awarded to the best Sweet and Savory dishes in both the Purchased and Homemade categories (no cheating!)".  All who contribute will be able to taste and judge.  It's up to you whether you want to represent your ancestral kitchen or just your latest favorite cuisine.  If you only want to represent your stomach, however, be prepared to shell out a $15 entry fee.

Libations to be provided by SocialID.

To the Korean culinary team: never fear, for if you win a category en masse, each of you will get a prize.

SocialID is looking for volunteers to help with set-up, take-down, and bartending duties for the party.  Please email joycec [at] id.iit.edu if you'd like to help out!

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Design from India: Lecturette with M P Ranjan
by Eric Niu

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Spanning the Globe...
by David McGaw

Students from all over the world come to ID ... and in recent weeks, members of the ID community have also gone out to at least two corners of the world, taking our user-centered research and structured innovation methods with us.

September 23–25, Vijay Kumar was one of the featured speakers at the 2006 World Industrial Design Fair, in Ningbo, China. Located about 100 miles south of Shanghai, the port city of Ningbo is a rapidly growing manufacturing center, and the perfect place for the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), in partnership with a variety of Chinese design societies, to hold the conference.

Vijay's presentation, "How Design and Innovation Can Help Companies Grow" included many of the themes he has shared with us at ID, including the challenges and opportunities facing companies in the future, the growth of design as a discipline, and how innovation processes and Vijay's legendary Innovation Toolkit can equip companies for new kinds of value creation. Just remember the first time you heard about collaborative design, and empathizing with users, and you can imagine what kind of impact this presentation had on those attending.

ID methods were also on display in a design exhibition co-sponsored by ID and IIT's Beijing office (which serves to publicize IIT activities in East Asia). A number of Demo posters (the same ones on display in the Steelcase Room and on the 4th Floor at ID) were emailed to China for output and display.

Because the conference took place during Ningbo's Science and Technology Week, Vijay and other speakers were invited to meet with local officials in the mayor's office, and participated in a lot of well-organized networking events. There was also "a lot of eating," Vijay recalls, plus a fascinating concert of Chinese folk music. Sounds like it was well worth the 14-hour flight!

MEANWHILE, the other direction around the globe, Enric Gili Fort, Zachary Paradis, and David McGaw spent several days in Walldorf, Germany, doing research at SAP, one of the world's leading software companies. It was definitely work (no, really!), but there was also a free afternoon to explore the nearby town of Heidelberg, site of a renowned, partially ruined castle that has inspired many generations of poets and writers of the likes of Goethe and Mark Twain. There may or may not have been some sampling of local beers and sausages (memories are a little vague on this point), and on the last evening, the team took a quick trip to nearby Strasbourg, France, site of one of the great gothic cathedrals.

Cultural and cognitive human factor discoveries were made throughout the trip. For example, German autobahn iconography—readable at 200 km/h or not? What's more useful for passing the time while travelling: in-flight Bollywood movies (on the Air India flight to and from Frankfurt), or American pop hits from the 1980s, played un-ironically on German radio? And who wouldn't want to trade a bowlful of Cheerios for the simple pleasure of Nutella on freshly baked bread for breakfast?

Both the German team and Vijay will admit that there was a lot of catching up to do after the trip. (Enric, Zachary, and David particularly want to thank their project teammates, in all their classes, for their flexibility and understanding!) But the trips gave all involved an opportunity to both learn from the ways design is being used in other parts of the world, and to share a little of ID's approach.

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SocialID: The Cubs won???
September 26th, 2006
by Mycal Elliott

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SocialID: Improvisation Workshop
October 5th, 2006

Sketching Seminar
by Swapnil Jadhav

The sketching seminar conducted by Alexa Curtis was partly in response to the reaction she got from most of the foundation students who had attended the earlier portfolio lecturette.

In the seminar Alexa covered the basics of sketching like the kinds of pencils, markers, and a few easy drawing tips to enable everybody to get started with the actual sketching.

The differences between two-point perspective and three-point perspective views were made clear. She had also gone into the trounble of making a handout that covered the basics of her lecturette. Surprisingly even a few of the first years (product design) were in attendance.

Her technique to draw human figures as silhouettes has possibly taken the mystery out of drawing realistic seeming human figures in place of the standard stick figures.

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Design Visualization Tools Workshop
by Swapnil Jadhav

This workshop primarily covered the various softwares that are available to a designer. Chris covered the broadest possible spectrum so as to give us a idea of what are the strengths and limitations of a bunch of programs that we will possibly encounter at some point or the other.

He also stressed on the necessity of having atleast a working knowledge of atleast a handful of these because of their ability to flesh out our ideas in to some semblance of form.

The questions raised during the lecturette concerned compatability between the PC and the Mac platforms, the scope of some of the more popular software and also the basic differences between some of them (ie parametric/ non-parametric; vector rendering/raster/nurbs).

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InsideOut: Human Centered Interviewing
By Alex Cheek

No matter how many times we hear it, the students at ID are always interested to hear more about how to present ourselves in job interviews. With a field as nebulous as design planning, it helps a lot to hear how your colleagues describe it. It helps even more to hear it from someone has been out of school for a little while.

To help articulate this, JoEllen Kames, Eunjoo Kim, Ryan Powell and Elisa Vargas, all alumni of our fair Institute and employees of Motorola, stopped by to share with us a lecturette entitled "InsideOut: A Human Centered Approach to Interviewing." They approched the interview as a design problem. Just as in design, in interviewing, their are decisions to be made how you make these decisions can be just as purposeful and well thought out as any project you take on as a designer.

Following a format that all ID students are intimately familiar with, they began by suggesting a discovery phase, a concept, execution and validation.

Discovery: Do a little research on the company and especially, dissect the job description to find clues as to what they are looking for, what kind of language they use to describe their work and how well the understand what ID does. This kind of terminology can vary widely from firm to firm, and just as in ethnographic research, you might want to speak in the user's own terms.

Concept: Decide what skills you want to highlight. Imagine what questions they will ask and how you will handle them. What are your weaknesses? Strengths? Show your most relevant work in your portfolio and have the appropriate level of detail.

Execute: Express a strong interest in the position. Be explicit about your skills. Do not be afraid to tell them what you are good at. Remember to show a little personality. Be aware of the interviewer's attention as you show your work.

Validate: Ask your own questions. Find out about what you will actually be doing. What is the culture of the office like? Finally, it is usually OK to ask how they felt about you as a fit for the company.

Their title made perfect sense. It was a metaphor that showed not only did they understand the interview process well, but their audience for this presentation also. Much thanks to the whole Moto gang and be on the lookout for them in the past IDer section of engageID.

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Last Saturday several of us had the opportunity to participate in a sustainability-themed "neo-scavenger hunt" put on by Foresight Design Inititative called Explorago.  Peter Nicholson from Foresight was generous enough to sponsor us.  The team make-up changed almost daily in the week building up to the event, perhaps because people were wary of the six hour time commitment, but in the end we had a solid team of ID students, Agatha Wilkowska, Rishabh Singh, Ash Bhoopathy, and myself.  The team was rounded out by Lisu Thachet, an active member of Chicago's green community.

Explorago turned out to be very involved and had us running all over town.  The clues were tough to crack.  Ash and I moved to the area only a month prior and had yet to develop in depth knowledge about Chicago, but we were still able to help the team figure out clues, and it helped that Agatha and Lisu were both native Chicagoans.  Nonetheless many of the clues proved to be a little esoteric; one clue was titled "41.88857, -87.63553" and mentioned a "green floor".  That somehow led us to the library (book numbers maybe?) where one of the floors actually had a beautiful sunroom filled with plants and trees.  We were way off; correct answer: The Merchandise Mart.  The numbers were the geographic coordinates of the mart (of course!) which was holding a green home expo that day on the 8th floor.

We fared much better on other clues however.  We found the Dutch art supply (Utrecht) in order to go down to the parking garage of the El station that was right in front of it.  The clue went on to lead us to an I-Go parking space which was near a pole tied with ribbons that garnered points.

Participating in Explorago also earned us free admission Wednesday night to MCA's Sustainable Convergence exhibit, which was a great time in itself.  The event had food from Wolfgang Puck's in-house restaurant, drinks, and a host of exhibits from various businesses and organizations centered around sustainability.  One of my favorites: Noon Solar, a company that offers bags with built in flexible solar panels good for charging cell phones. 

As for Explorago, in the end, we knew we were far from winning.  Those honors went to a team that had dressed as super heroes with Viking helmets and capes made from blue trash bags.  However, we all had a great time being on our feet, trying to solve clues, and learning about Chicago and sustainability.  And despite our worrying, yes, we still got our assignments for school turned in on time the following week. 

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 Unlike an MBA student, I am always frustrated and have a hard time answering when somebody asks me what I am studying. One day when I was traveling with some ID students, I was surprised to hear the clear explanation that Irene Chong, a first year ID student, gave to two strangers on a boat.   I realized that she is a co- chair of the About With and For conference and has probably practiced explaining what ID is over and over again.  I was curious if other students can explain what we do , so at the last ID pub night, I posed this question and limited everyone to a two- sentence answer.  Here are 21 responses :

• "ID is a diverse group of people who are dedicated to learning."
• "It is an Institution of diverse people who work together, sleep together and party together. It means we work hard."
• "It is a jelly mold of ideas that hasn't quite set yet."
• "I hate this question. It is very complicated."
• "ID is wonderful for many reasons, but especially for the network of wonderfully unique and motivated leaders that come here.  The breadth of interests and talents apparent in the students and faculty is what makes ID special."
• "A place to learn to apply design principles to business decision."
• "Institute of Design is a part of Illinois Institute of Technology."
• "ID is a country club man. This is what it is."
• "I don't know, you tell me!"
• "It is cool to learn how to talk about design."
• "It is design big brother, everybody locked inside, no one gets out."
• "It is so different, that's why I feel like I'm swimming upstream."
• "It is a design school that teaches you design research methods that make you a more effective, compelling strategist."
• "ID is a school that thrives to redefine a classic notion of Design through multi-disciplinary methods, and viewpoints that allow designers and other people to evangelize their idea to everyday life."
• "Design school that has combined the concepts of business and design with structured system in the methods."
• "Design school that emphasizes the user in design."
• "ID is a place to grow up and learn fun things."
• "ID is a place where I can combine my engineering background with my creative spirit."
• "It is a place for people of diverse backgrounds to learn to gain the skills and knowledge to be effective designers."
• "ID is party central"

As an ID student, what can I make of these answers? Well, we might have to write a charter first, cluster the answers, try to get some insights, do some framework or use the insight matrix to analyze before we jump to any conclusions.  Unfortunately, time is too limited for us students, so we may just have to forgo the synthesis and use the raw data as food for thought.

Reconsider your answer to this question – isn't it a question that you are always being asked? What is ID?  Asking this question is like asking who you are. What did you learn from school? What are you working on? Not all of us prepare for this question, neither do we have the same answer. Should we collectively define ID so that we can communicate the answer without straining our brains or confusing others? Where is our elevator pitch?

If you want to share yours, please send it to newsletter [at] id.iit.edu

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new IDer: Erik Van Crimmin
MDes Design Planning, 2008

How did you end up at ID? What were your motivations for coming? Where were you working before?
I discovered ID from a project I was working on at my last school. I couldn't understand why the school I was going to wasn't trying to be more like ID. So I came here.

My motivation for coming to ID is probably similar to most people here. I want to participate in the world in meaningful ways, and ID gives people the tools, environment and exposure to do that.
I've worked as a camp counselor, a dorm RA, a beach lifeguard, a history teacher, an economic consultant.

What are your first impressions about ID (people, faculty, the space, the city..)?
People are talented in all sorts of ways. Working as an economist I saw lots of analytical people who could outline complex theories and write crazy programs, and at design school there were students who could boil cloudy issues way down to their essence. I feel like ID has people who are good in both of these areas.

Personality wise, I think it's a pretty collegial atmosphere. The fact that everybody's working in four or five different groups forces us to constantly become better teammates. In order for the best end-product to be produced you need everyone in the group contributing to their capacity, which means listening well and understanding each other.

As for Chicago, somehow it surprised me how gigantic it is. I haven't been anywhere but Millennium Park, Wicker Park, and school yet. The good part of the size is that it allows cool little niches to form that couldn't reach a critical mass in smaller places.

What do you think you can bring to the people here at ID (culturally, socially,..)?
I have roommates who love to throw parties. And I share cookies that my mom sends me.

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

Live in Scandinavia. Especially if you are a Republican.

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

I'm reading a book I like by the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard. He talks about the importance of running both a financially successful and overall responsible company, especially if you want your company to be around in 150 years.

What are the websites you could not live without?

www.theonion.com, www.overheardinnewyork.com, www.wsj.com, and craigslist, which I literally couldn't live without.

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

(editor's note: Erik did not answer this question. Presumably, it does not apply to him.)


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past IDer: Ruben Ocampo
MDes Communication, 2001

My name is Ruben Ocampo. I graduated from ID in 2001 in the Communication Design Track. I was born in Cali, Colombia, and now live in the South Loop here in Chicago. Married?: Yes. Children?: No. Religion: Catholic.

What do you do now?
I am a Design Manager in the worldwide training department of McDonald's Corporation. In this job I do user and technology research to make recommendations on investments in training solutions for restaurant employees.

What was your background before coming to ID?
Industrial (product) design.

In which ways and dimensions do you think ID has changed your career?
It gave me a wider perspective to product design that is not process or material oriented. Today I try to always think of user-technology-business on everything I do.

Can you imagine what would you be doing if you had not attended ID?
Maybe Play-Doh figures to sell on the streets of Bogota, I don't know.

What are the skills learned at ID that you use the most in your current job?
I do a lot of user research, maybe to the point where it is annoying to my colleagues. But I tried to educate the people that I work with on the value of trying to understand the end users of our products. And that it is OK to receive criticism from them as long as it is applied towards continuous improvement of our products.

What was the most valuable class that you took while at ID?
I can't name a specific class, but there are a couple of skills I learned that I use a lot in my job: user research and analysis, and use of diagrams. Taking really complex information and putting into a simple diagram is truly an art if you can master it.

Which member of the faculty influenced you the most and why?
I can't name only one, it would break way too many hearts. But I particularly remember Greg Prygrocki, Dale Fahnstrom, Larry Keeley, Vijay Kumar and Kei Sato (no particular order).

What hard times did you have at ID, and what got you through them?
Leaving as a poor student with no social life or dates in my early to mid-twenties. Graduation got me through them.

If you could have changed one thing about ID while a student, what would it have been?
The back-breaking hours of work. But I've heard it's better now.

What's the best anecdote you have from the time you were at school?
My trip to the SIG-CHI conference in Minneapolis with Adriano Galvao and Shikha Varshney-Desai was a riot. Everything from Shikha's driving skills to the flat tire in the middle of nowhere made that trip unforgettable.

How many nights did you sleep at school?
Two, both dedicated to the final presentation for Larry Keeley's class. I stayed up working at the lab many other nights, but I always went home to take a shower and change clothes.

What is the last book that has impressed you?
The Da Vinci Code was full of nice historical and scientific trivia. Not to be taken literally.

Opinions on school romances?
If you are going to do it, don't try to hide it, people love good gossip when they are bored. ID is a very small place and there is not such a thing as privacy.

What other advice do you have for current and/or future ID students?
When you are out in the real world looking for a job, don't think that ID has to place you in a fat-paying job. ID gives you the education, you have to get your own job. And be humble - don't think that you know it all because you have a nice degree from ID, the real world is full of life-long learnings.

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Spotlight on Technology: Tabblo
By Ash Bhoopathy

Storytelling is a powerful tool for designers and leaders of creative organizations.
Today, we highlight a tool that helps users juxtapose images with text to tell stories that inspire, demonstrate, highlight, and instill empathy in your audience.
Tabblo is a web 2.0 software application that helps you do this, quickly and simply.    Think Flickr but with text and layout, so you can make an online "storybook".
http://www.tabblo.com/studio/

Tabblo offers unlimited storage, so you can go wild developing as many stories as you want.
You can customize your look to convey different emotions.
The pictures, when uploaded, are compressed, and load fairly fast.

Some tips for using Tabblo:
-- Keep your images a manageable size so they don't overwhelm the text (Don't forget basic comm design principles!)
-- You can use a hyperlink to a Tabblo to spread information virally-- Since you're just sending a link instead of a chunky powerpoint, a story-page is excellent email fodder.   (Don't spam!)
-- There is a "Comments" section on Tabblo, so viewers can help refine your story and share their thoughts.  Imagine the potential to get feedback on your concepts/stories before going to clients, or to market.

Here is an example of a page built with Tabblo:
http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view/101646/

Enough lecturing – Just go out and try it.  Send us examples and we'll publish them in the next issue of engageID.


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Observed