Attended a workshop at Stanford this afternoon hosted by IDEO CTO Doug Solomon and Lead of Connected Health Domain Arna Ionescu. It’s encouraging that the process we went through in the brainstorming session was so familiar. Guess I learned something in the past year of grad school! Posted via email from corinna’s posterous

Coming up with a suitable title for my thesis proposal has been an unexpected challenge. My project’s goal is the promotion of health or wellness, but which word should I use – health or wellness? If I had only read this NYTimes article earlier, I could have saved myself some time. By using the word [...]

I think I am now addicted to inspiration. Today’s TEDxCMU event featured speakers ranging from entrepreneurs to artists to musicians to writers. Actually, most (if not all) of them fell into more than one of those categories. In order of appearance: Jonathan Fields A former attorney turned author, blogger, and entrepreneur, his talk (according to [...]

Spring break has come and gone without really being. At least, that’s how it felt as I spent all week in Pittsburgh, reading and writing for school assignments and thesis preparation. I am glad I got things done, though, especially when I consider all that lies ahead. A quarter-long mini course I had been taking, [...]

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 [...]

One of the instructors in my graduate design seminar related a reaction that someone once had during a class exercise years ago. It went something like this: “Why should my work serve future generations? What have they ever done for me?” He brought it up as an example of the egocentrism he wishes designers to  [...]

The role of teaching assistant is new to me, but after one week, I have already learned three things from peeking on the other side of the student-teacher divide. Realization #1: Teachers have lives outside teaching. This may be a throwback to the egocentric perspective of childhood, but I am still adjusting to the realization [...]

Reading #2: “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning” Working Papers from the Urban & Regional Development Horst W.J. Rittel & Melvin M. Webber Bitch bitch bitch. Whine whine whine. Suddenly everybody’s an expert, and nothing’s good enough, despite the fact that we have well-trained professionals in countless fields. Well, if you think the situation’s [...]

I am in design school, but I am not a designer. As I plow through stacks of assigned readings, my non-designerly brain is straining to distill erudite works into comprehensible nuggets. And entertain itself late at night. Here goes… Reading #1: The Design Way Chapter 1: The First Tradition Everything kickass in human history that [...]

I just started taking an online class on freelance writing. The instructor wrote an article a while back called “Chasing the Perfect Taco Up the California Coast.” I can tell this is going to be a good class.