What's happening to play?

What’s happening to play?

Here’s a cool idea: give your kid a box. It’ll keep her entertained. And guess what? It’s cheap!

The interesting thing about toys is that kids have no say really in what gets bought. Parents make the final call on all purchases. And parents buy things they think are cool. Depending on a parent, a kid might get educational toys, or maybe they’ll get something outrageous and loud.

The thing about kids is that they’re really creative. Kids all over the place love to play with simple things like boxes, so why do we spend so much money on toys?

This questions hits pretty close to home for me since I have two sisters ages 4 and 9. I know it wasn’t too long ago, but when I was a kid, my sister and I kept each other company. We designed elaborate worlds with our friends to play our games in. One of my friends and I spent countless hours digging a hole in her backyard (in hopes of making a fort.) Every time we had a play date we’d dig deeper, for about a year. Somehow this kept us entertained. It must have made things easy on her parents too! And remembering all of this, I can’t remember a single toy that I used to be attached to. I had a calculator that I’d play with, and maybe a few plush animals. I remember playing with Hot Wheels and Polly Pockets occasionally, but mostly with things like Lego’s, Tinker Toys, and K’nex. Maybe this toy list for me happens to reflect my gravitation toward engineering, but I also feel like the toys I used to play with were things that let me be creative. Sure, K’nex gave me a little book to start off with, but after that I could just build whatever I imagined. And I never had trouble keeping myself amused.

The worst thing I can remember as a kid was running errands at Home Depot. This store was designed for people fixing up their homes-the last thing a kid wants to do. My sister and I used to go to the paint section together and play with all the different colors. After that we’d look at the countertop tile samples. We’d try to collect as many as we could every time we went. It was a game to try and remember how many we already had, and not to take too many that the man at the counter noticed.

So what’s wrong with the toys today? They’re educational, aren’t they?

Honestly, I can’t stand them. Maybe I’m idealistic about my childhood, but I see my sisters today who start whining as soon as they are apart from their Gameboys and Pokémon cards. I’ll usually try to suggest a game to them, but to no avail. They need something to keep them entertained. And this worries me a little. I guess it stands out because I can see the difference so clearly between my childhood and my little sisters, only about 10 years apart. I guess what bothers me about it is that as we (the toymakers) define a world more and more for these kids to play in, this leaves less and less room for the kids to imagine. And when you can get online and go to Neopets.com or to webkinz.com, why bother using your imagination? It’s all right there in front of you.

Play has transformed from some creative, fun interaction to some now form of managing assets given to you online, or playing by someone else’s rules. This is still play, but it’s radically different from my definition of play. I know this doesn’t tie into the idea of design too much, but my point here is that there’s an art to designing for fun. And that lies in the ability to create something that children can interact with in a way that allows them to fully be themselves, not something that constrains them to operating inside some outwardly defined criteria.

Teaching-a radical idea

Take a bunch of kids.

Make a list of what they need to learn in school every year.

Get rid of school.

Take them to a museum instead. Not just any museum though. We’re going to take them to a museum specifically tailored to their education. All of the exhibits in this museum are going to be part of the curriculum, and the classroom is going to be the entire place. Students will still have a teacher, and project rooms inside the museum that can be requested for room. There will be a consortium of museums that work together so that exhibits don’t have to be changed too often. With this, we can have kids shuffle between museums, and get an amazingly hands-on education.

And why is a hands-on education better?

Something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately in light of the educational discussions going on at Olin right now is the right way to learn. Olin preaches a hands-on engineering education. Being thrown into things and figuring them out for yourself, rather than being taught. One drawback to this is that this method of learning can be very discouraging, and when discouraged, if a student doesn’t put the work in to understand some key concepts they can very easily fall behind. Even though this method of learning can be very difficult, it’s the way I’ve always wished I could be taught throughout my high school career. I used to get upset that my teachers told me information, rather than giving me the tools to solve it myself. And I found that when I did do things on my own, I always internalized the concepts much more and retained them. When I arrived at Olin, one of my worst subjects was electronics. One of the things I loved about the way I was taught was that, as long as I put effort into learning and wanted to understand, I had a TA there who would not tell me the answers, but guide me in the right direction. This method of help made learning something difficult easier than it ever had been.

Because of the supportive environment at Olin, this method does a pretty good job of ensuring that people actually don’t fall behind. I think it’s a pretty different idea, and even though it’s probably not going to happen in museums, this idea could open up a lot of questions about education as it is now.

Why do kids have the curriculum they do? Is learning in a classroom actually effective? If it is, why do we try to incorporate so many hands-on activities for kids? And why don’t we have different stimulants for kids every day, rather than bringing them to the exact same place, with almost the same lesson..?

Changing Things.

So, the first thing ‘design for the next guy’ makes me think of is the principle of living with the 7^th generation in mind, or thinking about what’s going to make something easier for the people after you. The funny thing about designing for the next guy is that it usually makes designing for yourself a little harder. There are a few ways I can look at design for the next guy:

Option 1: Make everything the same

Today we see this all over the place: for something like building a house, a car, or a computer, people have created standards for things like sizes and energy ratings. This makes things a lot easier for example, when someone has a mouse or a printer you want to use (hurray for USB)! Now, if you want to change things, you can just go buy another version of whatever it is you want that fits into the same place as your old one! This works out pretty well for most people, if you think of ‘next guy’ as the rest of the current population, rather than someone in the future who’s trying to change things. There are a few problems with this though.

As far as manufactured products go, say you wanted to change the way that your computer fundamentally works. Of course, the way we do things now probably isn’t the only (or best) answer. What if you could do it better? Well..honestly, it’s probably not worth it. If I make something amazing that can’t interface with anything else, it’s either going to be pretty useless or it’s going to be a new adopted standard. You can see where this is going..

First, this can work pretty well with a physical requirement, but what about with some kind of a system, like a college? What would doing the same thing that everyone else does mean? Well…it would mean that the faculty are comfortable there in the sense that they won’t need to spend as much time learning the ropes as they would at some place that’s radically different than everywhere else. It would mean that students would more than likely know what they’re getting into when the decide to go there. It would mean that when people working here needed to change jobs, they wouldn’t need to go into hours of explanation about what the place they’ve been working at is, and why it’s legitimate. It would also mean that graduate schools would accept our students, and know by the titles of the courses what they learned.

But what else does this imply? For a place like Olin, this would mean that we’re the same as everywhere else. This would mean that we don’t question the way we do things: we just do them that way because it’s easier. But for something like a college system (something that’s not a manufactured product), how hard is it really to have a different system everywhere? Are there more benefits than drawbacks?

Option 2: Make everything change

What are the benefits for a college to be different? How do you define Design for the Next Guy in the context of something that’s its own internal system?

Well, to start off, Olin has its very own identity. Most schools do. I feel like Olin has a little more of that than most places. Why? We’re new. We’re tiny. We’re redefining engineering (or at least that’s what we say we’re doing). Since I don’t want to end up talking about Olin and what it is for too long, I’m going to bring up a few of the points from President Millers talk:

“Olin College Open Doors”

This was one thing that President Miller kept saying, over and over again. Olin College opens doors. We’re not here to define a future for someone. We’re here to make possible whatever can be made possible. This view is incredibly different than anything I’ve heard anywhere else. But I’m going on with the amazingness of Olin..Let’s change the subject.

I think this quote is most relevant here since it shows how schools and systems can have their own very radical identities, but still work in the world.

Think about the way we define ourselves: What are our values?

One thing that a lot of us complain about at Olin is that not everyone is in line with our set of values. But then, what are our values? Olin was designed to be constantly changing and reinventing itself. I mean, our mascot is the Phoenix. And what’s cool about this is that we don’t just have people here who agree with us. Having all sorts of people here to be committed to the college, but also to push it in a slightly different direction leads to a lot more discussion than there would be if we all agreed all the time. And that discussion leads to a huge questioning of beliefs, which in my mind is much better than just blindly moving forward. If your beliefs can survive that questioning, you know they’re true for you. If not, well, it’s a good thing someone made you question them.

The ability to change our values also does ensure design for the next guy, I think. Olin can become whatever we want it to be. We do have a few rules and guidelines, but this place is incredibly flexible.

Scrap Everything-It all expires.

This reminds me of something from a philosophy class I took in high school. My professor was talking about Buddhist monks, and how every so often they’d make this elaborate picture out of colored sand. Just on the table. And when it was done they’d brush it all away and make a new one again later. It represents how ephemeral everything is. And this works with ideas and systems as well. They’re designed for a very specific time and set of circumstances. And just because they used to work, and work well, doesn’t mean we should keep using them. This doesn’t mean we should get rid of them completely either, but it does mean recreation is a great way to make sure we’re still keeping things within our set of values (or within our newly defined and revised values!)

So What is Design for the Next Guy?

It’s making things changeable. And how do you do that in a massive system? It takes a lot more work, a lot more time, and a lot more effort. But it makes things flexible. It doesn’t mean that something is set in the way it is until someone come along with the drive to change it. It means things are easily changeable and always changing J.

Sticky Notebooks: Part 2

I think I left off last time describing my two design notebooks:

So I had a couple thoughts about the notebooks, though I haven't made any decisions about them yet: I need to resolve this “two notebook conflict” somehow. The problem is that different categories of things have already been separated into different notebooks. The notebook doesn’t feel like mine right now either. It feels like a tool-something useful, but not something that’s part of me. Things are dated, but they’re sloppy, and not something I feel I’d go back to. But am I even supposed to go back to this? Is this notebook something to be used to help me in the present, to be discarded immediately? The sole purpose for me would be to get things out of my head and onto a piece of paper-something I might have otherwise scribbled on the back of my homework for someone to see, that probably won’t be important ever again.

A lot of other people taking this class have notebooks they’re more attached to. One person is using an electronic device, while others are using old notebooks from past classes. Some people bought notebooks just for this class. Our notebooks are already ours, just because they look different, they’re different sizes and shapes.

Notebooks are sticky ideas

Something isn't sticky of it's own accord-it's sticky because /we/ make it stick. People around us make it stick. The classic example is the ipod. Everyone has one (except me..) at least, that's how it feels. Why? Because it's a sticky object-and it's not just an object, it's an idea. Our notebooks have everything that makes something sticky. We put time and thought into our notebooks. We put part of ourselves into them-our notebooks are something more customizable than almost anything we have.

So...what now?

I'm still not sure what to do with my two notebooks, but I don't think most people could possibly just use their notebooks for idea generation and design. Maybe if I stop worrying about what my notebook is supposed to be, it'll become what it should be.

Sticky Notebooks: Part 1

We've had two talks thus far-Matt Jadud on Notebooks, and Steve Gold on Sticky Ideas. It's actually kind of a good thing that I'm late on my first post, because the topic of sticky ideas ties in well with the ideation notebooks we're all carrying around for this course.

Most of what Matt talked about was his /own/ notebook-or notebooks, and what he's used them for, how he's felt about them. He highlighted how a lot of the information in them was just scribbles-the notebook wasn't some pristine space that he had to keep neat and clean. This made me think about my own notebook-

Right now it's lined..that's the first thing that comes to mind. And having lines makes me want to stay inside them. It structures my notes and ideas, and tends to limit them. Occasionally I'll realize the lines are there, and purposefully write against them.

That wasn't what I intended to talk about though: The story of my notebook starts last semester-before I knew about this class. I decided that I needed some kind of notebook to carry around with me, just for those little things that come up that I don't want to forget (like when a song I don't have in my itunes comes on the radio, or someone mentions a website or book that I might find interesting). I also decided that I'd write my thoughts in it. I didn't know yet what I'd do with them after writing them down, but I just had this feeling that putting them on paper would make them go somewhere. So I bought a nice little book at CVS for a dollar. It's spiral bound (the sprials are annoying already), and has a green plastic cover.

I lied, actually. I bought two. One's more pocket sized than the other, so it's easier to carry around. The conflict here? I have two notebooks. What am I going to do with them? I started writing tasks in the smaller one-I rip them out when I'm done (I usually can't seem to finish the tasks I wrote down though, so more often than not they stay in the book for a while). Even when I don't finish them all though, I find it helps to have everything written somewhere-like the planners we used to get for free in high school. I stopped carrying a planner once I came to Olin, but my planner was something I couldn't live without a few years ago.

In the larger one, I started taking notes. About anything. I've got notes about both Vital Ideation talks, notes and comments to the person sitting next to me on a robotics lecture I attended, and notes I took about Cafeteria workers for a design course. I’ve never had a notebook that served quite this purpose before-usually things get written on the last page of an existing notebook (who ever uses every page in their notebooks, right..? )

This is starting to get a bit long, so this post'll be continued in a few days :).