Google, the migrant and the native

Google's recent announcement to create their own OS, I think, is one of those eventualities in life that will eventually unfold itself, very much like death and taxes! But more importantly, the rationale of them doing so is in their belief that the current OS'es were designed in an age where Internet was not THE main tool of communication. Fast forward to the current time and age, it might just be true, but until I get to see their final product, I should hold my comments for another day. But what I do admire most is in their spirit to change and innovate, and perhaps, to hopefully challenge the conventional idea of what an OS should be, or ought to be.

Which brings me to the argument that I have regarding this polarisation of digital natives and migrants. Tying in closely with Google's reasons for coming out with their own OS that would be leveraging on new technologies, shouldn't teaching and learning pedagogies too be also embarking on such a similar journey of change. I mean if we are going to be moulding children that would land jobs that we ourselves are not familiar with, shouldn't the whole scheme of things, of how teaching should be, and how learning is going, or ought to be, also change to take into account these very multi-dimensionality of human's capacity to learn. And perhaps, for arguments' sake, shouldn't the very fibre of assessment too change with the times? And shouldn't we be encouraging a mass migration of digital migrants to digital natives?

Looking at possibilities...but really who limits them?

It has been a while since I last blogged, and I must say it has been a good month-long hiatus for me. A good time for me to reflect, recollect, reconnect, and perhaps hibernate too. But then again, given the high bar that I have to be expected to perform and deliver in my new role, it is indeed overwhelming at times to reach out and up, and to meet up with that bar! But then again, what is life without bars and standards to meet up to..and I mean that in a good sort of way, not some social standards of sorts that can be little skewed, and perhaps not of the type that I will usually be adhering too.

But it is still a relatively new journey for me...taking small baby steps, but huge ones at that. Perhaps it will take a little while for me to make any significant progress that is visually impactful, but then again, I am willing to wait, explore, experiment. Cos what I am going into is something that is new and exciting. There will be disappointments definitely, but always take the view that there could never be apogees of happiness and satisfactions, without failures and disappointments along the way. Optimistic...yes. Scared...yes. But I guess this is something that I am going into for the long haul.

Branding a Design : Designing a Brand - the case of Branding versus Design

I remember asking my significant other this hypothetical question. If she were to undergo a blind test of choosing between two similarly and outstandingly designed bags, one by a brand that she is comfortable with, and the other, of a brand that she would not be caught carrying, which one would she select? And this is given the hypothetical scenario that both the logos or brands of the bags have been removed. Though the answer is inconclusive, but I do wonder whether a person's preference for a certain way that a particular item is designed, and his eventual and perpetual liking for a certain particular design, or sets of design, has anything got to do with nature!

I ask this because as I was watching a documentary from the Discovery Channel on how the physical, mental and social growth of an infant develops over the years from birth, what surprises me from the episode is about how at an early age of between 4 to 8 years of age, a child has already a nurturing inkling of what kind of person would he or she be liking, or have an affinity towards when he or she grows up. Though not necessarily be ending up as a life partner, what surprises me is perhaps this nurturing liking for a certain physical way that a potential partner will look like, or of how he or she would have a certain trait or character, that perhaps would be the differentiating factor of making someone a potential mate...or not.

Now that just makes me wonder whether deep down in our most innermost of recesses, and perhaps in the deepest and non-conscious parts of our cerebral cortex, we might just have this trigger of sorts that would draw us to a certain brand, item, or perhaps even design. Could this also answer the dilemma, and perhaps potentially a research area of sorts that I have been looking for an answer to, that perhaps in each of us, there is this certain nurturing element that does compel us to like or dislike a certain design? Like the saying that 'beauty is in the eyes of the beholder'...perhaps the concept of beauty is indeed within our own subconscious mind that has been programmed for us to behold...or NOT.

Design Education: By the Young, For the Young

It is indeed enlightening to see how my younger batch of students seem to perform this year, somewhat a little iffy at times, but more often, a little too eager at times to go ahead and finalise their design ideas, as opposed to the more composed, collected, and planned way of doing things that is a trademark of more mature, or even more adult design thinkers. But perhaps that is how design thinking for the younger folks are all about, getting right into the thick of action of doing things, rather than having a deep and thoughtful process. Or perhaps I should be looking at how I could marry their innate desire and need to be doing something right away, with the more elucidating practice of deep thinking, reflecting, ideating, prototyping, modelling, and stuffs like that, in order to make their design experiences an even more enriching and meaningful one. It would indeed be a challenge, but I guess with the various experimental lessons and tools that I have done so far, and have put in place in my past 6 years as an educator, I am very confident that I would be able to find and package an attractive design thinking, teaching and learning model that would be a peculiar trait of SST, perhaps a good model, not necessarily a perfect one, but good enough I hope, to be able to be identified with the SST branding that I would be proudly be part of in a mere 4 weeks or so.

The oxymoronic nature of Search 2.0

It's been a while since I last blogged, and well yeah I guess I have been busy with work lately, but hopefully with my swansong project coming to an end in a week's time, it would be nice if I can get the hang of blogging about the things that really matter to me...among others.



First off, let's just start with the recent announcement by Microsoft on their new search engine, their Search 2.0 that they nicknamed Bing. Interesting to note how a simple task of finding data and information has indeed transformed how the internet have evolved over the years, and have somehow too, evolve the way people use it. Now one interesting thing to note about this new concept of Search 2.0 is the need for greater relevance, or greater customisability of the results of the search engine for the end users. It would be interesting to see just what the hype is all about, but my concern here is not so much on the searching end of the equation, but more so on how things are organised. Would the enabling and pervasive use of such intelligent tools make Organise 1.0 obsolete? I mean really, if we were to think about it, with such an intelligent search engine, we would just need to store all the data into a single huge folder (either literally or metaphorically speaking as a vast majority of us here don't organise our files this way, but just for argument sake), and then let the engine do our work for us whenever we need to search for ANYTHING that we have stored. I mean really...that will indeed give a whole new meaning to what I would like to call 'Organised Chaos'.

Which perhaps bring me forth to another great idea, that perhaps any software company out there would like to take up as a challenge. As a follow up to my oxymoronic argument above, can you please then develop for me a software tool that allows me to put stuffs into only 1 folder, and then through some reverse-searching algorithm of sorts, the software will then organise the stuffs for me, whether be it pictures from my nephew's birthday last month, or my vacation trips, or files that needs some form of confidentiality and should be marked under 'confidential'. I mean I wouldn't really care how the software tool organises my data, but as long as I am able to retrieve them, and retrieve them quickly, that is all that matters. And I don't mean having a tool that would require the user to put in place tens of tags of that particular file, because if Organiser 2.0 is intelligent enough, it will be able to discern and make out the tags for the file itself. Can this be done? Hmmm?