Meet the iPad: For only $499

This afternoon, hundreds of thousands of eyes were glued to their computer sceens at 1 pm, awaiting Apple's latest creation: the iPad.

The 16GB, Wi-Fi-only version costs $500, while the 32GB version is $600. Lastly, the 64GB version will cost you $700. If you want to add 3G, the pricing increases by $130 on top of that. The Wi-Fi-only models will ship in 60 days, while 3G models will be shipping in 90 days.

Worth it? We will have to wait and see.

Research Methodologies Reading No.2

Investigating Design: A Review of Forty Years of Design Research

by Nigan Bayazit

The objectives of design research are the study, research, and investigation of the artificial made by human beings, and the way these activities have been directed either in academic studies or manufacturing organizations. This paper provides a summary of design research history concerning design methods and scientific approaches to design.

Design research tries to

answer the obligations of design to the humanities:

1. Design research is concerned with the physical embodiment of man-made things, how these things perform their jobs, and how they work.
2. Design research is concerned with construction as a human activity, how designers work, how they think, and how they carry out design activity.
3. Design research is concerned with what is achieved at the end of a purposeful design activity, how an artificial thing appears, and what it means.
4. Design research is concerned with the embodiment of configurations.
5. Design research is a systematic search and acquisition of knowledge related to design and design activity.

First Generation Design Methods

• The influence of systems analysis and systems theory on design established the grounds for the foundation of “systematic design methods”
• First-generation design methods were simplistic, not matured enough, and not capable of meeting the requirements of complex, real-world problems.

Second Generation Design Methods

• User participation to P&D is a very wide and comprehensive subject, with its political, ideological, psychological, managerial, administrative, legal and economical aspects in relation to various countries.
• These second-generation design methods began to compensate for the inadequacy of the first-generation design methods.
• The success of the participatory design process depended on the designer’s awareness of user values, and obliged professionals to collaborate with social scientists as well as anthropologists to carry out design research. There were some obstacles in the application of participatory design in larger-scale projects, such as those in urban planning.

The period after about 1967 until today and especially in the seventies, can be labeled as the prime time for the initial development of design science. There was a close relationship between design research and the developments in the IT field, especially in cognitive sciences, and “artificial intelligence” (AI) and expert systems. Design theoreticians such as L. Bruce Archer46 and Gordon Pask47 saw the similarities between designers’ design behavior and the organisms’ self-control systems, and developed their own theories accordingly. The study of human performance and man-machine relationship developed great momentum. Ergonomics and work-study were well known by many people, and applied to designs during the war.

In 1980, the Design: Science: Method Conference was organized at Portsmouth, in which design research and the contribution of science to design were the subjects of discussion. The 1980s and 1990s opened a new era in design research. Many U.S. departments of design began to establish new academic research units, which were brought about from the government’s release of funds on design research, and the encouragement and demand by American industry.

Between 1986 and 1993, the Institute of Design (ID) at the Illinois Institute of Technology began to issue the Design Processes Newsletter, edited by Charles Owen. That newsletter was concerned with design research approaches of ID, design management, and design policy.

Significant growth in all areas of design research took place during the 1990s. New professional demands on design research, and the new educational confrontations for restructuring knowledge changed the context of design. The history of design research with reference to design methodologies, as well as design science, is a wide and comprehensive subject that needs additional extensive research.

Research Methodologies Reading No.1

Graphic Design Education as a Liberal Art: Design and Knowledge in the University

by Gunnar Swanson

Issues in graphic design education as well as other faculties.

What happens to design students who don't make it? They are often seen as failures because design studies do not prepare students for life other than design.

He suggests that we increase design /training practice with more liberal studies and reconsider it not as a design but as a liberal art.

Liberal courses are intrinsically important and crucial to self development. Even though many designers have no desire for post-graduate, the curriculum prepares them for it.

On the whole, design studies has not helped design students become people capable of shaping the world as a democratic whole.

"Design should be about meaning and how meaning can be created. Design should be about the relationship of form and communication."

The concerns of design will not be directly addressed by academia until it becomes an academic subject.

Research Methodologies Reading No.1

What is research?

By Leedy/Ormrod

This article is an attempt to clarify the mystery surrounding the over usage of the term and what it entails.

What research is not:
1.Mere information gathering.

2.Mere transportation of facts from one location to another.

3.Rummaging for information.

4.A catch word used to get attention.

What research is:

1. Originates with a question or problem.

2. Requires clear articulation.

3. Requires a specific plan for proceeding.

4. Usually divides the principal problem into more manageable sub problems.

5. Research is guided by the specific research problem, question, or hypotheses.

6. Research accepts certain critical assumptions.

7. Research requires the collection and interpretation of data in an attempt to resolve the problem that initiated the research.

8. Research is, by its nature, cyclical, or more, exactly, helical.

Research Methodologies Reading No.1

THE LANDSCAPE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN EDUCATION
Meredith Davis

The role of colleges and universities now engaged in professional education is to develop students with respect to both the discipline and the profession of graphic design.

Several years ago, the AIGA and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, the accrediting body for college programs in art and design, agreed that the Bachelor of Fine Arts with a fully-articulated major in graphic design is the first professional degree. As part of that agreement, the organizations defined “essential competencies” as learning outcomes that should result from study in these programs and have published briefing papers that expand discussion of conditions impacting professional programs.

I would argue that what distinguishes a professional graphic design education from a pre-professional experience (and a profession from a trade) is not the one-to-one match between curriculum and the current skill set necessary for entry-level practice, but the essential competencies that enable design practitioners to be predictive and responsible for transforming the field across their professional careers.

What excellent professional programs in design demonstrate, regardless of their structure and the particular skills of the faculty, is that it takes time to produce a professional and even longer to produce a leader in the field.

The goal for design faculty in professional programs, therefore, should not only be to monitor student completion of a cafeteria of required professional courses or to verify inclusion of each professional project type in the student’s portfolio (annual report, poster, website, etc.) Instead, the mission of professional curricula should be to instill in students a disposition for scholarship in both academic and professional settings.

As the economics of higher education encourage expanding populations of students to begin their baccalaureate studies in two-year institutions, the need is greater for four-year programs and community colleges to coordinate curriculum planning.

The field of graphic design has witnessed considerable change over the last two decades. The introduction of the computer and rapid growth of technology; increased public access to the means of production and dissemination; extreme highs and lows in the economy; public concern for the environment; and consumer activism have rewritten the value system of design and how it is perceived by others. In many businesses, design is now viewed as integral to an overall operational strategy.

Healthy professions transform themselves over time; they anticipate and respond to changes in the social, technological, and economic context by developing new knowledge, modes of inquiry, and critical perspectives. New practices emerge to meet new conditions.

So if graphic design education is to prepare future practitioners to anticipate and manage change, it must recognize the value of being well-educated in areas not currently defined as being about the profession and integrate this content into the normal discussions in the design studio.

More recently, design firms have taken on their own research initiatives, applying practices borrowed from more established research disciplines, developing new methods specific to design, and engaging audiences as co-creators of artifacts and services. Consistent with the evolution of any professional field, we now find firms and individuals devoted exclusively to providing research that informs the decisions of others. Regrettably, this emerging research culture currently resides almost entirely inside design offices that consider outcomes as proprietary, as trade secrets for which clients pay fees.

The last two issues deal with concern over who is minding the store in graphic design education. Nearly 30 years of burgeoning enrollments, unchecked by any concern for demand in the field or the skewing of priorities in multidisciplinary departments and college, has left the field with a shortfall of qualified faculty. Faculty searches continue to come up short and high-level master’s programs can’t produce enough young teachers to staff the current vacancies for assistant professors. Paired with shrinking academic budgets, many schools have turned to adjunct faculty who teach one or two courses a semester, receive no benefits, and do no advising, curriculum planning, or assessment. Many lack terminal degrees and receive little instruction from the department regarding what is to be taught, how the course relates to the rest of the curriculum, or appropriate student outcomes. At schools located outside of major metropolitan design centers, the pool of practicing designers is often limited to the institution’s own very recent graduates.

NBC’s Slide to Troubled Nightly Punch Line

At its height, NBC was the very model of what a television network should be. With iconic programming, enviable ratings and spectacular business success, the peacock network delivered plenty of laughs along the way with “The Cosby Show,” “Seinfeld” and “Friends.”

Nobody is laughing anymore.

Today the network is in shambles, brought down not just by the challenges facing broadcast television — fragmenting audiences, an advertising downturn — but also by a series of executive missteps that have made its prime-time lineup a perennial loser and, most recently, turned its late night programming schedule into a media circus that threatens the lucrative “Tonight Show” franchise.

“We live in a society today that loves a soap opera,” Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, said in an interview in his office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York on Friday. “Three months ago it was David Letterman. Six weeks ago it was Tiger Woods’s problems. Today it’s NBC’s problems.”

And this is all happening as the company itself is in transition, waiting for regulators in Washington to approve a sale of NBC Universal from General Electric to Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator. By the time G.E. finally decided to wash its hands of NBC late last year, the network ranked low on the list of those parts of the company most valuable to Comcast, which will swallow the network mainly so it can acquire the company’s money-making cable channels, like USA, Bravo, Syfy.

Indeed, even though NBC’s news division remains highly profitable, the network’s overall finances are crumbling — less than a decade ago, according to Bob Wright, the former chief executive of NBC Universal, the network generated over $1 billion in profit for its parent, G.E.

This year, mainly because of high costs associated with broadcasting next month’s Winter Olympics, the network is expected to lose more than $100 million, according to a person briefed on the network’s finances who insisted on anonymity. The company does not break out financial figures for the network. (In 2009, the network made a few hundred million dollars, and represented about 10 percent of NBC Universal’s operating profit.)

All of the networks are dealing with economic pressures, but NBC’s competitors have proved more deft at managing the challenges and creating hits, even as their profits have declined.

How did things go so wrong at NBC?

The network’s long fall from grace, particularly in prime time, culminated over the last decade. But most recently it has been visible in the public squabble over moving Jay Leno’s talk show out of the 10 p.m. weeknight slot, where he has foundered in the ratings, and back to 11:35 p.m. The move will effectively end Conan O’Brien’s seven-month stint as host of “The Tonight Show,” as he is refusing to go along with a move to 12:05 a.m.

The controversy kicked off days of public recriminations, with just about every comic with a talk show taking swipes at NBC, Mr. Leno, Mr. Zucker and everything else on the menu.

“Now they have a situation that — I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Fred Silverman, the only person who has overseen programming at three networks — NBC, CBS and ABC. “The hosts are sniping at NBC, and at Zucker, and they both are mad at each other. It’s a corporate embarrassment.” He called the idea of moving Mr. Leno back to 11:35 p.m. a “Mickey Mouse scheme.” (Mr. Silverman agreed with the original idea of moving Mr. Leno to 10 p.m.)

A Bet Backfires

At NBC, it has been an unseemly spectacle for a company that prides itself on a smooth corporate culture, and the disastrous culmination of a high-stakes gamble last year by Mr. Zucker to move Mr. Leno to the 10 p.m. slot, passing “The Tonight Show” to the younger Mr. O’Brien and saving money that the network would have spent on scripted dramas at 10 p.m.

But the ratings sank, and affiliates that relied on 10 p.m. to lead in to the late local news rebelled. And Mr. O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” did poorly in his time slot, losing resoundingly to “Late Show With David Letterman” on CBS for the first time in 15 years.

“At the end of the day Jay at 10 o’clock didn’t work,” Mr. Zucker said, “and I take responsibility for that.”

Mr. Zucker said that it was during a phone call in the first week of January from Jeff Gaspin, NBC Universal’s head of entertainment, that he learned that the network’s affiliates were threatening to pre-empt the Leno show. “It was becoming tough to deal with,” Mr. Zucker said. “The pressure from the affiliate body was strong.”

Mr. Gaspin’s idea was to move Mr. O’Brien’s show to 12:05 a.m., and give Mr. Leno a half-hour show at 11:35 p.m. “That’s what he wanted to do, and I said, O.K., give it a shot,” Mr. Zucker said. The shot exploded in their faces.

Welcome to my blog

This blog has been set up for Research Methodologies 2 course, 3rd year, at OCADU.