Monday, October 28, 2013

Day of Discovery: Design 1o1, Day 1




Indeed, the Design 1o1 MOOC is far from ordinary. The journey kicked off with the first of its signature Video Dispatches:





It concluded with a seemingly whimsical multiple-choice quiz -- complete with right-up-my-alley answer choices such as: "This question annoys me."

A scroll through the introductions on the course's home page yields hellos from a truly global bunch of enthusiastic participants. I saw all continents represented with people hailing from Nepal, Namibia and everything in between.

And..... I am still trying to process the fact that approximately 27 000, 
yes that is  
T W E N T Y  S E V E N   T H O U S A N D  
people have enrolled.

Deep. Breaths! I am relieved I am not one of the organizers -- I get to do the fun/work without having to worry about infrastructure, functionality, or grumpy participants. I'm also curious to see how many students stick with it all the way -- myself included. It's reassuring to me that the organizers have given some thought to human behavior and warned us from the get go to be aware of time management:



This admonition comes with a reference to something I had never heard of: the Quipu, the ancient Inca necklace-and-knots accounting system. I love discovery!

Which brings me to one of the things I am already enjoying about this course: its reference cornucopia, including its very own "Encyclopedia:"



Another discovery I made: the quiz asked how Sid Vicious ended his performance of My Way at the Olympia in Paris -- something I had never seen:



Knowing Paris like I do, that juxtaposition (whether it actually happened or not) of bourgeois culture and ultimate Punk is fun to behold.

If anything, this course is a social experiment in design, as much as it is a course about design, and it's already generated a slew of interactions -- instructor, Stefano Mirti has expressed the wish that above all, this MOOC is creating a community -- including this great stream launched by srinivasan reghuraman:

What does Design mean to you? I don't have a quick answer to that question. I am still processing.

But for me, Design is about making things, making things better, identifying problems, problem solving, ingenuity, imagination, cross-disciplinary collaboration, elegant solutions... 

Design is also about making things FOR a purpose; FOR users/people and so usability is inherent in it.

For many, Design is about style, and yes, style (elegance of form?) is crucial, but -- at least as I think on it right now, style on its own, style for its own sake is not enough.



NOTE: The images on this page are screenshots of today's Design1o1 Brief. If anyone can point me to its web home to link to, please do.





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