Posted: February 24th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Management | Tags: planning, scheduling, time management | 27 Comments »
To be honest, I didn’t use to manage my time efficiently. “But” when I did, I really performed better, multitask efficiently and enjoy the entertainment.
How did I start managing my time?
I’ll start by thanking Dr. Atef Al-Najjar who enlightened me with his steps to success. The story started by following the ”Steps for Success” when I was Junior student at KFUPM (2005).. Actually, it is the whole story.
You really need to write down a schedule for your self on paper (computers/iphone might work if you are a tech person who cannot imagine his life without iphones or computers), don’t just memorize it. You still have to look at it every morning. Think of it as your manager and these time slots as your tasks and deadlines. Every task should be submitted and reported to your manager on time. Try it for 2 weeks, and believe me, if you follow the schedule and submitted your tasks on time, YOU WILL SUCCEED within your self, which eventually will reflect on your other works. (you will notice the difference)
The Steps (a little bit enhanced):
- Split your day into two parts, 6 am to 6 pm and 6 pm to 6 am.
- Each part is divided by hours; 6 am to 7 am, 7 am to 8 am…etc. Personally, I prefer to split them with a 30 min span, but its up to you. At the end, you don’t want your schedule to look cluttered.
- Now, add the “Must do” tasks, such as sleeping, wake-up/bath, lunch, dinner…etc. Yah, bath.. it takes time too. If you have work, then you should add it now too, don’t forget it.
- Next, add the fun/entertainment/relax hours for each day.
- In addition to that, add the hours for transportation, whether its a bus ride, bike, car, walk… I don’t know how you commute or transport, but you should include them too.
- To make the schedule more appealing, add some colors to it. I don’t want to restrict you with any color, but you might want to use the colors to group similar tasks. For example, blue for sleep hours, green for transport…etc.
Something like this:
Make this schedule your daily guideline. Sometimes, you might want to adjust the schedule based on future appointments, events, circumstances… You cannot predict when you will have a meeting with a client, or invited to a marriage party. Sometimes, you don’t know about these appointments early enough, and you want/have to attend these events/appointments. As a result, you need to adjust the schedule for them. BUT, follow your schedule again, go back on track and don’t throw it away.
Every semester I create a new schedule and every summer I have different schedule.
Lovely! I hope you respect your new manager, and wish you a very successful and fruitful life.
Posted: February 18th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: notes | Tags: design, inspiration, ixd10 | No Comments »
Meaningful innovation relies on interaction and service design - Nathan Shedroff
In this talk, Nathan focused on meanings, and why and how to innovate. By innovation you design paths to organic, lasting growth. Also, he mentioned how we, as designers, should evoke meaning for clients. Companies look for price and performance, but that is not necessarily good. Instead, they should look for emotion, identity and meaning. He said that “meaning is the big thing in people’s life”. Furthermore, he described an experience as: breadth, triggers, intensity, duration, significance and meaning.
for more information about this talk, check his slides.
Frames: notes on improvisation and design - Liz Danzico
Improvisation is the intersection between creator and consumer.
Frame and vision of creator, and creativity of the team/consumer.
- Present: Involve the audience
- Detectible: Requires no pre knowledge
- Responsive: Define parameters
- Additive: Accept all offers
Mimic improve in design acivity
creator |——[ Design ]————[release]—-[use]—> consumer
|—–[compose]/[transmit]—————-[ interpret ]—>
Examples:
- Street vendors in Tokyo (van) go where interesting topics are. (not based on realestate or location)
- Hello health
- Jetblue story booth
- Pop-up lunch (streets/public places), Zero energy media wall
Jazz vs Classic songs (notes)
“…. pleasurable overflow of information”
improve small interface to symphony
(Twitter: @bobulate)
Remote design research - Nate Bolt
Nate went through many examples of websites that are used for remote testing. He talked about the advantages of conducting user testing, in person. That includes:
- The people are in their own environment,
- real tie,
- involved observer,
- geography,
- translation,
- faces
Designing Remote Studies, testing:
- Functional: (through interfaces)
- Conceptional: (through card sort)
Prototypes, wireframes, sketches –> 
Testing design:
Loop11, usabilla
He talked abou his experience in user testing and what is the average time for such testing, and that is between 25-50. He said that sessions that are more than 60 min means BAD!
Plain frame:
iShowU
remoteusability
userresearchfriday.com (Feb. 19)
audience mentioned: fivesecondtest.com
Design for social innovation and sustainability - Ezio Manzini
Next is the future of tomorrow morning…
Like designers, design for future, but design for something doable (can be done)
Exit strategies:
- from old economy
- to move to a new economy
Signals of a possible sustainable future
- social innovation: individuals and communities are inventing new ways of living
- welfare and social services
- elderly and self helping services
- digital platform become catalyzers of social resources
- aggregate for social action
- a new scenario is emerging (4 keywords)
- small – local – connected – open
- small/local: ..intereven users..? of scale, relationships & identity
- open/connected: the rise of aprevedented forms of organization
- small/connected: in the network society the small is not small (computer networks small, but not small)
- local/open: in the sustainable society the local is open: the connected local
( small ( ) local )
( open ( ) connected )
change the profile of consumer ==> design for codesigners
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
Needs to be satisfied
capabilities to be satisfied
www.desis-network.org
Designing for the web in the world - Timo Arnall
I found this talk interesting. He mentioned the book “Shaping Things” and how it influenced him, and I read this book and I enjoyed it. He talked about the internet of things by using RFID. He mentioned some examples where physical meets the network such as Nike+. Check his work. Must see!
Physical object + service = matching relationship
nearfield.org
The company: AHO
Designing for solitude - Ben Fullerton
Designing for solitude as a state
Books; community and privacy toward a new architecture of humanism
how might we design for solitude
disconnect = good
a device that cannot receive calls/messages while you are listening to music, but later you get logs about those cases
REASONS: make people think! <—-
that was the purpose
The human interface (or: why products are people, too) - Chris Fahey
The uncanny valley
don’t replicate/replace human
Why we became designers? what make us designers? what do we like?
- taking things apart to see how they work
- fixing broken things
- creating little worlds
why? IxD is a creative form…
www.behaviordesign.com
Open source design: camel or unicorn - Tom Igoe
Intellectual property now are lack stocks
examples:
- bug labs
- chumby
- market pot
- openmoko
- open prosthetic
Matthew Thomas
programmers are trained to solve the general case. example: he showed an image of an error box with message that says: “some sort of error” and a button that says: “OK!”
practical layers
of openness (a riff on phi\torrent)
- …
- …
- aesthetic guidelines
- interaction guidelines
- warranty
some resources:
- CHDK open-source (Canon Hack development …)
- the peer to patent project
- blinder
Talk to me - Paola Antonelli
significantobject
- people and objects
- the face of things
Even Rath: The Elastic Mind
Graffiti Research Lab
Access to Network
Lisa Strausfeld and James Nick Sears visualization
design and the elastic mind
“@” is a great design that already exist before
another sign (looks like @ with a dot instead) that means “I was making a joke”
paola_antonelli@moma.org
The future of search - Peter Morville
design pattern: autocomplete
speed is essential in iterative process
help people to discover what available
- improve search to continue improvements
- wolframe alpha
- help users ask the right question
- described navigation interface (Mwine)
- Augmented reality (physical search) {Augmented reality + RFID my idea}
- user experience honeycomb: (searchers edition)
- user experience treasure map
Search:
- Microscope: focus on details
- Telescope: look ahead and see the big picture
- Collude scope: les shift to see things differently
Rapid prototyping with Adobe Flash Catalyst - Guillermo Torres
What I hear I forget
What I see I remember
What I do I understand
a nice graph about prototyping:
sketch throughway prototype evaluatry prototype
—o————-o————o—————–o———————-o——
scope concept design implementation deploy/maintain
The importance of facial features - Gretchen Anderson
What is the mostly recognizable all the time
know coworker and clients might not remember them
functional catography
Project: Tools to teach students science
“in California (may be SF??) 80% of the teachers are not qualified to teach their subjects”
they spend time to manage classroom
=>> teach the teacher ***
give yourself constraints
another project: kitchen of the future (awesome videos)
- remember to create the love, how you will do that
- product personality
New soft city - Dan Hill
Company: Arup
City of Sound
‘the city’ Lewiz Mumford (movie)
- information reach spaces
- interaction installation
- patterns of activity you pull from digital
- strategic prototyping
- “fake” published magazine for 2010 when was 2009
- Responsive Architecture (Masdar city center)
- Informational feedback loop
- Landscaping information (Barangaroo, 2009)
- sensing moment
- urban sensing
- user experience flow
- BOP making (make clear what is being sensed and how)
- smart light city mobile
- persuasive public transit
- responsive spaces (Jatkasaari, helsinki) (Sydney metro)
- user-centered strategy
- civic-scale feedback loop (The Cloud, London 2009) (experincia)
- urban UCD
- shared spaces (Drachten, Netherland)
- enabling change
- Responsive fabric??
- Sentient furniture (the edge state of liboy??)
