Design Sojourn

I have to say, that I have been enjoying the use of Posterous a lot recently, especially the site’s ability to publish my stuff via email. They can store, re-size and present your media (pictures, music, video etc.) very efficiently. So I have been racking my brains to figure out how I can better utilize this wonderfully simple micro-blogging site.

And now I have! Enter my new micro-blog called “The Design of Everyday Things” or TDOET.com.

One of my favorite past times (or curse) is allowing my overly critical design mind to be triggered by good or bad designs that I stumble over in the environment around me. Therefore, I think it makes sense to create a site that catalogs these “triggers” by “The Design of Everyday Things” around me. Not to mention a convenient social outlet for my media slut of an iPhone!

The great thing about this site is that it can aggregate and store your content. So it could be sort of a visual diary or notebook of my stuff. The other good thing about the site is that it can cross post stuff all over the place like Twitter, Facebook and even a WordPress blog. So on advice from a fellow design blogger, I will set up Posterous so that it will cross post my thought triggers back here on Design Sojourn! How cool is that?

However “The Design of Everyday Things” will still have it’s own domain name, just to formalize things a little. I decided to keep the title of the site simple by calling it by its acronym, which was amazingly available for purchase. So we now have TDOET.com, is a 5 letter easy to remember .com domain name, how about that?

So if you like, do bookmark your visit to TDOET.com (The Design of Everyday Things) or just come back here and enjoy my take on the less serious side of design.

And oh, do check out the inspiration for TDOET.com:

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

Not only can it be a great source of information on usability and product ergonomics, it is also a fantastic source of learning how to be sensitive to the product’s user experience. If it is not a textbook or required reading for your design school, make it so!

Image by: Inobras, via HongKiat.

Gong Xi Fa Chai!

Design Sojourn would like to wish all readers a Happy Lunar New Year, good health and happiness in 2009!

From Wikipedia:

The Ox ( Niu ) is one of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The Year of the Ox is denoted by the earthly branch character. In the Vietnamese zodiac, the water buffalo occupies the position of the ox.

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The Ox is the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. This powerful sign is a born leader, being quite dependable and possessing an innate ability to achieve great things. As one might guess, such people are dependable, calm, and modest. Like their animal namesake, the Ox is unswervingly patient, tireless in their work, and capable of enduring any amount of hardship without complaint.

Ox people need peace and quiet to work through their ideas, and when they have set their mind on something it is hard for them to be convinced otherwise. An Ox person has a very logical mind and is extremely systematic in whatever they do, even without imagination. These people speak little but are extremely intelligent. When necessary, they are articulate and eloquent.

People born under the influence of the Ox are kind, caring souls, logical, positive, filled with common sense and with their feet firmly planted on the ground. Security is their main preoccupation in life, and they are prepared to toil long and hard in order to provide a warm, comfortable and stable nest for themselves and their families. Strong-minded, stubborn, individualistic, the majority are highly intelligent individuals who don’t take kindly to being told what to do.

The Ox works hard, patiently, and methodically, with original intelligence and reflective thought. These people enjoy helping others. Behind this tenacious, laboring, and self-sacrificing exterior lies an active mind.

The Ox is not extravagant, and the thought of living off credit cards or being in debt makes them nervous. The possibility of taking a serious risk could cause the Ox sleepless nights.

Ox people are truthful and sincere, and the idea of wheeling and dealing in a competitive world is distasteful to them. They are rarely driven by the prospect of financial gain. These people are always welcome because of their honesty and patience. They have many friends, who appreciate the fact that the Ox people are wary of new trends, although every now and then they can be encouraged to try something new.

It is important to remember that the Ox people are sociable and relaxed when they feel secure, but occasionally a dark cloud looms over such people and they engage all the trials of the whole world and seek solutions for them.Also the Ox people are all caring and loving but at times when you mess with them they will tear out in anger.

In case you did not know this Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States is 48 and thus born in the year of the Ox. Probably one of the most famous “Oxen” around.

Wishing all readers a HAPPY 2009!

Wow oh wow. Three full years of me being online and ranting and raving about everything industrial design! I have to say it was a bumpy ride from the start and while looking back to see how I can improve I have to say that my older posts were really poorly written. Hopefully the posts are a lot better these days?

With the constantly evolving nature of the Internet, and perfectly reflecting the growth of an individual, I thought it is about time I update this website. This update is also significant as it represents my transition into my 4th year of blogging and also some changes in my personal career goals.

Also dear reader, I have also taken your feedback, synthesized it, and used the best ones that gel well with my goals for this website update. So I like to officially announce the new look Design Sojourn Version 4.0 that contains a number of significantly new features and changes. They include:

1) Full RSS Feeds
This is has to be one of my biggest reader requests to date. The reason why I never had full RSS feeds because I kept on getting my copyrighted content stolen by SPLOGS or Spam Blogs. So I decided to turn down lots of requests my Full Feeds. However recently I better understood my reader’s requests when I got really irritated when sites I wanted to subscribe to did not have full feeds. So I concluded that my readers, whom are so inclined, would feel the same way. Therefore I had to weighed the Pros and Cons of readability vs. thief of content. As my readers come first, I have decided to give full RSS feeds another try and see how we go.

Oh, if you are reading this post by RSS, please do come and visit the site (DesignSojourn.com) and let me know how you feel about the new look?

2) Featured Story
One thing that I noticed on Design Sojourn is that my featured design articles often need some extra time on the front page before I get feedback. Sometimes on a productive blogging week my newer posts tend to bump these design articles off the front page. Not good as I do I spent quite a lot of time crafting these Design Articles. Also with a few reader emails and comments telling me how they missed this and that article, I decided to create a “Featured Article” section up top. This allows me to keep certain articles around a little longer so that I can get additional feedback or comments.

3) Favorite Stories and other reformatting
Occasionally I create Design Articles that receive heavy traffic and lots comments. These “reader favorites” are also often significant posts or articles that really define what this website is all about. Therefore under the “Featured Story” bit I have created a Favorites section for all such defining posts.

The discerning reader would have noticed that these post “chicklets” used to be in my sidebar. But with this new placement, I have the opportunity to reformat other elements, such a a new Twitter cell and creating post excerpts. Overall I think the new blog design has now a better hierarchy and a comes together in a tighter package.

3) Less Ads!
Recently Design Sojourn got featured in a local Marketing magazine. That was cool. What was not cool was the screen shot the magazine took had a butt ugly 480×60 Google picture Ad slot in the area below the post title. Arrgh, never again. Readability and Image before anything else in design. So out that ad slot went.

4) New Blog description and focus!
This blog was and is about “How to do Good Design and Create Clever Products”. Lots of tips and tricks on how a designer can do his/her job better. A year or two ago, I added “Mastering the Business of Design” to the end of the description. This reflected my move towards design entrepreneurship as well as focusing on the ‘selling” aspect of design.

As my blog evolved, my passions moved in the direction of strategic design. I think I have always been a very strategic thinker, it just took a awhile to manifest as I believe I had to acquire the skills first. True to the name of this blog, mine was really a design journey.

Therefore simplify things and make the focus of this blog more meaningful I have revised this Version 4.0 blog description to a more simple “How to master the business of strategic industrial design.” This brings a lot of clarity to this website and also really reflects what I do in real life.

On a personal branding note, this refocusing should be done anyway as more often than not sites like these are can be instrumental in your career as it has been to mine.

5) iPhone viewable
Not much to say here, but if you visit me via your iPhone’s Safari browser, my WordPress backbone should auto detect that and reformat the site to fit your iPhone. I think it should work for any mobile device as well, but I have not confirmed that.

6) 500 Posts!
I like to end this post a little nugget. According to my WordPress meta stats, I have written 500 posts! 500 posts, now that to me is amazing! So this would be my 501st post, and how apt, seeing this is my first post for the new year and all.

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I had planned to update a lot more stuff, including a new color, logo and perhaps even a brand new theme. However I was not able to find a theme that I was happy with nor a color that made sense to my personal brand. At the end I decided not to go for a theme change, however I still think I will take another look at a color and logo refresh. So do stay tuned to that!

I like to personally thank you for being part of my design sojourn or journey, and I hope you will continue to enjoy being part of my process as much as I will be sharing it with you! I look forward to all your feedback and still continue tolove receiving your emails. Please keep in touch?

Hat Tip to Pat Law and David Airey for their feedback during my redesign of this theme.

I like to wish all readers a Merry Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Edit: I am also taking the opportunity during this quiet holiday season to redesign and update my website. This initiative came about due to a few strategic decisions I have made from both a career and personal branding standpoint. I am also looking to improve and optimize my website’s reading flow and implement a number of user requests like full RSS feeds. So do stay tuned, the look site should be up before the year is out!

Image: Happy 3rd Birthday by Laura-Beth

Wow I almost missed it yet again!

Yesterday, November 09, was Design Sojourn’s 3rd birthday. It has been 3 great years of blogging and to mark this event it I have been thinking about what I should do to celebrate it with you dear reader.

Oh before I forget, I would like to extent a big “Thank You” for all your support, comments, or just sharing this journey of design with me. Recently, I have not had too much time to really keep up with my commenting and keeping in touch with all of your emails, but fear not, I do make sure I read every single one!

Ok back to this celebration!

I had come up with a whole bunch of “hair brained” ideas. From drinks on the house, viral memes, link farming, practical jokes, crazy prize giveaways, and even collecting donations for charity. Many of these ideas, have been done before, and the result was always the same. Some kind of self-glorification short term traffic boost, which seems to me a pointless exercise and something against the spirit of blogging. Done often enough is something I find very annoying as it does not really add to the blogosphere but spam it.

A while ago, I had a discussion with an old design lecturer on the pros and cos of blogging. One of the points we though about was the medium was a chronological one and there was no way to really index or keep track of your work from the past. Blogs will be great education and learning tools if it only had a glossary of some kind!

With that in mind, I think what I will do this Birthday month is to look back at some of Design Sojourn’s best articles, created when the site was just a new seedling with very few readers, update them with new information or data, and republish it for all to enjoy.

So do stay tuned for some hard hitting Industrial Design posts!

With my vacation last week and a shorten week this week, I have been just too exhausted to update my blog.

However, I have not been idle. I have been collecting lots of juicy design tips and thoughts. Not only that, I have been testing out the iPhone as a blogging tool. It’s not too bad, but touch typing is sloooow and good for short posts like this one!

Anyways do stay tuned as there might be something out end of this week.

Today I presented “What is Design?” at the Invent Singapore Conference 2008, Design for Life workshop. I had a really great time as we had a really friendly audience that asked great questions. As promised to my audience, I have uploaded my presentation to Slideshare for reference viewing right here on Design Sojourn.

On a side note, I designed the slide show not as a Design definition exercise. Far from that. In fact designers are still debating on how to define what design really is. This slide show was really more about looking at design on a holistic level and how design like the subject itself is constantly evolving. Not only that, the focus of the presentation was more about creating a design mindset and for inventors to understand what design can do for them. Do enjoy the slide below after the jump!

I also heard the presentation was recorded. So if the slide show did not really make sense to you, do stay tuned for the recorded representation. I’ll post it as soon as I get my grubby hands on it!

I have been invited to conduct a Workshop called “Design for Life” at the Invent Singapore Conference 2008 this Saturday 16 Aug 2008 at 2pm and also at 4pm.

Invent Singapore is a convention like no other, where innovators, inventors and the business community come together to exchange ideas, learn about the process of invention and create partnerships. It will be held on 15 & 16 August 2008 at the Pan Pacific Hotel.

This inaugural event organised by Fellowship of Inventors (FOI) aims to spread the awareness of the organisation and its purpose. FOI hopes to create an active eco-system of invention and innovation that helps drive ideas to successful fruition. FOI will aid in commercialising ideas systematically with the help of experts from various fields.

For more information do visit the official Invent Singapore 2008 site.

I have not finalized my presentation as of yet but it will likely be strategically focused with a leaning towards informational content. It will likely cover the following topics broadly:
1) What is Design?
2) The Changing Role of Designers?
3) The Advantages of have Designers In-house vs. Out-house.

If you happen to be in the area please do stop by and say high. If not, do stay tuned as the slides will likely be online or on slideshare. See you there!

With a sigh, I turn the lights and radio off, and shut my office door for the last time.

After almost 5 1/2 years and 5 international design awards later, I have decided to resign from my position as Head of Industrial Design and Senior Manager at Nakamichi.

Today the 8th August or 08/08/08 was my last day in the office. The decision to leave was a tough one, but I believe it is time for me to move on. I never realized it but this day happens to be a cosmically auspicious day to the Chinese, not to mention the start of the Olympics! “Eight” in Mandarin rhymes with “Fa” which means luck and prosperity.

So while I’m pretty sad leaving behind some great colleagues, it looks to me like a happy ending that is going to lead into a flying start!

I like to wish all fellow Industrial Designers or anyone in the Industrial Design profession a happy World Industrial Design Day!

Marked by Icsid’s anniversary on June 29, World Industrial Design Day (WIDD) is a day to actively engage design professionals and design enthusiasts to explore their creativity, innovation, vision and passion in recognition of the role of industrial design and designers in our society.

If you are interested in the events celebrated in the country closest to you, check out the official ICSID calendar of events , otherwise give your favorite designer or product a big hug for me?