:: think taboule ::

101 things i learned in dMBA school

Browsing a bookstore on a recent visit to Taiwan, I picked up this book, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, and after flipping through a couple pages, immediately felt inspired to take it home.  It's making me reflect on my first year experience as a grad school - what are the "101 Things I Learned in DMBA School?"

What I consider the most relevant and insightful lesson that Fredrick really nailed is about being process-oriented, not product or solution-driven.  He puts it in the context of design, but of course, in the interest of my own motives of melding design and strategy, I think this lesson can be applied to tackling any sort of problem, whether it be in business, design strategy, user research, or architecture. So I've taken the liberty to "adjust" his thoughts a little to encompass business as well:

"Being process-oriented, not product-driven, is the most important and difficult skill for a designer to develop.  Being process-oriented means:

1. seeking to understand any design problem before chasing after solutions
2. not force-fitting solutions to old problems onto new problems;
3. removing yourself from prideful investment in your projects and being slow to fall in love with your ideas
4. making design business investigations and decisions holistically (that address several aspects of a design business problem at once) rather than sequentially (that finalize one aspect of a solution before investigating the next);
5. making design business decisions conditionally - that is, with the awareness that they may or may not work out as you continue toward a final solution;
6. knowing when to change and when to stick with previous decisions;
7. accepting as normal the anxiety that comes from not knowing what to do;
8. working fluidly between concept-scale fulfillment of user needs and detail-scale the company's ability to execute to see how each informs the other;
9. always asking "What if...?" regardless of how satisfied you are with your solution."

Very wise words to follow in design and business practice!

And I think I'll start making my own list of 101 things I'm learning in dmba school.  I think I'll start with "Spicy pho can inspire bouts of creativity and group bonding" ;-).

making progress...

A month into "summer break" and finally to my first post of the summer...oops. This despite my goal to post twice a week.  But maybe that was an ill-thought-out summer task; after all, I'm having a lot of fun with Twitter these days (yes, yes, I jumped on the bandwagon, although I DID join pre-Oprah!).  Maybe micro-blogging is the new blogging for us amateur Web 2.0 enthusiasts.  I'm finding it a really fun, efficient, and stimulating way to consume content from interesting thought-leaders, share resources with any followers, and rattle off random thoughts as they pop up.  And then I can go back to those thoughts, mull over then, and maybe a significant post will come from that exercise.

As for the other goals though, I AM moving forward!  Finished "Buying In" last week, installed new software versions of Illustrator and InDesign in my new MacBook last week, and downloaded "Nudge" into my Kindle yesterday.  And I'm replacing blogging twice a week with starting up and writing in a new journal.  After having to keep journals for some school courses, I realized now much fun it was, so hopefully I'll continue that practice on my own.

So next steps - signing up for a Lynda account, starting the journal, and working on the newest book.  And now that they're online, I have to follow through.  Right?  Right??

Doing a little dancing

Just turned in my last paper and I'm now officially done with my first year of dMBA school!  I want to do something like this in celebration:

My poor little blog

Oh, my little blog, how I've neglected you.  My attention has been elsewhere these past months:

Obviously I've been very busy, but in the best of ways, as the Design Strategy MBA program has sucked me in and I love it!  Intense learning by doing, lots of collaboration in projects, disciplined reading and discourse - it's been a great combination of analytical and design-based thinking and strategy.  I feel like I'm in my element...design strategy is sure fitting well with me!

So now that the hustle and bustle of managing school + work is coming to a close, I'm starting to think about what I want to accomplish this summer.  I am going to hold myself accountable  by publishing my open list here, and I'm giving myself another week to finalize:

• Read some "for fun" yet educational and thought-proving books:
  • Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
    
  • Buying in: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, by Rob Walker
  • The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, by Jacqueline Novogratz
• Post twice a week
• Achieve proficiency in Illustrator and InDesign - maybe take some CCA Extended Education courses
• Exercise again!  The plan is to jump back into yoga and swimming, and strengthen up those arm muscles that have been further weakened by endless typing for school papers + work.  A hike once every two weeks would be heaven too.

I've got some other ideas, and will update as I commit myself to them.

By the way, I've been tweeting lately, and I can be found at http://www.twitter.com/nychen.  It's been a great tool for all the short bursts of thoughts I've been having lately, and hopefully now that I've got some time, I will expand upon them here on thinktaboule!

what i've been doing for the last two months

...and am absolutely loving it.  go dumbo!