Design Skills

Some Definitions for Social Design Class:

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is taking an idea and thinking of a creative and sustainable way to solve it. Design thinking is "thinking outside the box". You aren't trying to invent the wheel, your just trying to make it better with design thinking. Its a way of taking an exisiting problem and solving it with a solution that will improve the conditions the problem came from.

Sources:

http://designthinking.ideo.com/

http://www.idesignthinking.com/ <--Great Site


What is "Design Skills"?
Design skills is a broad term. I can be tecnical skills with 2D or 3D modelling or it can be abstract skills like inventiveness and imagination. From http://www.lukew.com/ it is the "mingling of medium and message".
Sources:
http://design-skills.org/
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?613

What is "creativity"?

Creativity is thinking of something in a new way. It is being uique, and a mix of social flair and design skill.

Sources:
http://creativity-online.com/
http://www.creativityatwork.com/articlesContent/whatis.htm

Retirement Elusive even in South Korea

I was reading the Monday, September 14th, New York Times today and I came across the article "In South Korea, Retirement Can Be Elusive". We were talking in last social design class how in Asian cultures it is more prevelant for Adult children to take care of their parents. This article says that tradition is changing. In this new modern world, there seems to be just no place for the elderly. The government of South Korea is holding silver job fairs, basically job fairs for the 70+ year olds living there. In a recent survey there, they found in 2009 only 48% of elderly South Koreans were living with their children. That is down from 72% in 1990. It seems to be drastically in decline as financial stressors and lack of room in urban cities increases.

It is really sad to see this tradition changing. I have always respected that in the Asian cultures and wished that the U.S. Cultures would adopt some of the time principles. At the same time, I personally do not like my grandparents much and would not like to live with them. I guess in that resepct I am a hypocrite.

The New Ipod

(delayed article post from Thursday, September 10th due to no internet)

I was reading the New York Times and flipping through the 50 million articles on the healthcare debate and the flood in Turkey when I found an article that was seemingly small in comparision to the rest but struck a cord I guess.

It was about Steve Job's speech about announcing the new Ipod and talking about his Transplant which I might add was a bit off topic. The article centers not on the new electronics but about the man. I think honestly they should have covered something about this new contraption I am selling to hundreds of kids a week at work.

This "new" ipod, is a revamped version of the old ipod; however, they had added a camera and a video recorder (but no microphone to pick up sound, sorry kiddo you gotta buy that seperate). I want to know why EVERYTHING today has to have a camera. Isn't it enough to hold an entire collected of DVDs in the palm of your hand? Now you have to have a digital camera too? How long until someone hacks the wifi in the ipod touch and uses it as a digital stalking device? I remember the days of the good old fashioned CD player. They were big and clunky and you couldn't hide them in class so you were actually forced to listen to the teacher and you could only hold a cd at a time so you were forced to listen to the same band preform a few times and you would stop. Today kids are so plugged into their ipods it will be a miracle if they can hear in 20 years.

Ideas for Social Design Project 1

I was thinking about this for a while and I decided to center around a few of the more important issues from my Creative Caffeine assignment (that can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42073068@N05/3883091760/in/set-72157622226771476/).



I am a youth cheerleading coach and my girls are between the ages of 7 and 9 years old. They act and look much older then they are. I personally think they are trying to be little Hannah Montana's. But, the more disturbing part is a lot of them wear short skirts and makeup. Due to privacy issues with me being a coach I can't show the faces of these girls but you can see just from what they are wearing the problems.

This got me to thinking what really was the problem and how I would work it into a guerilla/DIY project that would work on a larger scale. I think the problem is not with the youth of America alone. I think all women find this unconscience need to wear make-up and paint themselves up like clowns to fit societies idea of beauty.

More research of the history of make-up to come; however, I have some ideas about what I might do:
1. Window clings to the bathroom mirrors of the women's room with informational facts about the history of make-up.
a. clings with a slogan like "think before you ink" or "save it for the clowns"
b. "Why?" typography cling that is asking "why are you doing that" with a researhed quote about media influence or about man being attracted to women due to appearance alone.
2. Informational Brochure, would probably be linked to the window clings maybe taped to the inside of bathroom stalls talking about the history of make-up and the history of female oppression and how they are linked
3. Stickers that just say "why" stuck to boxes of make-up.

---------------> Creative Caffiene for this Project
I walked around and took notes about what I saw for an entire day. Every time I would go to the bathroom I would have to wait in line to wash my hands for the large line of girls fixing their makeup and hair.

Recession Not Just a US Problem

In the last couple of days, there has been a lot of talks about schools and economy in the United States news. I know that Towson Catholic was being forced to shut its doors today due to a lot of fund and a few schools throughout the US couldn't show Obama's speech due to a lack of technology to show it. The lack of technology was due to recent budget cuts throughout the school system making it impossible for the schools to replace broken a/v equiptment.

I was reading the New York Times today and I was surprised to read an article called Recession Batters Britain's Smaller Private Schools. It told a similar story to the Towson Catholic saga that is playing out right now. St. David's School for Girls was recently forced to shut its doors due to a lack of funding. This displaced 240 girls some of them seniors in high school. The school could just not afford the upkeep of the building and the increasing technological demands of today's educational system.

So if this is a global problem of schools not being able to keep up finances in today's world, then what kind of education do we expect our children to be able to recieve? If there is no money to buy the things needed to keep the school running how long will it be until it effects our public school system? I know for years they have threatened to cancel programs like music and arts but finding doing so would only negatively effect the children. How long until they find something new to cut? Like gym? I mean there has to be a way for the school system to be more cost-effective.

This is EXACTLY what we were talking about today!

This article (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20090903/pl_ynews/ynews_pl888_1) is a perfect example of what we were talking about in today's social design class. Frankly, it really pissed me off to read this. HOW can people think a speech will "brainwash" their children and why would they want to? Plus, what he is talking about (staying in school, doing well, ect.) should be something that is indoctrinated into our children! What is so wrong with convincing a child to pursue their education! I am wondering if it boils down to the fact we said today, "no one can ever be happy" with the government. I think they are taking offense in this speech just to take offense to something. I personally want to applaud Obama for the courage of making a speech to such a broad audience with such different levels of maturity.

What IS Social Design?

I was asked for my Design class to define "Social Design". So, I began my research like any college student would-- wikipedia. To my dismay, I found wikipedia to be as clueless as I was on the subject: (and I quote wiki here) "Social design has many definitions and the term is put to very different uses across the globe. Some definitions exist within the design world and refers to design in its traditional sense, meaning the shaping of products and services. Other definitions refer to social design as the creation of social reality; design of the social world" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_design).

The last statement got me to thinking. When I think of "creation of social reality" I can't help but get images of Adolfus Huxley-esque Utopian societies. How can one engineer society? I also realized, that my original perception of social design being a "community- centered" principle might have been short sighted. If social design is defined culturally, or even the definition of culture itself, it seems hard to pinpoint what social design truly is. I think in order to determine a definition for social design one must determine what definition they are looking for: personal, regional, or global.





From there I continued my search and I found a site called osocio.org which linked me to a youtube video called "We Cannot NOT Change the World!" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_V-zuDbO-k&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fosocio%2Eorg%2Fmessage%2Fwhat%5Fis%5Fsocial%5Fdesign%2F&feature=player_embedded#t=89 ) This was actually quite helpful. It interviewed various social designers and have them define what social design meant to them. This video is very informative in almost a scholarly way about the principles of their definition of social design; however, I still felt it was very ambiguous as to what "social design" was. So, I decided to look at the social designers featured in the video in more depth.



Illegal Beauty (http://www.illegalbeauty.com/)

Illegal Beauty is an organization that follows the stories of "people without papers". Basically, they have set up an awareness campaign about the life illegal immigrants face when they come to a new country. Illegal Beauty works in many different mediums from songs and fashion to full installations.








Retired Weapons (http://www.retired.jp/)
Retired Weapons is an art project dedicated to ending violence and sadness. They publish images of silhouetted weapons with flowers growing out of them to spread there word of peace.


From those two sites alone and the video I have started to come to a conclusion about the definition of "social design". To me, social design is about caring--caring about anything really. Social Design is art, ideas, or actions devoted to social betterment and change. Social Design seeks to right wrongs at home and globally. Anyone can be a social designer, they just need passion and drive towards fixing something in there daily lives. I still feel that I am lacking some information about the true meaning of social design but, I feel I am approaching a definition. I will update as I find out more.

For my Jewelry Majors

Last year I was surfing around the web looking for inspiration for a sculpture project in my 3D design class and I stumbled upon the work of Jennifer Miller. She runs a small business called "Featherdust Studios". I am usually not very interested in jewelry, but, her work has such a whimsical feel to it. I honestly recommend everyone to check out her work. I prefer her jewelry over her illustrations but, both are quite nice. http://featherdust.critter.net/

Right: Tidal Swirls © Jennifer Miller

Below: Checkerboard Smokey Quartz © Jennifer Miller

I really like the way she twists the metal around the stones to incorporate them into the peice. All her works are handmade and she sells each peice she makes. Also, you can find short videos on her website about how she makes them and how they reflect in the light.

Jury Duty for the Digital World

I got to reading an article today in the New York Times about how jury duty is becoming a hardship to those serving (article can be found here http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/us/02jury.html?_r=1&hp). This is a fact that I have never spent much time looking into, but it does make sense. For me myself going to school and working on the weekends part-time in retail, a month or so away from work would pretty much leave me broke. How do they expect people working from day to day to make a living to take a month away from their job to serve on a jury. If I am not at work I am not getting paid, which is true for most of the people in society in today's world.

This got me thinking about the way we handle jury duty in this country. It is a digital world, why are we still expecting people to show up for jury duty? With all the technology we have, it seems so primative to expect people to drive downtown to a courthouse. While I realize court is not supposed to be "fun", why have we not brought these courts up the the 21st century!

That's when I got the idea! We have digital conferences for large businesses were people all over the country meet to swap ideas. So, why can't we do the same for courts? If they set up trials over the internet, like in the form of a streaming video for the jury it would eliminate a lot of the hassles associated with this article. It would be like CourtTV but for the jury members. To me it seems so simplistic an idea, that is seems almost idiotic we have not set up a system like this already.

I have thought about the more practical aspects of how you would monitor these jury members to make sure they were actively involved in the trial. There would have to be some kind of system involved; however, I think there is an easy solution to this. If there was a device made like a net book for jury members to use during the trials I think it would solve this. This "eCourt" as I have named it, would basically be very limited. It cannot access any web browser or allow any personal information to be entered onto it. Basically it would be little more then a small portable dvd player that would stream the trail live to the jury members home. The jury box would still exist but in a different way. Instead of 12 chairs it would have a neat row of monitors. The monitors would display the jury members webcam located on the top of their "eCourt" laptop. These laptops would be distributed to the jury members prior to the trail and collected at the end.

I know this all seems very far out there, but these are tough economic times. Everything else is going digital and it is only a matter of time before something will have to change in the court systems. Why not make them digital now? It will save time and resources later and make the jury duty process more streamlined and convinent for all those involved.