I listened to Debbie Millman interview Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO and author of Change by Design. As someone who says he, "fell into industrial design." Tim seems to be an incredibly knowlegable and intellectual thinker who has a keen ability to disect problems in a way that allows for incredibly innovative solutions. I thought, at first, to pick a different interview, because I didn't think that hearing the point of view of an industrial designer would be as relevant to what I am currently working on than someone who deals more with motion. However, after a few minutes, I was convinced that I needed to read his book.
The interview somewhat revolves around what Tim calls Design Thinking. We hear those two words paired together quite often at this school, on various design blogs, in design books and other publications, but I am not sure that I have ever really given it as much thought as it deserves. Possibly I have taken the term forgranted; design thinking is creative problem solving. Its a way to come solve a problem. In the interview Millman reads Tim's definition from his book. Basically he says that the difference from a design problem and a math problem is that there is no definitive answer for any design problem. This creates room for creativity to take precedence in the problem solving process, leading to an innovative solution where new ideas or methods that have never existed are born. I thought that was brilliant. It sounds so obvious, but then again, many profound things do.
Other than this, there was in fact some information that applied to our current project. Tim is asked about story telling and how it relates to different mediums. He comments that programming for interactive design is a time based medium so there is room for story. But then he explains that as an industrial designer, his objects have a time base as well. A good example is a train seat. You have to sit in it for a period of time and that time allows for change to happen. Probably, your thoughts of your seat should remain constant throughout a train car. However, this made me think about the print advertisements I make at the Kansan. It is a common belief at the Kansan, that a viewer only lingers on an ad for about 3 to 4 seconds. I would say that it depends, but many times, the time spent is even less. Regardless, playing with the notion that because there is a time frame for one to view print, I decided that there are 3 basic ways to embrace story within the ad. The easiest and least effective of the three is a sequence. This is basically what happens in a comic book. You look at images that are divided by graphic elements to convey a sense of time between images. The second, which I think is more effective but harder to achieve, is a snapshot. This is basically one frame of a sequence that provides enough context information for the audience to determine the momentum of the scenario and fill in the spaces before or after the event. The third is sort of a mixture between the two depending on the way you look at it. in a way, it is what is happening when you read a paragraph. In my notes, I called it the "Hierarchical method" basically its a snap shot where the viewer is forced around the composition in a certain order. By manipulating what happens at the different points in the order, a story can be created. I can't think of a good example. I mean, a paragraph is a really simple example. You know where to start and end and you get there reading what is intended at the right time. I think I want to experiment with this in future work. And I probably need to think more about other options for non time based story telling.
I feel like I'm rambling. At one point I was going to relate all this back to our project with the Speeches. Basically, I noticed in class that many of the speeches (in book form) didn't have any sort of drive to get the audience from start to finish. Although we are supposed to visually articulate the audio of the speech, I think that it is also important to convey what the point of the speech is and what the viewer is intending the audience to feel (or at least how the designer is wanting the audience to interpret the speech). I wanted mine to feel like a pointless and endless debate because thats really what it is. So I have really tried to design the two speakers as characters through how I treat their type. I think that it has worked well, but it is still hard to create the tension between the two.
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