the crayon method of good design

There's a great column in Wired Magazine (October 2010 print edition) from Clive Thompson about crayons. Ok, it's not really about crayons, but he talks about drawing with crayons. And then he talks about how the fastest way to bring everyone to the same mental model is to draw a picture.

When I was starting my career in design (I guess I still am starting my career in design), I thought that design meant pictures. Drawings. "Art." I thought it was something that industrial designers did to make things pretty. And then I thought, maybe I want that skill. Maybe I'll go to design school. Maybe I'll learn to draw pretty pictures. And now I'm learning that design is more than that. That to be a good "designer" can mean lots of different things.

I recently realized that my creativity has always come in words. I have a lot of respect for lyrical creativity, for beautiful phrases and gutsy syntax. It explains why much of my writing is wordy, why I collect quotes and memorize song lyrics, and why I sometimes deliberately ignore grammar for the sake of style (even though I'm a pretty notorious grammar nazi). I'm still learning how that applies to the realm of good design, and how I can use my lexical creativity to design better products.

This weekend I went to lunch with Howard, our new design engineer. Howard is inherently creative (and British, which is a very important attribute for any design engineer, esp. one that has designed for Dremel). He challenged me, as we were sitting outside of Paolo's eating gelato, to start drawing. Just drawing anything, really. Anything I found beautiful or interesting or useful or inspiring. So here I am, sitting in front of my blank notebook that I bought the same day I started the 750words project. Today, I've got an outline of a wrist (arguably one of the most beautiful, interesting, and underappreciated pieces of anatomy we have), and a diagram of various confluences in the design process (and a feeble attempt to understand my place in the design world).

In Clive Thompson's article, he uses a crayon to draw out various alternatives for a new laptop. Seeing it in pictures helped him understand what he needed and what he didn't, and gave him a means of filtering out the noise. One great design example of this is PadMapper - a mashup of Google Maps and Craigslist apartment listings. Craigslist has the right information, but not in a way that can be broken down and understood easily. Another is the now-famous Ikea method of delivering product assembly instructions. And it's the method of visualization that helps people learn to read, both in the developed world and the developing. It takes a mix of both the lexical talent (appropriate content and use-case understanding) and artistic flair (a usable format and pleasing view) to make a product that just works.

So I can still use song lyrics as a platform for creative brainstorming. But I'll have to start drawing my own emo album covers to go with it.

how bollywood is teaching india to read

Love this thought of the day from the New York Times (tip: Will - thanks!):

Think of the old follow-the-bouncing-ball singalongs, with a serious purpose. In The Boston Globe, Riddhi Shah writes that “same-language subtitling” of music videos in India improves literacy, once people become curious about the text at the bottom of the screen:

Indians and musical device for learning to read.

 According to Hema Jadvani, a researcher who has been studying the effects of the subtitles on Khodi [in western India], newspaper reading in the village has gone up by more than 50 percent in the last decade. Her research also shows that the village’s women, who can now read bus schedules themselves, are more mobile, and more children are opting to stay in school.

India’s public karaoke-for-literacy experiment is the only one of its kind in the world. Technically known as same-language subtitling, or SLS, it manages to reach 200 million viewers across 10 states every week. In the last nine years, functional literacy in areas with SLS access has more than doubled. And the subtitles have acted as a catalyst to quadruple the rate at which completely illiterate adults become proficient readers.

The article adds that “this is big news” for fighting poverty, since literacy “is linked not only to economic growth, but to better health, greater gender equality, and a more transparent political process.”

It's originally an article in the Boston Globe. The development community has understood for a long time that literacy is a key step in building an economic future. The problem is that the conventional method of teaching people to read is labor-intensive and time-intensive, and requires access to ancillary reading material. But with the advent of television, even in the rural areas of India, and the popularity of its Bollywood film industry, a whole new vector to transmit information is being put to use.

I've talked at length about design for the developing world and of course, India holds a special place in my heart. This is a great example of a keen understanding of a target population and some very thoughtful and deliberate (yet unobtrusive) design to create access to literacy. 

useful life skills, part one: using a lug wrench in three inch heels

For the second time in my life, I'm changing my own flat tire in a skirt and heels.

The hardest part? Getting the jack out of the holster. Come on Lexus, that was a poor design choice.

A black lace Banana Monogram skirt and gold snakeskin heels, to be exact.

Done! ... White shirt's still (almost) spotless. Hands, not so much.

Mad props to the random dude who stopped in a Park 'N Ride lot in the Middle of Nowhere, Georgia, to help me out. And to AAA, for finishing the job. But I wasn't creepy enough to take their pictures, too.

tug of war & thoughts on 3rd year of medical school

An incredible post from an incredible friend.

Current location:	Barnes Hospital/St. Louis Children's
Current mood:	All
Current music:	DMB: Christmas Song

Tug of War

I've never been more nervous or more excited about what's going to happen from day to day. I'm blessed to be on the path to the greatest profession I could possibly imagine.

The first time a patient calls you "Doctor," it's really cool and really scary. I am not, in fact, a doctor yet, but it's fun to pretend.

to become a better writer, write

self-expression is a learned skill.

On August 1st, I stumbled across a website called 750words.com. I've always heard that to become a better writer, you need to write. And that by becoming a better writer, you become a better reader (of more, and more relevant, content). I thought, I'll give this a shot. 750 words = 3 pages, as it's explained:

Morning pages are three pages of writing done every day, typically encouraged to be in "long hand", typically done in the morning, that can be about anything and everything that comes into your head. It's about getting it all out of your head, and is not supposed to be edited or censored in any way. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day.

For 48 days, I wrote religiously, almost exclusively in the morning, often before going for a run at 6 AM. Eventually, I got into a rhythm, writing first my personal mission statement verbatim, then letting myself run wild on my thoughts and reactions to where I was. Then I always concluded with a thought for the day, a goal, an inspiration. For 48 days, despite my travel schedule, availability of internet connection (or laptop!), meetings, appointments, and all the other craziness that the past few months have brought, I wrote no matter what, sometimes finishing the day's thoughts on my iPhone. I wanted to make sure I hit every date, could continue my "streak", meet my challenge. Some days were harder than others; some days more open, some with more thoughts to share. I expected to feel a surge of creativity, an undiscovered side of myself that would point me in a new direction. And above all, I wanted to check my box and say that I had done my time and completed the day's words.

And then yesterday, I woke up at 4 AM to a sick puppy. Sawra had vomited in her crate, and both her fur and her den needed cleaning. It wasn't a task I particularly felt like doing, especially on my day to sleep in after weeks of 5-AM-wakeups. So an hour later, as I pulled my laptop into the bed and opened up the site, my mind was as blank as the white space in front of me. I just didn't want to write.

my overall mindset in all my time at 750words.

Creativity can't be forced. Creativity isn't about checking the box, about scoring points when you write just to write. There is a lot of value in pushing yourself through things that most people won't (link is a .pdf), even when you don't want to. But there is more value in realizing when you need to do that... and when you don't. I've learned a lot by waking up every morning and writing 3 pages. One of the things that I've learned, is that sometimes you have to let yourself deviate from the schedule you've set. That your idea of what should happen in your life, and when it should happen, isn't always the way that it will happen. And you have to be ok with that.

I've learned that you don't always learn what you think you're going to. I've learned that I write very quickly, that my thoughts center on religion and success. I learned that I am consistently and privately introverted (and, although many of you won't believe me, that my extrovertedness is a learned skill). I learned that I am unfailingly positive, more certain of myself than most of the world, and toeing the line between thinking and feeling. I am learning that I filter my words unconsciously, that I'm not often completely open with the thoughts in my head, and that to be self-expressive is difficult for me (which makes blogging scary, at times). I've learned that despite my background in design and engineering, my creativity has always been primarily in words, and that I have an uncanny ability to describe every situation in life through song lyrics (and am I reminded now of the Anna Nalick song "Breathe"):

two am and i'm still awake writing a song
if i get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me,
threatening the life it belongs to
and i feel like i'm naked in front of the crowd
cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
and i know that you'll use them however you want to.

I learned (well, confirmed) that I like metrics and complete datasets. I learned that I view my life in the third person more often than I'd like, and that maybe there have to be changes in the way that I think in order to create the changes that I want. I learned that I am capable of thinking big thoughts and taking big chances.

I broke my streak at 48 yesterday. I have already lost the September Challenge. I have to start my quest to 100 days from the first step again. But I'm finally ok with that. This morning, I came back from my run and started my words.

the best place to start when you're struggling is anywhere at all

Today was a good day.

I've been working on a big design project for just under one full year. It's a two-part project with a lot of visibility in the company, and involves a change from our current paradigm that falls outside of our "core competence." For the past year, we've gone back and forth on designs and iterations, on concepts and user needs, on market segmentation. The topics are always interesting, and the insight is always good, but month after month, the song remained the same. It was starting to remind me of the Einstein quote about the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

We were struggling.

just get the ball rolling. (photo courtesy of... )

But two weeks ago, something important happened. We brought in a new industrial designer, one with a totally different paradigm on medical devices than anyone we had on our staff. Almost immediately, he started on one piece of our design problem, and had a working concept in four days.

For anyone that works in design or manufacturing, four days is not a long time. Four days in the entire development lifecycle is a blink of an eye. It takes months, and sometimes years, to take a new product from idea to shelves. For medical devices, time to market is typically even further exaggerated, with regulatory requirements, clinical trials, and extensive documentation standing in the way. It's not uncommon for an implant or heart valve to take more than eight years of development time before seeing commercial use. For a kinesthetic person, it takes an enormous amount of discipline to work on something for that long without seeing the physical output.

The best part, though, was not that we had a design in front of us that met our design criteria, or that changed the way users interacted with IV lines. We had a design that gave us momentum. We got moving on part one of that two part design. And today, that spilled over into part two. I had been searching for a new material since February. I had drowned myself in the research, looked at material properties, made tables of peel / shear / tack values. I had tested for moisture vapor transmission rate and looked at every vendor this side of the Mississippi. But late last week, after seeing Howard's excitement and new designs, I got excited. I picked one. Today, the material arrived, and it works wonderfully. The excitement is contagious. Howard's designs get better with my excitement, and my designs get better with his input.

Momentum is a funny thing. When you get stuck in the inertia of the day-to-day, it's hard to visualize the end of the road (especially when the end of the road is 18 months down the line for a medical device to launch). But as a new friend of mine told me a few weeks ago, the important thing when you're dreaming up something new is not to come up with one really good idea; it's to come up with lots of ideas, period. Ideas lead to more ideas, and more ideas lead to action. And that's all you need to get the ball rolling.

what i don't understand about "busy" people

Sawra values sleeping, eating, and chewing on everything in sight. And it shows. (please do not reproduce without permission)

Everyone has 24 hours in a day. No more. No less. Everyone, or at least, the fully functional adults among us, has a choice of what they get to do with their 24 hours. Some value sleep. Some value work. Some value family, or friends, or athletics. We choose what those values are, and we choose how we manifest them. Which is why it amazes me that people still use the excuse "I'm too busy!" (read the part about being addicted to "busy")

No, you're not too busy. You just don't value what I'm asking you more than you value what else you're doing. And that's fine. They're your values, not mine. Trust me; I get it. I've been "busy." I've had (and still sometimes do have) 18- and 19- hour days, back to back (to back). I've been through engineering school and a political campaign (at the same time). But in each of those situations, I still had the choice of designing my life to fit those things that I valued.

Case in point: the traditional workplace is designed by people who value early mornings (and apparently going to bed at 9 PM). Unfortunately, I value late evenings with family and friends, and I value sleep. I value waking up and going for a run. I value having 30 minutes, before I do anything else - before I shower, before I take the dog out, before I check my email - to have time to write and sketch and ideate. And I value doing all of those things before I leave for work at 7:45 AM. So I design my mornings to accommodate for them. But I also value my work, and sometimes, these other things that I value get sacrificed to maintain the trust of my team and the integrity of my work.

The point is, what we value comes out in our actions. We are no busier than anyone else, our actions no harder, our lives no more challenging. We value what we value, and we put those things first, and we can't force those thoughts or priorities on anyone else. I think Stephen Covey says it best:

"... You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage - pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically - to say 'no' to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger 'yes' burning inside. The enemy of the 'best' is often the 'good'.

So it's worth asking yourself if you really live in a way that promotes those values. If you value your family, do you regularly make time for them each day or week? If you value your relationship with God (Shivji, Allah, Jesus, Yeshua, nonbelief, etc.), do you actively pray and make time for reflection? If you value your health, do you exercise routinely?

Or, are you too "busy"?