Teaching
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Are We Arguing When We Should be Designing?
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2 min read
Scanning the Internet-centered design mailing lists these days, I have to wonder if the inward-looking conversations aren’t doing more harm than good. Earlier in my career, mailing lists and blogs were incredibly useful tools for learning my craft. The mass media hasn’t really covered the story of blogs as more than journals and citizen journalism.…
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Launched!
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1 min read
The first SmartEx class was taught this week and went off without a hitch. While it’s a real working course from the students’ point of view, behind the scenes I’m using it as a prototype to quickly learn better ways of doing everything schools do. I was even planning to take a hit financially in…
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Interview with Alex Kirtland at UsableMarkets
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1 min read
Alex Kirtland interviewed me for his blog UsableMarkets about my work on Smart Experience. Here’s a highlight of me in a young turk mood… …Smart Experience students tend to be younger, technically-savvy, and willing to experiment, so we don’t have to adhere to tradition when we think another way is better. If we want to…
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Frog Design Groks SmartEx
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1 min read
Ian Curry, design analyst at Frog Design, pens an interesting look at the current state of design education in The Known Unknowns: Exploring the evolution of design education in response to the industry’s expanding role. We’re honored he includes SmartEx alongside the Institute of Design and Stanford’s d.school, two schools for which we have great…
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Props from Lou Rosenfeld
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1 min read
Lou Rosenfeld, who helped create the field of information architecture with the “Polar Bear Book” blogged his reaction to Smart Experience… “…Smart Experience is essentially a broker of dialogues between teachers and learners at different levels, starting with sharing thoughts on rough topics, and ending with an actual course (with students, a teacher, course materials,…
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Talking vs. Doing and My New Project
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1 min read
If there’s still anyone out there who follows this blog I’m sure you’re wondering why the post frequency has dropped off and why it consists mostly of quoting the New York Times. I’ve been busy slowly creating my latest passion, a school of continuing education called Smart Experience. I could write a lot about it,…
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The skinny here is that I’d like to work on correcting the uneven access to Internet jobs (great jobs, btw) by providing education to the disadvantaged. By disadvantaged I mean — here in New York City — mainly blacks and Hispanics, but generally those with lower income. I’m not sure how organizations who provide such…
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Ken Bain’s Research on College Teachers
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1 min read
Ken Bain came to Pratt last night to discuss his amazing research on teaching. Twenty years ago he and his colleagues worked to identify the best college teachers in America. They then examined how those teachers did research, planned courses, and taught classes. It’s all summed up in his excellent book, What the Best College…
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How To Talk to Your Kids
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1 min read
While this research says talking more and more encouragingly to your kids increases their IQ, this research says (I believe) when kids get to be about 5 years old then focused praise is better.
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A New Internet Strategy Course
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1 min read
Though there is much punditry on the topic, I’ve found a paucity of books, classes, and other educational materials about Internet strategy. Guessing Internet practitioners would appreciate a formal review, I’ve created a course called Introduction to Internet Business Strategy and will be teaching it first at the Information Architecture Summit in Las Vegas this…
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Successful small business units, schools
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1 min read
William G. Ouchi on decentralized management: I had spent 35 years studying the management of very large companies, and one of the most consistent principles is decentralization. In a competitive world, you must make decisions in the smallest operating units possible, or you will go out of business… …We have a research project under way…
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Business models for designers
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2 min read
About every third or fourth design student I meet has a concept for helping the elderly call for help from their homes. I just saw another one last night at the Parsons show. One might wonder why such devices aren’t widespread by now. I ran into my friend Bill recently who works as a CTO…
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Lance Carlson, president and CEO of the Alberta College of Art and Design, is — somewhat ironically — one of the only art and design colleges incorporating design thinking into the curriculum in a comprehensive way… “Our new Institute will explore and foster work in these areas, and provoke internal dialogue at the college as…
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2006 Pratt Show, May 9-11
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1 min read
Since I’ll be teaching Business+Design at the Pratt Institute here in New York this Fall, I plan to check out the graduate show to get inside the heads of these bright young designers. The show is open to the public May 9-11. Inspired by graffiti, t1-12 by Victoria Haroian is a living room chair that…
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MIG Seminar in Vancouver, March 23
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3 min read
We’ll be teaching a full-day seminar prior to the IA Summit called Enhancing Your Strategic Influence: Understanding and Responding to Complex Business Problems. I’ll be joined by John Zapolski and Scott Hirsch of MIG, Harry Max (formerly of Dreamworks), and Mark McCormick (Director of Design at Wells Fargo). We’ve been designers. And we’ve partnered with…