Back to Shcool

 

I'm happy to be back in school, and now that I'm back, blogging is now enforced twice per week, which is part of the reason I tried to get in the habit over break.   More of my posts will be oriented toward school, but I still plan on posting about random design issues.

Our new project is concerned with way-finding, or 'environmental legibility', through which we will utilize some of the newer creativity concepts, like 'body-storming', and '2nd order' thinking.  Second order thinking doesn't have a handy link, but it's basically removing yourself and your desires, ego, preferences, etc., from the situation at hand, and letting the solutions be oriented to real and imaginary users of a system, not you.

Perhaps I can re-define that.  It's simply being objective in the design process.  I imagine graphic designers run into this a lot.  If you love designing concert posters, would you be able to design a poster for a concert held in a retirement home?  Your users are most definitely not you, and if you don't know how to step back and solve from an objective standpoint, you're not going to get called back for more work.  I think those situations are easier to see the reason for objectivity.  I suppose the real problem is when you want to design something for which you could be the target market.  The ability to remove your ego from, say, cell phone design, is probably not as common among a great deal of designers, as that situation makes it harder to notice your own bias, and user/designer confusion abounds.  

So, back to the project; we'll simply find a place to go, and place to come from, and research all the possible decision making between those points.  After mapping out the numerous decisions that are made, the existing environmental legibility, and maybe mapping any of the environmental elements, we will construct a representation of the current reality as a baseline to work from.  Then, we'll take this 4 minute walk, and reduce the mental strain to the greatest degree possible.  This means the golden mean between no information, and too much information.

 

On another note, I just want to further explain the audience of this blog, its not a blog about George, its a blog about design, and I just want everyone to know, you'll be bored to tears if you come for entertainment.  Hopefully, in a few years, I'll have some sort of presence in the design world, and will be able to point back to this for any future employers.  Let me set a goal actually, by the time I graduate, I hope to have at least one link from a major design site to one of my posts.  That goal is pretty 'up-there', but Core77 posts like 12 times a day, so it's not insane to think I could get a link over the next 3 years or (quick math) 130,000 posts.  Plus when my rendering skills are better, this will also work as a long-term portfolio.  I'm also taking a non-fiction essay writing class, so this terrible writing will get better.  I hope to find my voice by the end of 2011.  We'll see.

GeorgeP