My presentation on user testing for Monday's class

Leigh Ann: Prototyping and Research

Leigh Ann: the dream team

This is a list of my "dream team" partners for my thesis

My updated thesis goal: 

We learn about our world through experience, but in modern America we don’t always grow up seeing how food is brought to the table.  Without a full understanding of where food comes from, our culture has lost the ability to connect our food choices to effects in the environment.  I will address this issue by designing a tool that will help children in suburban families make the connection between the food they eat and it’s origin at an early age. 

1. a teacher (children ages 3- 6)

2. head of a school farming program (hopefully in NYC)

3. parents of children age 3-6

4. parents with children who have once been 3-6

5. any parents at all!

6. toy designer

7. president, owner, or other head person at a toy design company

8. owner or manager of a toy store

9. expert in early childhood development

10. wendell berry (farmer, food writer, and a leader of the local food movement)

11. other authors or leaders who are like-minded to wendell berry

12. someone who has proven an actual human need to know the process behind the food we eat (or other objects we use)...i don't know who this person is, but i think they are out there.  maybe a philosopher or theorist who focused on effects of industrialization (even if not specifically about food)? anyone remember anything from global issues about this?

13. kids cooking instructor

14. a farmer, or someone who can tell me more about growing food*

15. someone who knows about how to put a screen on a refrigerator (DT student?)

16. stone barns instructor*

17. KidFresh - natural pre-prepared kids food (store on Upper West Side)

18. Anna Lappe - writer on food issues

19. exibit designer at children's museum (or other director)

20. Alice Waters (or anyone at edible school yard*....thanks rob!)

* i have established these contacts ... but more are welcome!

Important editorial about the need for innovators and entrepreneurs to help US economy

Please read this! It is very important and relevant to product designers like us!!

OP-ED COLUMNIST

More (Steve) Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

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By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: January 23, 2010

The most striking feature of Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency was the amazing, young, Internet-enabled, grass-roots movement he mobilized to get elected. The most striking feature of Obama’s presidency a year later is how thoroughly that movement has disappeared.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman

Go to Columnist Page »

Related

Times Topics: Science and Technology

In part, it disappeared because the Obama team let it disappear, as Obama moved to pass what was necessary — the economic stimulus — and what he aspired to — health care — by exclusively playing inside baseball with Congress. The president seems to have thought that his majorities in the Senate and the House were so big that he never really had to mobilize “the people” to drive his agenda. Obama turned all his supporters into spectators of The Harry and Nancy Show. And, at the same time, that grass-roots movement went dormant on its own, apparently thinking that just getting the first African-American elected as president was the moon shot of this generation, and nothing more was necessary.
Well, here’s my free advice to Obama, post-Massachusetts. If you think that the right response is to unleash a populist backlash against bankers, you’re wrong. Please, please re-regulate the banks in a smart way. But remember: in the long run, Americans don’t rally to angry politicians. They do not bring out the best in us. We rally to inspirational, hopeful ones. They bring out the best in us. And right now we need to be at our best.
Obama should launch his own moon shot. What the country needs most now is not more government stimulus, but more stimulation. We need to get millions of American kids, not just the geniuses, excited about innovation and entrepreneurship again. We need to make 2010 what Obama should have made 2009: the year of innovation, the year of making our pie bigger, the year of “Start-Up America.”
Obama should make the centerpiece of his presidency mobilizing a million new start-up companies that won’t just give us temporary highway jobs, but lasting good jobs that keep America on the cutting edge. The best way to counter the Tea Party movement, which is all about stopping things, is with an Innovation Movement, which is all about starting things. Without inventing more new products and services that make people more productive, healthier or entertained — that we can sell around the world — we’ll never be able to afford the health care our people need, let alone pay off our debts.
Obama should bring together the country’s leading innovators and ask them: “What legislation, what tax incentives, do we need right now to replicate you all a million times over” — and make that his No. 1 priority. Inspiring, reviving and empowering Start-up America is his moon shot.
And to reignite his youth movement, he should make sure every American kid knows about two programs that he has already endorsed: The first is National Lab Day. Introduced last November by a coalition of educators and science and engineering associations, Lab Day aims to inspire a wave of future innovators, by pairing veteran scientists and engineers with students in grades K-12 to inspire thousands of hands-on science projects around the country.
Any teacher in America, explains the entrepreneur Jack Hidary, the chairman of N.L.D., can go to the Web site NationalLabDay.org and enter the science project he or she is interested in teaching, or get an idea for one. N.L.D. will match teachers with volunteer scientists and engineers in their areas for mentoring.
“As soon as you have a match, the scientists and the students communicate directly or via Skype and collaborate on a project,” said Hidary. “We have a class in Chicago asking for civil engineers to teach them how to build a bridge. In Idaho, a class is asking for a scientist to help them build a working river delta inside their classroom.”
The president should also vow to bring the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, or NFTE, to every low-income neighborhood in America. NFTE works with middle- and high-school teachers to help them teach entrepreneurship. The centerpiece of its program is a national contest for start-ups with 24,000 kids participating. Each student has to invent a product or service, write up a business plan and then do it. NFTE (www.NFTE.com) works only in low-income areas, so many of these new entrepreneurs are minority kids.
In November, a documentary movie — “Ten9Eight” — was released that tracked a dozen students all the way through to the finals of the NFTE competition. Obama should arrange for this movie to be shown in every classroom in America. It is the most inspirational, heartwarming film you will ever see. You can obtain details about it atwww.ten9eight.com.
This year’s three finalists, said Amy Rosen, the chief executive of NFTE, “were an immigrant’s son who took a class from H&R Block and invented a company to do tax returns for high school students, a young woman who taught herself how to sew and designed custom-made dresses, and the winner was an African-American boy who manufactured socially meaningful T-shirts.”
You want more good jobs, spawn more Steve Jobs. Obama should have focused on that from Day 1. He must focus on that for Year 2.

Felt Workshop:

Art & Copy

Happy new, successful and healthy year 2010 everyone!

I just wanted to share some info on the movie Art & Copy,

a film about ads and inspiration with you.

I just found out about it and am happy I did.

Personally I found it very entertaining

with a lot of good stuff in it.

At the end we are all storyteller.

It should be out in DVD and you can find it online

at the usual suspects.

If you can't find it, contact me,

I might be able to help.

Link to the films website.

best,

Ben