Sunday, November 6, 2011

Three things I found most meaningful to me:
1. When Jobs mentions how he would take abnormal classes that struck his interest, an later they became a huge part of what made a Macintosh a Macintosh. This really showed me that doing what is interesting can often be more helpful that doing what is required. so in short, feed your imagination.
2. When he talks about getting fired from his own company, I remembered a quote from Harry Potter. Dumbledore says "happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the lights." This is similar in meaning. Jobs had lost everything he had worked for. Just by turning on the light, and bringing about new ideas, he was able to make yet another revolutionary company and find a wife.
3. the live each day as if it were your last is an old quote, and yet maybe one of the most wise. We never know when we will die; guessing is futile. I cannot put into words what it means to me. 

Energy Sources







Tuesday, November 1, 2011

The Deep DIve

1. “From the buildings in which we live and work, to the cars we drive, or the knives and forks with which we eat, everything we use was designed to create some sort of marriage between Form and Function.”


2. The folks at IDEO state that they are not experts in any given area. But, they do claim to be experts on the __Procces of how to define stuff___, which they apply to the innovation of consumer products.
3. After the team of designers is brought together, told the problem, and informed they have five days to “pull it off,” what phase of the design process do they immediately engage in?

  • Brainstorm
  • give useful comments.
  • Come up with ideas

4. Give two examples of what the team members did during this phase.

a.Give info and facts about the problem.
b.Brainstorm, and work as a team(teamwork)


5. List five rules-of-thumb that IDEO employees follow when they share ideas during the brainstorming phase:

a.One conversation at the time
b.Stay focused on topic
c.Encourage wild ideas
d.Defer judgement
e.Build on the ideas of others


6. Why should wild (and sometimes crazy) ideas be entertained during the brainstorming phase?
  •  Because out of wild ideas, they come up with brilliant ideas.
  • And if there were only normal ideas, they wouldn't be able to do something cool or extraordinary.

7. After the brainstorming phase was over, the team narrowed down the hundreds of ideas by _____voting_____ for those ideas that were not only “cool” but also _buildable_____ in a short period of time.
What phase of the design process is this called?
Enlightenment trial and error.

8. IDEO believes that the ideas and efforts of a ___team___ will always be more successful than the planning of a lone genius.

9. Once the ideas were narrowed down and divided into categories, the group was split into four smaller teams. What phase(s) of the design process was each of these groups responsible for?
·  Shopping

·  Safety

·  Checkout

·  Finding stuff you need

10. The leaders at IDEO believe that  _a playful __ behavior and a ___fun____ environment are two important reasons why their employees are able to think quickly and creatively to produce innovative results.

11. Sometimes, people come up with great solutions that work by trying their ideas first, and asking for _____opinion____________ later.

12. Design is often a process of going too far and having to take a few steps back. What phase of the design process would the critique of the four mock-ups come under?
re-finding and communicating results

13. Upon critique of the four teams’ models, it was obvious that none of the teams had developed an optimum solution. However, the people at IDEO believe that it is important to ____fail_________ often in order to ___succed__________ sooner.

14. What percentage of the entire week’s time did it take to fabricate the final prototype?
1 day - 20%


15. Instead of showering his design team with a tremendous amount of praise, what did the boss require his employees to do with their new design?
Improve on there design


16. Of all the things that we are surrounded by every day, what has not been placed through the design process?
  • human body
  • nature
Conclusion

1. What did you find to be the most impressive part of the team’s effort?

·   Everyone worked as a team an had fun while doing it.

·  No one criticized ideas.

·  The final product looked cool was effective and very successfully.

2. What advantages are there to having a design team with members that have non-engineering backgrounds?

·  Crazier ideas.

·  Ideas engineer wouldn't come up with.

·  Provide more info. from each person from a different field
3. There was a point in the process where a self-appointed group of adults stepped up, stopped the ideas, and redirected the group to break up into teams. Why was this done?

·  So they could get more ideas in a faster range of time.


4. At the end of the video, Dave Kelly states, “Look around. The only things that are not designed are the things we find in nature.” Can you think of anything that would contradict this statement?

·  No, because everything is done by thinking, even minor things. Only nature is not engineered.