2008 Jan 21 - Jan Jan 27

Mon day Jan 21 - 6 PM
Full Moon Run with the Pittsburgh Hash House Harriers
Oakland - bring a flashlight

Japanese Architect Lecture
CMU
Tuesday Jan 22 - 7 PM
McConomy Auditorium
Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima will give the 2008 Jill Watson Distinguished Lecture at Carnegie Mellon University at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 22 in McConomy Auditorium in the University Center. The lecture is free and open to the public.
“We are honored and privileged to have one of the world's leading architects featured as this year's Watson distinguished lecturer,” said Laura Lee, head of the School of Architecture. “Kazuyo Sejima's work has received prestigious awards for its extraordinary invention and ingenuity. Sejima's creative sensibilities position her as a perfect representative for the Watson series, which serve to celebrate interdisciplinary approaches.”
Japan’s 1992 “Young Architect of the Year,” Sejima created the Tokyo-based firm SANAA with Ryue Nishizawa in 1995 and has designed structures in the United States, Germany, France, Spain and Japan. Her structures include an extension of the Institute Valencia d’Art Modern in Valencia, Spain; the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; a satellite Louvre in Lens, France; and numerous buildings in Tokyo. Images and information on many of SANAA’s structures are online at http://www.arcspace.com/architects/sejima_nishizawa/sejima_nishizawa.html.
Sejima studied at the Japan Women’s University and started her own practice in 1987. She teaches at Tama Art University and Keio University in Tokyo and at Princeton University with Nishizawa. SANAA won a Golden Lion Award at the 2004 Venice Biennale.
Sejima and Nishizawa described their style in an October 2005 interview with designboom.com. “Probably our interest now is more how to organize ‘a program’ within a building — the layout of rooms and how people move inside, but also how to keep a relationship between the ‘program’ and the outside and then how the outside fits to the surroundings,” Sejima said. “In each project we have different requirements and the site is different, we try to find our way.”
The Jill Watson Distinguished Lecture Series is made possible by the Jill Watson Family Foundation. Watson, a Carnegie Mellon alumna and acclaimed architect who later became an adjunct faculty member in the School of Architecture, died in the TWA 800 plane crash on July 17, 1996. The lecture series honors Watson’s commitment to an interdisciplinary philosophy as an artist by bringing emerging and recognized artists, architects, musicians and designers to Pittsburgh.

Thursday Jan 24 - 4:30 PM
Kresge Theather, Art Building, CMU
Guest Lecturer Inspires Social Change Through Art at NYC Laundromats
Mon Jan 14 10:34:00 EST 2008
Artist and social entrepreneur Risë Wilson will discuss her Laundromat Project during a lecture at 4:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 24 in the Kresge Recital Hall in the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Her lecture, titled “Innovations in Funding and Access to the Arts,” is part of Carnegie Mellon’s Institute for Social Innovation lecture series, sponsored by the Grable Foundation.
While people wait for their clothes to dry at two laundromats in Bedford-Stuvyesant and Harlem, N.Y., Wilson engages them in making and discussing art and its social backdrop. “At one level, Risë Wilson is turning laundromats into places where people gather not only to wash clothes but also to take art classes,” said Alan Friedman, director of the Institute for Social Innovation, housed in Carnegie Mellon’s H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management. “Yet, the Laundromat Project sees art as so much more than just an amenity or nice touch. Art in this context is a forum and force for social change.”
In the Laundromat Project (http://www.laundromatproject.org/), Wilson was not seeking a particular audience of art aficionados. She wanted the people of the community — teens, twenty-somethings, parents, and grandparents — to come in and do their laundry, which is when she engages and inspires them through creating and discussing art. The two laundromats serve as studio and gallery space where the new art can be displayed.
In communities with under-funded schools and rampant unemployment like Bedford-Stuvyesant and Harlem, Wilson’s art programs also fill an educational void in a manner that is all the more impressive for its self-sufficiency. Wilson reinvests the laundromat profits into arts programming and the community. “From the perspective of social entrepreneurship, the business model that she has created is just brilliant,” Friedman said. “Her organization is powerful proof of the role the market can play in realizing a social mission.”
Wilson believes art can inspire people to improve their communities. She says, “Before you can make lasting change, you have to know firsthand that there are extraordinary possibilities in even the most mundane and bleak circumstances.”
Wilson is one of four 2007-2008 special guests of the Institute for Social Innovation. The institute aims to help nonprofits become financially secure, help for-profits affect social change through their business models and solve social problems through education, research, and local and global partnerships. More about the institute is at http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/isi/isi.pdf.

Free Film showing (festival de cinema latinoamericano)
January 24, 8:30pm • Frick Fine Arts Auditorium - Pitt
PALOMA DE PAPEL
Dir. Fabrizio Aguilar • Perú - 2003
Set during the terrible Peruvian civil war of the 1980s, PALOMA DE PAPEL (PAPER DOVE) juxtaposes the beautiful landscape of the country with the horrific violence of the conflict. Juan is an adolescent trying to survive in the poverty-ridden Andean countryside while beginning to discover the adult world. But he soon learns about the dark side of that world when a group of paramilitary revolutionaries enters his town and recruits him for their army, which involves a period of soul-crushing political indoctrination. But Juan's desire to survive through the conflict and to live his own life leads him to rebel against the paramilitaries. PALOMA DE PAPEL marks the directorial debut of Peruvian actor Fabrizio Aguilar, and it won the Silver Precolumbian Circle (the second-place prize) at the 2004 Bogota Film Festival.


Jefferson Presents ... NEXT SCREENING:
WHEN: Saturday, January 26, 2008, 8PM
WHERE: Garfield Artworks 4931 Penn Ave.
HOW MUCH: $5/$4 students, seniors
The January Jefferson Presents … program is filled with 9 essential and rarely screened experimental films, including some recently restored
16mm prints by sixties legend Robert Nelson, plus films by minimalist
painter Robert Huot, northwest USA filmmaker/photographer Jon Behrens,
French film scholar and writer Frédé Devaux and JP returning favorite,
Austrian avant-garde heavyweight Thomas Draschan. All titles projected
in the original 16mm format. Read below for descriptions. Adults over
18 only.
1. Robert Nelson - Confessions Of A Black Mother-Succuba (1965, 16mm,
b/w, so, 16 min) “Like a bite on the ass with rubber teeth.” (Q.A.
Standish)
2. Robert Nelson and William T. Wiley - The Off-Handed Jape (1967,
16mm, color, so, 9 min) “This film can be of immeasurable aid to
would-be actors who are weak in the jape.” (William T. Wiley)
3. Robert Huot - Black and White Film (1968-69, 16mm, b&w/si,
16fps, 12.5 min) “A nude woman is revealed, and then obliterates
herself entirely, in extreme slow-motion. This film is ‘about’
painting. Outside of painting itself, it is the only really intense
criticism I have ever seen.” - Hollis Frampton
4. Robert Huot - Nude Descending the Stairs (1970, 16mm, b&w/si,
16fps, 14.5 min) “A naked woman (Marie Antoinette) - slowly descends a
four storey staircase toward the camera. Because of the camera’s upward
angle, the descents are translated into level forward motions during
which the two people grow larger with each step they take. The film’s
concern with the manipulation of space and with the details of human
motion through it, accounts for both the title and the inscription ‘for
Duchamp and Muybridge.’” - Scott MacDonald, The Films of Robert Huot:
1967-1972, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Summer 1980
5. Jon Behrens - Reflections (1992, 16mm, b&w tint/sound on
cassette tape, 12 min) Original Music: Rubato. Surrealistic, dreamy,
atmospheric, hypnotic. Super high contrast journey through a collection
of past life experiences. Heavily filtered light, shadows, multiple
exposures, and film tinting. Almost an extension of the late ‘80s
Behrens film entitled Exposures.
6. Jon Behrens - Undercurrents (1994, 16mm, b&w tint/sound on
cassette tape, 12 min) Original Music: Rubato. The sister film to an
earlier Behrens film called REFLECTIONS.
7. Frédé Devaux - Ellipses (1999, 16mm, color/so, 6 min)
8. Frédé Devaux - Entrecroisées (1999, 16mm, color/so, 4.5 min)
Fragments in diverse shapes, mostly circles and dots filled with
various imagery.
9. Thomas Draschan - Metropolen des Leichtsinns (2000, 16mm
color/sound, 12 min) Intercourse leads to cell-sectioning &
birthgiving and a release into space. Being born one may ask “what
should I become” (in the german original: was soll ich werden, written
on a wheel), the filmmakers answer that pretty realistically with
someone blowing his head away. The hit of the bullet in the head
triggers beautiful visual effects, which as well refer to death and
decay, and therefore justify the decision. The film then shows various
opportunities of how someone could spend his life. But somehow all
efforts seem to be in vain and everything is running empty...

Sunday 27 January - 2:00 to 3:00 PM
World Kaleidoscope! David Bennett will be telling stories and singing songs of Appalachia.

in the news:
Interactive Storytelling Game Created at Carnegie Mellon Is Available at All Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Locations
Can a lion share a cupcake with an astronaut? A new, interactive educational game for children created at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), gives them the power to answer that question. The game, called "My StoryMaker," allows children to create, print and share their own unique stories, and through that cultivates a love of storytelling and reading.
The project was funded with a $50,000 grant from The Grable Foundation, and is available to visitors at all 18 Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh branches.
"Partnering with the Carnegie Library has been immensely stimulating and educating," said Don Marinelli, executive producer at the ETC. "The ultimate goal of an ETC project is for the students and faculty to learn as much as the client learns from our technological experiments and implementation. This is one project that truly delivered on all accounts. We thank The Grable Foundation for facilitating this connection as the endeavor has far surpassed even our grandest aspirations and wishes."
My StoryMaker was developed by a team of graduate students at the ETC exclusively for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. It is aimed at increasing literacy rates in children during their formative learning years. To achieve this goal, the students, faculty advisors and library staff harnessed the power of fairy tales from books and combined them with the interactivity of gaming and the Internet to create My StoryMaker.
"We were challenged to find an innovative way to reach children, many of whom have never known of a life without computers, that would be both educational and engaging," said Mike Nangia, director of information technology at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. "The team was fortunate to play-test the initial prototype at several local elementary schools. It gave us insight on how children learn and utilize technology."
In My StoryMaker, children can control characters, scenery and props. The game uses artificial intelligence to form sentences in relation to how the child is interacting with the story.
"The only limit to My StoryMaker is a child's imagination," Nangia said. "If the child directs a character to interact with an object or another character, the software will recognize the interaction and create a corresponding sentence. The child can also completely customize his or her creation for a one-of-a-kind experience. Once the child is satisfied with the story, he or she has the option to print and/or save the story, making it available for sharing and viewing outside the Library."
Screenshots of My StoryMaker are online at http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/library/images.php.

Design presentations by CMU Students
Fri Jan 25
As second year Masters candidates, students propose, plan, develop, and complete a studio thesis essay that demonstrates mastery of the concepts and techniques of their chosen field (Interaction Design or Communication Planning and Information Design). Each year, the student thesis essays run the full range of design problem-solving. Some theses focus on social issues; some on technical issues; some on interpersonal or professional issues. The thesis essay may be directly related to the student’s chosen studio project, or may explore a different set of themes related to the general goals of the program.

See below for the complete presentation schedule:

9:00
Introduction by Dan Boyarski, Head of the School of Design, and Shelley Evenson, Director of Graduate Studies at the School of Design.

9:15
The Thinking Behind Design by Jamin Hegeman, IntD

For the past several hundred years, science and humanities have enjoyed prominence in our culture and education. Science and a scientific approach to solving problems have received bias in our educational systems and our work. But increasingly, design is being recognized as a valuable approach to solving complex problems and creating inventive solutions. However, understanding what designers do - the thinking behind design - is not fully understood. Design is still often thought of as a black art rather than a rigorous discipline. If design is to advance as a discipline, understanding design thinking becomes paramount. Design is a relationship between the design way of thinking, the process of carrying out that thinking, and the embodiment of the thinking and the process within the designer. The process of developing design thinking is a design process in itself. It therefore may behoove designers to recognize designing oneself as a designer as fundamental to improving design ability. Understanding design thinking will also help designers articulate their value and communicate what is it they actually do in a way that demystifies the process and instills a sense of trust in their solutions. This paper examines how designers think and the relationship between design thinking and the design process to better understand what designers do, the rigor of their process, and the value of skilled designers.

9:30
An Ecological Approach to Interaction Design by Hee Young Jeong, IntD

Human beings are organic and social by nature. Their behaviors are varied, and sometimes their experiences have very different meanings for individuals or groups in diverse contexts and ecosystems. Therefore, analysis and prediction of human behaviors and experience is a big challenge for interaction designers. For this, I propose that an ecological approach to interaction design can be a proper method for helping designers to better understand and interpret user research with a systematic and holistic worldview.

Ecological design generally refers to green design and sustainability involved with nature, biology or energy efficiency. Like an ecosystem that sustains harmonious human lives and experiences in an integrated human environment consisting of artifacts, services, system and nature, interaction designers need to pay attention to ecological paradigms that include a holistic worldview. In fact, in terms of interaction design, there is an increasing need to explore social and cultural aspects of ecological design. In this paper, I argue that an ecological approach to interaction design considers human society and culture as a primary design value. The goal of this paper is to explore the relationship between ecology and interaction design, and how interaction design can move toward an ecological approach.

To do this, I explore social science literature and ecologies related to interaction design: information ecology, interface ecology, product ecology and cultural ecology. From these, I establish five ecological factors such as organisms, environments, ecosystems, relationship and sustainability, and finally an ecological framework for interaction designers is suggested.

9:45
Designing for Activism and Learning: Finding a Convergence by Ayça Akin, CPID

Communication designers in activist settings make thousands of context-specific design decisions to advocate their causes. While they can fall back on previous successful campaigns for guidance, there is no handbook on designing for social change. Should there be a special category for designing for activism, or is activism simply one of thousands of contingent uses to which design can be put? This paper explores the link between design and activism. My own inventory of design used for activism suggests that arguments for social change typically make their case from facts. While acquiring facts may not be sufficient to move people to change, they seem to be a first necessary step. Accordingly, I have focused my thesis essay on empirical findings about the principles by which people best acquire facts from multimedia artifacts. I survey these findings and apply them to an online visualization tool designed for activism. My case study serves two purposes. First, it allows me to evaluate the principles of fact-based learning offered in the literature. Second, it allows me to understand the gap between acquiring facts and aligning with causes suggested by those facts.

10:00
Accessibility Through Participation by Srividya Sriram, IntD

Many of today’s technologies are experienced through complicated interfaces like the recent phenomenon- the iPhone. But these interfaces tend to be very minimally accessible (if accessible at all) to the visually impaired people (VIP). The devices and products that do take into account this population tend to fare poorly in the realm of user experience for the VIP. This is largely due to negligence on the part of the manufacturers and a result of accessibility being pushed to the end of the design process.

Also, more and more companies today are looking to include the users in the various stages of product development by implementing participatory design research. The positive effects of these exercises have been found to be valuable and are becoming increasingly prevalent.

But another look at these methods and we will be able to see that most require the participating user to perceive visually and make meaning of visual information. Eg. collage-making, paper prototyping, experience mapping, etc.

My essay is an attempt to see if a more inclusive research process is being implemented and if so, will it pave a better path to a more inclusive design.

10:15 BREAK

10:45
What Can Services Learn From Classical Music? by Carrie Chan, IntD

As a relatively new discipline, service design has a lot to learn from various fields that have well-established histories. This paper will explore the field of classical music and draw aspects from it that are useful in thinking about service design. Themes will also be drawn from music in an attempt to provide applicable approaches to service design. The topics that will be paralleled in this paper are the following: how services can be thought of as performances, how the roles inherent to music find similarities to roles defined in service design, and how music notation systems are essential in connecting different music roles together and why service design should adopt a notation system of its own.

11:00
Sense-making as Place-making: Establishing Meaning out of Ambiguity Through the Built Environment by Joseph Iloreta, IntD

Meaningful experiences inevitably occur in place – “a locus of meaning” cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan portrays as constantly in physical and cultural flux; as our perceptions of place characterize our experiences and identities within them, so can our behaviors change the character of place.

Design efforts of environmental and social concern often enlist civic agency, engagement and responsibility, signifying the synergistic relationship that connects our actions and beliefs to places both local and global. In this light, this essay is an effort to better understand our relationship with place and the instrumental role of design in its composition and preservation.

Examining literature from various fields such as architecture, urban planning, philosophy, and phenomenology, I develop an understanding of place as realized through physical and conceptual constructs, where acts of design parallel sense-making processes carried out by both an individual self and collective society. As concepts of place evolve with social and technological complexity, I examine how the built environment is a powerful lense portraying the self as an active body readily assigning meaning through sensorial action, reaction and creation.

In particular, the urban street – an archetypal experience of the built environment –illustrates that people create experiences for themselves, exposing themes that ally with perspectives in user-centered design. Investigating the composition of place as a vital component in understanding the nuances of human experience, I hope to reflect the urban spatial experience as a powerful, resonant metaphor for the human-sensitive responsibilities and capabilities of design.

11:15
The Language of Symbols: Bridging the Cultural & Linguistic Gap by Maria Kim, CPID

“Communication—people to people, nation to nation—is a vital ingredient to understanding. It would be presumptuous to imply that standardized graphic symbols will result in perfect intercommunication; but perhaps this is the first faltering step to convince us that it is imperative for man to be able to communicate with any other man no matter where he may live.”

- Henry Dreyfuss, author of “Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic Symbols”

Communication is the key to any relationship, even relationships between countries around the globe. Efficient travel and the “Internet Revolution” creates many opportunities and circumstances in which ordinary people of completely different tongues and cultures might find themselves sharing the same space.

For my paper, I focus on the use of symbols in Olympic Games and examine this example as a case study of how symbols are the ideal form of communication in an international setting. Olympic symbols such as the familiar five rings, national emblem and sporting event pictograms function to invoke the Olympic ideals of strength and unity, highlight the character and aesthetic appeal of the host country, and provide a seamless experience through clearly presented information. These symbols provide a visual language that surpasses the differences evident between written languages. The Olympics Games itself has always been a major symbol of hope in reinforcing the idea that the nations of the world can be united despite political, economical and cultural differences.

11:30
Patterns in Designing Successful Products for the Blind by Beste Nazilli, IntD

While Universal Design and Accessible Design concepts are widely accepted paradigms and are regarded as contemporary models that represent a unique and consolidated approach to design, we continue seeing examples of devices and information media designed with no consideration for disabled people, especially for those who are blind or visually impaired. Although both of these approaches are acclaimed as cornerstones of design by many, there is a wide range of views regarding the interrelations between these and a thorough understanding of these is an essential aspect of the design process for products designed based on these concepts. In this paper, I utilize existing literature as well as notes acquired through personal communication with people from various disciplines in an effort to display a variety of different approaches and analyze the effects of these concepts on existing products/systems.

From a practical point of view, we get to see that designers are seeking new ways to understand user needs and to create more useable , useful and desirable products. While keystones of Universal Design such as assistive and supportive technologies have been accepted as effective tools addressing these "useable" and "useful" aspects, the desirability aspect has not been effectively studied. In order to discover potential opportunities in this desirability factor in products, this paper reviews the pros and cons of current mobile technologies with regard to this aspect and presents the current reasons preventing the full participation of these people in the society.

11:45
Designing for Travel: An Analysis of Public Transportation System Information Aids by Peter Bird, CPID

As we move through the natural and built environment, we create mental maps of the land around us containing information we gather from the environment and meanings we project back. To successfully travel through this land, we must select and navigate a route, often using multiple modes of transportation. This essay begins to analyze the materials public transportation systems provide to passengers to aid in navigating the systems using analytical categories developed by designers, cartographers and urban planners. These information aids, from maps and timetables to signs and electronic displays, are used in a variety of contexts of use, but all attempt to visualize some aspect of the system and connect it to the larger environment. The essay will explain how some forms and techniques are more successful than others, leading to fewer barriers of entry for potential users.

12:00 – 1:00 LUNCH

1:00
Designing Graphs for the Display of Scientific Data by Melissa Clarkson, CPID

As artifacts through which data is both analyzed by the researcher and communicated to others, graphs serve a tremendous role in transforming scientific data into meaningful information. Yet, graph design receives little attention from scientists themselves, and poorly designed graphs commonly appear in the published literature. Problems range from simple issues, such as poor choice of line weight or color, to much more serious ones, including misrepresentation of the data due to an inappropriate style of graph. My thesis essay explores graph design from a very fundamental level. I begin with an examination of the types of data, variables, and studies, and then move to topics in graphical perception. Using these two areas as a foundation, I explore how datasets can be represented using elementary graphical elements. Finally, I address common questions and problems in graph design.

1:15
Designing Lasting Relationships by Matthew D. Forrest, Jr. CPID

This thesis is concerned with the creation of a meta-language for discussing how and why we have lasting relationships with everyday products. The proposed meta-language is presented as a framework of questions that are designed to evaluate the probability of a product remaining in our lives beyond the expected lifespan or the initial reasons for purchasing the product. The thesis begins with a discussion of human-to-human relationships in order to understand the nature of lasting relationships. Analysis of writings by the psychologist Carl Rogers, philosopher Henri Bergson and social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi leads to the identification of three necessary elements that define a lasting relationship: congruence, acceptance of limitations and recognition of a future. After applying these elements to the issue of human to product relationships, the thesis turns to identifying factors that enable the maintenance of lasting relationships. By looking at the biological characteristics of our selves, durability and adaptability are identified as two necessary components of a lasting relationship. When combined with the previously identified elements above, they create a meta-language, or framework, upon which we can discuss whether or not a product has the potential to outlast its expected lifespan or initial reasons for its purchase. The thesis concludes with the suggestion that designing for lasting relationships not only provides a financial and ecological benefit, but also can lead to the design of new and interesting products.


1:30
Experience Through Objects: Visual Data Sharing Issues on Family Interaction by Sook Yeon Kim, IntD

We live our lives in the middle of material objects. We sometimes consider objects as companions to our emotional lives or as provocation to thought. The object as a companion in life triggers narratives and experiences. In this sense, photographs are the most common example accompanying narratives. The family photographs are intensely personal, and create emotional, social, and cultural values. People save, preserve and treasure photos more than many other possessions. Moreover, people share these photos with others. The advent of technology enables ordinary people to visually record their view and passage of lives. Development of technology affects people's behavior such as creating, saving and sharing photographs. In this essay, I will focus on "why people share photos and what is the Technology roles?" and then discuss interpretation of emotional, social and cultural aspects of family photos sharing issues along with technology development.

1:45
Identifying Presentation Techniques Jeffrey Tzucker, CPID

The ubiquity of personal computers and the explosion of PowerPoint have created a culture of presentations that are overwhelming in their number, frequency and, let’s face it, ineffectiveness. While presentations are intended to aid communication, instead the tools to create them are hindering it by enabling poor design and the disorganization of content. And unfortunately, there are too many presenters for designers to work with or educate. To address these problems, we must consider digital media as a viable tool for teaching students to design effective presentations.

My paper reviews journals and popular press focusing on the current techniques used to organize and design presentations. I will present this information to identify the major areas of current slide design and content organization techniques. In addition, I will explain how my research will guide the development of an online learning tutorial by identifying effective and ineffective slide design techniques depending on the rhetorical situation and the organization of content.

2:00 BREAK

2:30
Open Design: Solving Complex Social Problems by Jared Cole, IntD

As designers, we want to change the world, and if we want to continue developing our role as agents of change, we will need to call upon a great diversity of voice and thought in order to do this effectively. By working alongside those who we have traditionally worked for, we stand to gain a better understanding of their needs, desires and insights. Inspecting the nature and economics of user-led innovation, we can see a direct benefit to existing and future products and services. While diversity in thought provides a wealth of valuable information, we still need to do something with it. Exploring the concepts of management and entrepreneurship enables us to develop methods for extracting this information, and implementing a sustainable system by which these diverse ideas can be given form. But with form comes questions of ownership, especially when the form has no single source of creation. Looking to the world of open-source software, we can see a healthy and alternative view to the traditional understanding of ownership. If we can adopt these notions of collaborative, user-led innovations, the development of a sustainable social enterprise, and open systems of co-ownership, designers greatly improve the likelihood of solving complex social problems.

2:45
Trust in Design by Sunyoung Park, IntD

When people see unfamiliar products, they are often reluctant to buy them due to lack of product experience and trust. This issue of trust becomes more crucial when new services are introduced, since service is key to people’s experience, and not limited to one interaction with a single product. In my research, I have explored ways to make services more trustworthy. To do this I have focused on trying to deeply understand the concept of a service, exploring how people use services, and how services work to serve people. I’ve also investigated the concept of trust, learning how a service can be reliable, and how the role of the designer works within this process.

As designers, we create products that help connect people with their desires. This process of creation often involves a level of consumer (user) expectation and trust, this is true for products as well as services. Building and communicating the trustworthiness of a service is primarily a dialectical issue that requires an understanding of the emotion, character and quality of the product, the user, service providers, and ourselves as designers in order to produce sincere feelings of confidence and expectation.

3:00
A Drama on Designing Products for Cultural Identity by Kipum Lee, IntD

They say that when teenage girls exchange clothing, this exchange of possessions symbolizes more than just friendship – it symbolizes a sharing of identities. What if the teenage girls were rival siblings and the older sibling is given a better gift than a younger sibling during the holidays? Maybe that's expected. This relationship is maintained as long as the older sibling does all that she can to make sure the younger sibling feels she is getting her fair share. In this case, the older sibling controls or possesses the ideology of the younger sibling. Another way of saying this is that the relationship is maintained as long as the younger sibling doesn't become aware of her situation. If she becomes aware and decides to revolt, she changes the dynamics of their relationship. Others may then look at them and say, "Wow, that younger one's really come out of her shell. I never knew she had it in her!" Maybe the two have an even younger sister who may one day come out of her shell to rise up as the dominant sibling. There is another way to look at this family. Perhaps each girl already has an established character like the Bennett sisters in Pride & Prejudice. Instead of pitting against each other, what if they consider how they must measure up next to what a good teenage girl ought to be?

I am interested in how these possible relationships have relevance in designing for cultural identity.

3:15
Look Around You: Pervasive Products in Everyday Life by Imran Sobh, IntD

Interactive products are increasingly becoming a part of our everyday surroundings through the use of embedded and mobile computing. While products of all types are spread throughout our lives, those that use pervasive computing as a material play an important role in shaping our environment. Sensors, location tracking, mobile devices, wireless data networks, and other technologies provide layers of information that can be acted upon to a greater extent than ever before. Some of the most salient and distributed components of services today are the devices that are carried or worn. Their ability to extend the places and possibilities of action changes how we experience our physical, cultural, and personal contexts.

Designers look to technological infrastructure as a resource, not only in researching current products, but also to enable future ideas and solutions. As more products take advantage of pervasive computing, the need to understand how they shape the human environment becomes stronger. Without knowing what is possible, it is difficult to put forward practical design solutions, but without knowing how it influences people, it is difficult to put forward appropriate design solutions.

3:30
Close by Shelley Evenson, Director of Graduate Studies at the School of Design.

(1) January 26: The 4th annual Winter Gathering of Urban EcoStewards, a group of people caring for Pittsburgh's wonderful parks; this is an opportunity to learn more about the program and take part in stewardship activities in Riverview Park. More information on this and other events is at
http://www.ninemilerun.org/get_involved/events/


(2) January 26: The 10th annual Summit Against Racism at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church. More info is at http://blackandwhitereunion.org/ .


(3) January 29: The start of the 2nd annual lecture series at Carnegie Mellon dealing with issues of local food and local economies (Jan 29, Feb 26, March 27, and April 29; details are below).


(4) January 30-February 1: Focus the Nation teach-ins and other events related to global warming will be taking place in our area. Granger Morgan's keynote and a screening of "2% Solution" will kick it off at CMU on Wednesday evening, a day-long teach-in follows on Thursday, and on Friday there will be a panel discussion at Pitt. For more information on the national FtN program and our local events, go to
http://focusthenation.org/ and
http://www.cmu.edu/steinbrenner/Events


(5) February 7: The Center for Environmental Research and Education of Duquesne and Clean Air-Cool Planet are hosting a free workshop on software for campus-scale greenhouse gas inventories. For more information, contact Stan Kabala (kabala@du.edu) or Lindsay Baxter (lindsay_baxter@hotmail.com).


(6) February 7-9: The 17th annual conference of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture in State College, PA; lots more info can be found at
http://www.pasafarming.org/conference2008/ .


(7) February 27: Join the Group Against Smog & Pollution ( http://www.gasp-pgh.org/ ) and cardiologist Don Grandis to explore the connection between air quality and heart health. Contact GASP at 412-325-7382, or lee@gasp-pgh.org for more information or to RSVP; a couple of articles on the link between cardiovascular ailments and fine particulates are at
http://www.uclahealth.org/body.cfm?id=403&action=detail&ref=956
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=79270 .
Looking ahead to March 29th, GASP will host a panel discussion about energy generation from waste coal, featuring Eric Schaeffer of the Environmental Integrity Project and Dan Volz of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities.


Apologies for any crossposts, and I hope to see you at some of these events! Here's the scoop on the lecture series, which begins next Tuesday:
Local Living Economies and Urban Farming

Public Lecture Series at CMU

A four-part lecture series exploring the connections between the food we grow and eat, local markets, the potential for thriving local economies and global social equity will begin in late January and continue, one per month, until April. After the final lecture in April, a public workshop will be held to frame a strategy for developing capacity and collaborations towards creating a sustainable and equitable economy in the Pittsburgh area with a focus on local food systems, related green business and tools for local economic transformation to a local living economy.

This lecture series and the public strategy workshop that will follow will build on information and input gathered through three community-based events that have happened recently: the Green Forum on Vacant Land Revitalization (held at the Pittsburgh Project in Nov. 2006), the first Urban Farming Lecture Series in Spring 2006 (Hosted at CMU and organized by the Urban Farming Initiative) and The Cooperate Pittsburgh Grassroots Forum (Held at the Friends Meeting House in Shadyside in May 2007… look for Grassroots Forum’s Link on www.holisticpittsburgh.com ). The co-organizers and co-sponsors of this latest lecture series and workshop include Carnegie Mellon Univ., Office of the Vice Provost and the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management, the Urban Ecology Collaborative, The Urban Redevelopment Authority, Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, The Penn State Cooperative Ext., Allegheny County, Grow Pittsburgh, The Urban Farming Initiative, The Green Block Farm Project and the Green Bough.




Lecture 1: James Quilligan, American Coordinator for the Global Marshall Plan and Convention on the Global Commons

Tuesday, January 29, 2008, 5:00-6:30 PM
Connan Auditorium, University Center, Carnegie Mellon


Quilligan has been an analyst and administrator in the field of international development since 1975. He has served as policy advisor and writer for many international politicians and leaders, including Willy Brandt, Jimmy Carter, and Tony Blair. Quilligan is currently the managing director of the Centre for Global Negotiations and US Coordinator of the Global Marshall Plan Initiative. These organizations, along with many partners, have launched a multi-stakeholder consultation process that is focused on global development issues, including food security, sustainable agriculture, and fair trade. They maintain that bilateral policies based on domestic security interests -- such as agricultural subsidies and trade protectionism -- are on a collision course with the interests of the global community for multilateral cooperation, justice, sustainability and peace. A draft report is now being created through an interactive website, incorporating the wisdom of thousands of global organizations, individuals and experts. The partners in this consultation network will also be selecting delegates to an international conference in 2010, Convention on the Global Commons, which will reach a consensus on a final plan. (See www.global-commons.org/)




Lecture 2: Michael Schuman, economist, lawyer and author of Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in the Global Age (1998) and The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition (2006)


Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 5:00-6:30 PM
Rangos 3, University Center, Carnegie Mellon


Shuman promotes the concepts in Going Local and The Small-Mart Revolution through a variety of projects including: creating a small-business venture capital fund in New Mexico, launching a community-owned company in Salisbury, MD, called Bay-Friendly Chicken, organizing university-government-business collaborations in St. Lawrence County, NY, analyzing the impact of devolution in the former Soviet Union for the United Nations Development Program, preparing a buy-local guide for Annapolis, MD, developing a website to support marketing by family farmers, and building BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies). (See www.smallmart.org/)





Lecture 3: Kenneth Warren, Director of the Lakewood Public Library System in the Cleveland area; community activist/member of LEAF- the Lakewood Earth and Food Community



Thursday, March 27, 2008, 5:00-6:30 PM
McConomy Lecture Hall, University Center, Carnegie Mellon

Warren has authored a practical report in Lakewood Ohio on grassroots alignment efforts of artists, citizen journalists, farmers, local food system activists and public librarians to enact the community and place-making vision of LEAF - the Lakewood Earth and Food Community. He is a student and teacher of the psychographic tool Spiral Dynamics as it relates to local economies and food systems. Warren uses Spiral Dynamics to enable assessment and insight concerning the community's capacity and interest in developing local agricultural, cultural and economic circuits of exchange. (See www.spiraldynamics.org/)




Lecture 4: Judy Wicks, founder of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia; founder of The White Dog Café


Tuesday, April 29, 2008, 5:00-6:30 PM
Connan Auditorium, University Center, Carnegie Mellon

Wicks is probably best known for establishing The White Dog Cafe on the first floor of her Philadelphia home in 1983. As the restaurant grew, so did her notion that the strength of her business relied upon the quality and sustainability of its locally grown ingredients. Envisioning how strengthening relationships among independent, community-rooted enterprises could inspire broad and profound cultural change, Wicks joined the Social Venture Network and co-founded the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) in 2001, She is currently writing a book about the White Dog Café and local living economies called Good Morning, Beautiful Business. (See www.livingeconomies.org/)

================

Supporters of the series include the Carnegie Mellon Heinz School of Public Policy and Management, the East End Food Cooperative, the Fay-Penn Economic Development Council, Green Block Farm, Grow Pittsburgh, Penn State Cooperative Extension, the Green Bough Holistic Learning Center, the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, the Urban Ecology Collaborative, and the Urban Farming Initiative.