Week 2 HW: Dominant Design

List of Dominant Designs

QWERTY Keyboard

            Competition in the late stages of the stages of the typewriter for different layout of the key on the keyboard to maximize productivity. The Dvorak style keyboard is often cited as the major alternative to QWERTY.

Microsoft Windows

            In the Late 1980s and early 1990s there was major competition and different for operating systems for different PCs, such as between Apple’s OS and different distributions of Linux, however Windows emerged as the most dominant in the computing industry.

VHS Tape Format

            Competition between the VHS and the Betamax formats for the leading standard using for recording and storing video tapes. VHS ultimately won this “format war” because it was significantly cheaper in the U.S. market and could record up to twice as much footage per tape.

AC Power Electric Grid

            In the late 1800s there was a large feud between Tesla and Edison to determine what would be the type of current used to deliver electricity to the masses over the power grid. Tesla was an advocate of AC power while Edison advocated DC power.  Tesla’s AC power ended up prevailing because it is safer and much more efficient than Edison’s DC power which he had all of the ownership rights too.

Philips Ambient Health Experience

            This refers to a patient treatment style used throughout the healthcare system developed by Phillips where the patients are put in a relaxing environment that calms their senses when they are undergoing stressful procedures or operations. There was not much of a precedent for this kind of system, but once it began to be implemented, hospitals began to imitate it all of the world because of the peace of mind that it brought to patients.

The Next Dominant Design

I believe that in the field of education at least, the next dominant design is going to come in some form of a new teaching model with traditional classroom style learning time done through online video lectures and an in-class lab or discussion period that can be used to cater to the specific needs of each student. This will allow all students to have access to a level of education appropriate for them and will allow more students in general to have access to that education.

Week 1 HW: Remarks and Reflections from iPod Intro Video

I thought that there were several elements of this video that were particularly remarkable for its time. The one that first stood out to me was how Jobs never actually displayed the physical product until the very end of the keynote, and spent the rest of the time merely describing what the device did. I felt like this was done in an effort to emphasize the fact that it wasn't the form factor of the device that mattered but what its capabilities were. Another part of the video I found interesting was how Jobs kept comparing the new iPod to many of the current devices on the market. However in this process he kept emphasizing not that his device was merely better but that it was x10 or had specs that were at least ten times greater than what was currently available on the market. I also noticed that many of the 10x comparisons that were being made referred to the storage capacity of the device which seemed to be the major breakthrough for the iPod. Jobs was really trying to market the fact that you could now no longer have just 15 songs in your pocket but your entire music collection that you have ever owned. Here he was really trying to appeal to the mass audience of people who all listen to music and make a call out to them.

Week 2: Using Noodl as a tool for real-world development

Think of some of the ideas you sketched in class for projects targeting specific problem frames in heathcare and education in the 21st century. How might you be able to use Noodl or a similar tool to prototype a product that might address those problem frames? What would be the advantages and disadvantages of using a tool like Noodl? Do you think a Noodl-based application could be used to develop the final product? Why or why not?

Noodl is a web-based chrome extension that allows users to quickly construct their own web apps using an easy to learn visual programming environment. In our entrepreneurship class, we are trying to examine if this tool would be at all valuable in developing apps in the real world for solving the current problems in the healthcare and education industries. I personally believe that Noodl has some use as a preliminary design tool and for allowing ideas to be quickly developed into a prototype that can be deployed and tested on users. However Noodl is also limited in its potential longevity for use on a project and once the real application needed to be developed, more engineers would need to switch to programming in actual HTML and JavaScript.

These reasons lead me to believe that Noodl potentially does have use in the development of a final product that can be used to solves problems in one of the outlined areas, however the usefulness of this tool will just be limited to initial prototyping and proof-of-concept designs. Ultimately the tool will most likely be ditched as the app becomes more refined and more features that can be found in more advanced tools will become necessary.