Solve Anything! Building Ideas through Design - Mar 2010

Hey Everyone,

A couple of logistical points before I take the plunge into this update.

First, check out the snazzy new discussion forum! Second, have a look at the rest-of-course calendar I post-it'd in the attached image. It looks like we'll need another 5-6 weeks of weekly meetings to get where I wanted the course to be. This of course puts us some 8 weeks beyond the original P2PU finish line, but that's on me.

Okay, so, action items:

1) Everyone please vote on your ideas by responding to the discussion below. I will post again to refresh your minds. Vote once, vote well. We've got to move ahead.

2) Respond to the whenisgood: http://whenisgood.net/hgr443 for our next call.

3) After you've voted, consider that topic. Three steps:
- Try to list all the users / stakeholders / etc involved in that system or environment. For example, if we were sti interested in my old proposal about school attendance, I might say 'teachers, students, cleaning staff, secretaries, the principal' but that list could balloon to include 'school superintendant, local police' and more if I looked beyond the immediate school. If it helps to do this visually, as a map, please do!

- Choose two of the most relevant (let's say I chose students and local police).

- Describe two extreme 'embodiments' of each of these users in the context of this problem. What does that mean? Let's try some examples: So I might identify the unmotivated student who's really not interested in school at all and misses often, recreationally. And another student who loves school to death but misses a lot of school because she has to work a part-time job that overlaps with school hours. You see? these are two different 'extreme' users in the world of this problem. They're not the average students, and they have unique motivations about and relationships to school. As for the police, well, I'll have to think on that.

So, let's shoot to have votes in by Thursday, May 6. Talk to you soon!

Vivek