Strongwong17's Blog

The first step of a start-up is so hard

strongwong17 — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:13:41 +0000

After reading wicked problem in design thinking several times, I still don’t know what is exactly design thinking is. I was seeking the meaning. There is one moment I was enlighten, I want to share with others what I drew from this article about design thinking.
Whenever people tend to create, design or plan an idea in order to shape a better human experience, there is design thinking embedded. Design thinking already expanded all areas of our daily life. We don’t need to speak of it everyday, because we are thinking that way. Once everyone is a designer, everyone should be able to think as a designer sometimes. This should not be a term being talked about all the time. It is not going to be gone by not saying it, neither by saying it. The effort we should do is to make majority of people consciously take advantage of design thinking in doing.

The night before, R, Saad and I just met for a while at night. Something interesting came out. Two symbols of Chinese characters are invented. At least, I consider them as characters. They are both invented in online communication in our traditional way of creating characters which is based on symbolic signs. Once the character囧 came out. Even you don’t know what it means, how it pronounces. You can probably still get the meaning. This is great. In addition, someone also invented orz, as you can see, it is a combination of English letters. However, the form itself give you an illustration of a person kneeing down. There is a vivid story behind it. Imagination of the context will fulfill the meaning of this interesting way of communication.

The communication is in revolution.

Contextual Research

strongwong17 — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:52:51 +0000

It has been such a long time. Time does fly really fast. Last a couple of months, it was the first time my dad, my mom and I were together and drove a car to travel. It was a piece of memory I will remember forever.

Anyways, after sending my parents off, I decided TA a contextual research undergraduate class with Professor Malouf. So far, I was amazed even I have taken that class before. I started thinking in a different role, shifting my context from a student point of view to a teacher point of view. The content is familiar, but also strange. I still love it. I will start keeping some record here for my reflections as well in comparing to the previous so-called teaching experiences when I was interning in China. Hopefully, I could get out something really fun.

Their design thinking

strongwong17 — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:57:26 +0000

The last meeting with the manager and the shareholder lasted for 5 hours. From one topic to another, they just showed their design thinking without any doubts. Even the shareholder didn’t attend my lecture on contextual research, she still tried to make her point on conducting research which is basically contextual research methods. She doesn’t know those terms and the way of what she was thinking, but she knows exactly what to do and how to do. This is a surprise.
How many times people applied design thinking in their activities? Countless. Why we are saying it all the time even it seems everyone already possess this ability? I may not be able to answer this question at this moment. It will be the question I have to figure out in the next step.

design and innovation

strongwong17 — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:17:14 +0000

Why should not do this?
I always asked myself. One of the other college teacher who also works in the design team, his statement today was really where the problem coming from.
The conversation is like this.
I said”Why don’t we produce tens of sketches or ideas in a couple of days and choose from them and refine them?”
He said”That is definitely something we should not do. First, we are not paid that well to work that hard; second, this is how you work in the US, not in China, and most Chinese design firms are doing this. You are wasting your time. The last, our ability is not able to do that.”
I was wordless.
I was pissed off at that moment. However, I have to face the truth here. A month ago, I really believed probably the problem is coming from the world outside design field. Now I know the problem is right there in the center of design.
How? Why?What to do?
Next challenge for me.

However, I think I made a step forward with my presentation. Tracing back to the first one and the second one, there are more people coming. However, the correspondences are fewer. Incorporating with questions and discussion really helps me a lot. Once I saw some engineering teams hanging their drawings on the wall, I was really happy and satisfied. The happy moment was exemplified by a colleague who mindmaps her work.

Keep working hard.

Innovator’s dilemma in China

strongwong17 — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:10:25 +0000

At the very beginning, it will make better sense if the concept or definition of innovation is given. There are a lot of media buzz in China about innovation. What innovation means in China is really focusing on technology and ideas, but the diffusion of innovation.
After given the concept of innovation, we could talk about what kind of situation innovators are facing here in China. Once we went through Christensen’s book one more time, an illustration will jump into our eyes. The graph shows the relationship between the line of the customer’s need, and either sustaining innovation or disruptive innovation.
I want to make an extension of this graph. There would be likely another line called the line of customer’s desire or expectation. The absolute distance from the point on sustaining innovation or disruptive innovation to the point on customer’s need or expectation zone will determine which probably could make a better market or diffuse the specific innovation faster. However, in this case, China is still nowhere in the graph, neither its technology nor its innovation.
Currently, most of the businesses are looking at only at the line of sustaining innovation from abroad. They overlooked or neglected the line of customer’s need. Is this a time to change our way of thinking? Gaining competitive advantages requires both technology and meeting the need-desire zone.

second presentation

strongwong17 — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:01:51 +0000

The presentation today is all about contextual research. I got fewer audiences. Probably because I didn’t make attractive impressions. I need to think about how to engage with the audiences in a disadvantage situation.

I had my video recorded. I won’t need to repeat what I have done. A little bit of exhaustive but it is a success. There are a couple of colleagues made some very good points, philosophically. They are not designers, but very sharp.

I like one sentence I said today. I don’t really care about what you call those method. Whatever you call them. You can name it as Marketing research. It won’t matter. The key point is you got what I supposed to communicate.

PS: the World Cup is playing now.

Talk to Human Resource

strongwong17 — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:26:16 +0000

Exchanging some ideas with HR manager this morning, we were talking about some of my thoughts about the organizational structure and how to create a multi layer entity. HR manager was really interested in what I was talking, and inspired by some of my visualizations. I was quite happy. Then she started talking to me about her idea towards the company. I had some other understanding of problems within the company from some different perspectives. The relationships among everyone, details of this company-wide social innovation, and tensions within this atmosphere, they all depicted a 3 dimensional matrix in my mind.
With further discovery day by day, I felt really satisfied, just because a wicked problem is emerging in front of me. This is fascinating.

In the afternoon, a great news to me. I have contacted a chief engineer in ministry of industry and information technology department of the P.R.C. She gave me a further contact who is the current secretary of Industrial Design Association in China. I can really reach someone from the top. Maybe my study will go further.

Poor Life

strongwong17 — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:03:16 +0000

Before I got part of my first month pay check. I had only 1.00 RMB left. lol. It was great. Am I inclining to American consuming style? This is not a good sign.

3 Steps for tomorrow’s presentation. Contextual Research

prepare for next presentation

strongwong17 — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:29:01 +0000

Spending this morning for reviewing all research materials I have, and reading through a famous design educator in China, I have learnt a lot. The more I know about design in China, the harder I will face to in the future on the way of influencing design in China. Last night, I was watching a movie named Confucius. Confucius has the dream of ruling the country via education, ethics, and Confucian. Later his life, he found a way to diffuse his thinking, which is through social innovation. I need learn from these successful cases, especially someone like Confucius.

early weak signal

strongwong17 — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:47:52 +0000

Foxconn recently has been exposed to the media a lot because of the suicide of its employees. So far 13 cases. From this, it led to a series of scenario of how Chinese labor force would likely change. I assume in the next 5-10 years, Chinese labor and manufactures will run out their advantages on cheap labor. Where are our economy going? I am perceiving this as the early weak signal for the arouse of Chinese design thinking. We need to employ design thinking to transit our role in the whole global economic ecology. Especially after reading from “the whole new mind” and seeing Chris Anderson’s talk, as a Chinese, I don’t know what should I feel and how should I react this kind of theories. When the western cultures are focusing on their design and strategic advantage, and relying on Chinese manufacture. The structure of the society is actually evolving.

Just some thoughts.