我们21世纪的首10年

2009 年的最后一分种，我和朋友一起倒数，也分享了彼此的21世纪首10年的过程。以下是我的:

2000 - 傻女孩开始第一份工作，充满梦想和希望
2001 - 精彩的 NYC 之旅，遇上911
2002 - 爬了东南亚最高峰 - Mount Kinabalu - 得了黑脚指
2003 - 非常伤心，遗憾，后悔的一年，没有见到奶奶最后一面
2004 - 离职第一份工作，太累了，想多陪爸爸，妈妈，做自己想做的事，学开车
2005 - 考到驾驶执照了！
2006 - 开始学当 Design Researcher, 找到自己最爱的工作
2007 - 一年走 11 国家。很开心。去了黄山，什么都没看着，要再去！上海多雾，没有雪，失望死了
2008 - 换工作，加入ASUS
2009 - 认识 你，很 开心

Last day of the first decade of the the 21st century

Wow. What a decade. I'm breathless.
But it's always the case.
Always.
On the last day, the dawn of a new day.
A new year.
I'm breathless.
With thanks.
For family, for friends, for good health.
For the ability to do what I love.
For people I've come to love.
For people I've loved, but lost.
For lost love, for love I've yet to find.
For these final quiet moments.
To reflect and reminisce.
Some heartbreaking moments.
Many happy days.
Lots of warmth, oh yes, thanks Singapore.
Lots of cool, I need not another chore.
What a bore.
What, life?
Hahaha, check out what the new year brings.
Life.
And I thank YOU. And YOU. And YOU.

Gray Christmas

Reflections.2009 (to be cont.)

Nadolig Llawen

The Welsh say
Merry Christmas, Nadolig Llawen
be safe, be wonderful
I can be
be happy and joyful
I will be
in days to come
But this eve
I grieve
albeit not too long
because
The Welsh say
Merry Christmas, Nadolig Llawen
grab each day with both hands,
spread your light across the land
This spirit shall not bend.

Deafening

At times, 1
goes deaf, on Christmas Eve
No, no, no jingling bells,
This time, 1
goes deaf, the Lady weeps
Yah, yah, yah sh-at-ter-ing h<3rt

McAVATAR

Hehe ... created my very own AVATAR (with my own face superimposed!) using an application courtesy of McDonald's.

Get yours too!

And the male side of me ^___^* Errr ... I mean, of my AVATAR.

Dusk

As I stepped out of the office building, I was greeted with this sight, at the very spot of the rainbow this morning. As I've lent my camera to my sis, I whipped out my Samsung F480 to capture this. Not bad!

(^___^*) O happy day!

R.I.P. Roy Edward Disney

He's the third celebrity whom I care about who has passed on this year, the other two being Yasmin Ahmad and Frank McCourt.

Roy E. Disney, Uncle Walt's nephew, passed away on Wed 16 December, after a year-long battle with cancer.

R.I.P. Mr. Disney. I guess Roy Disney's the last in a short line of illustrious Disneys. In his wake, I hope the magic of Disney continues to prevail and dazzle for many more years, and generations, to come.

The real Singapore weather

Yes, Google's finally fixed its weather gadget.
I must say, though, 31 d. Celsius, although that's what it really is right now right here in Singapore, is very uncharacteristic of December weather here. All thanks to global warming. It is scary.

Winter wonderland ... in Singapore?!

Now it's really (supposed to be) snowing!

15 d.Celsius in Singapore?

Hur hur ... screen cap of my iGoogle weather gadget at 12:22.
18 degrees, and plunging to 15 in the next 3 days?! I sure hope so cuz it now feels like 35.

Value of design research

I think I'm becoming Daniel. Everytime I see the same flow of thought in a famous person that I myself have been contemplating, or even better, practising, I get somewhat high. Hehe ... in response to a recent controversial argument by Don Norman that design research is useless when it comes to innovation, someone wrote:

Roberto Verganti in Design-driven Innovation outlines three innovation strategies: 1) technology-based; 2) analysis of user’s needs (user-centred design); 3) Design-driven (radical innovation of meaning).

Both Norman and Verganti define user-centred design as an incremental innovation strategy. But what Norman misses is design-driven innovation or innovation of meaning. To achieve design-driven innovation, Verganti argues for the need of interpreters who conduct research into how people give meaning to things. While some in the UXD community would argue this is what they do, Verganti says the problem of UXD is its focus on users instead of people:

"When a company gets close to a user, it sees him changing a light bulb and loses the cognitive and sociocultural context – the fact that he has children, a job, and, most of all, aspirations and dreams.” Refocusing on people and meanings means asking different types of questions, questions like “How can we make a person feel better when she comes home after work at seven at night?” This question led to Metamorfosi, a system that emits a “human” light, a light that made people feel better and socialize better.

To radically innovate meanings, Verganti argues we need to step back and “investigate the evolution of society, economy, culture, art, science, and technology.”

Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean.

Yes, yes, yes, and absolutely. I've always advocated this as a practising design researcher, but many times, the company or even some colleagues don't see this. But true value will show in time.

My original thoughts on the subject on reading DN's piece last Tue:

Hmmm ... while I agree that design research can probably add the most value to product improvement (that means fast innovations), I disagree that it does not play a part at all in radical innovations, or that needs necessarily come last.

I will see design research as 2: the formal (ethno, focus groups, etc) and the informal (when we observe, think, dream and create everyday in our heads possible scenarios of what it might be in future). I think the informal sort of design research is the trigger for technologists and innovators to create, not simply to prove that they can do it.

I also believe that technology and needs run parallel, and when one outruns the other, that's when a product fails because either the technology or the user is not ready for it. So it takes time to realign and product improvement, through rapid innovation driven by design research, kicks in.

Glad to find that Frog's Adam Richardson shared some of the thoughts:

... the reason these ones took off was because someone recognized a user need, and shaped the technologies to address that need, adjusting the form of the technologies as the need evolved. So it was not formal design research, but it certainly was an attentiveness to understanding how the technology would be used, which is a key element of design research.

And I find these points that Adam raised thought-provoking:

The seductiveness of evidence and insight that comes from design research can push inspiration, intuition, hypotheses, hunches and nonlinear thinking to the sidelines. Analysis overwhelms creativity.

Design research can be, and should be, much more than user research. It should include research into technologies, brands, macro trends, retail settings, competitors and comparatives, and a company's own IP and capabilities. I refer to this as multivector research--where we examine multiple vectors of data types simultaneously, and seek insights by finding the patterns across the vectors, not just within a single vector (e.g. user research).

Just another girl

Looking at the photos of Johnson and Laura's proposal honeymoon in the Maldives, the broad smiles of the happy couple against the azure blue sea and sky with hardly a thin line of horizon separating the two ... hah ... somewhat like Laura's pretty 3-tier blue skirt ...

I'm thinking.

Marriage may not be a bad thing. For me.

Maybe it's time.

Maybe I can handle a life for two. Maybe three.

Maybe I can be less precise with my morning routines, less calculative with the exact minutes I spend on washing up, dressing up just so I could sneak in a few more minutes of beauty sleep.

Maybe it's just the magic of Christmas sprinkling over me. It must be the 'kissing under the mistletoe' crap.

Maybe I'm finally tired of being alone, not especially when NSYNC sing 'You Don't Have To Be Alone (this Christmas)'.

Maybe ... or not? ... I'll be ready to trade in this freedom of packing my bags and sprinting off into a distant land of beautiful strangers. But maybe I can share it with someone dear.

Hah ... maybe I'm just another girl.

Crab feast Nov!

Haha ... long overdue update. CS gathered at Jeffrey's home for a feast of crabs in 4 tastebud busting flavours - (fried) butter, black pepper, white pepper and spicy curry!

Christmas@Orchard snaps

Reindeer outside Centrepoint.

Just 2 of the many reindeer-ladies along Orchard Road, each wearing her own style.

My favourite trees in Takashimaya Shopping Centre! They look like ice creams and chocolates, don't they? As if being fully made up of teddies ain't sweet enough! (^___^*)

I remember shaking Santa's hand and receiving pressies from him when I was little, but have I sat on his lap before? Hehe ... gcheow says she can imagine a hum-sap male posing as Santa for free lappies! LOL.

Right, I've said that Orchard Road is like a massive money-sucking machine (especially during Christmas!) and I'll say it again. Sure, Prada and LV had crowd control measures to ensure that their privileged clientele could shop in peace, so there were small lines forming outside the stores when I walked past them at ION Orchard. But this Uniqlo Singapore flagship store at 313 Somerset had a meandering line waiting to get into the store too! Can't say such crowd control measures are a common sight, or even necessary, at fast fashion stores (not even at Zara and Mango). Uniqlo is really something, getting Singaporeans ga-ga over its clothes, which IMHO, are neither exceptionally stylish nor downright affordable.

Transformers in Chengdu!

Hehe ... folks in Chengdu made a 10-metre tall Transformer model out of auto parts. Nice effort, but this doesn't quite look like Optimus Prime ... hmmm ...

My grown-up Christmas list

Inside the tree

Standing INSIDE the giant Christmas tree outside ION Orchard, I was beginning to feel the magic of Christmas for the first time this year. It was a universe of stars and constellations, it's almost WALL-E. Haha, to me, that's MAGIC.

It's high time someone realised that giant trees take up a lot of footprint, so why not make that space part of the enchanting Christmas experience as well?

Good job, you guys at ION Orchard! (^___*)

12.3 [4]

It's a special day, December 3rd on a Thursday. So I'll treat you to a special song of the same numerical pattern :) Maybe it's cuz of my recent, and truly sudden, addiction to sudoku (thanks to Google Wave, maydayer and gcheow, haha), I see patterns in numbers. So I guess that while Daniel has his "highly developed Brazillian mind", I have my "exceptionally beautiful Malaysian mind" that sees floating numbers ... hehe ...
(^___^*)