J1: You know it don't come Eamesy...

Great reading this week from Bill Moggridge about the considerations related to design. One of the great advantages to entering this program with previous design experience is that I have the opportunity to completely adapt skills and experience for new and highly specialized applications. This re-purposing also offers great insights into how these skills are applied, giving new contexts to previous experience.

I particularly loved the Eames references. I often use Eames when noting the qualitative and substantive effects of democratized media (music in particular) using an IKEA to Eames spectrum. I have nothing against IKEA, but I often describe contemporary music as IKEA to the more substantive Eames of music produced before 1980, with a few exceptions. Personal predilections aside, Charles Eames's definitions are a valuable qualifier for how one might view design.

Tacit knowledge, I submitted a blog on this topic on my Intro to ID blog several months ago. After our reading it brings to mind something I experience sometimes in my own teaching studio. A student asks the question, "How long will it take to 'get good?'" I use examples like the Zen master story (which I posted in my first blog for this course) and I'm often tempted to double the length of time proportionate to his or her ambitions. The question alone tells me almost everything I need to know about the learner and their motivations to gauge their potential for success. If a metric did exist, it would be Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule... 10,000 hours to mastery... that would be a good ballpark figure to start with because it displaces the "finish line" to the degree that a student's commitment to do the work is automatically revealed. I think it's great to be excited, but I don't want the student to confuse a wanting-ness for an end result with a willingness to do what it takes to get there.

In any case, whether you're at hour 3, hour 30 or hour 30,000 the path to success is really the same... just practice your chops...