nowWhichway – every day, I have to ask

The NY Times presents a view on education that talks about new vs. old, exciting compared with old and useless, rigid versus dynamic. Or not. Why does it have to be either/or? Of course there is a place for learning to write blogs, just as there is a point to learning how to create a careful constructed, well researched essay.

We’ll apply the same ideas in photography with some projects that are loose and exploratory, and some that present a coherent concept and are thoroughly crafted.

To paraphrase Ray Charles, there are only two kinds of work: good work and bad work.

Check out ‘Blogs vs. Term Papers’ at the NY Times.

Researching building energy efficiency, technology and user behaviour.

In reading “Soft Landings” (2009) by Mike Way and Bill Bordass, published by the Usable Buildings Trust in the UK.

The describe the gaps in the effectiveness of buildings in the same terms as Donald Norman described usability of everyday objects back in 1988. It is interesting that the same lessons are still to be learned:

“Surveys of recently completed buildings regularly reveal massive gaps between client and design expectations and delivered performance, especially energy performance.

There are many reasons for this, including:

-Many designers do not take sufficient account of how occupiers use and manage buildings and the equipment they introduce.
-Achieved performance is becoming increasingly dependent on technology, which often needs careful attention if it is to work as intended. Pre-handover commissioning is seldom enough.
-Solutions that look good in design calculations can often prove to be too complicated to be manageable, both through the design and delivery process and particularly in use. Designers can easily forget that management is a scarce resource, as can those procuring clients who do not have a direct involvement in building operation.”

The Green Party in Ireland has just suffered a difficult backlash in the general election. While I am not a member of the party, I have been impressed by the their work and so I wrote them a brief thank you note. Here it is…

Greetings-

I am not a member of the Green Party, but I have been pleased by the courage and tenacity with which the party performed while in the coalition with Fianna Fail. Some of my friends thought you were doing the wrong thing by ‘propping up that shower of wasters,’ but I think it showed intelligence and maturity to be in government at such a difficult time. I would be vehemently against Fianna Fail administrations, but I still saw value in the Greens engaging with the difficulty of running the country. We all knew there would be an electoral backlash but it must still be difficult to motivate the party after this difficult week.

As a small party with a very specific core agenda, it would have been the easy route to sit on the sidelines and make a career out of complaining about the mistakes of the establishment. I have heard there were serious divisions within the party about the coalition arrangement, and some of those people will certainly now be saying ‘see, I told you so’. However, there is a big difference between being an activist for a cause and being a political party. Politics is a much messier affair, and I am one of the outsiders who would say that the Green Party has had a tremendous impact on the activities of Irish politics. You have pushed onto the main stage many of the issues which I feel are important. The other main parties will have to address those issues in a manner they might have avoided otherwise.

Mine is only one comment, but in this difficult week I thought it important to state that I admire what the Green Party has done, and wish you all the best in the future.

Tim Kovar
(North Kildare constituent)

Time to start a module on career development for fourth year photography students.

There are some great resources available but the trouble is finding the ones that are really appropriate.
Photo District News in the US has huge range of material. Here are two that I thought were especially useful:

Promo Mojo for Artists
–how creatives can apply some of that drive to promoting their work.

Revamping a Portfolio and Marketing for a commercial photographer

“Emerging Photographers” from PDN Online

As an immigrant, I have had many complaints about the stagnation in Irish secondary school education. The Irish Times notes that the establishment may finally be listening to some of my rants with an article published Dec. 14 called ’2010:The year that Irish education fell to earth.’
The warning flare is a report by the OECD showing that Ireland’s educational ranking has fallen sharply among the 39 countries surveyed. Ireland fell from 5th to 17th in reading, and
“In maths, Ireland has fallen from 16th to 26th place, the second steepest decline among participating countries. Ireland is now ranked as below average in maths.

In science, we rank 18th – despite all the hype about the knowledge economy.

Cumulatively, the results represent a body blow to a system which has long traded on its “world class” reputation.”

The quotations around ‘world class’ are a pointed comment on the frequently self-congratulatory attitude adopted by institutions in many areas of Irish society. I’m not qualified to moan about other areas, but as a part-time college lecturer for 18 years, with two children in primary and secondary school, I know a bit about education.

As a self-taught educator, I have worked hard to deliver my material in an effective and engaging way, with my primary focus on relating the information to how my students will use it in their future endeavors. No one is more critical of my work than I am when I make mistakes. Or I should say, no one else is ever critical of my work, certainly not my managers. In eighteen years I have only twice been spoken to by management about my class performance: once when I was sick and out for three classes, and once when a student objected because I used a swear word in class. And then there were the two or three students last year who were upset when I asked them to assess and evaluate information, rather than telling them what answer I thought was ‘right.’

My biggest complaint is with the secondary school process. The Leaving Certificate system is ludicrous and Victorian–rote learning assessed almost entirely via a three week exam period after 5 or 6 years of secondary school. My personal knowledge comes from seeing first year college students who don’t think about what they read and struggle to evaluate the relative importance of information. That is what I thought school was about.

So I ask the Irish education system: How about some self-assessment and evaluation of teaching practices? Some of the process is great, but a lot is weak, ineffective, and inappropriate. All of us in education should stop saying how important we are and how hard we work.

It may sound trite and there are some like to rail against the marketization of learning, but innovation is appropriate in capitalism and in education. I think the theme should always be, How can we do better?

Among my recent reading, I found a short column by Mario Polese about the reasons for the continuing growth of urban areas around the world. While he has written a book on the subject, here he presents his ’7 pillars of Agglomeration,’ in a concise, very readable article for City Journal.org

Last topic for this year: Donald Norman’s book Emotional Design.

He discusses the non-practical, non-rational implications of design. What makes people love or hate a particular design. After the rational, usability centered investigations of D.O.E.T, he realized that much of our lives are governed by not by the choices about what works best, but how something affects our emotions.

He breaks this down into three levels of design:

Visceral-’what nature does’; how something affects our senses. Taste, smell, visual appeal, texture. My question for you is: What is a website with Visceral appeal?

Behavioural-’all about use’; how well does something suit its purpose. What we call usability, functionality.

Reflective-’…message…meaning…culture’; what cognitive associations accompany a design. Are you drinking Starbuck’s or ‘Joe’s Fairtrade Local Jobs Supporting Environmentally sensitive Java’? Nobody gets a tattoo for the functionality; it’s all about meaning, expression.

Notice your responses to your everyday tasks, and how these terms relate to your choices. When are your activities governed by these different levels of response, and when are you surprised that what you thought was a purely rational decision is in fact based more on how you think other people will respond to your choice?

Marketing people are all over these concepts, trying to convince you to buy something for some spurious reason. But it isn’t just useless marketing speak. How can the designs you create take into account these different levels of response by your target audience? Can you make your design more successful by looking beyond usability and incorporating your audience’s non-rational responses?