The celebration continues

Today we celebrated

- Karen's birthday, and also Amelie's birthday (Karen's cousin's daughter) by Skype.

- Jill submitting a proposal to the Design Management Review coauthored by 5 members of the Business & Design Lab

- Karen making headway on her poster presentation

- Steve demoing various web 2.0 opportunities

- Jack transferring all his Palm info to his PC

And I bought a new 13 inch fully loaded Mac-Pro from the online Apple store.

My Thanksgiving cooking task

I was assigned to bake dinner rolls from a "simple" recipe clipped from a magazine. It was simplified to the extent of omitting certain technical details. I think I'll stick to pies in the future!

But they all disappeared along with many other delicious dishes at the Thanksgiving dinner with Steve's brother and his family at their home in Redondo Beach.

Thanksgiving Eve

The day included traditional chores such
as shopping and baking, though not in traditional mode

It also included two good work events - things to be thankful for: Hearing that I now have an official affiliation at the University of Gothenburg (including a salary!) , and FINISHING the Worldview paper.

And things were left almost finished so there is something to do tomorrow morning while watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade - but I'll wait to give that news when the tasks are complete. I didn't read my book about Design Thinking.

Workday in Irvine

In some ways my work environment was no different from any other day with Skype connections to Massachusetts while I worked with Jeanie on the Worldview paper, and to Gothenburg while I worked with Ulla on the DMR paper. I did learn that research group at the Business & Design Lab has nicknamed me Miss Marple! In other ways my work environment was quite different, with bougainvillea climbing over the garden wall, and decorated palm trees at the mall (That's Karen and Steve on the right.)

Switching coasts

One of the good/bad things about going away for a festive weekend is finishing work due before/not having enough time to do everything needed on the project. In the last couple of days I sent back my piece to coauthors of three different papers/proposals. I'm hoping for a few days of peace, but past experience suggests that they too will try to get work off their desk before the holiday. How many times can we trade drafts before turkey day on Thursday?

On the 2,800 mile flight across the land mass of the US I started to read Peter Rowe's "Design Thinking." For the trip I decided to pick the oldest unread book on this topic from my collection, and it is providing me with good background on the topic. I especially enjoyed the first chapter with various case studies of the architectural design process, and the second chapter fills in theory on different forms of decision theory -- which I believe I've met before as "design methods."

So, now I'm on the "left coast".

Condo in depersonalized design

It's real!

Friday marks the end ... for a while

How many times have I said, "We're almost ready to put the Fairfield Condo on the market"? That day has arrived. Even the basement is "ready"! It will be listed tomorrow. To celebrate our final work day we stopped at the Equinox Diner at the corner of I95 and Rt27 for supper on our way home. The place opened earlier this year, (there was a Howard Johnson's there for years) and we've joked so many times about stopping there that this time we actually did it. Like getting the condo ready for sale, it was an experience I'd prefer not to repeat.

The difference that makes a difference

8 AM and I was at work - at a BDL (Business & Design Lab) meeting about a paper for the Design Management Review. There were 6 of us - 4 in Gothenburg, 1 in Stockholm and 1 in Connecticut -- connected via group Skype. Ulla had some initial thoughts, Ana, Markus, and Katerina had ideas for the different sections, I kept us focused on a practitioner piece, and Mary-Jo came up with the title. Now everyone is writing a short piece, then Ulla and I will create the one page proposal due before the end of November. If it's accepted, the 3000 word paper is due for a March edition. This is an interesting collaboration: industrial designers, an artist, a critical feminist, and an ironist, or broken down in a different way: doctoral students, an established professor, a post-doc, a rogue researcher, and a visiting professor. Quite a diverse group! That's why we're writing about stereotypes and meaningful differences.

Crisis midday when I discovered that I had been eliminated from the Sacred Heart University system so could no longer access the library. What a terrible shock! IT support couldn't help me, so it was Lynda to the rescue with an email to "Sys-Op". Apparently a request from the Registrar to remove my name from a distribution list was misinterpreted as "remove from across all systems." Poof! and I was gone! So far efforts to reinstate me have not been successful. I hope I'll be back tomorrow.

The other major accomplishment of the day was the F-pie, no, not swearing, but Frozen Marble. Ingredients were cream, butter, chocolate, sugar, sherry -- it had to taste good!

But I had trouble adding the melted chocolate to the whipped cream, egg white, and sugar so the "marble" wasn't as much of a contrast as it should have been. The result earned a "3 pie" rating (out of 5)

Working, not designing

I've been in Fairfield for the last couple of days so haven't thought much about design or anything other than getting the condo ready for sale. We organized the patio and I vacuumed and dusted like the white tornado. Must return on Friday for the final touches -- it's "going live" on Saturday!

Worldview in view

Today was worldview day. Jeanie and I met and now have the paper within striking distance of being finished. We're both comfortable with the focus and placing it in a lesser journal (Cabells listed, 60% acceptance). It's about the development of an assurance of learning rubric for a short travel course, and provides an example of using the rubric for programmatic AOL using the data from three courses. We sat together and hammered out details -- the rubric needs to be inverted (again - back to original rows and columns!) and our demonstration data cleaned up. Plus the conclusion needs writing and various sections of the text have holes in them. So we each have a list of tasks to be completed before I head for California on Monday. Then we can email final touch-ups back and forth and submit on time. I started my new research notebook - the backup notebook, not my original choice -- so there's no going back now! The photo is of a poster in Jeanie's office - today's inspiration for Worldview - if you click on the picture you will enlarge it so you can read the text.

Intersections - or clashes?

Today my three of my current writing projects clashed - and crashed. Just as I was finishing a Skype conversation with Ulla about our abstract, "In praise of fads," for a DMR article (due 11/23) and a "state of the BDL" brochure/CD to be in print by the middle of April, Diana was at my door to work on "wicked problems" symposium proposal (due 12/7). By the time she left there was something in my email from Jeanie for our meeting tomorrow to finish our "worldview rubric" paper (due 11/20). The rest of the day my mind flitted from one project to another -- as soon as I started developing a line of reasoning for one, I'd convince myself that one of the other projects should have priority, so I moved on -- and kept on moving round the triangle. Truth be told, I' was at the stage of bouncing ideas about, not yet ready to write, so I might as well juggle with three balls as just toss one up in the air and catch it.

Fortunately I had a diversion this afternoon - Brahms Requiem with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and Hartford Chorale. No clashes there! The conductor, Constantine Kitsopoulos, is a candidate for the Music Director position. He's the first of seven (5 men, 2 women) who will be visiting over the next two years. I think it takes about 5 years from the start of a serach to the new conductor being installed -- even longer than a Dean search!

Conundrum

Yesterday I used the last page of Research Daybook 8 (started 4/10/07). Some time ago I picked out Daybook #9 and have been carrying it about in case I finished the current one. But now, can I find the new one? No! I've looked in every place I can think of. Not there. I have a couple of other empty books that I could use, but I'm sure that as soon as I actually write in one of them, my chosen book will appear -- and it's against the rules to switch without using every page. What shall I do -- have no new research ideas or plans? (Or "grow up" and not take these notebooks so seriously?)

Unable to generate new ideas (ha!), I spent my workday doing some linguistic editing - or "De-swinglishing" as it is affectionately called. I worked on a couple of interesting papers on user-driven innovation. It's a clandestine way of learning about current topics!

I read a few more pages of Tim Brown's book. I'm enjoying it less now -- I'm finding his "narrative" lacking in structure - or recognizable themes. Ever so often there's a page that makes absolute sense, but the context for that particular thought is elusive.

Thursday's accomplishments

Work: Washed outsides of kitchen cabinets, cleaned venetian blinds, washed and waxed hardwood kitchen floor = kitchen is "done"

Fun: Visited Steve Brown's BU299 Decision-making class to act as a resource for the Where to make the charitable donation exercise. Great to see the different ways the teams started to tackle the problem = going back next week.

Thinking: The first question Bruce Nussbaum asked yesterday (18 of 20 responses to his tweet asked it) was, "How do you start?" None of the panelists answered it. It's a question I'm thinking about too. Here's as far as I've got: First you need to have a personal experience of the design process -- this frequently happens when working with an architect on a building. Second, you need to have a group learning experience about the nitty-gritty of tools, techniques, and processes (with both designers and managers as instructors.) Third, you need a period of individual reflection, then have (shared) responsibility for a real project. = sounds just like Kolb's adult learning cycle!

Craving: This came upon me during the drive back to Fairfield -- I haven't made one in ages (check earlier posting for actual date.) So, in less than half an hour, I produced the "L" pie!

(My-T-fine lemon meringue package mix.) = Delicious!

South on I-95

By car to Fairfield, then on to New York by train. I had a bonus with a curbside view of (part of) the Veterans Day Parade up/down Fifth Avenue, and almost stopped in at the New York Public Library to see if they had any books of interest. Then on to Times Square and the 30th floor of the Thomson Reuters Building for The Rotman School Design Thinking Experts Series.

It was an opportunity for Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman Schoolat the University of Toronto to speak about his new book, but to my mind the other speakers, Tim Brown, CEO IDEO, and Will Setliff, VP-Strategy, Insights & Innovation, Target, were more interesting. Bruce Nussbaum - now Professor of Innovation & Design at the Parson's New School of Design, was the moderator for the "conversation."

I don't think I heard anything new, maybe a little more focus on redesigning business education in North America, but that too was a plug for Rotman and its way of equipping MBAs with design thinking tools. One of the more interesting threads was about asking questions, and the power of analytical thinking to ask good questions and how this could help design. But there weren't any specific examples. I didn't hear the words "wicked problems."

I heard two interesting comments during the cocktail hour. One, from a Canadian (graduate of Rotman who had been working for Morgan Stanley in NY for the past four years, he liked Martin's view -- everything was put together in models that mangers could understand. The other from a gallery owner in NY who lamented that no one was doing the sort of art-based design she could display.

Afterwards I did a little window shopping at H&M on Fifth Avenue, then took the train back to Fairfield.

North on I-95

Headed towards Boston and stopped in Newton to work with Deb and Diana on our EAM submission. I was interested in the way in which they both grabbed "wicked problems" and ran with it -- I'd forgotten my fascination with the concept when I first encountered it. We didn't get very far with the actual submission -- we had plenty of tangential talking. But far enough that something will come together. Working title for symposium, Wicked problems: When strategies, models, and tools are not enough (building off the conference theme). It will go to the MED track (management education & development) because we want to have some serious play around teaching and learning dilemmas created by wicked problems.

There's more to design ...

Yesterday I was on a high because I realized that I understood the design experience. Today I came crashing down when I started to read chapter 3 in Tim Brown's new book. He writes, ".. with all epiphanies, that's where the hard work begins. It is one thing to witness the power of design and even to participate in it, quite another to absorb it into one's thinking and patiently build it into the structure of an organization. " (Change by Design, p. 63). Clearly, I have a lot more learning and experiencing to do.

Today's milestone was dumping my cork collection -- patiently

collected one bottle at a time ever

since I made the cork wreath that

hangs in the kitchen. All those interesting designs on corks with little value; even the designer knows they will be discarded - and usually much sooner than I did.

Fragments

The day started with yesterday ... that is, with unpacking Saturday's carful of stuff brought from Fairfield. The condo doesn't look like ours any more -- it's completely depersonalized. And I can't remember when I last slept there -- before Labor Day I think.

Then a sunny morning became late afternoon dusk when I Skyped with Ulla and had a tour of her emerging kitchen. We talked about so many new ideas and projects that my head is still spinning. How can I display a postcard-montage for each of them? What a wicked problem!

And today's purchase of a new camera will really take effect later because charging the battery takes 330 minutes. But I got a better camera than yesterday because the sale had changed. I spent more though - the camera that was on sale yesterday was back to list price which is the same as today's sale price for the more expensive version (12 vs. 10 megapix). Is your head spinning yet?

Here's my very first picture.

One part of my head is clearing. I've been thinking a lot about how I, as a management person, can understand design. As a design thinker I need to be what Tim Brown calls a T-shaped person: the vertical piece of my T is depth in management theory and practice, while the cross-piece is designerly. I realized that my experience working with Ron in the designing of this house was primarily a design process. When Ron came with his first drawings and I tentatively said "yes, ... but could we ..." and Ron overlaid the original with tracing paper and with great enthusiasm started sketching something different - I was dumbfounded. He'd spent a long time making the plan and sketch "just right", and now he was willing to change it -- and keep changing it to meet new challenges -- or should I say constraints, for example, my famous, "Can you do the same thing for half the price?" (and of course he could.) I hadn't conceptualized my own experience in this way until today. It gives me a whole new identity. And with that I'll wait to take it up again tomorrow!

But there is progress. I bought a Swedish-English phrase book, so now I should be able to answer the emails to my U Gothenburg e-dress. (The messages are in English, but all the email commands are in Swedish!) I'm also ready to ask, "Far jag smaka?" which will be good to know at fika time.

How to write a great scholarly article .... ?

A fascinating article in today's Wall Street Journal prompted me to think about the process of scholarly writing. Academics probably have habits much like those of the novelists featured in the article. Me? I set aside two hours to write each morning, then if I work for one and a half hours and actually write for an hour, I've done well. It's after breakfast and after I've scanned my emails for anything important/interesting from the other side of the pond, but I try to be disciplined about not spending too long on the internet. And when I think I've finished for the day, I force myself to write just a bit more -- just a few thoughts, or an outline, or "notes to self", so I have something in process to pick up the next day. If I'm on deadline, or my writing juices are flowing, I'll continue after this mandatory period, or take it up again later in the afternoon. A workday without committing at least a sentence to whatever is in process is a day of shame.

The authors in the wsj article all have strategies for dealing with writer's block. I have my postcard displays. Followers of my sabbatical blog may remember the plastic pocket perpetual calendar from the Tate Modern that I use for themed displays from my ever-growing postcard collection. All last academic year it had the same collection of postcards that grandchildren Alexis and Ethan selected. I had no energy or inspiration to change them

Now it sports a selection for my "front burner" writing on assessment of worldview, and I glance to my left at the various doorways in buildings in different countries when I look up from the keyboard. A few moments reflecting on my visit to a particular spot is sufficient to clear my head and get me back on task.

Because the photo-holders are clear plastic, I can reverse the display for inspiration related to wicked problems and hybrid thinking - the symposium a group of us are developing for the EAM meeting next May

Wicked problems/hybrid thinking was a tough topic for selecting postcards. I imagine I will change cards every day I am working on the project. So for mow I think I'll stick with worldview!

How are YOU inspired to write -- whatever your genre?

And thanks to Jack for lending me his camera.

Guy Fawkes Night

.. and I almost forgot to "remember, remember, the fifth of november, gunpowder, treason and plot ....

Jack and I had a "fire drill" if not fireworks when "we" (my glass, Jack's action) caused a glass of red wine to spill on the white carpet in the TV room. Tried white wine (bother's remedy) and club soda (Google) before deciding that since the carpet was ruined anyway, we might as well take it onto the deck, hose it off, and try a good dose of Spray and Wash. It looks as if the stain is gone, but I imagine it will be back when the carpet dries -- and all sorts of strange things will probably happen to the shape and texture.

I'd take a photo, but my camera died.

I haven't forgotten about design -- registered for an event for Rotman (U. Toronto) alumni on Design Thinking next week in NYC. Amazing what one can do over the internet! I'd just finished reading Roger Martin's book on design thinking so decided I'd better get started on Tim Brown's latest offering on the same topic. I'm enjoying Brown's version much more than Martin's. But it's interesting to compare how two gurus spin the same fad topic.

Other designs

Today I interacted with three very different artifacts from different design processes.

First, a YouTube video of a product of son-in-law Steve's designing. (He's the co-CEO not mentioned in the video)

Second, the W-pie from my quest to prepare a pie for every letter

the alphabet. The W-pie, more formerly known as the "Woodilla indulgence pie" is a completely new design -- the crust prepared from Jack's favorite cookies --Oreos-- and the filling from my mother's famous World War II mocha mousse, prepared from non-rationed ingredients (no cream, butter, or eggs). Photo is of the first prototype, next iteration will be a little different.

Third, a redesign of some of the papers (photo on left) from my archives, including my dissertation research (3 boxes) and teaching notes from courses I taught at Central Connecticut State University more than a decade. From the redesign I have the papers and office supplies below while the rest of the paper, below far right, will be recycled -- much improved design!

Another life, other lives

My work-life isn't all about design! Today I drove up to Western New England College to work with long-time colleague Jeanie Forray on converting the paper we presented at the Academy of Management meeting in Chicago last August into a journal article. It was a pleasant day - alternating between sharing news of our work-lives, our families, and mutual colleagues, and vigorous discussion (some might call parts of it arguing) about when, how, and what we would/needed to do for the paper. Now we must put the plan into action -- and have the article submitted before the November 30 deadline!

A weekend!

It actually felt like a weekend -- slower pace, different activities. Not that I did anything exciting, unless you count filling two boxes that previously held many reams of pristine white paper with my used, once extremely important, but now discarded papers. I also threw away scores of old backup floppy disks (remember those?) and CD-R disks. Who needs to remember the 2004 SER? Not I. It's getting easier and easier to shed my former life.

I even had time to "talk trivia" with three colleagues - without even thinking about how Skype enables "real presence" conversations across miles and oceans. And Ulla's report on the Service Design Network Conference held last weekend in Madeira brought me close to the community of the Business and Design Lab.

I've almost finished reading Roger Martin's "The Design of Business." I'm still struggling with the genre of "professional books" where the author writes with such authority and without a glimmer of critique. But, if I take it at face value - or from the value-system I attribute to the author, which as an ironist I am compelled to do - it is logical and easy to read, with interesting examples -- all positive, of course. Martin frames his thesis in terms of reliability and validity, a clever way of distinguishing the work of reliability-focused traditional analytical managers versus validity-seeking designers and design-thinking managers. His metaphor of a knowledge funnel - mystery to heuristics to algorithms to code - is clever. I'll be more critical later when I switch to another perspective. This is the first of about 10 new books (including four 'design primers for business people') I've purchased as essential designerly reading. and I've told myself I cannot buy another book until I've read them all. I plan to be ready for the upcoming BDL "fika conversations".