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Hire a Hero...

Combating the high levels of unemployment as they return to post-war life, Hire a Hero, has built a social networking tool with upwards of 10,000 active members. Visit www.hireahero.org
Posted on Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 09:05AM by Registered Commenter[kym or kristyn norris] in | CommentsPost a Comment

IOU... S....A

Posted on Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 09:02AM by Registered Commenter[kym or kristyn norris] in | CommentsPost a Comment

A Grove Plants a Better Way!

Outreach International (Sustainable Good TM)

With about 900 sign up’s for the old Facebook application, Outreach set out with the help of Convio to launch a new application that would embraces the full potential of Facebook site and engage audiences in a more tangible manner as a “badge for the cause.” Not only can people add the application to their profile, but people also interested in recruiting others to add the application (“It’s the Grove, Not the Orange.”) As a person adds the application, Outreach pledges to add a tree in a developing country community. To speed up the reforestation process, people can add more trees, for a $5 donation you plant 10 trees. People are then ranked in order of how many trees they had planted and it would appear on their Facebook profile.

Outreach’s goal is to gain 1,000 people giving $5 each. Click here for more details and to add to the grove!.

Posted on Monday, June 30, 2008 at 04:42PM by Registered Commenter[kym or kristyn norris] in | CommentsPost a Comment

The Girl Effect...

Nothing feels better than changing the future of humanity… one of the organizations behind this effort is the Nike Foundation. Watch the video below…
www.girleffect.org

Posted on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 02:52PM by Registered Commenter[kym or kristyn norris] | CommentsPost a Comment

Daily Design Reflection

Creativity + Risk =
The answer to which is calculated from the designers perspective, (note: implemented by their unique skill level) coupled with the natural free will of a consumer/audience reaction. Indeed, design is the process that links these two words on many levels. Recently, I read Design, Risk, and New Product Development in Five Small Companies by Robert N. Jerrard, Nick Barnes and Adele Reid. An interesting study/research into the processes and level of risks noted for five organizations undergoing the development of a new product. Themes that gathered from the data outlined something that interested me a great deal. From the smaller organizations that participated, some of the results showed that companies placed a higher value on the personal/entrepreneurial benefit of producing a product that “left their mark” over the “financial gain” of the organization.

Which made me think about size and complexity of a larger design operation vs. a smaller firm. Naturally as a firm gets bigger, does it lose the focus on the true role of a designer? Does design become yet another system to just plug data into when housed inside a larger organization vs. a smaller one? Design as a process is personal and intimate—and I trust my gut-reaction and intuition. However, no designer is the same, we each uniquely bring to the equation/answer our own understanding of culture, psychology and human nature. The outcome of which is inheritantly part of assessment and risk at every turn of the process. Is that that understanding lost when the process doesn’t allow designer’s innovation to flourish at their own risks?

While the paper on design and risk caught my interest, I am not sure that my conclusions from the study didn’t wander a bit off course. I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about processes, right-brained minds and the off-shoring of left-brain skills. So my departure may have taken some key points, thoughts and reflected them back onto the importance of design, the designer and our processes.

Hmmm…. any thoughts?
kym

 

Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 10:08AM by Registered Commenter[kym or kristyn norris] in | CommentsPost a Comment
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