A Dangerous Idea

This past Friday I attended Bolt | Peters' User Research Friday, and there were a couple of presentations I found interesting. For example, frogdesign's Associate Strategy Director Ben McAllister's talk based on his recent Atlantic Monthly article, "The 'Science' of Good Design: A Dangerous Idea." Evidently McAllister got some flak from folks who were saying he is anti-research or anti-science, when, in fact, he is a researcher but is anti-pseudo science - against designers or design researchers attempting to provide oomph to their argument by using scientific-sounding language about their research, as if Science is Certain. He refers to the mathematician William Byers' Science of Certainty, and the economist F. A. Hayek's term, Scientism - both dealing with the idea that science is not certain, it is an ever-evolving body of work moving toward certainty, with some ideas more certain than others, but nothing immutable.

The Dangerous Idea? That research can be used to provide easy answers. The talk covered a topic I often raise with my students - the idea of trying to persuade with scientific-sounding language rather than a courageous and well-argued rationale based on instinct that is well informed by solid research, iterative testing, and analysis.

McAllister starts with a cogent dissection of the word "strategy," which comes from the Greek "στρατός" (stratos), or army (that which is spread out) and "ἀγός" (agos), or leader. Strategy is, in other words, "leading that which is spread out." Leadership in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity.

Humans don't like uncertainty and ambiguity, so the impulse to find easy answers is a strong one. Without the uncertainty, however, there is no need for real leadership. What we're left with, McAllister says, is merely following directions. To provide true leadership, rather than easy answers, is to face the ambiguity. This is the act of courage required of the designer.

I made a LiveScribe "pencast" of the talk, which you can view here. Click on the handwritten notes to hear the presentation, and you can click anywhere (provided you can read my handwriting!) to skip to different parts of the talk:

User Research Friday: Ben McAllister
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Update: Nate Bolt has put this pencast along with Ben's slides up on the Bolt | Peters site, so you can listen to the pencast as you flip through the slides. Ben's slides are delightfully quirky, however, so I defy you to figure out exactly which slides, in some cases, go with which part of the talk. But you'll get the idea.

The Mastery of Color Theory

Mentioning Richard Keyes in the previous post reminded me of his excellent DVD on color theory. He is the keeper of the legacy in this subject, standing on the shoulders of the giants who taught at Art Center in the old days. He is elegant and precise in his teaching, and I am thrilled that Scott Robertson has added this DVD to the collection at Gnomon. I hope it's the first of a series.

Formula "E" Racing

Formula E, Summer 2010 from Katherine Bennett on Vimeo.

One of our regular events in Grad ID is the "Formula E" race, where the students build and race a radio-controlled car that is powered by a rubber band (the E stands for elastic). This is a fun exercise in hands-on mechanical problem solving. We make it even more interesting by asking them to create flyers and short video stories about the race. These are done in my colleague Richard Keyes' class and the results are sometimes quite entertaining. 

Above is last term's crew's advertising campaign. Below is a short film created by Uri Tzarnotzky and Koo Ho Shin for the 2009 competition. 

Engines of Innovation

Just listened to this Podcast of a conversation between Brian Eno and Steven Johnson, roughly organized around Johnson's book, The Invention of Air, but talking about environments that support innovation, how ideas can be made, and what conditions are in place when this happens. Very interesting.

Eno and Johnson talk about how Londoners went from drinking wine and beer all day to drinking coffee and tea in the 1760s, and the explosion of coffee houses that provided gathering places for intellectual discussion. They pose the question of whether this fueled the innovations of the Enlightenment - hubs where different disciplines connect combined with an atmosphere of amateurism being characteristic of environments that foster innovation. Johnson compares this open sharing of ideas and cross-disciplinary exploration to the atmosphere in the Silicon Valley. Eno talks about the period in the 60s in England when art schools were where the interesting music was being made - the idea of crossing disciplinary boundaries being essential for creativity - comparing that to the early days of Silicon Valley, when folks coming from a wide variety of disciplines had a hand in creating the personal computer. The idea of randomness being important to innovation, and that when you have experts from only one field involved, that essential randomness is eliminated.

He also discusses platforms that inspire creativity, comparing the 45 rpm record to iPhone apps. Rock music being very easy to play, combined with the 45 rpm record being easy to record and distribute, plus a thirsty dissemination medium, radio, always looking for something new to play. Johnson and Eno compare this to the current open platform web environment, and especially the iPhone app platform.

Well worth a listen.

Art Center Futures

Art Center College of Design Visioneering Panel

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Last night Art Center College of Design's new president, Lorne Buchman, started a conversation within our community about future directions with a few guests from outside the college. This is a Livescribe recording of the panel discussion, delivered to a packed house of students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Panelists were Katherine Hayles, David Rice, Stephen Oliver, and Andrew Blauvelt.

The discussion was webcast, but I'm not sure they saved it in a form that is still accessible, so I'm posting the session here for those who are interested. For those of you unfamiliar with Livescribe recordings, the audio is linked to the written notes, and you can click anywhere on the notes to hear what was being said at that time. It's a useful way to record a session as long as this one, because you can skip around.

Today we will have a day-long brainstorm on a number of topics: students & student life (life?! what life!! you mean there's life outside of Art Center??!! ;-)), curriculum & pedagogy, outside partnerships, governance & community (promises to be a hot topic, given the excitement of the past couple of years), and future trends & global context. If I have time (we start the term next Monday) I'll report on that as well.