Social Sites, Design, Informal Learning, & Brain Games

Java Time

Anthropology: The Art of Building a Successful Social Site - ReadWriteWeb

The Nine Building Blocks of Social Engineering:

• Voting
• Tags
• Editing
• Badges
• Karma
• Pre-search
• Google is UI
• Performance
• Critical Mass

Is Design Too Important To Be Left Only To Designers? - NussbaumOnDesign

There is huge anxiety among designers and design educators at the encroachment of business, education, health, energy, transportation and other fields into Design. The evolution of Design from an individual working intuitively to shape beautiful things into a collaborative process of discovering what can come next and making it happen is attracting people to Design for new ways to journey through these confusing and uncertain times.

Informal Learning: Directed and Flow Goals

People tend to fall into one of these two camps in terms of how they approach their own learning:

• Directed Learning Goals – specific focus
• Flow Learning Goals – nonspecific, exploratory

See:

Learning Goals : eLearning Technology - Tony Karrer

On Directed and Flow Learning Goals - Michele Martin

Informal learning for "directed" and "flow" goals - Catherine Lombardozzi

Brain Games: Do They Really Work? - Scientific American

So what do these findings tell us? Clearly IMPACT demonstrated that both trained and some untrained cognitive abilities can improve after two months of structured sensory input training. But the control group also improved, albeit to a smaller extent, suggesting that even watching videos (such as The History Channel) may help!

Chrysler, Culture and Cerberus - NussbaumOnDesign

Chrysler thrived when it's brands and design aligned with American culture. Jeep, Dodge--muscle stuff. Vans--family stuff. Chrysler failed when got out of touch with US culture--and merged with German car culture. Daimler Benz ran the numbers and saw efficiencies of scale.