The next speaker in the David H. Liu Lecture Series in Design at Stanford is Dr. Jon Cagan.

Dr. Cagan is the director of Carnegie Mellon University’s graduate program in Product Development and a distinguished professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering. Cagan has written two fantastic books on the topic of product development: Creating Breakthrough Products and The Design of Things to Come. Both books skillfully navigate the arc from the fuzzy front end of product development all the way up to program approval. The texts also bridge the chasm between qualitative and quantitative values in a way that is actually understandable. His Liu Lecture will be about the emerging research in the creative Design process and the role of emotion in product usage.

The talk will be at 8:00pm on Monday, May 4th, 2009. It will be in Braun Hall (Building 320) in Room 105. Hope to see you there!

Here’s the abstract:

Emerging research is uncovering the cognitive basis of creative design and the emotional basis of product usage. This talk will present studies in both of these areas. From the perspective of how designers create innovative solutions, we will look at a series of cognitive studies that uncover how designers utilize both useful and misleading information while carrying open goals of unsolved design problems. From the perspective of the person using the product, emotion plays a critical role. We will examine new methods to capture aesthetic preferences and agent-based computational tools that use those preferences to guide generation of preferred design forms.

I’m really excited to present the lineup for this Spring’s David H. Liu Memorial Lecture Series in Design. All talks will begin at 8pm in building 320, room 105. Every lecture is free and open to the public!

Andy Spade will be speaking on Wednesday, April 15th. Spade had over a decade of experience with top advertising agencies Saatchi & Saatchi, Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, and TBWA/Chiat/Day managing accounts with companies such as Coca Cola, Evian, Reebok, Lexus, and Coach. He’s the branding and marketing man behind Kate Spade and Jack Spade (the companies that he and his wife created.) He has also been tapped to design the experiences of a number of companies including Delta’s Song Airlines and J. Crew retail experiment The Liquor Store. Spade’s latest project is Partners & Spade. It includes a highly conceptual retail experience in downtown Manhattan. Beyond all these business ventures, Spade is heavily involved in the art world. He is a patron to emerging artists, co-owner of a gallery, and curator of several exhibitions. Spade’s projects merge emotional branding, experience design, brilliant collaboration, and always a touch of surrealism.

Dr. Jonathan Cagan will be speaking on Monday, May 4th. Dr. Cagan is a co-director of the Masters in Product Development program at Carnegie Mellon and also the co-director for the school’s Center for Product Strategy and Innovation. He has the title of Barrett Ladd Professor in Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and holds appointments in the School of Design and Computer Science. He has expertise in product development and innovation methods for early stage product development. Both his design methods and computer-based design research have been applied in a variety of industries. Dr. Cagan is the author of two books: Creating Breakthrough Products (co-authored with Craig Vogel), and The Design of Things to Come (co-authored with Peter Boatwright and Craig Vogel). He has consulted with a variety of small and large companies in diverse areas on product development, brand strategy, and strategic planning. He is co-founder and chief technologist of DesignAdvance Systems, Inc., a company focused on developing CAD software for the early synthesis processes. Cagan teaches New Product Development at Carnegie Mellon and runs executive training sessions in small and large companies.

Alex Wipperfürth will be speaking on Thursday, May 21st. Wipperfürth is a partner at Dial House in San Francisco. He is the author of Brand Hijack, and the upcoming The Co-Creation Myth and The Fringe Manifesto. Dial House is part think-tank and part creative hot shop. The client list is diverse: from fringe (Napster, Doc Martens, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Jones Soda, Red Stripe, Altoids) to cutting edge (Current TV, New Yorker Magazine) to blue chip (Diageo, IBM, P&G/Clorox, Toyota, Coca-Cola). Projects range from innovative strategy, innovative research, meaningful creative expressions with DIY production to brand innovation. In earlier work, Wipperfürth had interviewed actual cult members and people in “consumer cults” (like Apple or Harley-Davidson fanatics) and made fascinating insights about their similarities.

Spent some time at Tesla Motors in Menlo Park, CA. Fantastic machines and friendly people. You can see some images through my Flickr page.

A friend of mine has a OLPC XO-1, so I finally had a chance to give the much-talked-about piece of equipment a test run. Challenging user interface and miserable keyboard layout… on the bright side, it is rugged, the mechanical aspects of the case and swiveling screen are great, and the $100 price point it fantastic. For its intended purpose of spreading the availability of information and education to children of developing countries, it’s a great start!

There were some mixed feelings at Perpenduum HQ regarding Helvetica, to be quite frank. However, Gary Hustwit’s next documentary, Objectified, is slated to feature some of my humble favorites, and if it’s half as good as its logo, I’ll be quite happy.

Drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car.

…and data from New York City traffic studies:

Not that New Yorkers need any reminders of their traffic problems, but a study released in June by Transportation Alternatives, a public transit advocacy group, reported that 28 percent to 45 percent of traffic on some streets in New York City is generated by people circling the blocks. The study also said that drivers searching for metered parking in just a 15-block area of Columbus Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side drove 366,000 miles a year.

(via Kempt)

In a 2006 interview by Ryan Dombal for Pitchfork Media Review, Gregg Gillis talks about how he had his Engineering day job where nobody knew about his rising fame as a DJ:

It would just be weird that I’ve been hiding this huge part of my life from them. They always come in and ask me about my weekend and I am the resident young guy and whenever I have a wild night on the town in Pittsburgh they like to hear about it. A lot of times when I say I didn’t do anything I was actually in Miami doing a show.

The prodigious rock-balancing art of Bill Dan. (via Reference Library)