Winter quarter started for me today. Having to be at work by 8 AM wasn’t all that bad. The most exciting part of the morning was the reports of a large male stranger with red hair wandering around the building with bulky backpack. One theory was that he was casing the place for laptops to steal.

My first class of the quarter was Information Systems Analysis and Design co-taught by Phil Agre and Christine Borgman. I’m really excited about what I will learn and the new ways of looking at things that I will be exposed to. Iterative design will be the focus of the course: designing a system over and over again after receiving feedback and rethinking the design problem. At one point Phil told us that the goal of presenting a design was to “get your mind blown” by the ideas and criticisms and other perspectives of the audience.

We have one of the most creative assignments I’ve ever conceived of just to get us thinking about design in radically different ways. It is not a major assignment of the class and will probably only take a few hours of work in total. First, we go to an interesting (to us) place in the city. When there, we observe what takes place, interact with people, take note of all the information that exists around us and think about the information issues. Then we think about what sort of information systems could make this place different. Maybe in terms of what technology might be in place in ten years. Then, this is a real kicker, we call up one of our professors on our mobile phones and a have a 30 minute discussion about where we are and what is taking place. Since we are on site, we can report in real time and observe directly what sorts of ideas might work. Phil and Chris will only be able to brainstorm based on what we report to them. This will hopefully lead us to come at design from angles we may have not considered before by showing us in practice what potential is out there. Afterwards we will report to the class for five minutes and receive feedback from the professor we didn’t call on the phone.

I’m looking forward to this. I need to find a place to be on Tuesday the 23rd at 1 o’clock.

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