Archive for November, 2006

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Making in 2006

November 29, 2006



Originally uploaded by alexandra666.


I made this map after thinking about the state of the act of “making” something. In my former life, I used to be an industrial designer, then dove into installation design and then interaction design and now information architecture. That roller coaster didn’t mean that I never look back. I still enjoy building things with my hands as a professional so I thought I’d map out what that meant in 2006.

What has surprised me most and what I tried to capture here was the way that the act of making something in a professional sense (which is perhaps why I did not include craft here, you’ll have to forgive me) can now take place in so many different ways (in yellow type), using different tools (in black) and attracting different types of designers (in pink) who train and learn in very different environments (in white).

I obviously didn’t map out everything, I’d never finish it otherwise. The names I used are people, companies and institutions that jumped up at me when I sat down at a cafĂ© to map this out last week. I see them as examples and not necessarily the end all and be all.

What seemed obvious to me doing this was that our mental model of “making a product” is slowly shifting, away from ourselves and our hands.

One only has to look at Matt’s work in Second Life to see him “making something” that doesn’t actually come out of his avatar’s hands, but instead materializes itself out of nowhere. Karim Rashid’s work is also reminiscent of that lack of relationship as most of his collections are never prototyped and go directly into manufacture without prior modeling or physical appreciation.

Then there is what i am calling the “democratization of product design” with the world of hackers taking over existing objects and playing around with their suggested functions and forms with platforms like Arduino.

If the web2.0 has it’s “old and dirty media” as Ze Frank puts it, I guess in product design it’s the classic product design schools puking out CAD drawers every minute.
I myself went to one of the few north american conceptual undergrad program and did not concentrate on learning the latest CAD tools. So many of the colleagues I have met however, told me it was a core part of their curriculum. A woman I met recently, working for an extremely prominent firm, confessed to me that although she knew such programs, she told her colleagues that she “wasn’t that great” so that they’d put her on more interesting and strategic tasks.
Ignorance is bliss in this case.

All in all I’m sure some of you will find gaps in this map so if anything, I hope it sparks debate :)

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links for 2006-11-29

November 29, 2006
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links for 2006-11-28

November 28, 2006
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links for 2006-11-27

November 27, 2006
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links for 2006-11-25

November 25, 2006
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Twits

November 21, 2006

I joined the bandwagon of Twitter fully aware that i would only collect a meager amount of friends on it, (since it seems fashionable around the geek arena now to jump into the same friend collecting activity as kids on myspace) but thought it was an interesting twist on Jaiku. It definitely feels like “myspace for grownups” as Matt put it, but i was a bit distracted by the fact that my name didn’t fit into the form and I got the above annoying message. I am of course the first to admit that my name is quite long (25 characters) but I have enough identity issues with using just Sonsino or Deschamps-Sonsino, id at least like to have the choice of what to use, and if I’m asked for my real name, well, to be able to type it in…

grumble

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A half-baked feminist

November 19, 2006

I’m not a very good feminist.

I don’t read enough to know about the entire debate, and I don’t encounter very many occasions that would make me raise my fist and the patriarchal society and all I can brag about reading would be the The Feminine Mystique, and books about gender and design.

I read Anne’s and Molly’s blogs and occasionally cringe at conferences that put together bad “women and technology” panels but apart from that, I usually prefer to shrug and think (naively perhaps) that it’s a non-issue. I go about my daily business and career not concerned by the fact that I might be the only woman in a workshop, one of 2 in an office or 1 of 6 in a building. It simply doesnt interest me.

Then today feminism came knocking on my door. I started reading my feeds and saw Anne’s and started reading the absurd comments on the fark post, thanking god I wasn’t surrounded by such morons. Then I glanced at the page again and saw the very very very stupidly edited advertising for the new Zune on the right banner. Well, i thought, that’s bloody insulting.

Later on that day I ended up reading a post from the very good Sexblo.gs on russian women taking courses in “how to become a bitch” in order to get their man’s attention and the jobs they want.

This all gave me somewhat of a headache, i mean, if you’re not a bitch you don’t get what you want (supposedly) but get more respect for shutting up by a community of oafs who go to strip clubs, then if you are, you’re either a lesbian or an unhappy russian housewife….while corporations continue to think that they need sex to sell toothpaste…

I think i’ll just keep being naive and get on with my work.

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Just when I lose faith in blogging

November 17, 2006

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Mixed messages

November 16, 2006

Italian advertising company…. some disturbing images (even if work safe).

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User-centered architecture.

November 16, 2006



DSC00084.JPG

Originally uploaded by Rudemeister.


This Collectivity project is a really nice show of how architects are starting to listen to the people who live/work/play in the structures they design. This took place in Oslo where they dumped a sh&% load of Legos on the ground and asked people to come anc build what their version of the new museum should be.