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Came across this in an issue of IEEE Computer today. It’s a simple conceptual model from the 1960s by a guy called Bruce Tuckman of the stages small groups go through; groups such as committees, work groups, and project teams. The basic stages seem obvious, but, as with many models of human behaviour, the value… Read More »
Imagine a search engine that, instead of just doing text matching, attempts to parse your statement into questions it can answer, then provides you with as many of those answers as it can. Imagine a search engine that can deal with numerical relationships and analysis. Imagine a search engine that’s tailored towards returning facts and… Read More »
While brain stoming with Julian about the implications of ‘always-on augmented reality’* on human communication, I decided I needed a way of collaboratively drawing mind maps so that we’d have some sort of concrete record of the ideas coming out of our conversation. Normally, I make notes of my own, but they’re hard to share… Read More »
Playing with a new comments plugin called IntenseDebate. Apologies if anything weird starts happening..
I recently listened to this interview with Denis Dutton on Bloggingheads.tv about his new book “The Art Instinct“. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t comment on it in detail, but I can definitely tell I want to read it. The basic premise is that the art can be explained in evolutionary terms as… Read More »
Went to Yakima a week and a half ago to taste wine. For those who don’t know, it’s a wine region in south central Washington. We were in Zillah, a bit south of Yakima proper, where we visited six different wineries and tasted about 30 wines. Grape hyacinths are the closest I got to taking… Read More »
Following on from last week’s post on wicked problems, I got to thinking about the general sorts of challenges that occur in design, whether it be design of software, bridges, posters, web sites, or even social policy. It seems there’s three main types of challenge: Problem definition – exploring a problem space, identifying a particular… Read More »
This quarter, I’m taking a design studio class focusing on the dissemination of video interviews of members of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. You might not be familiar with the Rwandan genocide and the ICTR, so here’s some background: Over three months, starting in April 1994, about 800,000 Rwandans were killed, mostly with machetes,… Read More »
Today I read a paper from 1971 by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber about “wicked problems” – problems that are intrinsically difficult or impossible to solve in the sense that one can solve a crossword or mathematical proof, or win a game of chess. Wicked problems abound in policy questions and design, and it’s interesting… Read More »
This week, I decided to make sure that Sunday was a day where I wouldn’t have to do any work so that I could actually relax. Normally, I’m really bad at relaxing. I’ll spend most days stressing about work, and this saps my motivation such that I get less work done. In turn, I stress… Read More »