I am fascinated by interesting theories and philosophies but at the end of the day, reality is what matters. So, I am even more interested when theories and philosophies can be clearly observed through examples. There are great minds who can conceive of incredible ideas but when they are understood by all through simple, real situations, then they are truly important to society.
One area I have experienced this notion being overlooked all to often is in design education and design philosophy. The rift between theoretical design and practical design is far more significant than it may seem and in many cases, what design schools focus on is much more theoretical than practical. Another critical example is in the social noise about start ups and entrepreneurship. So many people are continuously in a state of wanting to start a company, or wanting to do some project. The problem this poses for me is that many of them never do anything - they are all talk, no action.
In response to the latter problem I have worked to create a community at my university called
StartUpKAIST. Our initial aim was to promote starting up or working with start ups as an option for KAIST students. Seeing that so many people said they wanted to start up, but so few ever had (and those who had did not want to talk about it), I thought we need to refocus on creating impact and outcomes with this community. I wanted people to immediately make simple things they could earn money from directly, just to know they could, a kind of low risk way to play with fire. In some ways this view was exacerbated by
Rework (an interesting, though appallingly written take on how to work from a small software businesses' perspective as opposed to the mythical experiences of the larger options).
In response to the former problem, the failure of design education to relate to design practice, I have recently considered a simple model - force students to use
Kickstarter for their projects. Students would see the impact of their designs' properties: if it was very attractive their would be more interest; if it had many flaws, customers may complain after release; if it was poorly optimized it may prove to be impossible to manufacture efficiently etc. Making a Kickstarter project seems to test many of the capabilities designers should possess while not putting them in too much danger. Again, a low risk way to play with fire.
This notion of reducing risk in reality, allowing anyone to do incredible, real things, is really fascinating to me. I think tools which enable simple, functional, embodiments of anyones ideas characterizes our future. Reality matters, and increasingly, we can influence reality more and more easily.
The image is the TextEdit logo from OSx which happens to contain a wonderful quote about significance from Steve Jobs. Steve was famously good at understanding what really mattered. I miss him, not because I knew him but because now I am no longer sure that there is a company out there who will definitely keep doing awesome stuff.
