Design Morality

Just yesterday, Google released an announcement that it may consider withdrawing itself from China in light of the Chinese government's censorship policies. Google had suffered backlash in 2006 when it agreed to censor its results in China, so many praised Google for finally standing up to the Chinese government. Others see it as a last-ditch attempt to salvage some good press out of a poor branch (Google has struggled to increase market share past 25-30% in China, and Google could rebuild what reputation it lost in 2006).

Whatever Google's motives, it brings up the interesting point of morality in business, and in design. Matt Parkinson spoke last quarter about designing for human variability, and how design may result in disproportionate exclusion of certain demographics. As designers, we need to ask ourselves the question: is the greater evil for a designer to do work he opposes, or to deprive end users of the value the designer could have added?

One of Google's 10 "commandments" is to "Do no evil". Is censorship evil, though? Regulation of information occurs in parental control, and website age restrictions, and fewer people argue against it. It might be argued that censorship is a sub-optimal solution due to the net reduction in available information--sub-optimal, however, is not evil. I personally contend that Google censored in China is better than no Google in China.

Let's hear from you: when faced with a situation where there may be no perfect solutions, what and how do we prioritize?

Blog Revival, Round 2

So much for more updates. Now, though, with a forced revival of this blog for class purposes, I guess there will be more content to look forward to... eventually.

Blog Revival

New posts coming soon, I promise! Here's some random tidbits:

-Taiwan was lots of fun, pictures and such to follow shortly
-After getting back home yesterday afternoon and packing all my stuff, my beloved CR-V wouldn't start last night, ended up taking Jeff's Civic to NU
-My first day of class as a grad student -- I feel old!

Curve

What professor makes a 96.75% in class a A-?

Looks like I'm going to need to do some haggling with the admins to let me do an honors thesis. "The required GPA is 3.50, which I have if you use three significant digits!" Heh.

Things to do with what little time I have left:
-contact professors for recommendations/honors thesis
-research companies I would like to work for
-research grad schools --- done
-practice piano
-study for GMAT/GRE
-finish website
-finish mastering those recitals I recorded (!!!)

Ahhh where has my summer gone?

Trying to Move On

I miss you so much...

Short break

Time passes by so quickly during the summer... it's hard to keep track of the days.

I've been told that long posts are okay if there's pictures. I've been looking at getting a camera for the past month or so anyway, so that's fine with me. I just ordered a Canon Powershot G9, so once it arrives there will be pretty pictures to go along with my verbose posts.

Random note: This looks kind of fun...

Catching Up

I'm terrible about keeping up with my own blog, even though I religiously view others. One drawback of posting less often is that I often feel compelled to write a huge uber-post that covers what several smaller posts would have done better. I'm going to try and avoid that in hopes that I will start writing here more often, so let's just talk about my summer plans for now.

This summer I'm working for the Segal Design Institute, which is really just a fancy name for Northwestern's design engineering department, which received a significant amount from money by Gordon Segal, founder of Crate and Barrel, in exchange for his name. Basically, I work to redesign, test, and manufacture various EDC projects that the RIC felt sufficiently lacking in fail to pursue further. So far, I've worked on a jar opening device for people with only one functional arm, and a feeding system for a girl with very little manual dexterity/strength. The next project involves a bit more engineering design, and is a pair of swimming goggles for people with limited upper-body dexterity. None of the projects particularly appeal to me, perhaps because I lack the disabilities to make any of these products necessary, but it certainly has been familiarizing me with the shop tools. Perhaps I'll even make something I'd be willing to put in my portfolio! Having flexible hours is also a perk that I've been taking advantage of a little too much :-P

I'm also taking GEN CMN 102 (Public Speaking) and ECON 311 (Intermediate Macroeconomics) this summer. The main reason I'm taking these classes is because I really want to do a senior thesis (for whatever bizarre reason I cannot say), but can't unless I raise my GPA to a 3.5 by the end of the summer. Having taken a few too many unnecessary classes that destroyed my GPA (*cough cough orgo*), this is my last chance.

In many ways, this summer is my last chance to really shape up in preparation for next year. I had been putting off preparing for the future, thinking "Oh I have time, I'm taking 5 years with the BS/BMus program", but signs now point to me graduating in 4 years with a BS in Mechanical Engineering (hopefully with honors thesis) and Certificate in Engineering Design, so I need to start thinking about finding a job or getting into grad school. This is the summer to beef up my GPA, refine my portfolio, ace my standardized tests (GRE and GMAT in September), and do the relevant things that will land me a nice job/grad school. Oh, and I should keep practicing piano so I can give my senior recital this fall. And learn Chinese better. And get in shape. And maintain some semblance of a social/romantic life. Time really does pass by faster as you age... and yet there are still people that complain of boredom.