The last two weeks have been glad and sad.
Glad to be in a new place, see old friends, and be free of the last year's emotional burdens. Sad to have left Santa Monica and my dear friends there, the relationship that was my family, and the fabulous little girl I came to love as my own. Sad, too, that my destroyed Mac G4 Powerbook rendered me unable to blog here, to experience the catharsis of creation.
These too shall pass. The memory to upgrade my Mac G3 Powerbook, the best machine I own for writing and blogging -- a work of ergonomic genius, as subsequent Macs have not been -- finally arrived. I installed it a couple of days ago and have been testing it. It works. As you can see, I'm “back in the saddle and ready to ride!” (to quote local rodeo lore). Thanks to Paula for her continuing postings of interest in the meantime.
Tomorrow I'll pick up again where I had to leave off: exploring the varieties and qualities of spiritual experience, and their relation to the experiences that we seek to understand and for which we design. I'll also open a conversation about my future plans, which include a total immersion in innovation, and invite your comments....
Over on Speedbird, Adam Greenfield has penned one of the best essays on experience and experience design ever to grace a blog. It's a modern take on philosophy and general systems thinking as applied to experience design, and what we can and cannot design for, experientially. Thank you, Adam, for a smooth exposition.
(Image: Odd Items)
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior (economics), optimizing interactions (design) and facilitating conversations (markets), are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a 'nice to have'‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
