Design Thinking

In our english class, we have ben looking into the  A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. I chose to carry around a design notebook and re-design things that annoy me, or that I run into on a daily basis.

This, to my suprise, turned out to be rather difficult...  When I started my week, I was actively thinking about things that I wanted to redisign, naturally I couldn't think of any. Eventually I gave up on that idea, and started forgetting about the assignment. As this happened, I began thinking subconsciously about more and more things that really annoy me, or that I think could be designed in a much better fashion.

among my redesigns are:

- the cover of Daniel Pink's Book ( thought that was ironic); it has a cut out and is just asking to be torn and defaced ( that's a pun)

-  the spine of a three ring binder; if you make the spine out of metal, crushed rings would be a thing of the past

- an insulated cookie pan; my parents' cookie pan collects water from washing in its insulation, make it more like two sheets of metal on top of one another, one sitting a little higher ( cooking surface) and one cut a little smaller and made out of  more conductive material ( so that it cools more quickly)

- a cribbage board; make a truly travel board out of two sheets of felt with magnets sewn in between to act as "holes" and use magnetic pegs. this would allow you to keep pegs attached to board and allow you to roll up the board.

Now, at the end of the week, I feel like a design master. Although my drawings aren't to scale, and my ideas are perhaps less than probable, the exercise definately got me thinking more about the world around me, and suprisingly in a subconscious way. I think that this is an exercise that I will continue doing, it helps me think in a more c