seven d.buzz words + phrases
- codify
- tee up
- unpack
- debrief
- radical collaboration
- POV
- framework
today marks the end of my third month at the d.school, and it’s been quite a wild ride. at times it feels like i’m living in a new country and learning a new language (and then having to teach that language to everyone who comes through here — students and executives alike!), so these are a few phrases that i hear alllllll the time around here.
go ahead, say radical collaboration five times, fast. ready….go.
seven unwritten rules of the locker room
- no eye contact
- no looking around for a shower; commit to one and go there without browsing around
- you may not stand idly at any point. you must always be doing something.
- no talking
- no acknowledging the existence of others
- you must be covered at all times unless you are standing under a running stream of water
- you must stay at least 10 feet away from any other human being
what a strange morning. i much prefer it when the locker room is empty in the morning. there are all these strange dynamics that evolve when you put 4 or 5 people in the locker room together… so much awkwardness! delicious!
seven things i heard yesterday evening at design-x that piqued my curiosity
- the idea of “moments of opening“
- a binary system for classifying idea receptiveness in groups
- a method for graphing said idea acceptance vs time
- brainstorming = trivializing (ooooh, i’m conflicted about this one!)
- ignoring as a way to engage with ideas
- the concept of computer software possessing “openness” (still having a hard time wrapping my head around exactly what this means)
- the possibility of a correlation between “openness” and idea half-life
but perhaps what interested me most were larry leifer’s closing comments. he declared that this research, studying the interactions (specifically, the level of engagement) of designers given an innovation challenge, seemed on the surface to be more in the social sciences field than in that of engineering. i’ve been feeling the same way lately while trying to formulate my own research plan for NSF, so in that moment i experienced exactly what had been discussed all evening — a “moment of opening,” where a switch flips and a participant transitions from feeling disengaged to feeling engaged in a split second. i found it particularly fitting to end the night with such an experience. larry addressed the group and proclaimed that designers engage in ways specific to design challenges, that any other field will have its own nuances and that engineering design is in a league of its own, so to speak. he’s been studying this his whole life, so i have to trust his judgment to a certain degree, but i did find some relief in that a figure of academic prominence believes forcefully that studying interactions is a legitimate field of engineering.
let’s hope NSF agrees.
seven things i like about being a short-order brunch chef
- i kick off every week being really productive. nothing revs your engines quite like cooking for 80 on a sunday morning.
- free food every sunday morning… food that i know is good… because i made it!
- keep in touch with folks i wouldn’t normally see. i love keeping tabs on all my favorite swimmer + runner folks.
- who doesn’t like making some extra cash?
- i make people really happy. direct quote from yesterday: “oh my GOD, i’m so glad you’re here… you saved my life.” a little dramatic, perhaps, but definitely makes me feel appreciated.
- practice improv skills. nothing like realizing you don’t have buttermilk 10 minutes before showtime and you need to make buttermilk pancakes for 80.
- develop grace under pressure. there’s more of a parallel than i might have imagined between managing a backlog of 30 breakfast orders and managing a complex project with tight deadlines at work.
so this makes any sense at all, a little context: i’ve been cooking for two undergraduate dining halls (they’re actually mini dining halls, we call them “eating clubs“) since my junior year of college. i invite you to do the math with me: spring quarter of junior year, all of senior year, all of grad school (2 years), and now the beginning of… whatever it is i’m doing now. this is year #4, folks! anyway, the way it works is that meals are provided to the students M-F by a professional chef, they fend for themselves on saturdays, and then sundays are student-run. there’s a student who cooks brunch on sunday (short-order) and then a student who cooks dinner (most certainly NOT short-order!)… but more frequently they just order pizza or something. i started just cooking for one of the four clubs, but now i cook for two of them. i’ve developed quite a loyal following, in part because of my fabulous breakfast quesadillas (to which there is a facebook group dedicated) and in part because of my ability to make things really quickly. every year there is always a large contingent of swimmers and runners who live in the residences that i cook for, and it’s nice for me to stay in touch with them, since i wouldn’t get to normally.
probably irresponsible... but mighty tasty.
