Author Archives: Mike

Design changes with jQuery

I’m currently developing a new theme template for the site, so it’s not going to look all that great for a while. Hopefully I can get most of it sorted before I start school in September!

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Downtime

Unfortunately, my laptop was stolen during my trip, and I’ve been busy with catching up on work and recovering from the lost information so I haven’t been able to update the blog. I may be able to get thing going again soon, but otherwise it will be another month before I can do anything significant. […]

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UWC guidance counseling conference

I’ll be heading to the States tomorrow for a UWC guidance counselors gathering at College of the Atlantic in Maine at the end of the week. I’ll also be getting the chance to visit Brown University, Colby College, and possibly a short visit at Bates College on the way up to Bar Harbor from Boston, […]

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Simulating user experience

Since the 1950’s, the Human Sciences (in the broad sense that includes design) have embraced a user- or human-centered approach to research. This usually takes the form of ubiquitous user experience surveys, observation, and other methods of getting ecologically valid feedback. Many “experts” in these fields, however, still insist that users doesn’t know what they […]

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The Human Sciences in TOK

This is an outline of a presentation that I recently gave to a group of students at the Mahindra United World College of India as part of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program’s Theory of Knowledge course, which investigates various ‘Areas of Knowledge’ and ‘Ways of Knowing’. The Human (or Social) Sciences provide a great synthesis […]

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NYTimes articles on technology, usability, and design

Heads up on a couple of great articles in the New York Times today:
The first article, “At a Certain Age, Simplicity Sells in High-Tech Gadgets“, closely relates to a previous post about how one of technology’s outgroups - the baby boomers and older - sometimes convinces itself that it cannot understand new technology. The column […]

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Engineering Design and government funding

To any academic reading this blog who senses that their research interests are in any way related to mine:

Leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you and know what you’re doing, and how your research is going.
Check out the NSF funding for Engineering Design, and the projects that have been supported in the past.

I’ve […]

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CL plans

Just to let everyone who is interested know:
I will not be actively advertising or promoting this blog until I do a major visual and structural refresh, which likely won’t come until later this summer, when I have a new laptop, software, and upgraded internet connection. Currently, I’m on a 3 year old iBook G4 that […]

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Downward spiral

When Thomas Friedman wrote last year that the introduction of the Tata Nano “people’s car” was a Bad Thing, many interested parties quickly came to defend the project, claiming that Friedman and others concerned about deploying thousands (perhaps millions) of inexpensive cars into India were being elitist and insensitive to the needs of a developing […]

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Thinking with your hands

One of my favorite scenes from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” is when the title characters move to Bolivia and apply to be armed guards at a (coal?) mine. The mine’s owner tells Sundance to stand and shoot a stone tossed about 10 yards away. Sundance attempts to do so, but repeatedly misses, and […]

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