Creating Creative Communities

via lookbook.nu

For those who do not know, I am working on my masters in Korea at a university called KAIST. The topic I am looking at right now (still being in early stages of the overal degree it is still not fixed) is related to the methods of integrating and working with external creativity from users and other external components of a company. With a strong interest in Design Management and Innovation Strategy, I want to think about how we can optimally integrate and facilitate this external creativity.

In any case, today, while reading through Google Reader and stopping at an interesting peice from NussbaumOnDesign, I was introduced to what seems to be a great success in the construction of a creative communities.

Lookbook.nu is a simple site that lets young fashion thinkers show their work in a simple yet integrated community. I particularly like how Nussbaum discribes this setting in his post.

Anyway, I am interested to think of how to make good communities and good integration between companies and external creative communities. Any ideas would be treated with kindness.

Posted via web from Mark Whiting's posterous

Living in Context

Recently while shopping at the local KAIST convenience store I noticed the clerk was getting exercise by power walking around the small store.

The KAIST Convenient Store with woman running too fast to be photographed

I think the prospect of making our living spaces and working spaces share strange unexpected values is pretty interesting. I should also add that recently in my Ubiquitous Hacking summer class we did a little thinking about combined multimode spaces for living and working. My prototype was based on the prospect of incorporating emptiness to reduce functional specificity. A little like the discussion of bathrooms I noted last time I was travelling in Korea, this concept is also highly motivated by the seeming emptiness and functional agnosticism of many traditional Korean destinations.

A simple room for work and living biased on the lack of objects to create flexibility

Thinking Presentations

A screen shot of one of my presentations from a few years ago. Made with Keynote

I am sitting here looking over my colleagues shoulder, he is building a site map and a bunch of content ideas for a new website. Surprisingly however he is using powerpoint to do this not some specialised app. Interestingly I have in fact used a similar tool, Apple's Keynote, to do the same sort of work in the past. So, I was a little puzzled about why this actually happens.

Various obvious reasons come to mind, one being that in our work here at KAIST we have presentations almost every day and hence use presentation tools all the time anyway. I in fact use Keynote even to prepare ideas for discussions where no presentation will actually be made.

Another factor however, is the fact that presentation tools as they exist today are a little like WYSIWYG interfaces for building idea frameworks and hence can be used in a lot of settings. I think this could be taken a few steps further.

On a related note over the past half dozen years I have thought about the possibility of a computer interface that is more like a presentation at all times. So, everything you do is sort of always ready to be seen, but also always valid and useful to communicate.

I think with presentation like tools we do, or should get the following 3 basic modes; idea collection, organisation and communication. These each have various core features that I think are important and I list bellow.

1. Idea Collection
1. Data Dropping - ability to quickly add data
2. Quick Capture - ability to create nice text or other media fast
3. Sketching - this includes typical sketching and the sketching in the more abstract sense
2. Organisation
1. Data Types - ability to take data and group it or render it or do something to it which is useful quickly. Like Smart Graphics from Powerpoint though I think they could do a lot more with that idea. 
2. Trend Visualisation - a way to see how things are flowing and to design flow
3. Communication
1. Data Pulling - ability to take data out quickly, easily, and conveniently - Keynote is exceptionally good at this. 
2. Pretty Core - things have to naturally be presentable, designing a presentation style is a whole different project, it should be made easy
3. Communicative Features - features that actually enrich the communication and storytelling value. Perhaps Scott McCloud can say more about this. I really like the idea of non slide based communications and I often emulate this in my presentations. 

I think perhaps what I really want is not actually a presentation tool but more generally a thinking/communicating tool which would be really great for designers of various sorts as well as probably many other people. I have looked at a lot of tools branded in this space and I think they get some things right but nobody makes me sing. Some I like are Compendium and PersonalBrain but these are really tailored for a slightly different process and are absolutely not as pretty as required. 

I know there is a lot more I could write about these things but perhaps I will later. Ideas, additions or suggestions?

Animals at University

Here at KAIST we have some animals; Several geese, one duck (who pretends to be a goose), a collection of rabbits, the occasional dog randomly in the corridors of the design building, and various other dogs, cats and birds. Here I have linked to a gallery of examples.

Click to see big and map and other junk. 

What I can see in Korea

This is my dorm building at KAIST. In the background are apartments outside the university. 

So when I got here I wanted to start a blog relating to my stay but I have had a few reasons not to and thus it has been delayed. In any case, I am going to start documenting my stay a little more readily, and feel free to remind me to do so more in the future.

My school is quite small, about 6000 students I think, though the campus is quite large given that number.

View Larger Map

A map of KAIST.

Other places and things that begin with KAIST

Recently I have been working on another, new website. I may have mentioned it before but it is starting to actually have pages and content and stuff. I can not get a RSS feed out of it very simply yet so I am not bothering but I hope to at some point. In any case, my new home page is now located at google sites. For now the URL is not really that nice but at some point I am hoping to get a good one.

KAIST Emblem

In other news. I have been accepted to KAIST and have been given the appropriate scholarships to go there. I will be pursuing a Masters in Design Management and Strategy and hopefully learning a lot of Korean at the same time.

In other unrelated news, Soumitri is working on a project that I think is kinda cool and has been pushing me to think more about the before mentioned Google Design School. Also, given the new website etc. I have been commenting on my project more here, than on this blog.

Comments comments comments. Any medium available.

Moving Places - Thinking Stuff - Giving Things

My New Kidneys

Firstly. I think I said previously I am looking to go to KAIST in Daejeon, Korea next year. If anyone knows anyone with input I would love to learn more. For now they have given me a scholarship pledge but we will see how other things turn out. I am also considering doing a US school. Obviously D.School is probably the most attractive for me at this point but that is also in debate.


Next. I am working with a few new people, including a group called SocialAtom.com who do social media marketing with an emerging market tilt. . I am helping them deal with the Chinese market. So far so good.


Additionally I am now also working with a web outsourcing startup in China which should be interesting. I think we are going to try to target people who want to do minimal input and minimal interaction to develop desired applications. This will be fleshed out in the next few weeks. I am not sure when we are going public yet but it should be soon.


I am also trying to get a blog off the ground with a friend here in the states. We are still not sure what we are actually writing but I think it is going to be along the lines of writing about stuff in design that people are not discussing, to our knowledge. We are interested in logic based arguments etc. I will link here when we have some posts up.


Lastly, Brittany Veitch gave me a wonderful birthday present, a pair of kidneys. They are really beautiful I think I am going to wear them with my suit. Obviously the image at the top is them. Thanks Brittany. 

Comments please.

Future and Magic

Today I thought about how a big part of the things have made now the future are the things that do what would have been considered magic and are now provided by technology and science. At the same time, I think the other side of the future is undoing all the bad innovation that has lead to the strange world state we are in now. 

For those who have not seen it please watch Future Perfect's TED Talk


Today I had I took a train too and from Daejeon, about 2 hours south of Seoul where I had an interview with KAIST for a PhD. I am not sure if it is the right place for me. 

Korea is still a lot of fun however this evening I realised I had no water. I will have to find a way to get some tomorrow.