Was it something I said?

So, it may have been something that I did wrong. Or maybe not. Great. That helps a lot.

A Career of Meaning

As designers … [w]e have the opportunity and the responsibility to create a world where each object and experience is filled with value, where living with less but better is both joyful and meaningful.

Hugh Graham in Lasting but Not Least on A Brief Message.

To me, a career and a life of meaning involves both seizing opportunities and assuming responsibility for being part of creating a joyful world.

Obviously, design isn't the only career path that contributes towards this vast goal but I definitely believe the set of skills associated with human-centered design creates many unique opportunities and thus increases the responsibility for designers to do our part in making things truly better no matter where we go and what we do.

Just as each person has their own way of understanding, expressing concern, and offering help, different careers have varying methods and extents to which they contribute towards creating a joyful world. I realized that all the careers I've had interest in sparked passion in me because I felt that the mix of my personal abilities, the working environment, and the problem space could enable me to maximize on opportunities to make solid contributions towards "making things better" and "making people happy".

While I may not always know exactly what I want to be doing in the future (and things inevitably change even when I think I do), from this perspective, what I do not want to do becomes more clear. I don't want to be spending my time on things where I'm not positive if I'll be making things happen towards improvement.

That is part of the reason I decided against pursuing a PhD program. I only considered it in the first place because I assumed it could increase my capacity to execute on my goals more effectively. However, somewhere along the way, I became convinced that the design legs I stood on were already capable enough to do some worthwhile work, so why not see how far these legs can go?

Basically, I want to be part of making things happen; and in particular, meaningful things. What's meaningful? I find it meaningful to be part of creating a joyful world. Making things better!

What would define a career of meaning for you?

Photo credit: Joe Lencioni.

I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

I feel like I just went through a breakup! I've been collecting screenshots of "company voice" that I find interesting. Maybe I'll figure out something cool to do with them at some point.

It's nice how the machine-generated message is very human by personifying itself by being able to give up and having emotions such as feeling sorry and even sympathizing based on the assumption that things didn't turn out well. These are normally (I think) all good things. But in this instance, I somehow find it rather depressing.

How much...

How much...
Originally uploaded by ericpan

… I know, it's not really a window.

[Decided to randomly put my photos on the blog for no reason.]

Don't talk to me like that okay?

hulu.com has a cool feature to let users create custom entry and exit points for each clip to share or embed.

Remind you of anything? (profanity ensues)

UX Company Gmail Ticker Tagline: Nectarine

"UE Design Firm- Palo Alto - www.nectarinegroup.com - We work with tech clients to make beautiful and easy to use software."

Amazing Interactive Information Visualization: Lens Reviews

Digital Photography website dpreview.com just released long-awaited (by me at least) lens reviews section and besides being thorough and clear as I would expect from dpreview, I'm totally nerding out over the interactive information visualization widget that visualizes sharpness and chromatic aberration at all combos of focal length and apertures.

Wow. I'm blown away. If this is the result of Amazon.com buying dpreview, I'm glad it happened and I look forward to seeing this feature being developed and seeing what else they are cooking up.

"Design by committee 2.0" or "Genius designer is an anachronism"

In the end, is all this process-oriented work satisfying for its designers? Some of them say yes. "What you lose is overt self expression, but I gain something much richer by doing it this way," says Alexandre Hennen, a senior designer. "I get into somebody else's life and make it better."

Nicely put. From Masters of Collaboration: The 21st century design environment trades individual stars for teamwork uniting designers, engineers, anthropologists, and others.

Dream: Collect Cars

Well, maybe just being able to regularly enjoy and marvel at them will be sufficient. If only there were more museums, galleries, or showrooms that would display and celebrate the cars as human achievements…

I was looking through a gallery of the upcoming BMW X6 and even though it may not be groundbreaking-beautiful (I'm not educated enough to have a meaningful say anyway), as I came to the first shot of the interior, I thought "I wish I could collect great cars." Asking myself why I thought that, the answer was "Because great cars are fascinating like art." (Yeah, it would be nice to collect fine art too, wouldn't it?)

But then I thought that cars may be somewhat different than what is traditionally considered as art - so what's the deal? It dawned on me: Great cars have held a special place for me as a designer because great cars are like highly interactive art with immense utility that are simultaneously demonstrations of mastery in technology and engineering. Truly amazing objects, aren't they?

How cool would it be to work in such an intersection as a designer?

Sure, BMW's Chief of Design Chris Bangle had a TEDTalk called Great cars are Art, but when I blogged about it, my main takeaways were the depictions of love and trust in design and more specifically the process of design and what it means to design. If I remember correctly, Chris Bangle was more interested in car design as art as a parallel for sculpture and artists seeking truth. Actually, I think I want to to watch it again.

For convenience, here it is again:

Design is how it works…

not what it looks like.

'Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,'' says Steve Jobs, Apple's C.E.O. ''People think it's this veneer -- that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.''

I've seen this excerpted quote floating around in coding-related blogs lately and decided I'd do my part in the beloved blogosphere echo and repeat it from this design-related blog.

Original Article.