Designing for mobile - Undesigning for desktops

Designing for small mobile devices and tablets has taken over with a vengance. I'm confronted with sites where the top third or more of my desktop screen is taken up by a (often meaningless) image. I was just looking at a post on medium.com where my entire monitor is taken up by an image. I have scroll to see any text at all. And...the text runs down the middle of the screen. Navigation is... where? I had to enter a new gmail contact today and you can see that I might be better off completing the transaction on a small device using touch. I gather the idea is "progressive enhancement": design for mobile first with enhancements for large monitors. I think designers are leaving out the enhancements. I know I'll get used to it after a while, but right now I'm finding it really annoying.

LibGuides: Tool of Oppression

Alison Hicks wonders if LibGuides software is a tool of oppression. (See http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/libguides-pedagogy-to-oppress/ ) I don't get it. Would Nicole Pagosky's Ferguson Resources ( http://libguides.library.arizona.edu/ferguson ) be more social justice-y if it were on WordPress and not part of the Arizona University Libraries system of LibGuides? Why the emphasis on the container? Also... I'm not clear about the hostility toward our traditional library resources. Hicks says "librarian-defined notions of value and authority conceals an industrial-era adherence to library-centric, behaviourist learning theories and provides a textbook example of Paulo Freire’s banking model of education." So... it would be less oppressive if students do NOT learn about scholarly resources? Why the hostility toward faculty assignments that provide a structured exercise? I'm at the reference desk of a community college where students are asked to do a basic bibliography with a recipe. Find five books, three articles, and two multimedia items on your topic. Use a certain format for the bibliography. Oppressive?? They have to find library resources. Oppressive? It's just an exercise - like doing scales when you are learning to play a musical instrument. Would it be more social justice-y if students did not know how to do a systematic search using a variety of sources and note that many publication types can be useful? Would it be more social justice-y if students never dealt with scholarly resources?

"Redesigning the entry experience"

Redesigning the entry experience is about providing an inviting experience for clients entering a physical setting. http://www.freshtilledsoil.com/redesigning-the-entry-experience/ Can we apply this kind of design thinking to our students'entry experience into our online courses? Do our students find our course site "friendly, inviting and welcoming"? Or do our students experience the "deer in the headlights" sensation that Jeremy Sabath describes in his piece? I wonder if thinking about the "course" as an architectural space would be useful....

Microaggressions or... not

I had a good time paying attention to the #critlib session on microaggressions. Storify's here http://goo.gl/SR7Bg8 I do get that we tend to operate off of stereotypes in the worst possible ways, but could there be times when we simply should NOT be offended? I am now working with librarian who also has short gray hair and similarly-styled glasses. We're almost the same height and appear to be roughly the same age. We're both caucasian. Students mix us up. #notmicroaggression, right? If students mix up two staff members who look alike, is it possible that they really do look alike?? If you look like a student, should you be offended if someone thinks you're a student? How can they tell you have a different status? Even if you are sitting at a service point... What's the indication that you are a librarian and not a student assistant? I think there's a possibility that this might not fall under the heading of microaggression. Or.... ?

OCL4Ed is starts June 18, 2014

"Learn about the concepts of open educational resources, copyright and Creative Commons open licenses to achieve more sustainable education for all." http://wikieducator.org/course/OCL4Ed/Start_here/ I signed up to take a look and see some of the design changes that have been made. I plan on looking around more tomorrow. Also coming up soon: Coursera's Copyright for Educators and Librarians. Starts July 21, 2014. Kevin Smith is involved, so this is bound to be a good course.

Sebastian Thrun's pivot

There are a lot of "I told you so's" aimed at Sebastian Thrun for his initial enthusiasm for MOOCs and his recent turn-around. Udacity is now going to target job-specific training. So... ok, we told you so - BUT I'm thinking about how he got to this "fail": He was willing to experiment and go way out on a limb in a very public way. He had the social capital to gather up venture capital and develop a platform in short order. He has brought online education to the attention of many - including ivy league schools. He experimented in a BIG way. We told him so, but he learned it for himself. I'm sure that he will go on to do many more interesting things. Now I'm trying to think about what would be different if the last couple of years of MOOC craziness hadn't happened?

Design 101 - Victor Papanek - In print only

I'm doing Design 1o1 (one-oh-one - not laugh out loud) through iversity.org One item on the suggested readings - Victor Papanek Design for the Real World - I'm reading the first edition which happened to be available in the academic library I frequent. They haven't thrown it out yet even though it's one of those academic libraries that seems bent on marginalizing the printed book. How frustrating that Papanek is not legally available electronically! (I'm quite sure that the material at gobookee.org is not up there legally.) I would like all of you to read it - and read it in its' entirety. I listened to some of Dave Cormier's discussion for #WWEOpen13. I'm rather confused. He seems to be saying that there's no longer a need for fixed texts. The conversation with the group seemed to fall somewhere between "print is dead" and "I like print." I think that you ought to read Papenek - not as revised or condensed or regurgitated by someone who might shift Papanek's arguments in some way. Write your own work and have your say! Don't mess with Papanek's expression. Also if I were teaching a course in design, I would insist that the students should read Papenek. Apparently this is "teacher as leader = bad." Perhaps if I disguise myself as a fellow student I could enthusiastically endorse the reading of particular texts?

First page of the preface from the 1st edition

Design in the Real World: Ecology and Social Change - 2nd edition (2005).

Design 101: I've only missed doing one assignment so far and will catch up on that one today. I'm not trying to be the best or even good. I'm not agonizing over the assignments. I'm doing that thing where you get an idea, do it, and ship it.