functional & elegant?

Imagine your ideal scenario for three next steps: your summer job, your thesis next year and your first job out of grad school. What do you hope they all have in common? 

I hope my summer job and my first IxD job fulfill all 10 criteria Lynda Gratton writes about in her post on meaningful work. Why am I excluding my thesis? Well, how likely is it that I’ll be developing relationships with anything outside my thesis next year?

All right. (Attempted) humor aside, all three scenarios should:

• be a space for me to explore my interests, come up with creative solutions, and create experiences that enrich people’s lives in some way.
• strike a balance between putting my skills to work and being an opportunity to learn something new.
• be an opportunity to work with talented, driven people.

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Watch the historic debate between Larry Lessig and Jack Valenti on the “Future of Intellectual Property”. If your last names starts with A-M, blog on why Larry Lessig is right.

This is a well-timed assignment: for the past couple weeks, I’ve been working with several of my Interaction Studio classmates on a video based on the video game Portal. I believe that our project is sufficiently transformative to constitute fair use of the original material (and Valve, the copyright holder, fortunately encourages fan works), but the legality of fan fiction has been a contentious topic for decades. When it becomes an issue with the author or copyright holder, it’s considered on a case-by-case basis. (Authors sometimes express that they are wary of being accused of stealing a fan’s ideas, so in that case, an argument can be made that copyright laws are protecting, not stifling, that particular author’s creativity.)

But what about older works, where the original copyright terms have been extended repeatedly? As Lessig argues, why should Disney be able to benefit from adapting works in the public domain, then claim that their adapted works should be afforded copyright protection indefinitely—so they can collect royalties indefinitely? This is a case in which limited copyright terms on the source material worked as intended: the works were protected for a limited time, then released into the public domain for anyone to adapt. But if Disney can protect their own derivative works indefinitely, how far does that protection extend? Does it cover only the likenesses of the characters, or the story as well? 

To me, though, this passage from a 2006 Wired article, which describes one of the Eldred v. Ashcroft plaintiffs, perfectly illustrates how art suffers under retroactive copyright extensions:

There was a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving old movies. (Because early films are protected — with copyright often assigned to owners who can’t be traced — there’s no incentive to save them from the ravages of erosion, and they’re literally killed by copyright.)

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How can a designer contribute to a company’s financial discussions?

Data visualization was the first thing that came to mind, but perhaps that really mostly involves synthesizing the results of those financial discussions, rather than contributing to them.

It’s funny that you ask, actually. I applied to design programs with the goal of making a career change—one in which I’d never have to look at a project or departmental budget again. I realize I was naive in thinking that; if I find myself in a project management role again, which I’m not averse to, I’ll spend plenty of time allocating all kinds of resources. In any case, I do believe it’s important for designers to understand a company’s financial picture for a few reasons.

1. How’s the company doing? Does it make sense to stay? Being aware of a company’s financial decisions can give you a sense of how sound its leaders’ judgment is. I’m acquainted with a startup employee whose bosses recently made a decision to accept a fairly small amount of VC funding in exchange for what seemed like too much equity. Said employee considered moving on at that point, but ultimately decided to stick with the company for another year before re-evaluating the situation.

2. How much will the work cost? The people who do that work are in the best position to give a reasonable, and realistic, estimate…or know when a budget given to them is unreasonably small. (Ideally, they’d be part of that conversation, but that was never how it worked with my former employer.) At the same time, designers need to have a sense of what’s financially feasible.

3. Okay, data visualizations. “Looking at the hard numbers” might work for Fred Wilson, but for a lot of people, visuals work better. Accurate, well-designed visualizations can help all the non-accountants in the company contribute to financial discussions.

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Blog on a recent experience you had buying something and relate that experience to the “consumer decision journey” explained in Edelman’s article.

Several months ago, my husband and I decided to upgrade our TV. (I wonder if we ended up buying from the brand Edelman uses as an example?) We’d been passively thinking about it for at least a year beforehand, but it took us some time to start seriously researching our options.

Consider
I don’t think either of us is consciously aware of consumer electronics brands with the exception of Apple, thanks to their distinct and consistent branding. I did the bulk of the research and started with Amazon and Newegg searches, sorted by customer rating and with a price cap. I also consulted CNET reviews. During this phase, I didn’t pay much attention to brand names.

Evaluate
This was the longest phase for us, partly because I don’t particularly enjoy reading product reviews for hours, but still want to make an informed decision so I don’t regret my purchase. I read customer reviews, keeping in mind that some people like to complain about everything (I glanced at the profiles of people who gave extremely low ratings) or, well, have no idea what they’re talking about (you’re just not going to get 5.1 surround sound from a TV alone, sorry). Potential candidates were chosen on the basis of customer and expert reviews for a particular TV model, not by brand.

Buy
Before I mentally recreated the TV purchasing process, I would have said that the “buy” phase Edelman describes is pretty much the exact opposite of what I tend to do. I distrust the exploitation of placement, packaging, and availability that Edelman mentioned, so I rarely make purchases in brick and mortar stores unless I know I won’t get a better price or find a better alternative online. That way I also get to avoid the extended warranty upsell/request to make donations to charity/credit card offers from cashiers.

For a TV, though, you want to see what the picture quality is like. So we made the half hour drive to Fry’s Electronics in Concord, wandered around their overwhelming TV department until we spotted one of our top choices, and dithered over it some more while we tried to do online price comparisons on our phones. At some point, an employee helpfully told us we could have the display unit for a discount. We went home with the TV that day. I guess this point of purchase turned out to be a more powerful touch point than I thought it would be.

Enjoy, Advocate, Bond
Contrary to the McKinsey findings, I didn’t conduct online research about our purchase after the fact. I was thoroughly sick of reading and thinking about TVs at that point, and just wanted to watch some movies and enjoy it already.

No one’s asked me for recommendations on which TV to buy. I had to look up at the TV to remember what brand it was (LG), so that alone won’t make me skip the consider and evaluate stages in future electronics purchases. But my experience, I think, shows that the CDJ strategy described in the article was a sound one: I made use of positive third-party reviews online, and I didn’t notice inconsistent product specs anywhere.

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Blog on 1-2 questions you would like to ask the founders of Architecture for Humanity.

1. How can new chapters be established in areas that don’t have many local architects/designers/engineers? All 73 existing chapters seem to be in major cities. It seems that rural areas would benefit from having a nearer chapter.

2. How does a large non-profit like Architecture for Humanity ensure that local chapters are well-run and follow the organization’s mission—or does it? On a related note: do they rely on individual chapters to promote the organization, and distinguish themselves from similar non-profits? I’d never heard of Architecture for Humanity, or at least never paid attention to them, and at first I conflated it with Habitat for Humanity. (Turns out they’re not related at all.)

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Blog on why entrepreneurs or startup employees need to “keep it fluid” (as defined in Sull’s article).

Sull says it himself at the beginning of his article: in a volatile environment such as a startup, “uncertainty lurks in every corner and comes in many flavors.”

Visiting Stimulant a couple weeks ago perfectly illustrated the benefits of “keeping it fluid”. As a small studio designing for emerging technologies, many of which have no precedent, they must continually adapt to each project’s quirks. Committing to a solution too early can hobble the project when specifications change, unexpected problems arise (whether technical, financial, or otherwise), or new information becomes available. Startup employees and entrepreneurs treading new ground will face similar problems, and being able to adapt quickly to change is an essential asset.

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