Hello good people of the Internet, sorry that Friday Stories is running a little late this week due to a birthday. Mine! So, to commemorate the once-a-year event, this week we ask what triggers your sense of your age. Does the smell of rain bring back memories of playing in the afternoon rain as a child? Or when the feeling that you could go on forever mid-marathon inject you with a sense of youthfulness? Or that the weight of familial responsibilities reminds you of your station in the life cycle? …

High school graduation. Entering the final year at college. Getting your first paycheck. Breaking up with your fifth girlfriend. For some events in life, we can anticipate that our lives are never going to be the same again. Some are social milestones; goal posts painted for us when we were mere children.
What about the other stuff that don’t follow a timeline? Perhaps a realization that a close friend wasn’t who you thought she was, or an epiphany about your own life.
How did you know that things were never going to …

The Stories

that the chinese are making a hell lot more money then i will ever get. But at least i shave my armpits.

Thank God I’m alive, with a healthy, happy family and friends I can count on.

I ask myself the same question everyday at the start of the day.
“What do i have to clear today?”

That I am so happy to be studying what I am studying.

Since I alternate between feeling highly suspicious of mantras and periods of excessive preoccupation with self-help books, I rarely have a mantra that I repeat …

The stories

I put personalities in my toys, complete with voiceovers.
All my stuffed toys are somebody, I have my own “Sesame Street” in my bedroom!
I’m a bedroom animator.

It will have to be fitness coaching which has absoutely no relevance to my current professional career. During National Service some 10 years ago, I went for a couple of coaching certification. At that point, it was a natural progression from the instructor course I took when in Army. I must say, it has changed me to become more open to different people.
What struck …

How do we know the (designerly) things we know?
Design Research has been called many names and projected onto many different platforms. From observing like a fly on the wall to role-playing as a participant; from collecting personal stories through an eclectic collage of images to utilizing focus groups as dipsticks to approximate product success rates; these methods have been useful in gathering (social and cultural) knowledge that design needs to know in order to do designerly things.
But questions of utility lead us to designing for task accomplishments; are there human …