Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
After reading this post on iLounge I’m thinking I might finally buy a full-fledged iPod.
That’s right my friends, I’ve never owned a real iPod. I have a first generation shuffle that rarely gets used (lack of a screen sucks), and Gretchen has a 5th generation that I’ve watched videos on when we travel. But I, both a designer and an Apple nerd, do not own a magic music box with a screen (aside from the laptops).
Hopefully, tomorrow will bring this era to an end. My money is on a touch iPod with some level of wireless capability. I’m not betting on full internet or anything, but maybe wireless syncing, or some other sort of wireless trickery.
School continues to go well, and I continue to horde my projects and not put them on the internet for you to see. I’d like for this to be different, but it still remains low on the priority list. Deadlines are even more ominous when you’re the only one responsible for the whole project.
Some notes on the analog cube project:
- Discoverable experiences that offer a rewards are more satisfying than obvious experiences that don’t offer anything to the user.
- What an object says is just as important as what the user brings to it.
- Time management and being a perfectionist do not play well together. Learning to manage time is still the most important skill a student at any level can learn.
Back to work…
Posted in Apple, Design, Fall, Meta | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
Two days into the Fall semester, today begins the third. The past two weeks I have been mostly getting stuff done in preparation for the amount of work that we’ve been told will be hitting us. The summer work will be making its way up here shortly, but it’s not high on the priority list at the moment.
So far there are both similarities and differences between summer and fall:
Similar
- Sometimes it is hard to tell what’s expected out of a given assignment. Even asking questions doesn’t help. I get the feeling that the professors are trying to learn about us by what we do for the first assignments. This might also be a part of breaking us of old habits and preconceived notions about design.
- There still isn’t enough time in the day to do everything I want to do. I knew this wasn’t going to change, and we’ll have some longer projects later, but I can’t wait to spend a few months on the same problem.
- Time management is still the single most important skill to master. It’s strange how I forgot how overwhelming multiple classes can be when compared to a job. Just a different sort of time management.
Different
- It’s weird not having many of our CPID sister program’s students in our required IxD courses. Sidenote: CMU uses acronyms for most everything. I’m so used to seeing all of these people everyday, and I didn’t see a few of them at all on Tuesday.
- The expectations are different. Higher, but also different in that we have new professors and varying subjects.
I think at this point I need to keep my mind open and absorb everything I can without looking backwards too much to what I’ve done or what I think I know. That’s a strange feeling.
Posted in CMU, Design, Fall, Meta | No Comments »
Thursday, May 31st, 2007
The site redesign is finally up for the world to see – obviously more of a blog than what has occupied this space for the last 5 years or so.
Features still pending…
- Individual Article/Post Styles
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I’d like each article to have its own style. I think Inman has a good idea in associating content with a specific time, but I feel like magazines actually do a great job of this by designing individual articles to reflect both the content and the moment that the content is happening in.
The homepage will reflect the style of the most recent article – taking cues from ALA and the recent AIGA redesign.
- Portfolio? Work?
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My day-to-day responsibilities have been changing so much over the last year… I need to update the online portfolio to reflect some more current work, but I’m not sure about the technological underpinnings just yet. Expect to see new work in the coming weeks.
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Thursday, May 31st, 2007
Well, I’m a designer. Lately I’ve been doing lots of designs that end up as something on the web. Before that I designed things that ended up on the web, on someone’s desk, in a tradeshow booth, on my wall, and other places.
I’m about to begin Carnegie Mellon’s Interaction Design graduate program. That means I’m moving to Pittsburgh, PA and for the first time will be living outside of Kentucky. I’ve visited other places, crossed an ocean or two, but I’ve never been away from Kentucky for more than a month.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Posted in CMU, Meta | 2 Comments »