LETTER no. 55Week no.8: Zoom Out. FridayDesign 101 MOOC, Abadir for iversity

Greetings from he a think-tank of the contemporary world,Were at Googles headquarters in Mountain View, California!

Google, is set forth to understand us, humans. Our way to put together words to form meaning.

It constantly analyses and shapes our language. For better or worse.

We just came back from an exhibition on the history of computer chess at the Computer History Museum and learned that the first chess-playing automaton was created in 1770. Impressive isnt it?

The principle was very simple. A human chess player was hidden inside the machine.

By the way, this museum has an impressive concentration of nice content, Just check for instance this virtual exhibition on Visible Storage.

Seymour Crays supercomputers were truly something. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, he designed the worlds fastest computers.

This one we see is called self-portrait.

Question of the day: What are you searching for?At Google, the main mission is to organize the worlds information to make it accessible and useful to all (this is what they say).

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They do this by providing tools. Easy-to-use, intuitive, self-explanatory tools that make navigating the internet and, for that matter, life simply better.

Apart from the search engine, Google has introduced Sketchup, a free 3D modelling program that can be used by everyone.

Google says about Sketchup :

Great tools are ones you look forward to using. They do one thing (or maybe two) really, really well. They let you do what you want without having to figure out how. They help with hard or boring tasks so that you can focus on being creative, or productive, or both. And they are, in their own way, beautiful.

In this course, our main mission is to understand the basics of what it means to design. Something we mainly try doing by making things and by organizing our time and lives.

But then, each one of us should shape his personal set of missions and goals.

The important thing is not about having extremely high goals.It is about setting up clear ones.

We want Google to be the third half of your brain. (Sergey Brin)

And what about you? What would you want?

Homework no. 55Today, there is no specific homework.

You will rest and relax, catch up on the week if you have not completed your homework, or simply think about your own personal plans or missions.

What will I learn today? Nothing specific. Just take a look at this Sketchup thing.Nowadays there are a lot of powerful (and free) tool around.Tools to draw, to write, to plan, to do all kind of different things. Do you use them?

Here some we like:

> https://mural.ly/> http://paper.li/> https://storify.com/> https://medium.com/> http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/project/art-project> http://ldd.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx?icmp=COUSCreateShareSL100LDD

Why do we do this? In the previous world, the tools to design were pretty much given. Nowadays, every day we have new tools.

How to understand if they are good / useful or not?Where to find them? How to keep ourselves updated without drowning under the informations waterfall?

Also, we want to have you take one stepat a time.

As supercomputer designer Seymour Cray would said, as long as we can make them smaller, we can make them faster.

Something to remember: Design. Brick by brick.Remember Confucius? The one who said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step?

Further inspirations...From the workshop of carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen to todays worldwide sensation including six themed amusement parks, Lego is a game that everyone can enjoy.

Its name comes from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means play well.

Indeed, with its unmistakable and colourful plastic building blocks, the game has a simple set of interlocking parts. Building blocks to build whatever you can dream up.

Another open-ended game that we love is SimCity. Its about city-building: developing a city and seeing that its citizens are happy and have all the makings of a nice, comfortable life.

And all this on a budget!

The most interesting thing about SimCity is its generative aspect. There are different zones for different types of activity: residential, commercial and industrial. The zones are developed when the player provides adequate factors and conditions like sufficient power, transportation infrastructure and good tax levels.

The great popularity of Simcity has seen many spin-offs and more recently The Sims.

Here is another cool game Railroad Tycoon: empire building in the Golden Age of railroads.

It was our inspiration for todays postcard.

:-)

Design 101. A How-To.We know we have some late-comers, here are a few instructions on how the whole thing functions...

A typical Design 101 day:

We send you an email around 9 in the morning (Berlin time) with the link to our daily unit + some news, updates, cool Design 101 things we found etc.etc.

Note: you can find all of our previous emails in the Announcements section of Design 101 on iversity.

Once you land on the units page, you find our shipment (which consists of a video-postcard + a letter). You watch the video, read our letter, get to work and complete the assignment (or relax if its a weekend day). For even more fun, you can always refer to the Design 101 encyclopedia, which is updated every week.

Dont forget to take part in the conversations of the Discussions forum!

Now, going beyond the iversity platform, we have setup other places for us to meet and spread things we do.

On Facebook:the Design 101 page: to follow whats going on (in general terms)the Design 101 Exercises page: to check out picks (things that fascinate us the most)the Design 101 Arena group: to post your pictures, share your thoughts, emotions, references, lalala (as a complement to the discussions happening on the platform).

On Twitter,@design1o1: to follow whats going on + discuss with each other.#design1o1: to connect us all under a same hashtag.

On YouTube:the Design 101 channel: to view + share our video postcards (which is not possible to do from the iversity platform)

On Instagram:#design1o1: to connect us all under a same hashtag.

Regarding the hashtag, make sure to use #design1o1 with an o and not a 0...

:-)

PS Uploading your homework to the iversity platform is very important in terms of archiving. It is the only way we can collect all the things we do in one same place. Once the course ends, it might turn out to be reorganized into a wonderful book and/or exhibition

Lego man

Lego bricks

Todays postcard

Our little sketched-up city