Corinna Sherman

I just attended a university lecture by Chuck Klosterman, journalist, pop culture philosopher and author of books such as Eating the Dinosaur. In a self-aware storyteller style reminiscent of a stand-up comic, he talked about a variety of things, including

Why are things the size they are?
How are a blues club and a zoo similar?
What is the relationship between reality and realness?
How is the Unabomber’s Manifesto relevant to society today?

These kind of lectures remind me why I enjoy the university environment. Not only was the talk entertaining and interesting, the students in the audience asked questions that were equally thought-provoking. I especially liked the debate that sparked over whether new media creates a low ceiling for creative thought – whether the images we see in television and movies limit our ability to imagine things outside our own experience.

Earlier in the afternoon, I attended a talk hosted by the Carnegie Mellon School of Design. Ezio Manzini, founder of the DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) Network, described how designers are harnessing social resources to tackle sustainability issues. Citing examples from urban vegetable gardens to co-housing, the smiling Italian emphasized four characteristics of successful projects in this area: small, local, connected, and open. The Q&A session afterward for this talk provided additional food for thought.

What kind of foundation is today’s generation laying for future generations?
Are designers becoming a professional field without an industry?
What is the relationship between sustainability and resilience?

I look forward to pondering these questions further, in between the bursts of concentration I will, of course, devote to my course work and thesis topic musings…

I turned in a first draft of my paper entitled “What is interaction design?” this morning for seminar, churned through the weekend’s trend analysis findings with my studio classmates this afternoon, went home, took a nap, and arose groggily an hour later feeling like I just came out of a weekend-long design bender that I can’t quite remember. Scraps of paper litter my desk, covered with the fragmented ramblings of a deranged design philosopher in my own handwriting. An avalanche of articles in varying states of annotation clutter my virtual desk. I sweep them clear with a single Command-Q and begin reading the assignments for this week. Highlight, summarize, synthesize, repeat. I shall be insane by spring.

The second semester of my Master of Design in Interaction Design program began this Monday, and I can already tell it will be a cold, hard marathon to the end. I’ve been training by walking to and from school each day in the snow, uphill both ways, with a fully loaded backpack. Today was a relatively balmy 34°F day. Sunny. Atypically devoid of precipitation. But I am not letting that lull me into a false sense of security. Oh, no. I am taking vitamin D supplements to get me through the Pittsburgh winter, and I’m keeping a regular sleep schedule to keep the germs at bay. My challenge this time around:

Graduate Design Studio II featuring a semester-long team project to design a social service, sponsored by either Microsoft or Motorola (to be determined by a brief yet brutal death match on pay-per-view)

Research Methods in Human Centered Design covering a series of methods for explorative, generative, and evaluative research (my favorite to imagine: “velcro modeling”) to support the project work in Studio II

Graduate Design Seminar II reading and writing about interaction design (Will anyone top Henri Bergson for most baffling argument? Stay tuned…)

Adaptive Service Design exploring service design that leverages context-aware technology such as mobile phones, intelligent environments, and robotic products (super excited about this one!)

Information Design and Rhetoric exploring how rhetoric can provide systematic frameworks for designing information products in complex situations (more reading and writing guaranteed to blow my mind, plus two projects)

And just to prove it’s on, I’m going to stop this post now and go do some reading. Stay warm, people.