So when you're sleeping in strange beds every night on a three-week road trip, you sometimes have strange dreams. My latest dream is that I was talking to Rachel Maddow about her experience in the human computer interaction design program at IU -- what worked for her during the program and how it might be improved given her experience "in the business." We had a great conversation; it all made sense in dream land, including some of her suggestions for improvement. And then I woke up! [For the record, Rachel has a B.A. from Stanford University and a Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University. She's the host of the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC.]
Back to reality. I've been in the San Francisco Bay area for the last two days -- having a Glerb business meeting at Google Ventures and catching up with old friends and former students. I've been hosted by Christian Beck and his wife Angie in their beautiful home in Novato (just north of the city, across the Golden Gate Bridge). They have a beautiful son, Milo (almost ready to walk!), two cats and a dog; I got along with everyone. Yesterday I visited Christian's office at Autodesk and he showed me some of the detailed and highly skilled design work he is doing.
Later in the day I visited with Dane Petersen at Adaptive Path, a super cool interactive design company. And then we met again for dinner with Matt Snyder (Adobe) who happened to be in town interviewing some customers. We had a lot of fun talking about design and the questions I "asked" Rachel Maddow! Much of these conversations throughout the day confirmed the design of my new course that I'll be offering in Fall 2011 (I590: Rapid Interaction Practice); more about this later.
Again it's so good to see that former students are doing very well in their careers. Dane said that his training at IU was for "a job that will likely exist in five years." By this he meant that the typical business world is not ready for high-end experience design or even deep design thinking. Nevertheless, Dane, Matt, and Christian agreed that their IU training was excellent and important. I urged them to think of themselves as design evangelists; they can make slow but important change at this stage in their careers. "Five years from now" will happen for them soon enough!
My meeting with David Krane at Google Ventures was very good. David has been providing great guidance for getting Glerb off the ground and he has networked us into valuable contacts in Seattle and the Bay area. Vamshi Reddy, one of three Glerb co-founders, was able to join the meeting via phone, and it was helpful for David to hear about his background (as well as Anoo Padte's, our third co-founder). We hope to present David and others with our business plan soon.
I've traveled 3,300 miles so far. Next stop: Ashland, Oregon.
One place where design is understood and appreciated is Rocky Mountain Institute.
ReplyDeleteA couple extracts from their Mission Statement
"...emphasizing integrative design..."
"...to create abundance by design..."
rmi.org/rmi/Vision+and+Mission
This isn't just rhetoric. Design is what they do, and they are very innovative about it, even if often in very common-sensical ways. For example, one of their trademarks is to make sure that *all* interests are represented at the table from the *beginning* of a design process. Not the way it has traditionally been done in almost any domain.
You might think of stopping in there on your way home. It's a nice part of Colorado.
I definitely agree with what Dane said about the program training us for a job that will exist five years from now! Five years is taking too long as it is haha.
ReplyDeleteGlad you're enjoying your journey across the west, Marty.