Aldo de Moor

Mar

2008

Understanding Design: 150 Reflections on Being a Designer

I recently finished reading “Understanding Design: 150 Reflections on Being a Designer“, by Kees Dorst. It’s a delightful book with 150 single page stories that you can’t stop reading. The stories have been organized in four main themes (Inside Design, About Design, Being a Designer, Around Design), and cover everything from the philosophy and morality of design to very practical guidelines on how to do and teach design. A must for everybody remotely interested in this complex but so intriguing field.

Mar

2008

Design for development

Richard Heeks and Bill McIver sent useful references in response to my post on the Another Perspective on Design-symposium.

[Richard Heeks]

Just to follow Aldo’s original point, the whole area of “design for development” seems to be a growing one. Examples are the work of The Cardiff Group: http://www.thecardiffgroup.org.uk/ (which helps organise the Development Studies Association’s Design and Development group: http://www.devstud.org.uk/studygroups/design.htm), and Design for Development: http://www.designfordevelopment.org/. Up-and-coming are the outputs from the BGDD project – http://www.bgdd.org/Wiki.jsp – which is approaching the issue from a computing/interface design-for-development perspective.There are also a lot of organisations working more to help multinationals understand and design for emerging markets, e.g. CKS in Bangalore – http://www.cks.in/They, in turn, have been involved in one of the main design-and-development functions, the Doors of Perception events: http://www.doorsofperception.com/

Mar

2008

Another Perspective on Design – Symposium

Yesterday, an interesting symposium was organised in Breda by COLIN (Creative Organisations Linked in Networks) , named “Another Perspective on Design“. Here are some notes I took during the presentations. They are not comprehensive, but should capture some of the highlights.

Speaker: Mary-Ann Schreurs, chairwoman of the working group Design of the Eindhoven city council

Design has enormous economic potential
- One reason DAF trucks has become so succcessful is because of their truck cabins having been optimally designed for their human users.
Designers bring together ideas from all disciplines, combine them into a form. Design is leading.
Governments need to create the necessary conditions for design to have its effect.
- For example, never enough workspaces for starting entrepreneurs!

Mar

2008

Installing a VPN client on the ASUS EEE

I have to work a lot on Tilburg University campus, and continuously need to access the Internet, which is one main reason I bought my ASUS EEE laptop. However, to get access on campus one needs a VPN connection. On Windows machines, it is no problem to install the Cisco VPN client, but, alas, not so for Linux machines like mine. Raymond Mul, ICT manager at the Faculty of Law, and avid Linux enthusiast, has been so kind to write a short manual (in Dutch) explaining how to make the university network open up for Linux lovers as well:

VPN installation Howto for Asus EEE PC series

Enjoy!

Mar

2008

Second Life: Beyond the Hype

The hype is over. Whereas only a year ago, Second Life was everywhere in the mainstream media, the mad rush seems over. Then, every major organization seemed to try to establish a presence “in world”, and the virtual sky seemed the limit. Now, the number of active users seems to have stabilized, and many initially over-enthusiasts are disappointed, because their unrealistic expectations have not been met.

However, the dot com bust around the turn of the century did not kill the development of worthwhile applications of the Internet, on the contrary. Similarly, the current stage in the evolution of Second Life from mere vision to serious business, educational, and many other applications is a natural one. Consolidation and reflection on where to go from here is healthy and necessary.… Read more...

Mar

2008

Virtual Teams and Collaborative Environments – book

CALL FOR CHAPTERS

Proposals Submission Deadline: 3/31/2008

Full Chapters Due: 7/31/2008

Virtual Teams and Collaborative Environments:
Knowledge-Driven Creativity

A book edited by A book edited by Aggelos Liapis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Julian Malins, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland UK
Stijn Christiaens, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Pieter De Leenheer, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

http://www.igi-pub.com/requests/details.asp?ID=371

OBJECTIVES
One of the principal objectives of this new book is to suggest improved tools and methodologies for CSCW which can be applied in a variety of disciplines and professional contexts. The book will explore the nature of creativity and how this relates to CSCW. In particular this book will identify the factors that limit creativity in virtual teams when using online collaborative environments.… Read more...

Mar

2008

Back to the basics

Since yesterday, I am the happy owner of an Asus EEE laptop. No, it’s not yet another machine with more cycles, megabytes, and features. Rather, the philosophy is “less is more”. EEE stands for “Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play”, and as far as I am concerned, the machine fully lives up to this promise.

My version is the 4G-Surf: only a 7″ display, 512 Mb RAM, and 4 Gb solid state disk. The price? Less than 350 euros for all this goodness! There is a huge backorder for the newest models (4 Gb SSD with webcam, 8 Gb SSD), but the 4G-Surf is already definitely good enough for your daily basic mobile needs. See also my post on GrowingPains for some reflections on the impact of this development.… Read more...

Mar

2008

5th Prato Community Informatics & Development Informatics Conference 2008

5th Prato Community Informatics & Development Informatics Conference 2008: ICTs for Social Inclusion: What is the Reality?

27 OCTOBER-30 OCTOBER 2008, MONASH CENTRE, PRATO ITALY.

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS
We are seeking abstracts and proposals from academics, practitioners and PhD students for a conference and workshop event at the Monash University Centre, Prato, Italy (near Florence). The Conference will also include a development informatics stream under the aegis of the International Development Informatics Association as part of its second conference meeting.

Click here for more information.

Mar

2008

Virtual worlds are not enough

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with Philippe Kerremans, who through his Louis Platini company is implementing Second Life business solutions. We agreed that building virtual worlds in, for example, Second Life is not enough. Additional necessary conditions are an accompanying website in “ordinary cyberspace” and process models that can be used to ensure that available functionalities are actually being used by community members in all their various roles.

Mar

2008

IADIS International Conference Web Based Communities 2008

IADIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE WEB BASED COMMUNITIES 2008

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 24 to 26 July 2008

(http://www.webcommunities-conf.org/)

part of the IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems

(MCCSIS 2008)

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 22 to 27 July 2008

(http://www.mccsis.org)

* Conference background and goals

The mission of this conference is to publish and integrate scientific results and act catalytically to the fast developing culture of web communities. The conference invites original papers, review papers, technical reports and case studies on WWW in particular the emerging role of so-called WWW-Based Communities.

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