Objectified Coming to Boston

Finally, Objectified is screening in Boston (got my ticket today), info below.

For those who maybe aren't familiar with the film, I emplore you to check out the trailer

Objectified: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit

May 21 & 22
Boston MA, USA
Museum of Fine Arts
8:00pm both nights, post-film Q&A with director Gary Hustwit on 5/21 only
Tickets on sale now

Mind Mapping my Annual Review

One of my favorite blogs to read is Lifehack.  Recently, Dustin Wax had a post on a mind-mapping software called X-mind.

I have heard people to refer to mind-mapping before, but it always seemed too cumbersome.  I never really had any project that made me think "this needs to go on a mind-map.", until about a week ago.

I am coming up for my annual review @ Farm, and as is the case of a consultancy, the past year consisted of a very broad spectrum of projects and tasks.  Knowing fully well that my annual review would one day come, I had taken periodic (read: sporadic) notes, snapshots, etc.  The problem was, those notes were typically done in times of easy, steady work, not in the midst of a mad rush to get deliverables out the door.  This being the case, there are a few gaps in my work history that need filling, enter X-mind.

Recalling the past year was a surprisingly pleasant experience.  There was an organic flow from my meandering mind through my fingers and onto the "mind-map".  I started with a project name, and within 10 minutes I had listed the 10 or so subsystems, the specific areas I worked on, what I learned, the technical challenges, the design intent and so on.  When I was finished, I looked at the map, stunned.  How could I never have used this before?

I should also note that I am by no means gifted with a super-memory, far from it.  Instead, I liken my recollection that of a song coming on the radio that I haven't heard in years.  If you asked me out of the blue to recite the lyrics, I would be stuck.  On the other hand, once that same song is blasting and the first few lyrics are sung, I can remember the next few lyrics, then the next few.  That chain continues until the end of the song, at which point I have recalled every lyric without fail.  It was this type of chain that empowered me to recall details of the project with surprising accuracy, the mind-map just served as a catch for the memories I was throwing out.

After doing the outline for my review, I had an hour or two of downtime at work and checked out some free ANSYS webinars.  As I pulled out my notepad to take some notes, I thought of Xmind and figured I would give it a shot.  What an excellent choice.

I've seen my fair share of training webinars, and many of them tend to have similar structures: An intro, an overview of each section, then details about each section, and a conclusion.  I find that this doesn't mesh well with old-fashioned, linear note-taking.  Your notes on the overview of the first section and notes of the details of the same section are pages apart.  With a mind-map, you can bounce around with the presentation, and export into a nice indented outline.  Nice.

Did I mention it's free?

Geneva Drive

The products we use in everyday life are increasingly becoming plastic clam shells around an an unintelligible (at least to the untrained eye) array of green plastic, components, and LCD displays.  In such a world, I find it refreshing to see a mechanical device like the Geneva drive.  It's relatively complex geometry is perfectly attuned to it's function, and can easily be understood... 

If Gary Hustwit is looking to make another film along the lines of Helvetica and Objectified, might I suggest, Mechanism?

A visualization of the credit crisis

I tend to follow financials somewhat, and I find the current predicament we are in interesting. However, even if you don't find economics interesting you should appreciate the power of a well designed presentation to communicate an otherwise complicated topic



The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.


-Chris Loughnane

Procrastination and state agencies

Back in October I moved from Boston to Southern New Hampshire. Ever the procrastinator, I put off getting a new drivers license. After being pulled over and given warnings (twice) by the same police officer, I was given a ticket. This is all my fault, and I bear no ill will towards the Hollis police department, but I digress.

Naturally, I put off paying the ticket until the 29th of the 30 days alotted to do so, today. I checked the NH website to see where I could pay, but there was no information. All that was there were directions to mail the ticket and payment. Mail? In 2009? Seriously?

Well mailing was out of the question, so I drove to the nearest dmv (~20 min away) to make a payment. The woman there curtly thrust a piece of paper in my face with a number to call. However, upon calling the number it was busy. Naturally, I hung up and called again...and again.. and again.

I called nonstop for 40 minutes (no exaggeration) before I got through and made my payment.

During this tedious excercise my mind wandered. How much time and money is spent on collecting payments such as these? Wouldn't it be great if officers carried a credit card scanner with them, and I could pay then and there? No lost tickets (did I mention I lost my ticket?), instant punishment (perhaps nudging people to drive safer and not procrastinat), and less support staff required to answer my questions.

With all the talk about improving infrastructure, I hope to see federal/state/local agencies streamline themselves to the point where the processing time is measured in minutes, not months.

-Chris Loughnane

Culture Shock Down South

I'm from Boston.I have traveled down south, but usually I just take a plane to the nearest airport, and an hour or so later I am at my destination.  This past summer however I made a 5.5 hour drive from Dayton, OH to Gatlinburg, TN.  I was going through my photos and there were some distinctively different sights....




I am sure that some of you will look at these things and think nothing of it.  That is the point I am trying to make.  When we stay in our own comfort zone (emotionally and geographically) we get so accustomed to the way things are that we look sideways at anything that doesn't particularly mesh with our own worldview.  I was definitely surprised to see all of the images above, but i think it was good.  It really just underscores the fact that if you are going to design any type of product or service for somebody, having a personal, holistic understanding of who they are and where they come from can make all of the difference.

POP Design

I understand that it is popular to associate your brand with a lifestyle, but what about the above image rings true?  There is zero correlation between the product and the lifestyle.  Do POP displays like this really encourage people to buy a nutter butter?

Revamping college education

While reading a seemingly innocuous post by Bruce Nussbaum, I was inspired to write something I've been thinking about for a while regarding the way our collegiate system is set up. Here are my thoughts

As a recent Mechanical Engineering graduate from Northeastern University...

I don't know if I would go as far as to say that admins are trying to prep students for a world that doesn't exist. However, I do think that the method in which they go about educating the students is in a manner that is more conducive to a more rigid, pre open-source era, and less so to the world of today...

The collegiate experience (at least academically) consists of a list of books you should read to become a professional "____", professor's to guide you along the way, and a surrounding of like-minded people.

Of those three, I believe the sense of community one gets from working with people that are passionate about the same subject is the most irreplacable. The curricula for almost any course can be downloaded from an increasing number of universities (MIT Open Courseware and Stanford iTunes are the first that come to mind). The professors (for the most part) can be replaced by online forums and industry professionals who (again, for the most part) are more than willing to discuss a topic here and there with a passionate student.

I think it best if companies ends their love affair with degrees. Why not put the onus of proving competence on the licensing institutions? Engineers have the Professional Engineer Exam, Lawyers have the bar exam, etc. If I did not have an engineering degree, but passed the Professional Engineer Exam (which only ~65% of degreed Mechanical Engineer's have done), who is to say that i cannot practice as an engineer?

I envision a future where Universities offer student's varying packages. On one end you have the all-inclusive, lifelong-debt-incurring programs of today, and on the other end of the spectrum, you have a package that consists of lab usage, library access, career counseling, and an ability to cherry pick which classes you attend (so that you don't have to take say, algebra I, but you have the option to take quantum physics). These students will achieve their learning through MIT OCW, netowrking, etc. At the end of every semester or so, each student has the opportunity to take the same test. These tests will just provide feedback to the students so that they know how well they are doing. As mentioned before, this process is culminated in licensing exams provided by the appropriate licensing bureau.

You want to talk about stifling innovation? The crippling debt so many of us are graduating with prevents the fiscally responsible of us from taking the kind of chances that are required to achieve great things.



-Chris Loughnane

Ideals - from 2D to 3D

If you don't know the name Chris Jordan, you have probably seen his photographic arts.  I enjoy the photos because they so vividly portray that which most of us can barely see: consumerism.  My fondness for these photos is anecdotal; the point I am trying to make is that I am not the only one who enjoys it... they are very popular.

This popularity got me thinking.  It is en vogue (appropriately) to think of products as "experiences", and to give products features that facilitate emotional attachment to the user. To that end, what is more emotional to people than their ideals? Think of anyone you know, I am sure they take pride in being _____.  Urban, religious, thrifty, southern, northern, vegetarian, etc.  The point is that if people enjoy looking at a two dimensional piece of art that reaffirms their ideals (as Jordan's photos reaffirm my anti-consumerist bent), imagine the connection that could be made between an individual and a tangible object whose shape agrees with that person's ideals.