1. From my understanding of the readings and my thoughts on them I can honestly say that I am starting to change the way I think and approach design. Mau's focus was on trusting yourself to apply a "free-form" approach. Try to think outside the box, and when you think that you have gotten there then push it even farther and follow the paths that your creativity can take you. It may not always work, but you can often find great design concepts in your mistakes and accidents.

Davis' keynote on the other hand was more about teaching. with the advances of technology, many of the programs around this country can get stuck in an inbred way of thinking and applying learning criteria. "She believes standards must be overturned in place of better ones. She plays for and against the other articles, the throw back of the past refinement but also the turning over of sub par excellence, again in her case good is the enemy of best."

Blauvelt is a little easier to follow. He believes that the there are nor current design trends. I have a hard time believing in this one. It seems that design has always followed a trend. One thing to keep in mind about this reading is the point he makes that future design will be a hybrid of past designs. This could be a great time to be a designer if his point is in fact true.

The IDEO reading really puts the customer, consumer, person, community into play. Often designers will create something that looks good, but has no or little practical value to those it was designed for. By going to the source and obtaining all the information you can, you can start to get a sense for what is really needed. making sure that you utilize every means you have for a quality design that will actually do some good to those who need it. Myself, i like simple designs without much fluff. Simple and straight to the point. Unfortunately the program at PSU seems to frown on designs of that nature. Not always, but most of the time.

In the June

In the June 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review, there is a super article by IDEO’s Tim Brown on what it takes to bring innovation down to the execution. Tim’s solution: Design Thinking.

Tim tells us that Design Thinking is:

a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.

My design proccess is still a work in progress. I try to use things like Mau's "think outside the box" but I am still learning to trust myself to do it. I like to be simple and to the point. I try to put myself in the shoes of those who will see my work and ask myself what I would need to see to get my point across. Sometimes this works for me and sometimes it does not. But as we know, event the parts that do not work can come back in a different design with great success. I think that aving Luke as a teacher has helped me become more open to free thinking than I thought was possible. I really resisted not having an instructor that said exactly ehat he wanted us to do, but I know now that it was becaused he cared and wanted us to grow on our ways as designers.