Thoughtful Design - Mobility Recovery Walker

http://www.coroflot.com/Josephparr/Pathos

Design Thinking paradigm

The wonderful Star Trek mission

"To explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before"

Never forget the feeling of discovery, of strange experiences, of wonder and amazement. Hold on to the spirit of adventure. Be bold and never settle.

Ogilvy: Divine Discontent and The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness

Divine Discontent and The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness.

1. Courage

Ideas are magical but fragile seeds that require protecting. If we are to fight, if we are to defend and if we are to protect, we clearly need a spine. And only by standing up for what we believe will we begin to build the most precious commodity in the world: trust. Then, the virtuous circle begins: courage leads to trust and to courage and to trust, and upwards and onwards we go. 

2. Idealism

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. David Ogilvy said: Raise your sights! Blaze new trails! Compete with the immortals! Dare dream humongous dreams. Put on our overalls, go out there and build them. 

3. Curiosity

It is only in the open state of curiosity that we can explore and dream. For a start, we have to ask stupid questions, like a pesky six-year old. Ray Croc summed it up nicely when he said: when we are green, we grow. When we are ripe, we rot. 

4. Playfulness

Pablo Picasso said: we are all born children. The trick is to remain one. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it is horseplay that is most certainly the father. All our art, all our science, and all our philosophy have been invented by playful people, not serious people.

5. Candour

Our job requires us to be brutally honest and totally dedicated to the truth. If someone asks for our opinion and we don’t offer it, our answer is not only dishonest; it’s worthless. We only get a spark when the stone and flint are moving in the opposite directions. 

6. Intuition

95% of our brain is our unconscious. Dreams, premonitions, gut feelings, and Freudian slips are all attempts by our unconscious to guide us. We are wiser than we think, and intuition is the art of listening to the guru within us. 

7. Free spirit

Rule 1: there are no rules. Rule 2: never forget rule no. 1. Step inside a free-spirited, idea-centric company and you’ll notice the air itself is different. Bureaucracy has no place in an ideas agency.

8. Persistence

a.Dogged determination is often the only trait that separates a moderately creative person from a highly creative one. Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Before them, obstacles vanish into thin air and mountains crumble into atoms. 

Conclusion: We are what we repeatedly do. Being very good is no good. You have to be very, very, very, very, very good.

How to generate ideas

Five step process to generating ideas

1. You gather as much information on the problem as you can. You read, you underline stuff, you ask questions, you visit the factory. Get to know your client’s business and customers.

2. You sit down and actively attack the problem.

3. You drop the whole thing and go do something else while your subconscious mind works on the problem.

4. “Eureka!”

5. You figure out how to implement your idea.

First, say it straight. Then say it great.

Write hot. Edit cold.

Nurture a newly-hatched idea. Look for what’s right, not what’s wrong. Ask what is good about it. Ask what we like about it. Coax the thing along.

Tim Brown's Design Your Life speech at UC Berkeley

Don’t ask what. Ask why.

We have a habit of accepting the challenges that get put in front of us—the latest school assignment, the next business project. Designers have a habit of being awkward on this subject. They ask, why is this even the right question?

They do this because they have learnt there is nothing more frustrating than pouring one’s creativity into doing a great job of answering the wrong question. So invest plenty of time in getting to the right question before you invest your creative energies in finding solutions.

Open your eyes.

We spend most of our lives not noticing the important things. I am sure there are many of us here whose partners regularly accuse us of that! The more familiar we are with a situation the more we take it for granted and in the process miss the opportunity for insight and inspiration, never mind enjoyment.

Good design thinkers observe. Great design thinkers observe the ordinary and in that ordinariness find great insight. Try getting into the habit of stopping once a day to look at an action or an artifact as though you are a detective at a crime scene. Why are manhole covers round? Why do I dress this way to go to work? How do I know how far back to stand from the person in front of me in line? What would it be like to be colorblind?

You will be shocked how inspirational it is to look carefully at mundane things.

Make it visual.

Record your observations and ideas visually, even if it is just a rough sketch or a photo on your phone. Being visual allows us to look at a problem differently than if we rely only on words or numbers.

Pictures put things in context. They show what else is going on. They show the whole idea. Drawing forces you to make decisions about what you want to happen. Don’t worry if you think you can’t draw. Do it anyway.

Build on the ideas of others.

Leonardo da Vinci’s sketch books are full not just of his own ideas but those of other inventors and engineers. He used them as the starting point for his own thinking. Picasso was famous for happily using the work of his fellow painters as genesis for his own masterpieces.

Great ideas evolve. They do not spring fully formed from the minds of geniuses. No matter what your professors might have implied about their own work! Creativity is a social activity and you should feel no hesitancy in standing on the shoulders of others. Just remember to give them credit where it is due.

Demand options.

Just as it is too easy to accept the questions that get put in front of you, so it is far too easy to accept the first solutions you come up with. Design thinkers seek out options, multiple solutions that can compete with each other. Design is a Darwinian process and diversity always creates the strongest ideas. Don’t stop until you have explored at least three ideas you would be excited by.

Balance your portfolio.

One of the most satisfying things about design is that the results are tangible. Something exists at the end of the process that did not exist before. If you chose to apply design thinking to your activities as you go forward then remember to document the process as it unfolds. Preserve those pictures and sketches you use to inspire and create. Keep videos, prototypes, whatever it is that shows how you think.

Assembled as a portfolio, this material will document a process of growth and record the impact of many minds. This will be invaluable not just in the prosaic drumbeat of performance reviews and job interviews, but in your own reflection on your life or when you try to explain to your friends, parents, or perhaps kids, what it is you really do. It is easier to feel proud of your contribution when you have a record of it.

Cultivating Flow

1. Wake up to a specific goal to look forward to

- Before falling asleep, review the next day and choose a particular task that is relatively more interestingand exciting.

- Next morning, open my eyes and visualize the chosen event and get myself excited about it.

2. If I do anything well, it becomes enjoyable.

- Have clear goals and expectations, pay attention to the consequences of my actions, adjust skills,concentrate on the task at hand without distractions

3. To keep enjoying something, I need to increase its complexity

Habits to control attention

a. Take charge of my schedule

- Pay attention to how well my schedule fits my inner states: when we feel best eating, sleeping, working,etc.

b. Make time for reflection and relaxation

- Schedule times in the day, the week, the month, the year to take stock and review what has beenaccomplished and what needs to be done

- Combine periods of reflection with activities that facilitate subconscious creative processes, e.g. walking,showering, driving, gardening, weaving, etc.

- Neither constant stress nor monotony is good for creativity.

- Best relaxation involves doing something very different from my usual tasks.

c. Shape my space

d. Find out what I like and what I hate about life

- Creative individuals always know the reason for what they are doing, and they are very sensitive to pain,to boredom, to joy, to interest, etc.

- Keep a record of what I did each day and how I felt about it.

e. Start doing more of what I love, less of what I hate

- Review the daily record and suss out what I like and what I don't like. 

- Once I know what my daily life is like, and how I experience it, it is easier to gain control over it.

Summary: Developing schedules to protect my time and avoid distraction, Arranging my surroundings to heighten concentration, Cutting out meaningless chores that soak up psychic energy, Devoting energy to what I really care about.

Develop Internal Traits

1. Develop what I lack

- Identify my key traits and attempt something completely opposite that would expose myself to the opposite trait

2. Shift often from openness to closure

- Take a task that I often do at work

- Relax my mind, look out of the window

- Try to grasp the most important issues for the task, What's really important? What gives me a goodfeeling? What scares me? Picture people involved; what are they doing? How are they feeling?

- Jot down some words, anything that concerns my feelings about the project or people. Words thatdescribe facts, events or persons. 

- Choose words carefully, keeping in mind the goals of the task, the department, as well as interests, tastes and prejudices of the intended audience.

3. Aim for complexity

- Be differentiated and integrated at the same time.

- Follow my own star and create my own career, but at the same time be steeped in the culture, learn andrespect rules of the domain, and be responsive to opinions in the field.

Mental Training

a. Find a way to express what moves me.

- The first step to solving a problem is to find it, to formulate the vague unease into a concrete problem

b. Look at problems from as many viewpoints as possible.

- Do not rush to define the nature of the problem.

- Look at the situation from various angles first and leave the formulation undetermined for a long time.

- Consider different causes and reasons. Test my hunches in my mind and then in reality, try tentativesolutions and check success, and be open to reformulating the problem

c. Figure out the implications of the problem

- Once a formulation is created, consider a variety of solutions and enetertain different possibilities. 

- Think of a good solution and then think of the opposite one.

d. Implement the solution

- The longer I can keep options open, the more likely the solution will be original and appropriate.

- Stay flexible by paying close attention to the process, and be sensitive to feedback to correct the course as appropriate. 

e. Produce as many ideas as possible and try to produce unlikely ideas

- E.g. jot down summaries of what people say in meetings and generate alternative positions, and integrate various perspectives into a more comprehensive one

- Instead of stating views that are based on my previous positions, use lines of force emerging in themeeting to suggest new ways of thinking 

The House I live in: war on drugs

As America remains embroiled in conflict overseas, a less visible war is taking place at home, costing countless lives, destroying families, and inflicting untold damage on future generations of Americans. Over forty years, the War on Drugs has accounted for more than 45 million arrests, made America the world’s largest jailer, and damaged poor communities at home and abroad. Yet for all that, drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available today than ever before. Filmed in more than twenty states, The House I Live In captures heart-wrenching stories from individuals at all levels of America’s War on Drugs. From the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America’s longest war, offering a definitive portrait and revealing its profound human rights implications.

While recognizing the seriousness of drug abuse as a matter of public health, the film investigates the tragic errors and shortcomings that have meant it is more often treated as a matter for law enforcement, creating a vast machine that feeds largely on America’s poor, and especially on minority communities. Beyond simple misguided policy, The House I Live In examines how political and economic corruption have fueled the war for forty years, despite persistent evidence of its moral, economic, and practical failures.

via http://www.thehouseilivein.org/see-the-film/about-the-film/

Brooklyn: social costs, crime, and the prison boom

Million Dollar Blocks: the neighborhood costs of America's prison boom (by Jennifer Gonnerman) in  Prison Profiteers.

Excerpt: In Brooklyn last year, there were 35 blocks that fit this category - ones where so many residents were sent to state prison that the total cost of their incarceration will be more than $1 million. In at least one case, the price tag will actually surpass $5 million. These blocks are largely concentrated in the poorest pockets of the borough's poorest neighborhoods, including East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Brownsville.
...New York's state prisons release around 28,000 people a year. Nearly two-thirds of them return to New York City. They arrive wearing state-issued clothes - a plain sweatshirt and stiff denim pants - and they come back to the same streets they left. They bring home all the memories and lessons of prison life, plus the system's parting gift, $40. Usually, they discover that the neighborhoods they left behind have not changed, and that life on the outside can be incredibly difficult. If the past is any predictor, half of them will be back upstate within three years. 

"70% of the children in this school live below the federal poverty line."
BROOKLYN CASTLE tells the stories of five members of the chess team at a below-the-poverty-line inner city junior high school that has won more national championships than any other in the country. The film follows the challenges these kids face in their personal lives as well as on the chessboard, and is as much about the sting of their losses as it is about the anticipation of their victories. Ironically, the biggest obstacle thrust upon them arises not from other competitors but from recessionary budget cuts to all the extracurricular activities at their school. BROOKLYN CASTLE shows how these kids’ dedication to chess magnifies their belief in what is possible for their lives. After all, if they can master the world’s most difficult game, what can’t they do?
via http://www.brooklyncastle.com/about/synopsis

Wise words from a reverend

Definition of a successful life:

To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived.

--Harry Emerson Fosdick