Crunch Time

Here are some photos from recent trips into the city. The first two are from the inside of the elevator at the NYC Apple Store—such a cool place! There’s also a colorful shot of the inside of the Nokia Store (the walls are illuminated by lights that are programmed to change colors every few minutes). Both of those stores were visited as part of research with Sunmee. There is also a shot of the inside of Grand Central Station, taken on the same research outing. It is so cool to see the constellations painted on the ceiling (I tried to take some photos, but they didn’t turn out well at all). My restaurant project is going well so far. Zac, Jansen, and I also took some pictures in the Museum of Modern Art while they were here on the 4^th. In the gift shop, as a designer, I felt obligated to photograph some of the more famous (and unbelievably unaffordable) chairs—even though I was scolded by staff members for doing so. The first is a chair designed in the 60’s by Verner Panton, made out of one continuous piece of polypropylene—although it was originally fiberglass. An original fiberglass model goes for around $1250, but the polyprop versions are only a measly $245. Next we have a coffee table inspired by a design originally done by Isamu Noguchi in 1944. To finish out the ‘Designer Furniture Which I Can’t Afford’ category is the Eames lounge chair and ottoman designed by none other than, Charles and Ray Eames. This piece was released in 1956 by the Herman Miller furniture company and, to this day, remains in production. It is not only notable for it’s unique use of materials, but also for it’s remarkable comfort (something that is sometimes secondary in high-design furniture)—although I was not bold enough to actually test this for myself. Shortly after watching the city fireworks from Battery Park, we noticed a smaller version of Lady Liberty. All day throughout the city, we had seen the same statues painted vibrantly with the colors and logos of various professional sports teams, but this one was different—it bore the Atlanta Braves logo. We had to stop and take a photo, so Zac “stepped up”, and what you see is the result. Everything at work is still going well. I am starting to get to crunch-time, as I only have about three weeks left on the restaurant project. My concept sketches went over well (as far as I can tell) at my scheduled design review this week. Now I have moved into 3D CAD modeling, and will be able to explore more form there. Hopefully, I will be able to print out some test wax models this week! All is well at “home”, and I will keep the rest updated.

Office Par-tay

So it’s now been almost a month since my last entry—oops. I’ve been working for 5 weeks and one day. Everything is going great, and I am enjoying myself. A few Fridays ago there was the big office party for the Innovation & Design department, which turned out to be a lot of fun. One of the directors of design research owns a house on the north shore (actually, pretty close to my place here in Port Jeff). All the locals leave off the "erson" on the end, so I am busy trying to fit in. Someone from work sent us a lot of photos from the event, so I have posted a few here. To make it a little bit easier, I tried to label some of the people that I interact with on a regular basis. Anyone not labeled in a photo is just a significant other or some other type of guest. Here I go through a brief explanation of each person:

Curt – head honcho, Director of Industrial Design

Shane – my boss, and recently promoted senior design manager

Donna – department secretary/office mother

Mike – junior designer, VT grad, and the main reason I got this job

Sean – junior designer, most recent hire (before the interns)

Sunmee – design researcher

Lexie – senior designer, has unofficially claimed the “intern project mentor” role

Ally – the other “kid” as we’re referred to (mostly by Lexie)

Eric – senior designer, really funny guy, knows a lot about a lot

Chad – senior designer, fellow resident of PJ

Mark – junior designer, another Port Jeff-er

Ian – senior design manager

Rich – design researcher

Chandra – design research manager (and the person that Ally reports to)

Last week, Sunmee took Ally and I into the city for a research field trip, mostly to observe corporations that currently use mobile point of sale. This research was mainly for Ally’s project (which focuses on MPOS in retail environments), but we met Lexie for lunch at a Thai restaurant which uses a digital device to take orders. All in all, it was a very long but fun day (it always is when I visit the city). This weekend Zac and Jansen came up to visit to celebrate the fourth (it’s always good to see familiar faces from home). We went into the city and toured the Museum of Modern Art and watched the fireworks near the Statue of Liberty. We also hit some golf balls and grilled out Saturday. The housing situation has become very interesting lately. The day before Jaime and Paula left for Ecuador, a friend of theirs from school was in dire need of a place to stay. Apparently a roommate left a stove on, a house was burned down, and Glenn and I are now joined by Jordi Casanova. He comes to America from Barcelona, Spain. This is his first visit to the country, and he had only been here for about a week when his house was destroyed. I feel bad for him, but he is very nice, and is making the best of his situation. I am told that when Jaime returns from Ecuador, he and Jordi will both continue to live in the room downstairs. I’m sure that I am leaving some things out, but if I think of anything else, I will update in the next blog!

Heat Wave!

Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve updated, but I hadn’t had a chance to take any photos, so I was waiting until I could snap a few more. Today I got a couple of shots of the outside of the Motorola building, which is as far as a camera can go without special permission. I’ve included a shot of the front (yes, the building is so large that I had to stitch two photos together), and a shot of the back of the building. The back is where my entrance is, and you can barely see through the trees a large band of window across the back of the building, which is where the Innovation & Design department looks out. Last Thursday I was finally given my summer project. They have an idea for an area of the market that hasn’t been thoroughly pursued by many companies, and they want me to do some research and develop a design. They want to look into improving the restaurant business by incorporating some kind of digital device, potentially utilizing Mobile Point of Sale. MPOS is basically centered on the idea of a mobile device that can read credit or debit card data and do transactions, eliminating the need for a cash register—except that for most retail environments, a receipt printer and bagging station would still be necessary. The beauty of MPOS for a restaurant is that there is no bagging of purchased items (except for the leftover “to-go” box, which wouldn’t change). So I will be doing research in middle-tier restaurants to identify what the problems of the industry are, what the needs of employees or consumers are, and how they can be solved. Monday, a few people from the Innovation & Design department came along with me to Chili’s, where we had a delicious lunch (courtesy of Motorola), and I was able to begin some observation and interviewing. I have spent most of this week compiling data and working out a Summer-long schedule for each part of the design process. Most of this month is dedicated to the research (and more free food, yay!), July will consist of design conceptualization and modeling, and August is designated for final computer modeling and summarizing the final design. Tomorrow, I have a meeting to present my schedule as well as my research protocols that I will be taking to each restaurant that I visit. From there, I will be able to fine-tune my research method and finalize more dates for specific eatings-out. The final intern, Jason, started this week. He seems nice, but we don’t see much of him because he has only had one year of school at this point, and is mostly stuck doing design busywork. I was trying to figure out how a rising Sophomore was able to land an internship like this, but today I noticed a man with a nametag that had the same last name as Jason (and unless LeGoff is just some common northern last name, I would say the puzzle is solved). Nevertheless, most of the “real” design work (at least as far as interns are concerned) is being left to me and Ally. It has been drastically hot here, and I have not enjoyed our lack of air conditioning in the house (multiple fans have now been purchased). Even at work yesterday the A/C was broken, leaving me no escape from the heat. For the past three nights, I have gone to bed with my room thermometer reading above 90 degrees—the record peaking at 93.7ºF (INTERIOR temperature! agh!). Today was much cooler (relatively speaking), and I am now feeling very comfortable at a chilling 86.2. Hopefully things will continue to cool down, and work will continue to go well. More to come!

Work Begins

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Yesterday was my first day at work. Everything went well—the building is huge. Even some of the people that work there weren’t 100% sure of how to get to certain conference rooms! Most of my day was spent being introduced to people, filling out paperwork, and attending meetings. I received a photo ID badge, a laptop, and my very own cubicle (name plate on order—jackpot!). Mike also informed me that I will be receiving my own Wacom Cintiq© tablet for the summer—for the non industrial designers, this is an awesome piece of technology that consists of a 20-something-inch screen which can be drawn on with a digital stylus. Today basically entailed two of my superiors giving me mixed signals when each had respectively left the room. I was told by one to rearrange some furniture and re-organize some display models for potential customer tours. When I was in the middle of it, the other came and told me to stop what I was doing and put everything back (apparently Guy in Charge #1 didn’t inform Guy in Charge #2 of his intentions. After they had their own mini-discussion, I was put to work with a digital floorplan under the instructions to fit a certain number of cubicles in a certain amount of space. Of course, neither #1 nor #2 were available for most of the day, so most my inquiries fell on my co-workers (all of whom are in the same boat as I am in regards to this project, which has supposedly been in the works for months with no progress). Finally, at the end of the day, #1 (Shane MacGregor, by the way—my manager) and #2 (Curt Croley, Senior Director) got together with me and discussed my proposed plans (and of course, what I need to change tomorrow). Although this sounds somewhat tedious and that this entry is taking a turn towards “whiny”, I am hopeful for the rest of the week—although I expect tomorrow to be similar to today. Shane insists that on Thursday he will brief me on what my main project will be for the summer so that I can get started on ‘real’ ID work. Overall, I enjoy the atmosphere so far, and all (not most) of the people are really nice and seem very interested in my development as a designer. I was starting to wrap this up, but now that we’re on the subject of people, I will note that although the design team is very diverse in age, it is also comprised of a decent number of younger, fresh-out-of-school folks. I would say that there are about 20 people on the design team, which is comprised of Marketing Strategists, User Interface Experts, Human Factors Experts, Liaisons to other countries (Japan and Korea mainly), and (duh) designers. There are also probably numerous other disciplines as well, but I am not exactly sure what everyone does yet. There is also another intern named Ally (a Human Factors major from Cornell) and Jason (who will, along with myself, be an Industrial Design intern, but has not yet started yet). Ally is very nice, and (depending on how Jason is) I think we will have a fun “class” of interns this summer. Everything at “home” is going pretty well, I have added a few more photos of the house, one of which was taken because I was finally fortunate enough to park my car under the covered “car port” outside (which is surprising because it is attached to our house, and none of my roommates own cars…). Anyway, I apologize for the “stream of consciousness” style I have adopted here, but you probably know that I’m not a big fan of editing and doing extra work of any kind (kidding). I will keep updated on the latest developments!

Move In...

Saturday, May 31, 2008

630B Main Street

Port Jefferson, NY 11777

I am fully moved in, and mostly settled. My roommates are very nice, although I see little of them because the downstairs common area is rarely inhabited—I regret to admit that this is most likely due to the fact that there isn’t a television on the main floor. On this floor there is a small kitchen and one bedroom (shared by a married couple named James and Paola), as well as a few couches and a large tank containing a pet snake (which I’m told doesn’t escape often). My bedroom is one of two on the second floor, and the other upstairs inhabitant’s name is Glenn. The upstairs has a large hall closet and a small bathroom, which is shared between the four of us—for now. I’m told that Paola and James will leave for their home country of Ecuador on June 25th, and that 3 weeks later only James will return. I feel better knowing that only 3 people will be sharing that bathroom for most of the summer. I’m looking forward to starting work on Monday, and will keep you updated. I am also working on taking some more pictures of the house, but I am trying to do so without being seen by my roommates and therefore looking like a weird person.