May 2012
21 posts
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“Intolerance for ugliness is not in itself enough. You have to understand a field...”
– Taste for Makers - Paul Graham
“plus the ability to gratify it,” if only more people had that ability, the world would improve faster.
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Close Your Loops! →
Which is to say: the loops are left open. The reading-enjoying-sharing-engaging-reading loop can’t be closed when your platform doesn’t have universally, publicly accessible points.[3] And right now, those points — to be truly universally accessible and pointable — need to be web based. It’s our lowest common denominator of pointability.
So that feeling: if a text isn’t...
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T-55: Pick Yourself
Part of the MFA Interaction Design Weekly Thesis Blog series - 10 of 64
“Pick Yourself” was the theme of Seth Godin’s all day seminar last Wednesday, which I had the privilege to attend because I was a student volunteer. It echoed many of the themes of last semester’s entrepreneurial design class, with a slightly more personal twist.
Seth’s premise is similar to...
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Steve Blank on the Dearth of Hard Science...
THOMPSON: But you think Silicon Valley is screwed, whether Facebook lives up to that valuation or not. Why?
BLANK: I teach science and engineering. I see my students trying to commercialize really hard stuff. But the VCs are only going to be interested in chasing the billions on their smart phones. Thank God we have small business research grants from the federal government, otherwise the Chinese would just grab them.
THOMPSON: But there are some people doing interesting, daring things, like Vinod Khosla.
BLANK: He is. But think about this. The four most interesting projects in the last five years are Tesla, SpaceX, Google Driving, and Google Goggles. That is one individual, Elon Musk, and one company, Google, doing all four things that are truly Silicon Valley-class disruptive.
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WatchThe best framing of “when to pivot” I’ve heard yet, from David Binetti of Votizen.
Surveys, A/B testing, landing pages, etc. are all good ways to find a local maximum for a given set of assumptions (i.e. you current business model)
If you’ve hit that local max and your model still isn’t a sustainable business, it’s time to restate your assumptions (i.e. to...
“In each case, we have resources that were once dedicated to advertising instead...”
– Why UX is better marketing than marketing (via Findings.com)
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T-56: GitLaw
Part of the MFA Interaction Design Weekly Thesis Blog series - 9 of 64
A few days ago a blogpost proposing a git style platform for legal documents hit the front page of Hacker News, and generated quite a bit of discussion. Several friends who have heard about my thesis idea forwarded it to me. My thesis proposal for a digital, participatory repository for legal code is not a new idea; people...
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“Maybe your company shouldn’t scale.
Maybe you shouldn’t focus on making things...”
– A Focus on Scale | Austin Center for Design (via Findings.com)
Questioning the metrics of success. Do success require scale? What does scale burden you with?
“But because they never really take the leap and quit their job, they can give ...”
– Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston (via Findings.com)
“Haidt says that our emotional side is an Elephant and our rational side is its...”
– Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath, Dan Heath (via Findings.com)
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Designing in the Browser
Heads up, the following is a technical reflection blog post. I do a lot of web development after all.
Launched the SVA MFA Interaction Design Thesis Festival website on Tuesday. Another foray into responsive design, using Andy Clark’s 320andUp framework. From receiving the basic identity and content structure to launch, the site took about five days.
The website is relatively straight...
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Watchbarbaradewilde:
Physical Computing Project created by myself and Tony Chu. A indoor wind chime that moves by sensing the motion of the wind outside. SVA coursework with Rob Faludi.
Thanks Barbara!
Another example of the diverse course work at SVA IxD. In the same weeks we were running around shooting these videos, making Arduinos work, we were also trying to get entrepreneurial design...
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T-57: Meaning finds you, if you listen for it
Part of the MFA Interaction Design Weekly Thesis Blog series - 8 of 64
This past weekend marks the fourth Financial Literacy for Youth conference, and the first one I did not attend. Flipping through the photos on Facebook was a bittersweet experience. I miss the young ones I mentored, and I am immensely proud of what they’ve achieved.
Almost four years ago, two friends of mine approached...
“Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look...”
– David Brooks, “It’s Not About You” (via The New York Times)
Amen. (via erintao)
So, have patience to listen for that call, and have courage to answer that call.
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Chen Guangcheng has a posse and Ai Weiwei is... →
Memes in China as decentralized cultural resistance against political repression. Once again, this is why we have to protect the internet, and protect digital public spaces.
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Balance and Pace
I struggle with balance a lot. I have a habit of going to extremes, particularly when it comes to achievement. I am a serious workaholic. My nickname among several social circles is either “machine”, or “robot”. It is not a mark I wear with pride.
What does it mean to be balanced anyways? Some of my friends advise me to do “normal people things” like watch more...
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Eight Months of Graduate School
It’s been said that life’s trajectories only become clear in hindsight, and that’s certainly how I’ve felt about this year. My teenage years of painting lessons, my college major studying computer science and psychology, and my odd kinship with commerce students all strangely map to aspects of what I am studying in graduate school in interaction design. It’s only now,...
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T-58: A Plan for the Summer
First year of graduate school ended Monday, and so my summer begins. In the spirit of working in public, I want to share with you my plans for the summer. Last week, I’ve proposed two ideas for my thesis project next year, both of which revolve around the idea of a networked and social approach towards information distribution problems. This summer I plan to interview lots of people, conduct...
April 2012
23 posts
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Fail in Public
Learning, as I was once told, is a two part process. The first part is experiential. You have to go through a process of doing and making and observing, which allows your brain to absorb the information. The second part is reflective. You have to go back and look at all that you absorb and examine them, connect them, integrate them together.
So in the spirit of working in public, I am going to...
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“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the...”
– Quotes that Inspire Acumen Fund: John W. Gardner « Acumen Fund Blog
(via James Wu)
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“But if I’m working on products and services that are explicitly intended to...”
– Collateral Damage | Austin Center for Design
Two weeks ago, Jon Kolko visited SVA and spoke about social innovation and tackling wicked problem using design thinking. At the end of the session, I asked him about the difference between “Lean Startup” style thinking, and user centred...
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“There will be ratings and photos and a network of friends imported, borrowed, or...”
– The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic
A carefully considered, detailed look at the state of progress (or the lack thereof) in social web. Great read.
I do have one bone to pick. If Alexis’ suggestion is that “more...
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T-59: Work in Public
Part of the MFA Interaction Design Weekly Thesis Blog series - 6 of 64
The third session at the Penny conference was by comedian and director of digital at the Onion, Baratunde Thurston. Baratunde recently wrote How to be Black - his talk was structured around how he wrote that book, and all the things he learned from writing it. His process provides a model of self-directed learning enabled by...
“But I take it for granted that social change is driven primarily by emergent...”
– William Gibson in his Paris Review interview (via cacioppo)
Soundboy: Towards a unified theory of starting up →
soundboy:
Wired asked me to write something for the last issue about start-ups, aka that ol’ heartache.
Here’s my attempt at a unified theory for starting up:
1. Find the people you believe you could build something amazing with. These are your cofounders.
2. Find something you love deeply that…
Wonderful encapsulation. Perhaps a “start up” ought to be what you care...
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Which Class Should I Teach?
Update: After hearing Adam Braum speak at the Penny Conference, I am going to donate the proceeds for this class to Pencils of Promise. Let me know which class you want on twitter @tonyhschu!
I’ve run the “Learning HTML through the Lens of Typography” classes three times now, and the fourth class is coming up this Saturday. I’ve learned a bunch of lessons from the...
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T-60: Shh, I'm Working
Part of the MFA Interaction Design Weekly Thesis Blog series - 5 of 64
I am not sure what ought to be my biggest takeaway from Jon Kolko’s visit to SVA this past week ought to be. One sentiment does stick out though. While he did not actually use these words, the message was this.
“Stop making excuses. Stop waiting for permission. Go do what is important already.”
I can...
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Christian Arca: Why Bother Dreaming? →
Christian Arca responded to my blog post Better Dream, wondering if transparency through social media is interfering with our ability to dream:
Now, with their broadcast available it’s much easier to play pretend without actually aspiring. Why bother becoming someone when you can make yourself feel like someone without any of the hard work? Perhaps this is why Seth Godin found out in his...
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tash wong: Starting a coaster company →
About a month ago Tom announced the start of Coastermatic. Coastermatic is a service that allows Instagram users to print their photos on to stone coasters. We’ve been working on it rather intensely for the last 5 weeks and are getting pretty close to launch.
Designers as entrepreneurs? Your instagram photos on stone coasters? Look no further than my amazing classmates at SVA Interaction...
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T-61: Angry (Legal) Coder
Part of the MFA Interaction Design Weekly Thesis Blog series - 4 of 64
In our first thesis preparation class, Liz talked about emotions as a good indicator for what makes a good thesis idea. The ideas or problems that makes us tear up, or make us angry are good places to start. It means those problems touch us deeply, and that is a well of energy that will sustain us as we push towards thesis.
...
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Skillshare Lessons Learned
In March I taught my Skillshare class “Learning HTML through the Lens of Typography” twice. The class was design to demonstrate the underlying organizational principles of HTML and CSS to people who are already familiar with design and typography.
I think I did ok. The feedback I’ve gotten was fairly positive overall. I did learn a few lessons about teaching though, and thought...
“One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done…”
– Marie Curie in a 1894 letter to her brother, upon having just received her second graduate degree, and other meditations on the essence of science. (via explore-blog)
When you really care, the distractions melts away.
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T-62: Better Dreams
Part of the MFA Interaction Design Weekly Thesis Blog series - 3 of 64
“Our culture has a dreaming problem.”
In his manifesto on education, Stop Stealing Dreams, Seth Godin wrote about a survey of high school students by journalist Jake Halpern. He asked students from three high schools in Rochester, NY.
“When you grow up, which of the following jobs would you most like to have?”
...
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Networks and Conversations Part 2 - Connecting...
My chat with Anil cast some of my recent conversations with in a new light. On Thursday morning I had a chat with James Wu, who manages branding and creative direction at Acumen Fund. I wanted to talk to James about volunteering with Acumen Fund in the coming summer. We had a great conversation about design, social innovation, and volunteering for Acumen Fund.
After talking to Anil, however, I...
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Networks and Conversations Part 1 - Talking to...
I had a chance to chat with Anil Dash this past Friday, and the conversation is making me rethinking how networks are formed.
I’ve been thinking a lot about networks recently, especially in context of entrepreneurship and building scalable businesses on top of internet infrastructure. The word “network” for me conjured the idea of platforms like Kickstarter and Petri Dish. I...
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Smoking, Spitting, and User Research
Last year at a friend’s bachelor party I smoked a cigar. Apparently an expensive Cuban one too. I had never smoked anything in my life. It was kind of an interesting and awful experience.
Today as I walked home a smoker spat right in front of me, leaving a spot of spit on the sidewalk which I sidestepped. “Why do people do such disgusting things?” I wondered.
The experience of...
March 2012
23 posts
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Teaching HTML from the ground up
It pains to me to see designers intimidated by code. At SVA I am surrounded by talented designers who have amazing intuition and great taste in interaction design. Few of them get to see their designs to fruition, however, because they never learned to code.
I want to change that.
I try to point my friends to tutorial sites, and implore them to experiment. With little guidance, however, these...
Doing Science for A Dollar
As part of a class assignment, I spent 70 minutes on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as a worker yesterday. I was determined to make it a non-tedious experience, and to learn something about the “future of work.” The idea of a distributed market of isolated tasks, available to millions online initially seemed promising.
Perhaps the mechanical turk model points to the future of work,...
I think that a failure of statistical thinking is... →
sarzha:
- Steve Pinker, in a fantastic interview with the Guardian
It’s a little bit crazy to me that you get a science degree from a top-flight university without ever having taken statistics. Cough, cough.
I am ashamed that I haven’t taken a proper statistic class. Maybe that’s what I should do this summer.
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T-63: I am a product of design
Part of the MFA Interaction Design Weekly Thesis Blog series - 2 of 64
Our cybernetics instructor Paul Pangaro introduced us to a wonderful word last term: Autopoiesis. Definition via Wikipedia.
(from Greek αὐτo- (auto-), meaning “self”, and ποίησις (poiesis), meaning “creation, production”) literally means “self-creation” and expresses a...
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“Why don’t we already focus our efforts on wicked problems? It seems that...”
– “A Large-Scale Distraction” from Wicked Problems by John Kolko
My entrepreneurial design classmates may remember me tentatively raising my hand when Buzzfeed’s Jon Steinberg asked, “Who hates advertising?” I couldn’t quite articulate my position, and it was...