I love making things by hand and Christmas provided a chance to make some unique presents. While on break from school, I made two hats, a cowl, and a bulky scarf for various (now warmly dressed) friends.

I also soldered for the first time ever, assembling AdaFruit’s Minty Boost. It was a process, but their assembly steps made it easy enough. I borrowed my boss’s soldering iron, though I may buy one in the future because it was pretty exciting, and they have some other cool projects on their site.

Naturally, Zissou kept close but pretended to not have any interest whatsoever in the tantalizing yarn.

When I worked as a front-end developer, I still put together graphics and designed pages here and there, but it felt like I was pushing code more often than pixels. Sometimes I felt a little design deprived and as a result would stop by the graphic designer’s office to ooh and ah over the samples she had been sent. One was House Industries’ booklet that promoted their latest work. It was beautifully designed, making fonts come alive with visual movement and excitement.

Here’s a video that I recently came across. I like how it alludes to apprenticeship- something I think is still very much a part of the design world, but maybe something they neglect to mention in school.

House Industries: Interview with Ken Barber from Gestalten on Vimeo.

Yes, that ever elusive happiness that you’ve heard so much about. It’s a fluctuating beast that seems to leave as soon as it went.

Allen Parducci proposed a theory that may be of some interest in your pursuit. Let me give a disclaimer that (obviously) I’m not a psychologist and this is all my interpretation.

The Game

Parducci conducted a study in which two groups were each given a deck of cards. The players would be rewarded with the value that was on the card they drew. The cards varied in value, with one group getting lower returns more frequently and the other high returns less frequently. However, both groups ended up getting the same amount of money in the end.

The players were told the probabilities of their deck, and each player selected a card, received the amount of money specified on the card and asked what his degree of satisfaction was with the reward.

Satisfaction ratings for the group that were given lower amounts yet won more frequently had higher satisfaction than the group that won higher amounts less frequently.

Adapation is the enemy of happiness

Parducci inferred that people are happier when satisfactory events occur more frequently. That seems like common sense, right? But what you might not be taking into account is that our level of satisfaction is lowered if we stretch the range of our expectations to include amazing, yet rare, events.

This can explain why when things are really good, we get used to it. The rich don’t constantly walk around in a state of ecstasy. And when things are really bad, we get used to it. We need a fluctuation in our range of happiness, or it simply becomes the norm. We need both good and bad.

The Key to Happiness (according to Parducci)

What Parducci is getting at is that we need frequently occurring, enjoyable experiences in order to maintain happiness. We should seek out frequent, “good-enough” experiences rather than “wow” experiences.

That means more pleasant walks around the neighborhood with a loved one, rather than skydiving. Or frequent restaurant trips to an average place, rather than a ritzy night out.

In essence- don’t treat yourself to “wow” experiences. They’ll make your typical day to day seem more drab in comparison.

There are some qualifications to think about- such as some experiences bring you many happy memories, or even anticipation (such as a trip to Hawaii). There is some gray area in Parducci’s theory.

On the Hedonistic Treadmill

I find this assessment gloomy, to be honest. Sure, I’ll be happy. But at what cost? Not having “wow” experiences and never seeing all the things the world has to offer?

There’s something beyond range-frequency theory to consider: the Hedonistic Treadmill. I think this is truly the source of our unhappiness, especially among us ambitious folk. We get one thing, and we’re on to the next. “I just got a great job, now I need a great apartment!” or “I just got published in a literary journal- now where’s my book deal?”

It’s my folk-psychology take that this is why all your accomplishments fall away and you feel unsuccessful rather than seeing what you’ve truly accomplished. Ambition can be a real bitch.

Find Meaning

How do we avoid the treadmill? According to Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind), Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman began studying happiness for himself. According to him, we can stay at the top of our happiness/well-being range by paying attention to certain things such as engaging in satisfying work, avoiding negative emotions, and having a rich social network. Easier said then done, but a first step is to practice gratitude forgiveness, and optimism.

The next step is to use your strengths to achieve gratification in the main areas of your life, such as work. Once you are engaged in meaningful work, you can deploy them in the service of something larger to complete the journey to true happiness.

Basically, find your strengths to define purpose in life and the rest will follow.

The Ferris Wheel at Prater in Vienna

I was reading this article the other day about the fear that artificial intelligence could replace white collar workers. In part, it’s true- machines are getting smarter, they are recognizing patterns, and they can certainly complete analytical tasks that used to be the responsibility of humans.

The article details the ’scary’ future, the rise of the machines, and in the end offers that the ability to imagine, feel, learn, create, and adapt are going to be the human’s advantage over artificial intelligence.

Daniel Pink takes this a step further in A Whole New MInd. Throughout the book he emphasizes six traits that should be emphasized to set people apart in the workforce: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. Symphony emphasizes the need for us human-folk to focus on developing the ability to recognize relationships in order to make calculated leaps of logic to encourage innovation.

Pink highlights drawing as a useful exercise that trains us to recognize relationships. When he originally started a drawing class, his self-portrait was something akin to a third grader’s work. His teacher chided him and told him that he was interpreting facial features in terms of symbols, or what we’ve been taught to think certain features look like. Over a week’s course, he began to notice the relationships of light, shadow, space, angles, and proportion. Thus he began to integrate those relationships into a whole to form a larger, more complete, picture.

His next portrait was more true to his actual image, and offers a lesson in retraining the mind. Rather than symbols and shorthand, recognize relationships to pull out the details that are going to form a more inclusive, holistic solution.

In How to be Creative, Jeremy Dean talks about making connections by combining concepts, or analogical thinking. He details an experiment in which the researchers showed that combining concepts to solve a problem became easier when it was described in looser terms. Think abstractly and mentally “zoom out” to see the connections.

Dean discusses another case in which a company that manufactured skis engaged in such a process to find that the vibration problem they were having was similar to a problem that had already been solved with violin bows. They adapted the solution and fixed their product.

Gestalt thinking is something that will set people apart in the future. Start looking for relationships. As Steven Johnson says, “Chance favors the connected mind.”

Photo via craftzine

I’m bad about tracking visual inspiration. I end up spamming close friends with cool things I see around the internet, gathered through sites like share some candy, ffffound, and other favorite blogs.

No more! I’m now tracking online awesomeness through Pinterest, a handy little site you might know. You can find me here, and as I add to my collection maybe you’ll find some cool stuff you like as well.

When my brother and I were younger, we’d get a science magazine for kids that had explanations of phenomena such as hiccups and sneezes. Being geeks, we were fascinated. These were the dark days when you had to procure information through your set of encyclopedias, magazines, or musty books. You may remember these trying times.

I vividly remember my brother relating a particularly awesome invention to me. “There’s this bathtub, and when you’re in it, you can say ‘more bubbles’…and it gives you more bubbles.”

I kid you not, the concept of such a wondrous thing blew our minds. Perhaps it was our love of bubble baths, or possibly not being able to fathom an inanimate object responding to your requests (both of which I think kids today take in stride).

Here we have Microsoft’s vision for the future. It doesn’t feature bubbles that appear as if from nowhere, but it’s pretty neat all the same.

Neglect, thy name is blog. Duties of school and work have pulled me away, but those aren’t good excuses as supposedly you make time in your crazy day for what you value. Making time for blogging is definitely on my mind.

I’ve been filing away ideas for posts. I’ve learned quite a few things during this quarter due to taking on a job and two classes that required extensive research in addition to pulling design implications from psychological studies. As a result, I have things to share. What kinds of things? Oh, you’ll see!

But enough of alluding to things. I will be back shortly, and in the meantime here’s a photo of myself and my editor, who’s very good about keeping me on task.

Here’s how my brain works. Avert your eyes if you never had any desire to see!

As most designers would say, nothing gets ideas flowing like the basic tools of pencil (or in this case, pen) and paper. For some reason, it helps me relax and think. I guess that it helps to unclutter my mind, focus, and visualize my thoughts which makes them easier to build upon. Funny how a piece of paper is where most brilliant ideas of any material (digital, physical, and otherwise) are born.

I was at the Lean UX event the other day talking to a guy about his start-up idea. We got on the topic of how people seek social validation in all aspects of life and how that translates to the online space (comments/reviews/ratings).

I started talking about Predictably Irrational and how our unconscious minds influence our decisions. For some reason I love that people aren’t really in control as our decision-making is heavily influenced by our unconscious mind, which we typically fail to realize. I guess I love it because it gives us a complexity- we have three brains (the old, the mid brain and the new) as discussed by Dr. Susan M. Weinschenk.

As I left the building to return home I noticed the sky. It was about 8:30, but the sky was an odd gray on one side and pitch black on the other. Consciously, I assessed it with curiosity but my lizard brain whispered of anxiety and fear. Though I was trying to convince myself that Chicago’s downtown light pollution was the cause, I’m from Texas and when the sky is an odd color and the winds are high, it makes me think a tornader’s a-brewin’.

I smelled the possibility of rain and began to walk faster towards the El.

The old brain processes things much faster than your conscious mind can keep up with. It can assess patterns, process problems, and evaluate situations and environmental factors. It’s the one that will flood your system with hormones so you can fight or flee.

I saw people standing in doorways. All the while my fretful lizard brain rattled. “Why is the sky that color? The winds get really high in Illinois. Things can hit me. Being out in the open is dangerous!” I followed the example of others (social validation!) and started jogging towards the train. Lucky too, as the moment I got to the covered awning of the stairs leading up to the El, the sky opened up and buckets of water came down.

Bits of branches flew off, golf ball sized hail fell from the sky. And I, modern lady that I am, watched it all from the train. Thanks to the old brain, my helpful pet lizard.

Oh! I didn’t see you there, sitting on the edge of your seat. What’s new you ask? Oh, I don’t think you want to hear…what? Oh, you do? Well, alright. You twisted my arm.

Summer has brought gorgeous weather, boat tours, and delicious meals to this happy gal. Its also brought quite a bit of exciting work, which I’ll have to share at a later date. But today, dear reader, you get to see the poster I made for a graphic design class.

The assignment was to convey a concept for a movie clearly through a poster. You can click for the larger size.

What do you think? Does it do the job of raising goosebumps on your arm as you remember your fateful tumble out of the arms of academia? Or maybe you were one of the lucky ones who had everything neatly lined up after your exit from college. But, based on my purely anecdotal evidence, I find the above scenario to usually be the case.

Let those of us who have already had the band-aid of undergrad ripped off rejoice in our slightly wiser state, and those who still live in the cushioned walls of college…enjoy it while it lasts!