YakShaving

Wow. I just got back from Spring Break in Beijing and it wasn’t much of a break at all. I was working on Bettr@ stuff and trying to nail down a final set of requirements and interaction flows, and was jetlagged the entire time I was there.

I knew I shoulda taken DEMO (MDes equivalent of a thesis) or something. It’s 6 credits and its a whole helluva lot easier than taking 4 A/B session ID classes to compensate. Especially because classes at ID tend to be pretty intense. This semester, I decided to drop my TA position for design synthesis so I could focus on schoolwork and really revving up work on Bettr@. Though Bettr@ has morphed and adapted as a concept as a result of the turbulent economic times and finding a leaner, more relevant business model, we’re still very excited about building something that people want.

I have a strong feeling that this semester is going to be a lot like this:

But I’m going to take it in stride, and see what happens.

This semester, I’m taking:

• Managerial Finance (MBA)
• Capstone II: Strategic Management (MBA)
• Design Languages (ID), continuing with this workshop by John Grimes.
• Metaphor and Analogy in Design w/ Kim Erwin (ID) — I’m super excited about this one!
• Service Design (ID), taught by the chief innovation officer at McDonalds, Dennis Weil. Should be pretty awesome, if not pretty intense.
• Product Planning (ID), taught by Senior director of Prod Discovery @ Motorola, Matt Mayfield
• Economics & Design (ID), taught by Jeremy Alexis

I was thinking about maybe taking either Tom McTavish’s interaction design class or Kei Sato’s, but I’m going to wait to see if Economics and Design is fun & easy– I’m sure it will be… It is Jeremy after all.

I have no idea how I’m going to handle this entire course load (SEVEN classes?!?) with Bettr@ on my plate. I like how my roommate, who’s supposedly at the number 1 bschool in the country (Chicago GSB) is taking just THREE classes. I guess GSB MBAs need more time to attend Thursday Night Drinking Club.

Anyway, I guess I’m going to have to delegate more… I’m excited to be working with an extended team of rockstar former Baidu engineers + an ID alumnus that used to be the chief designer at Baidu (Yu Guo).

If you email me this semester, please give me at least 24 hours to respond. There’s an off chance that I might have to invoke email bankruptcy, too, but I’ll give you a heads up if that’s the case. I’m going to sit down and try to email everyone back one by one who have emailed me.

Here are a few highlights from the Beijing trip:

here’s the Wodejia.com team that’s going to be helping out with some Bettr@ stuff while I’m finishing up school. I’m excited to work with all of them:

Here’s the 7-11 I ate at every freakin’ single day. They played the same exact music in there in a loop over and over again. It was the bizarrest thing ever. To a person with jetlag, sleepy, walking in there at 4am, it feels like the twilight zone. They had good jiu cai baozi and corn flakes + skim milk, so I was all set.

Here’s the Indian restaurant that I ate at one day (It’s a Kamat! Wonder if its the same owners as the famous Kamat chain in India…):

Here’s the foosball table (they also had a Wii, like any good startup should):

Check this out- it was at the immigration in Beijing. How cool! I wonder if this was released before Frogmetrics. And I wonder if it was out for the Olympics, or even before that. Its weird that its only for a simple task like getting your passport stamped– Not many things that could go wrong in that experience, huh? I hemmed and hawed for a minute deciding between “greatly satisfied” and just “satisfied” before the Chinese MP blew his whistle and pushed me along (im joking, but wouldn’t that be awesome?)

Institute of Design, MBA, classes, time management
wodejia.com