Friday, January 13, 2017

Zero to Maker: Learn (Just Enough) to Make (Just About) Anything

Hi there!

I created a podcast discussing Zero to Maker: Learn (Just Enough) to Make (Just About) Anything, embedded below via Soundcloud: (The backing track is "Love is" by @nop (Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0): ccmixter.org/files/Lancefield/55311 )

2 comments:

  1. First, let me say that I am incredibly impressed you put together a podcast. It's really great—loved your cat Jane making an appearance.

    A couple of insights you added to the conversation that I wanted to build upon.

    At about 6 minutes, you describe how the book outlines the need to go for the end result first and then worry about the means to get there. I'm in the Master of Design program here at UMich and have found this basic principle to be incredibly valuable in my work. Herbert Simon describes design as "Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones." I've found this definition to be helpfully directional. Thinking through the preferred situations as a means to determine how you will get there has always served me well.

    Around 10:30 you introduced a question in response to a lack of stories beyond the traditional hobbyist tinkering away at a workbench: Are people accurately determining their own needs? It brought to mind the work of Liz Sanders within the design community, who has written extensively on co-design and participatory design methods. Her book Convivial Toolbox has some really great stories and strategies for supporting people as they solve or intervene in their own problems. Check it out: https://books.google.com/books/about/Convivial_Toolbox.html?id=a8miuAAACAAJ

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    1. Thank you for this! I really like how you put: "Thinking through the preferred situations as a means to determine how you will get there has always served me well." A helpful concept for life more broadly as well. And I will definitely check out Convivial Toolbox :)

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