2020:18 What I learned this week

Tree frogs fully freeze in the winter and defrost in the spring, and then pee out the excess fluid!
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-alaskan-frozen-frogs-20140723-story.html

Watching this guy build treehouses and a suspended sauna fills me with so much joy. One day I'll be able to make my own treehouse but for now...
https://www.instagram.com/ewokcanyon/

Learning about booking travel on a cargo ship. Did you know that the ships come with a swimming pool and/or saunas and barbeques?
https://www.langsamreisen.de/en/freightertravel

Find out what is happened in space on your birthday via the Hubble telescope!
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/what-did-hubble-see-on-your-birthday
Hubble explores the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That means it has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday.

Some numbers for this week:
Articles 5
Recipes attempted 4
Minutes of Sapiens read: 352
Minutes meditated: 10
New Drawings made: 6

2018:51 What I learned this week

This article amuses me because I initially found the pivot from a dating app to content-creation to be a surprising expansion. What was also interesting to me is the value proposition and messaging these platforms are trying to get across --mostly because I never thought about what they were trying to sell other than romantic prospects:

Bumble is selling itself as a means to personal betterment and greater sophistication. 

Tinder wants to reinforce the idea that dating misadventures are cool, or at least exciting, invigorating and youthful. (Swipe Life says downloading Tinder is a milestone in human life akin to buying your first beer and losing your virginity.

Read it here!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/style/dating-apps-tinder-bumble-content.html

If you're curious:
Tindr: Swipe Life
Bumble: the Beehive
Grindr: Into

2018:46 What I learned this week

Value of design, with real numbers!
I am a service designer and I work with organizations at the company-level to help them make decisions and investments about design for the organization. It involves creating strategy and vision at a level that can provide both direction and development. I felt that the McKinsey's article was a good articulation and nuance to the elusive "How does [company name] become a more design-centric/customer-focused organization?" question. (see quote below) Also! We now have up-to-date stats on the ROI of design!

With no clear way to link design to business health, senior leaders are often reluctant to divert scarce resources to design functions. That is problematic because many of the key drivers of the strong and consistent design environment identified in our research call for company-level decisions and investments.

Read it here:
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-design/our-insights/the-business-value-of-design


A resource for designers to support non-profits with their skills
I stumbled across this, and I found this to be an interesting model. As part of an AIGA committee, I feel like this could be one way we could position our initiative.
It is essentially a resource for non-profits to find designers to help support their cause, and it's great because design is often the last thing that non-profits are worried about or focused on when it comes to limited resources. Also! They are very clear about expectations upfront! (e.g. This is a 12 week time commitment, this is a website redesign, etc)
https://visiblealliance.org/


Government and machine learning
On a totally different theme, three great examples about government applying machine learning, as well as best use cases within different industries. A good skim!
https://www.kdnuggets.com/2017/08/ibm-top-10-machine-learning-use-cases-part1.html

2018:44 What I learned this week

It's interesting to see how we went from a technology all-in approach to education as a positive thing to a more tempered approach. The idea here that intrigues me is that human interaction is becoming a luxury.

This "digital divide" can be seen in the possibility that poorer and middle-class children will be raised by screens, while the children of Silicon Valley’s elite will be going back to wooden toys and the luxury of human interaction.

Also! Currently, lower income teenagers spend more hours on a screen than their higher income counterparts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/digital-divide-screens-schools.html

Kids in Utah are doing online learning before kindergarten. They're making a bet that kids can learn what they need to learn before kindergarten
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/preschool-is-good-for-poor-kids-but-its-expensive-so-utah-is-offering-it-online/2015/10/09/27665e52-5e1d-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html

A neat chrome extension, and great for UX and empathy building. Experience the web through the eyes of users with different abilities!

https://www.funkify.org/

2018:34 What I learned this week

This is a fun watch about animal experiments that show their understanding of fairness, empathy, and reciprocity --Changing beliefs that animals once were only capable and motivated by competition.
https://www.npr.org/2014/08/15/338936897/do-animals-have-morals

I've been doing some light research on hospitals from the point of view of service designers, and came across two "tours"! These are interesting because you can see some of the space, logistics, and technology choices they make for patients and staff. There are two, one is a community hospital in the US, and the other is a dutch teaching hospital with an internal innovation center (like Mayo CFI)
Community hospital https://medium.com/hsxd-healthcare-systems-by-design/field-trip-a-us-community-hospital-4834eec8a16f
Dutch hospital: https://medium.com/hsxd-healthcare-systems-by-design/first-impressions-a-dutch-hospital-ab8a70c898e3

2018:26 What I learned this week

In the past 15 years, demand has increased but our trade routes have not changed and what successfully been used to transport food and goods to cities, is becoming more strained. An interesting look at "chokepoints" in our global food system.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-food-trade-chokepoints/

A digital platform in Barcelona enables citizens to participate in government and takes back public data ownership from companies, to government. This is an interesting strategy and one that can turn out hopeful! (or harmful)
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/barcelona-decidim-ada-colau-francesca-bria-decode

2018:01 What I learned this week

Effective methods and small solutions to dealing with stress as a designer
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/12/dealing-with-stress-designer-what-research-says

The Instant-pot! A few of my friends got this for Christmas, whereas I have never even heard of it until now. If you don't feel like reading, scroll past all the text and pause at the image of the oven being boarded up and replaced by a cooking gadget 1/10th its size. Is that what kitchens will evolve into as we run out of real estate?
https://www.theringer.com/tech/2017/12/27/16822948/year-of-the-instant-pot-amazon-fandom

2017:22 What I learned this week

Reversing the lies of the sharing economy.
An interesting read that takes you back to why the sharing economy exists and how it began to what it has become today, a monetized platform.

Give a startup minimal capital to hire developers and run media campaigns, and then watch as the network effects ripple over the infrastructure of the internet. If it works, you’re suddenly in control of a corporation built with digital tools, but extracting value from real-world, physical assets like cars and buildings. The entity holds itself together not via employment contracts, but rather by self-employed workers’ dependence on it to access the market they rely on for their survival.

https://howwegettonext.com/reversing-the-lies-of-the-sharing-economy-a85501d14be8

2017:21 What I learned this week

Fitbit based research
Fitbit released their research library which references all the research that's being done using the data captured by your Fitbit.
https://www.fitabase.com/research-library/

How Amazon is disrupting retail
Scott Galloway gives an interesting lecture on how retail is dying and how Amazon is going to replace them all, through voice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MOwRTTq1bY


What service design is, and isn't
For all those confused about Service design (is it the same as design thinking? Is it strategic?), here's a nice response to common assumptions.
http://www.meldstudios.com.au/2016/08/31/what-service-design-is-and-what-it-is-not/

2017:18 What I learned this week

Barbie's Vlog
I watched a Barbie vlog and was really impressed at how real Barbie and Ken felt... it's strange to have children's dolls act like a real life vlogger you would watch on youtube. Uncanny valley-ish maybe? I don't have the same issue watching the LEGO movie, but I suppose the LEGO characters are not acknowledging me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpyq7n_O4ZY

A planner's guide to reading:
If you are looking for some reading inspiration, this person organized the types of books to read by a framework in which she identify the specific things she is learning about.  The seven types of books are:
1. That which expands our capacity for empathy
2. That which grounds us in the basics of strategy
3. That which grounds us in the basics of how brands are built
4. That which illuminates the present state of things
5. That which lets us peer into the near-future
6. That which deepens our appreciation for creative instinct and craft
7. That which expands our capacity for persuasive expression

https://martinweigel.org/2016/05/25/a-planners-guide-to-reading/

The architecture of work
I originally did not entirely agree with this article, but I've been thinking about it over the past few days and it has intrigued me. Maybe he is onto something afterall..
This is Esko Kilpi's commentary on what the next management paradigm looks like and why traditional management thinking is no longer very effective. His argument is that industrial management was about hierarchy and fragmentation so each item/task could be measured and managed whereas today, the technology has created a networked and interdependent environment that reflects a shift towards a need regarding understanding the participative, self-organizing responsibility and the equality of peers. The example he provided is below:

...Organizational outcomes are first chosen by a few top executives and then implemented by the rest. Here, planning and enactment of the plans are two separate domains that follow a linear causality from plans to actions. From the perspective of open source development, organizational outcomes emerge in a way that is never just determined by a few people, but arises in the ongoing local interaction of all the people taking part. For example GitHub encourages individuals to fix things and own those fixes just as much as they own the projects they start [..] and ten million people working together for ten minutes may be the model in the future.

https://workfutures.io/esko-kilpi-on-the-architecture-of-work-1b35f9fb4bc0