Doctors also have their own way of thinking.

earlier post was about two ways to solve a given problem, engineering and design approach. Then i met the third kind the "doctors".

Recent controversial insect bite/infection/allergy lead me to search of a skin specialist. searching for a skin specialist on a monday morning by not attending your class is not the best thing you can do. you step out and take bike and ride around and then you go the all the skin clinics you see. no doctor is there on monday morning. finally you call up one random doc looking at the clinic board and then she asks you to come in the evening. I asked a simple question is it ok to wait till evening? she asked how long it has been there. I answered 2 days she says then its ok.. if you survive 2 days youll survive few more hours. Impressive.. logical explanation. I went back home and reached the clinic at 17:00 as asked to. the clinic is closed. i thought to myself importance of time is losing its value. but thankfully in 10 minutes a sister arrives opens the clinic.. another 15 mins the doctor shows up. calls me inside. i know i have to pay 150 bucks to her so i know to extract all the info i can. I show it to her and give her my suggestions of what it can be. she listens carefully. then i ask her can it be chicken pox? she says have you ever had it before i say yes. she denies that chicken pox can happen again. i gave her the example of classmate, yet she said its impossible. I was like fine, ignorance is bliss. so i ask her what is that am suffering from? and there is a pause.

then she says.. it CAN be SOMETHING like a VIRAL INFECTION. I asked why does it come? she says there is NO EXPLANATION to that. it comes and goes. take these meds and it will be fine. she gave me one ointment for insect bites, one tab for allergy and one tab for infection. played it safe.

All i could infer from the incident is that doctors are very easy to manipulate. their diagnosis depends on your complaints. So you can manage to get whatever disease you want if you know how the doctor is going to think about your complaints. They have option A B and C. they see which ever you fit in the best you are that. basically you suffer from something that text book says you can suffer from. there are things which are not possible at all.. cancer wont be cured till the textbook says its curable, Chicken pox wont happen again if the textbook says it cant. So design approach is much more different from a doctors approach as the first thing designer will say if some one says not possible is why not? where as doctor has no explanation to things like these. there might be some doctors who might be good enough to think outside the books but its a general PATTERN observed in doctors. same is with the psychiatrist who does counselling to people. he knows only that side of you what you tell him. understanding these patterns is much easy once you are in design as you understand the systems and how they work so as to modify them according to your need. If i come along any new kind of thinking then i shall update this.

Stop, Check, Move on

Is this the same i-cuboid which it was yesterday? yes its the same address and same person writing just the new original identity of i cuboid. its fresh, its colorful and its awesome. everything is set just the problem is making the graphics is much more time consuming. Am sure there is a short cut which i shall know with time. please feel free to tell me what you feel of the identity. kind of excited to get the feedback. This language is in my portfolio too which is under construction and should be done in this week. Now back to cuboid life..

Recent talks with professor made things bit clear. no it wasnt the big boss talking this time.. it was someone people would not take as a great designer but what he spoke makes sense to me. it made things much more simple than what they were. He might be behind people to give their parallel projection sheets but it also has its importance in future when you look back on your life. Anyway, so according to the prof there are 2 types of approaching a problem.

1> Engineering Way

2> Design approach.

Whats the difference in these two approaches? engineering approach is something that is always constraint driven. living in the rule books. not stepping out of the theory. If mechanics says its not possible it is not possible. so you don't think about it. Design approach on other hand is something similar but yet different. same as here too we have to think with constraints in mind. gravity exist. things fall. things don't float in mid air BUT what designer has the freedom to do is add a detail to make it float. add a thin nylon string that wont be visible at certain distance that will make it float. Now if we approach a problem like make something float in engineering approach you'll end up using high energy consuming fans and blah blah to make it float. as one wont abstract the term float to a level where it appears to float and not actually float.

Other difference is that engineering mind solves problem in mind and removes the concept in mind itself before you put it on paper. this happens with me a lot. but if we try the design approach and doodle everything that's coming to mind which might be anything irrelevant or a strange concept which you feel wont work on paper. So if not there then in future when you try to solve some other problem you'll relate this to that and that is where innovation shall happen. design is about innovation the prof said. I was talking to myself, isn't it about invention? but then invention is next step to innovation. if one cant innovate how will he invent.

So when you working on a problem sketch it no matter what it is. STOP, take a look at it, CHECK if it will work, if not MOVE ON. This is not much different than what we do in real life without knowing. You take up something, you cant do good in it, you stop, check why not and then move on to new thing. You break up your relationship, you stop thinking about it for days till you think things are fine. then you check if the things are fine and then you move on. Moving on is essential. Else you shall end up in great trouble where things from past will haunt you forever. MOVE ON you. yes blog is a nice way to communicate to people who read it. others think its too much text and they skip. their fault, i write to get thought across.

There were lot of things i wanted to write about but they just left my mind. i always wonder if its a good thing or bad to have a mind that is so unstable which wanders off from one thought to other in seconds. whats left behind is confused thoughts of thousands of things and no conclusion but good thing is you can see patterns and then connect the dots to make sense in future. CONNECT THE DOTS. that will explain the smile on your face when you hold a chocolate drink close to you and talk to others after dinner. connect the dots and it will explain how your assignments makes sense. connect the dots they all fit in a cube. after all entire world is a cube.

OH! someone reached my blog searching for " which man thought world is a cube". destiny.

Blog Action Day 2009

Its about making a difference. they asked me to write about how the climate change affects my blog topic. i thought ill write how my topic, say design has its effect on climate change.

now if you see around us there are 2 types of things. Natural(which are there) and Man made (which weren't there). had a controversial conversation with friend and also a philosopher Mr. George Joseph, i claimed everything that is man made is designed. he refused. Gave examples of music and art. I agreed. So in man made things apart from emotions(not all) and art etc everything is designed. now do you know what we are talking about? we are talking of design as a term in general. where everything that man makes is designed. so design has its root deep in there. So everything man has made intentionally is basically designed in certain way. I don't need to emphasize on causes of global warming and climate change. Most of us know why its happening.(if you don't know then stop reading this and go google it and then come back). so by this line everyone reading knows that man has been using resources and thereby earth losing its balance in resources and then other things adding up and finally leading to global warming and climate change. So it is blamed completely on human that we misused the resources we had. true. we did. why? because we had to. Why did we have to? as things were made which required resources and which created bi-products. who made these things? man did. so these were the second category the man made things category. hence also the design category. so you see design has to do a lot with climate change.

If only we industrial designers knew what our products are going to result in future, or if we had the vision to know what is the result of our design, would world be a different place? well now we do know what we did was wrong. but how much of effort are we putting to make a change? some people are thinking of things like green design, while for others it is just a mere topic for making fancy posters to win over other entries in a poster competition organised by a local design foundation which probably thinks green design is making your logo and poster green in color and printing it over a flex which will last on earth of years to come unable to decompose or recycle itself.

A friend doing ecology was wondering to take it as her profession. i suggest, you don't need to be an environmentalist to make a difference. you just need to make sure what you do has minimum change in nature. No its not stopping one from progress its just about changing the definition of what real progress is.

Maybe i should change the font colour to green for them to understand.

Its not just United states that's causing pollution. its everyone. Think about it and at least be guilty when adding up to it. Someday you might just stop.

Title goes here, Gone..

This is going to be bad.
a) people are annoying.

b) everyone has things to prove.

c) They all use others.

d) Definitions are made by us to suit our mind set.

e) Definitions change from each person to person.

f) The more your definition revolves around yourself (me this me that) more annoying you get.

g) One cant look outside ones perspective.

h) some people do.. they are awesome.

i) These people are rare to find.. no am no where close to them.

j) this world rotates on axis of society. that drives the world, the motor of its rotation. fuel is everyone who is part of it.

k) why am i writing this? as i am annoyed, as i said people are annoying in point (a).

been thinking over somethings recently. something called dependency. how things are related to others.. its the symbiotic relationship between things.

i give you this you give me that. i give you comfort you give me tag as friend, i give you portfolio submission date you work for me and make your portfolio. You need a scanner, HP needs people to buy scanner. You need Photoshop to make portfolio, photoshop needs designers to work on it.

you are dependent on things.. you realize it when you lose things.. thats what i learnt long back then forgot then learnt again till i forgot again. its a cycle.. goes on.. things happen to keep you reminding what you think of things. some friends got kids to play with others got turtles to play with. you? you were left with work on your table next to a window at corridor, playing music and looking at people going away from you. you accept it. move on you say to yourself and start working. result? at least you know what work is to be done.. but then you just realize how dependent your life was getting on others.. and now you know it can be fixed. fix you, i was gonna put that song lyrics in between this post but then i refuse to. it just diverts you from what you wanna talk about. so what am i dependent on now? early morning coffee and singing same song at breakfast which will be playing in head for entire day later. Coffee keeps me going and am loyal to coffee. then am getting dependent on my laptop to do things, watch movies, listen to music etc. thanks to people a have stopped from being dependent on other habits.

Its all connected

When we are in situation we relate our self to movies. If am in a place with 7 feet tall grass around me i feel there are people with guns hiding behind it or some baby trex waiting to eat me up. we relate to movies and we need it as a part of us as if we not then they wont make movies. if they wont make movies you will never know of trex, you dont know of it and it might just be there one day to kill you. you should be prepared. hence movies prepare us for situation and we prepare situations for movies. that does make sense.. read again if it didnt.

how is this to do anything of those points? see.. people demand to know whats on your mind. they annoy you they want to know everything for sake of it or to judge you over it. there making you dependent on them and keeping the cycle moving. If you dont want to talk of something you are forced to.. why? cos i want to know as it has to do something with me. Go get a life. Everything has to do something with everyone. Why one feels they are so important that they can get away with no matter what they do. reality check, you are annoying, thats the truth, deal with it. (this might be bit personal but have to get it out.)

keep yourself out of dependencies and try to take over your own life. it will help you get you what you want from your life. and not others want. why am i giving this suggestion? as am not any different from those points i started with.

how it has to do anything with design? Design plays a big part in society. it stretches the soc to be what it is.. we product designers create products that one day you will look your workmate has and then you will want to get it. you will do things you wont do otherwise. your work mate got that product looking at someone else who had it who got it looking at a graphic in magazine made by a graphic designer who turns out to be product designers class mate who is competing with his work mates to get the best laptop his class mate product designer made.. its a cycle. its all connected. we are all dependent on something or other. Its the way society is and you have to be a part of it to know it better to create your place in it. design a product that will make difference to world they said. anything that is made does make a difference. depends on how my fellow graphic designers will put it forward.