first test from ipad

this is a first test for using ipad for blogging
I use blogssy app and try to figure out how it works

Surviving (and Enjoying) Teams at ID

Most of the work at ID is done in teams, and for good reason: collaboration delivers better results. Plus, you learn from each other, and develop skills you'll absolutely need to survive the professional design/strategy/innovation world, which also is heavily team-based. But any ID student will tell you that teams don't always run smoothly... and from time to time, you may experience what John Grimes calls a "Toxic Team"--the kind of experience that is frustrating at best, and at worst, leaves you stuck with unnecessary work on a project you think is lame. And that's not even mentioning burned relationships.

ID students and faculty have been working together in the last two years to help teams function better. One outcome of this effort is the Teaming Workshop, taught by Chris Bernard, open by pre-registration to a limited number of students (with plans for expansion in the near future--so plan on signing up for the next one if you missed the one during registration week). Another outcome is a Peer Teamwork Effectiveness lecturette, which I'll be presenting at 11:30 am on the Wednesday of registration week for all incoming students, to equip you with a basic set of tools for good team experiences at ID.

Just to be clear, this is not teamwork cheerleading of the sort you see on inspirational posters. There will be no trust falls, or group hugs. Instead, you'll learn why teams at ID function differently from teams you've been a part of before. (Note to those who think they understand teamwork already: this means you shouldn't skip Wednesday's session!) You will also learn three core principles of teams at ID, which every member of every team is encouraged to leverage whenever things look like they're getting off track. Plus there's lunch, so how can you lose?

Remember: ID teamwork training has been developed by students, for students, specifically to help you get the most out of team projects. If you miss these opportunities, don't come complaining if you're on a team that starts to go south!

Questions or comments in advance of the Peer Teamwork lecturette, Wednesday, August 22 at 11:30 am, please feel free to contact me at davidm@id.iit.edu.

--David McGaw, MDes. 2007

Student-run orientation

Hello everyone,

WelcomeID is thrilled to announce information about orientation! Everything kicks off August 20th with a series of informative talks that you won't want to miss. Throughout the week we have planned a few other events that support the school-run events and hopefully will help to jumpstart your time at ID. See below for a rough schedule, details to follow.

Till then,

WelcomeID

SCHEDULE OF STUDENT-RUN WELCOME EVENTS

Monday

12:30 p.m.
Welcome Lunch

1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.
What is ID?
Larry Keeley, Doblin Inc.
Nathan Lecture Hall, 6th Floor

2:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
What is User Centered Design?
Vijay Kumar
Nathan Lecture Hall, 6th Floor

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
How Am I Using This Stuff?
ID Alumni
Nathan Lecture Hall, 6th Floor

Tuesday

2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
IIT Main Campus Tour
Lobby, Ground Floor

Wednesday

11: 30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Peer Teamwork Lecturette
David McGaw, McKinsey & Company
2nd Floor, Lunch provided

12:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Scavenger Hunt “Run Around Chicago the ID Way"
Lobby, Ground Floor

Thursday

12:00 p.m. - 12:30 p.m.
IDSAB Orientation
IDSAB Couch
Nathan Lecture Hall, 6th Floor

12:30 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Software Overview
Nathan Lecture Hall, 6th Floor

4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Chicago Architecture Tour
Lobby, Ground Floor

Friday

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
International Student Panel
Presentations and discussion with current International Students
Nathan Lecture Hall, 6th Floor

Welcome to ID!

Once again, congratulations on your acceptance to IIT Institute of Design! The welcomeID team would like to .. uh .. welcome you to Chicago. To that end, we've set up this blog to help connect new and returning students. Feel free to flip through last year's posts or field any burning questions you have.

First thing, I'd like to point you to the new student wiki at www.idwiki.org. We're just beginning to fill it with content, but the recently updated online Student Guide should hopefully be a helpful resource. Registration is currently open, but will close once school starts, so you should do sign up right now (the link is in the upper right part of the page). I swear, it takes 5 seconds.

Also, you can check out past issues of the student newsletter, The New Idiom. You can find this spring's last issue here.

Once again, welcome to ID. If you have any questions you want to discuss, fire away. I hope to meet you all soon.

Eric

P.S. If for some reason, you haven't heard from your mentor yet, email Amy at amypalit [at] id.iit.edu.
P.P.S. If for another (or the same) reason, you didn't get a contributor invitation, email me at ericniu [at] id.iit.edu.

Blogging comes to an end: now talk to real IDers!

As most of you know, Registration day is happening tomorrow and all the support you have been receiving through emails from your mentors and through this blog from all the welcomeID volunteers will be substituted by richer face to face interactions with current students and an amazing suite of events prepared by students who are putting a lot of effort and dedication so you have a great introduction to ID.

Just be sure not to miss any welcomeID event! All of them bring tons of value at all levels: academic, social, informational, cultural, etc.

And since you will start establishing connections with the ID community, hopefully this blog will be less and less relevant for you over time.

As a virtual wrap-up I wanted to thank all the students that have answered literally ALL new students’ questions, specially the most active ones: Hyuniee, Clint, David, Zach, Andrea, Lauren, Alex, Pam, Eric, Kevin, Joyce, Irene. Thank them personally if you come across them.

Have a great welcomeID week

Service Project Canceled

Unfortunately, the service project is canceled. If people are interested, they can participate later on in the school year since volunteer projects will still be available.

Welcome ID

planning classes-my post to my mentee

First years are very busy. The credit minimum is 13.5 and max is 17.5, but people usually end up taking around 15. Keep in mind that classes usually have meetings as well since what we do is mostly team work. So all that really eats into your schedule.
hmm... for good planning classes... Chuck Owen's Systems WS is a headache and a lot of work but good for wrapping your head around large, complex systems. I love any of Veejay's classes. Business Frameworks is also a good intro into the business world. Larry Keeley's class is good and teaches you how to look at innovation and to think big. Along with these and all your core classes you should have a pretty good class list.

IDSAB - The Value of Getting Involved

As a member of the "Team Team", I second David's post below that you should attend the Team Lecturette. This runs from noon until 2pm on the Wednesday of Registration.

Additionally, as Chairman of the Institute of Design Student Activities Board (IDSAB), I will be giving a presentation at 11:30am with a couple of other board members regarding what our groups do and why you should be involved. I'm not going to lie and say that you are going to have a lot of free time. Frankly, ID is a place that "eats free time for lunch". That said, volunteer participation in IDSAB enriches the both individual contributors and the ID community as a whole and, I would argue, is as relevant as your coursework. A few things to be discussed at this presentation and Q&A include:

• why IDSAB exists
• what is the total budget for activities
• how this budget is allocated
• a bit about each group and their specific activities: engageID, recruitID, socialID, insideID

I have hope you can make it because it really makes a big difference if we can get you on board early.

Zachary Jean Paradis
www.creativeslant.com

Team Effectiveness Lecturette, Registration Day

You may have noticed that on Registration Day, Wednesday, August 23, there's a lunchtime event called "Team Effectiveness Lecturette." ("Lecturette" is the ID term for one-time presentations, outside of classes.) In case you were wondering, here's a little background, and a pitch for you to be there with all your new friends.

One of the critical skills you'll learn at ID doesn't actually have anything directly to do with designing products, communications, or strategy. It's all about how you get things done collaboratively. All of us are going to be working in teams, whether they are within design consultancies or corporations, or the team of you plus your client. Most of your classes, apart from Foundation Year, will involve team projects--and even Foundies will be on teams for student activities.

Sure, you're saying, teamwork is important. Haven't we all learned about that ever since we first played soccer or worked on a school play?

The difference at ID is class teams are teams of peers. There is no one in charge of a team. So, just imagine three to five people all having slightly different ideas of what project teamwork looks like, trying to get things done under deadlines. The experience can be remarkably unfamiliar (and sometimes frustrating!)--no matter what your previous teamwork experiences have been.

An informal team of students (we called it the "Team Team") spent some time last spring doing research and seeking advice from people experienced in teamwork. (One of our MDM students, Chris Bernard, also developed a short course in teamwork skills that will be piloted later this school year.) The result is this brief lecturette, on Registration Day, to let you know some of the common issues that happen with teams at ID, and to recommend some ways we can ALL work together.

This is an entirely student-run effort, and we're actually using student activity funds to buy you lunch--that's just how important we think it will be. So, we look forward to seeing you there, at noon on Wednesday, August 23.

Please let me know if you have any questions, OK? --David McGaw (davidm@id.iit.edu)

DWR Champagne Chair Tour 8/1 - 7

This seems fun and is just around the corner from ID at the Design Within Reach store on Ohio. It's free to check out and is a beautiful building filled with beautiful furniture.

2006 Champagne Chair Tour
Chairs will be on display from Tuesday, August 1-7
10 East Ohio
(at N. State Street)
Chicago, IL 60611
Phone: 312.280.4677

From the more than 600 entries that poured in from across the country and around the globe, we’ve selected 50 chairs, including our winning chair and judges’ picks, to set out on a national tour. This year’s contestants provided us with another year packed with stunning, funny and creative entries that you’ll surely enjoy viewing in person. Chairs will be on view through August 7th.

See more here:

http://www.dwr.com/dwrstudio.cfm?loc_id=30

Zachary

Registering for Fall term

If nothing went wrong, you all have received an email from Rachel Smothers with the fall schedule and the courses that will be available this fall term.
Things you might or might not know already:

-Going 'trackless'
for MDes students, ID offers you 3 tracks. Fact: you can go trackless if you want (pick courses from any track you want and make your own courses cocktail). As long as your advisor approves it, you can do it.

-Courses info
Don't try to decide already which courses to take. Wait until the week before registration. Hopefully, by then, you will have access to courses' description and your mentor and other students would have given you more info about courses.

I am sure current students will add some more..

Service Project sign up!

As you saw on the welcome ID schedule
http://id.iit.edu/welcomeID/
, we are planning a service project on Saturday Aug 26.
In order to properly plan for this event, we need to get a head count of volunteers. Add a comment to this post, if you would like to participate in this event. It's an awesome way to help the community and work together with fellow IDers. It's not set in stone yet, but projects we are looking at are gardening, cooking, etc.

Hyuniee

Reading List

In addition to those forwarded by Chuck, which directly relate to next year's Systems class (a requirement for 1st year Design Planning students), I wanted to mention a few books that I know will also be valuable to your time at the ID regardless of your track. The short short list (this could go on for pages so I've really tried to focus on the best) includes:

The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker


The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman


About Face 2.0 by Alan Cooper


Observing the User Experience by Morgan Kaufmann


This whole list will only cost about $70 purchased from Amazon with free shipping. Also, start reading Business Week and the Wall Street Journal whenever you can. Understanding the business world will make you a far more powerful designer than keeping up with the latest issue of Print or I.D. magazines.

If any current students have any other suggestions add them in the comments.

Looking forward to meeting you all in the Fall. :D

Cheers,

Zachary Jean Paradis
MDes Candidate, Institute of Design, 2007
www.creativeslant.com

Ideal courses for a student with an engineering profile

Naveen asked:
"What are the apt courses for someone with a lot of experience in team-management, Engineering (Mechanical, Plastic, Manufacturing, Enviornmental, transportation etc.) and who is an above average computer aided designer ?"

There are some students with an engineering background in school though maybe not with that much experience. The ones that come to my mind now are Rishabh Singh and Steven Babitch. Feel free to ask them by email.

Post the answers you get from your mentor

For those of you who are in the mentoring program:
I encourage you to post in this blog any answer you get from your mentors that you think might be useful for the rest of the new students.
This could be specially helpful when getting recommendations on which courses to take, ways to find an apartment, neighbourhoods to live or other information based on your mentor's personal experience or preference.

thanks all

class schedule and school year schedule ?

anonymous wrote this in the first post's comment section:

"Thank you for committing to answering our questions. To kick-off the question stampeed, I was hoping to find out when a class schedule and school year schedule will be coming out? Thanks in advance."

I think Rachel Smothers can answer this one..

Everybody is invited!

For your information, invitations have been sent already to all new students and welcomeID committee members.

However, if you are a new student but have not received an invitation, just send me an email ( enricg@id.iit.edu ) and I will send you an invite.

Cool & Useful Sites of Chicago

Thing to do in the loop
http://www.chicagoloopalliance.com/intheloop/index.htm

Chicago public transportation
http://tripsweb.rtachicago.com/
http://www.transitchicago.com/maps/rail/rail.html
http://www.metrarail.com/

Cultural events
http://egov.cityofchicago.org/city/webportal/portalEntityHomeAction.do?entityName=Cultural+Center&entityNameEnumValue=128
http://www.broadwayinchicago.com/
http://www.chicagoshakes.com/
http://hottix.org/
http://www.mcachicago.org/MCA/Calendar/Friday.html
http://www.cso.org/main.taf?erube_fh=csocom&csocom.submit.perfDetail=1&csocom.eventID=7215

http://chicago.craigslist.org/

http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/

*Add your favorite sites below.

WelcomeID: Mentoring Program

Hi!

Welcome to the Institute of Design this fall. The WelcomeID committee, a student run group in charge of student orientation, has a bunch of activities planned tomake the beginning of your school experience great. We would like to jump right into the mentorship program where we match you up with a current student you can talk with about living in Chicago, going to ID, etc.If you would like to participate, please send me the following information:
1) Track (foundation, communication, product, planning, or PhD)
2) Place of current residence
3) Educational/professional background

Soon we will be sending out the link to a student blog to answer any questions you might have.

Looking forward to meeting all of you!

WelcomeID Committee
Hyuniee Jung, David McGaw, Enric Gili Fort, Woojin Park

hyuniee@id.iit.edu

welcomeID blog kickoff

Use this blog to share tips and ask for help from other admited students and from a selected group of current students that will try to help you answering your questions.
Welcome to Chicago and the Institute of Design!

the welcomeID team