Here we are, at the end of DCI 691, Fall 2025. We will not be meeting in person again – since the December 4 class meeting has been cancelled. That also means that, quite possibly, this is the last email that I will be sending to the whole class. That said, each of you will receive a personal email from me, in a couple of weeks, with some thoughts about the course and your work this semester.

I have to add that Thursday’s AI Carnival was great. You brought energy, creativity, and care to that event, and it showed. Everybody who stopped by: high school students, ASU faculty and community members were genuinely impressed. You should be proud. Thanks also to all those who could make it to the pizza party at our home. That was fun. (Here is a link to the Google Photos album that you can browse, and more importantly add to).

All that said, there are two key tasks still to be completed:

1. The Final Paper: Please remember the final paper is due December 4 (details in the assignment page). For our high school students: you’ll be creating a poster for your exhibition instead. I would love to see it when you’re done—please share it with me. You can email me the paper or share a link – either way it needs to be submitted by December 4. I cannot accept any delay in this since I will need to turn in grades, and I am traveling, which complicates matters.
2. Please complete the course evaluation: I’m hoping for 100% completion this semester—something I’ve never achieved. Your honest feedback matters. It helps me improve the course and it helps future students. Please take a few minutes to complete it thoughtfully. Don’t just click through the Likert scales—share your thoughts. I always appreciate hearing from my students. Watch your ASU mail for a link.

A final thought: This semester, we’ve explored what it means to live in a designed world—to understand that every tool, every system, every technology we interact with was created by someone, somewhere, with particular intentions and inevitable blind spots. We’ve looked at how printing presses changed truth, how cultural technologies shape cognition, how AI might reshape learning and creativity and community.

But more than that, we’ve tried to practice design—to build, to iterate, to collaborate, to look out for each other. Understanding that we live in a designed world isn’t just an intellectual exercise. It’s a responsibility. It gives us agency. It demands that we ask: What world do we want to design? Who benefits? Who’s left out? What are we building toward? I do hope that this class has given you a deeper sense of what it means to live in a designed world, to see it all around you.

It has been a wonderful semester. I wish you all well as you head into Thanksgiving, finals week and whatever comes next. And please—don’t be strangers. My door (physical and virtual) remains open.

With gratitude

We’re days away from the AI Carnival on Thursday, November 20—and this is going to be big. We are looking at 60+ high school students coming to the show. That does not include faculty, staff, and others who will also be attending. It’s exciting—and it requires all of us to be fully present and prepared. Below are some critical Action Items:

• Make ALL your projects publicly accessible (NO LOGIN REQUIRED): This is non-negotiable. Your vibe coding project and all other projects from the semester must be accessible without any login, password, or authentication barrier. Why? Because they’ll be linked on the event website and people will be clicking through, exploring, and interacting with your work in real time. If someone hits a login screen, your work becomes invisible. Please test this now. Open an incognito/private browser window and make sure you can access everything. Fix any access issues immediately.
• Look out for each other: With 60+ students and lots of moving parts, we need to function as a team. This means knowing your role and being ready to support the team. On the day of the event, look out for each other. If you see someone overwhelmed, step in. If you need help, ask.
• Remember that your Final Paper is due December 4.
• Pizza Party: Thanks to everyone who signed up! Details on time and address coming soon to your inbox. If you haven’t yet signed up and want to come, there’s still time—just follow this link and let me know.

I am looking forward to seeing all of you early morning on Thursday (I plan on getting there before 8:30). And remember, this event is a celebration of your creativity, hard work, and collaborative spirit. Let’s make it something special.

I am typing this message, at 5 am, from the airport as I head out to New York for a super-short trip (back late night Monday). I just got some breakfast so I feel a bit more awake…

We are now at the back end of the semester – our last “regular” class meeting coming this Thursday – and the focus is on speculative fiction. We are reading Ted Chiang’s “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling,” a story that explores how technologies of memory and record-keeping reshape truth, identity, and human relationships. It takes the somewhat abstract ideas we explored last week and situates it in two different narratives, two different technologies, two different time-periods. It is a lovely story, and I believe, a almost perfect way to bring our semester exploring learning and design to a close.

We are also gearing up for the AI Carnival on November 20. You should all have received an email from the project management team with tasks to complete. Check your inbox for specific assignments…

Finally if you haven’t done so, please fill out the pizza party RSVP form so we have an accurate headcount for the evening celebration at my home the day of the Carnival.

Final stretch reminders:

• Keep polishing and completing your vibe coding projects
• Start thinking about your final papers
• Stay responsive to the event planning team—this is a collective effort!

See you Thursday.

I am typing this message from my hotel room in Santiago, Chile, with a wonderful view of some snow tipped mountains through my windows. I took a bit of time this morning to explore the city (see photo below). I will have more to share (along with some examples of good and bad design) when we meet next.

Just to recap last week’s recap of our semester so far, I have to say I was impressed both by the quality and the variety presentations the teams came up with. We had songs, a diagram, quizzes, a website and videos! This demonstrated your creativity but also underscored the open-ended nature of design, where teams given the same instructions came up with dramatically different solutions. These solutions were, I am sure, a function of expertise within the team, constraints of time and resources, the nature of the ideas covered and more. Well THAT in a nutshell is design. Constrained and liberating!

I know a few of you had to miss class due to illness, I do hope you are feeling better. I must say not only did you miss the presentations, you also missed some delicious homemade Diwali treats!

For this upcoming week:

• This coming Thursday we will be widening our frame a bit to look both the adjacent impacts of technology and media. We’ll be reading the Introduction to Steven Johnson’s book “How we got to now” and an article of mine “To Thine Own Mind Be True: Understanding Cultural Technologies, From Cave Walls to ChatGPT.” (Incidentally, Johnson’s entire book was required reading for a previous version of this course and for those interested, there is a documentary based on the book available on Amazon Prime). As you read, think about: How did we get to now? And where are we going? What choices—intentional or accidental—will shape our future? (Working doc)
• Also we will engage in some event planning for the Nov 20 MLFC AI Carnival (thanks Shrusti for suggesting the name change from the boring “AI Day”). A huge shout-out to Devank, Lisa, Shrusti, and Priyanka for stepping up as project managers. Please keep an eye out for messages from them—and act on them promptly. This is a team effort and we need everyone engaged.
• This is also the time to start finalizing all the different projects we have complete as well as start working on your final paper. We’re in the home stretch!
• Finally, you are all invited to my home on the evening of Nov 20 to celebrate the semester and eat some pizza. Should be a nice way to wrap things up together.

See you all on Thursday!

Thank you to everyone who participated in Thursday’s presentation to Vice Provost Sukhwant Jhaj. You showed up prepared and engaged thoughtfully. Special recognition to our high school presenters—Jasper, Riley, Isa, and Oliver—who handled the opening with clarity and confidence. The skeptics and panelists brought energy to the Q&A, and the broader discussion showed solid understanding of the proposal.

This was a high-risk project I took on for our class and I think it came together really well. Could the format of the presentation have been better? Absolutely—mixing up skeptics and proponents so everyone gets a chance to play both roles would have been smarter. But, not bad for a first attempt at something like this. Kudos to all of us.

I have integrated two elements that emerged during our discussion: the need to emphasize hyperlocal solutions (because problems are always local and deep), and the importance of including arts, humanities, and aesthetic dimensions of learning alongside practical skills. These insights have been included in the final version. You can access the final version (PDF document) here: Knowledge Commons: Learning Without Borders. I will be sending this to Sukhwant in a separate email. I have added some info about how the process played out over the past few weeks and the names of all the people involved.

The semester continues. We have work to do: Next class I’ll be introducing our final showcase (November 20) as well as the final paper that is due on December 4. Your Vibe Coding projects need to continue developing—this is ongoing work, not something you can leave until the last minute.

For next class—Looking Back to Look Forward: We do not have any readings this week – but we have homework. We’ve covered 10 intense weeks—from what design is, to wicked problems, to bias, to building the Knowledge Commons. Now it’s time to step back and make sense of it all.

Each group has been assigned 2 weeks to cover as follows: 1-2: Hive; 3-4: AGORA; 5-6: Mindcraft; 7-8: Harmony; and 9-10: Crezia. Review what we read, discussed, and created during your assigned weeks. Then create a 3-5 minute presentation that creatively captures:

• The core ideas from that week
• One provocation or question that week raises for designers

Format: Your choice. Could be a visual map, a skit, a manifesto, a design critique, a remix, whatever—just make it engaging and idea-focused, not just a summary.

• Be ready to present your group’s creative reflection
• Agora will be presenting examples of Good/Bad Design
• We need AfterClass-Rapid Reflections from MindCraft (Thank you Team Hive for your reflection of the 10/16 class).

I’m excited to see what creative approaches you come up with. This kind of synthesis—stepping back to see patterns and connections—is when real learning happens.

See you Thursday!

Next Thursday is a big day—we present the Knowledge Commons: Learners Without Borders to the Vice Provost. This is what we’ve been building toward for the past few weeks and it is exciting to see it come to a close.

I’ve updated the Knowledge Commons document with the ideas that emerged from yesterday’s class session (thank you for those ideas). For those who weren’t there, we discussed several new concepts that strengthen the proposal: endless learning pathways, demand-driven cohort formation, dual portfolios, and Knowledge Boards that make learning visible. I’ve integrated these into the main document and added few new FAQ questions.

There are some critical tasks that need to get done in the intervening week.

1. Each and every one of us needs to read the entire updated document. We need to know this inside and out. There will be an open discussion at the end with the VP, and we need to present yourself well. This isn’t just about our assigned roles (presenter, panelists or skeptics) but about all of us representing this work with confidence and depth. (And yes, I changed heckler to skeptic–a better title, I think). 
2. The presentation team finalize their slides/roles: I am available to discuss and help. 
3. Panelists and skeptics have to sign up for their roles. I have also created a new tab in the doc with assignments for panelists and skeptics. Please review this. We currently have more skeptics than panelists assigned. If any skeptics would like to volunteer to shift to the panelist role, feel free to edit the doc and add/move your name. We also have many FAQ questions that are not assigned either a panelist or skeptic. That table needs to be filled – whether or not we get to each and every question in the time we have. 
4. Please arrive on time. We need the full dry run period.
5. I’m available by email or phone (text me first) if you need to discuss anything.

Here’s a tentative plan for how Thursday morning will unfold:

9:00 – 9:30: Dry run. We’ll walk through the presentation, finalize roles, and make sure everyone knows their part. This is your last chance to tighten things up.

9:30 – 10:45: After brief introductions (~5 minutes), our high school students will present the Knowledge Commons proposal, followed by the skeptics-panelists format where assigned skeptics pose challenging questions from the FAQ and panelists respond. Then we open it up for broader discussion with the VP. We’ll adjust timing as the conversation flows. We will also use the back end of this session for a quick debrief (time permitting).

10:45 – 11:00: Break

11:00 – 11:45: Back to our regular programming—Good/Bad Design presentations, discussion of this week’s readings on beauty, aesthetics, and emotion in design, and I’ll introduce what’s coming up for next week.

This week’s materials:

• Watch: What is beauty in Design?
• Norman, D. (2002). Emotion & design: Attractive things work better. Interactions.
• Listen to podcast: Why aesthetics is essential for science education
• Working doc for your thoughts/questions

Important notes:

• Please arrive on time. We need the full dry run period.
• I’m available by email or phone if you need to discuss anything before Thursday.

This is it. Three weeks of thinking, arguing, refining, and building together. You’ve put in the work—now give it one last push. I am extremely proud of what we’ve created and excited to see us present it.

See you Thursday. Bring your best and lets have fun.

Another productive week in 691! Thank you for a great meeting last Thursday, as we focused on a problem that was totally wicked!

Jokes apart, last week’s session really worked. The readings on wicked problems connected directly to our Knowledge Commons work—which is, unsurprisingly, a wicked problem hitting all 10 characteristics. I appreciated the questions, criticisms, and push-back. A few good ideas emerged (like the tip-jar model) and some serious criticisms and concerns. I’ve taken your input from the discussion (thanks to all those who dropped their comments into the doc) to craft a substantially revised version.

I know all of you are working on your 5 min presentations for the next class. I think it would be helpful to review this new version – since it is is substantially changed (based on our conversation and your feedback) from the first draft.

This week we’re focusing on a critical topic: understanding bias in design. You have to review the following:

• Listen to 99% Invisible Podcast episode titled On Average and read Beyond Average and read my blog post: Gilbert Daniels, the gardener who changed the world
• An interview with Caroline Criado Perez (2019). Why Everything From Transit to iPhones Is Biased Toward Men and on the 99% Invisible podcast: Invisible Women
• GenAI is Racist, Period. (Blog post: Punya Mishra, Melissa Warr & Nicole Oster);
• Racist or just biased? It’s Complicated (Blog post: Melissa Warr, Punya Mishra & Nicole Oster)

You can of course drop you questions / thoughts in the working doc.

Just a heads up, I will be reviewing your Vibe Coding projects and giving feedback. Make sure you continue to work on that project.

For next class, come prepared to discuss the readings on bias and design; present your vision for Knowledge Commons (as a group). Groups are already assigned for good/bad design and after class reflections.

Looking ahead: The week after next, we’ll be presenting our final proposal to the Vice Provost. Your presentations this Thursday are critical—they’ll shape what we ultimately present. New ideas may emerge, refinements will happen, but we’re moving toward finalization. Bring your best thinking.

See you Thursday!

Thursday’s session on our relationship to objects was genuinely wonderful. The physical objects you brought in, and the stories you told about them, (and the sonnets that emerged) revealed so much about how we connect to the material world. From the deeply personal to the surprisingly mundane, each object opened up conversations about memory, identity, value, and meaning. Understanding this is critical to understanding the power of design!

We also dove into brainstorming for our Reimagining Distributed Learning Ecosystems project, and I have to say, I’m excited by what’s emerging. I have been working on pulling the ideas together to develop something (for now) I am calling The Knowledge Commons. (You can review this by following the link). We will dig into this further in class… I may keep revising this so clearly this is a work in progress.

This coming week, we’re tackling one of the most powerful ideas in design—particularly at scale—and it’s something we all need to understand deeply: wicked problems (an idea particularly relevant to the project we are currently engaged in). Understanding what makes problems “wicked” will help you approach our Meso project with greater sophistication.

Next week’s readings:

• Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked problems in design thinking. Design Issues, 8(2), 5–21
• The Ten Key Properties that Define Wicked Problems: Systems Thinking Alliance website
• Working doc (drop your questions or comments here)

A few important reminders:

• I’m still waiting for reflections/summary of class from Crezia
• I will be reviewing your Vibe Coding projects and giving feedback. Those who don’t have links placed yet will NOT receive any feedback

For next class:

• Come prepared to discuss the readings on wicked problems
• We’ll finalize our design for the Meso project and move into planning out the details. We’ll spend significant time in class working on this
• Mindcraft to present Good/Bad Design examples
• Agora for AfterClass—Rapid Reflections

The momentum keeps building. See you Thursday!

We are almost at the half-way mark of the semester and things are heating up!

We officially launched our most ambitious Meso-assignment yet: Reimagining Distributed Learning Ecosystems. This isn’t just an academic exercise; this is a real design challenge: How do we create disruptive, flexible learning networks that serve people who currently have zero access to higher education? We watched the video, dove into the challenge brief!

We also saw your Reel Design Thinkers videos. They were uniformly creative, thoughtful, and diverse in approach. That said, I noticed some little bits that were off in a few of the videos, technical issues, audio problems, pacing hiccups. Here’s the thing: being a designer means not being satisfied with imperfection that can be fixed. That’s what we designers do, we iterate, we refine, we make things better. You can polish these and resubmit. These videos will be viewed publicly at the end of semester showcase, so getting them right is important.

Similarly, though we will not be talking (as a class) about your vibe coding assignment, at least not for the next week or two, that assignment continues in the background. Please continue working on it and let me know if you want to chat one-on-one. Please update the signup sheet with a link to a google doc in your shared folder, with a brief description and link to your ongoing progress. I WILL be reviewing them on a regular basis.

I must add that I laughed out aloud at Harmony’s radio play reflection on our last class! Bravo (he said, wiping a tear from his eye). And my personal experiments with Vibe Coding continue, and this time it is a tiny mindfulness website. 

Now comes the exciting part. For this week, each group needs to work on the Vision Development section of the design challenge. This is where you move from understanding the problem to imagining breakthrough solutions. And here’s where I want you to really lean into AI as a thinking partner. Don’t just ask it for answers—engage it in a conversation. Push it to think of alternatives, challenge your assumptions, help you see blind spots. Ask it “what if” questions, have it play devil’s advocate with your ideas, get it to generate wild possibilities you can then refine. Come to class next Thursday with something concrete to work on—sketches, concepts, provocative ideas that have been sharpened through this kind of AI collaboration. We’ll be using class time to push these visions further, so don’t come empty-handed.

Our conversations design and our relationship to things continues… We are reading/listening to the following:

• One episode of the podcast: Everything is Alive (any episode you find intriguing)
• Explore the website connected to the book Material World: A Global Family Portrait
• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1993). Why we need things. History from things: Essays on material culture.
• Blog post: Things we hold on to in a shifting world
• And of course our working doc (optional)

For next class:

• Update the signup sheet with your Vibe Coding link
• Come prepared to discuss the readings and your podcast episode
• Bring a physical object to class (not your phone!) that is meaningful to you in some way
• Hive to present Good/Bad Design examples
• Crezia back to you for creating AfterClass—Rapid Reflections
• Each group should be ready to share initial vision concepts for the distributed learning challenge
• Let me know if you have updated your Reel Design Thinkers video (so that I can review).

As always, I look forward to seeing all of you at 9 am on Thursday.

Greetings from 35,000 feet… the magic of wifi on a airplane. I am heading to New York for a super short trip, will be back late Tuesday evening.

Looking back on our last meeting, I really enjoyed the presentations on the design theorists. The mapping exercise allowed us not just to get to know the theorists and their contributions but also to get a 35,000 feet view of how our thinking about design has evolved over time. (Did you notice what I did there?). We will be digging into some of these theorists in greater detail in the weeks to come.

If I have one piece of feedback, it’s about presentation skills. In a class about design, every detail counts—and that includes how we project ourselves and our voices when presenting. This is an important skill that definitely improves with practice, so let’s all work on bringing more energy and clarity to our presentations.

Finally, a gentle but important reminder about your Vibe Coding projects—by this time, you should have finalized your idea and should be developing some prototypes. Remember what we discussed (and the readings this week emphasize) the only way to design is to make a move and let the design “talk back.” Make the move! There is no other way. (See below for an update on my vibe coding project.)

Next class

Our discussion will be based on the following – I would like you to pay particular attention to the section in the first reading where Cross describes the work of Schon (the story of the architect Quint working with the student Petra). That is one of the best descriptions of how design works and worth reading thoughtfully and intentionally. Not that you should not be doing that, in general 🙂

• Introduction and Chapter 1 (Design Ability) from Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and work (2nd Edition). By Nigel Cross.
• Summary of Chapter 8 (Understanding Design Cognition) by Nigel Cross, excerpts from Chapter 8 of his book Designerly Ways of Knowing.
• How Designers Think: Nigel Cross Interview on the A is for Architecture Podcast (Links to episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube).

Working doc: Drop your questions, comments and thoughts about the readings here

For next class:

• Come prepared to discuss the readings
• Reel Design Thinkers presentations – time to share your videos! And we’ll be starting our next Meso assignment. This is very exciting!
• Agora to present Good/Bad Design examples
• Harmony back to you for creating AfterClass—Rapid Reflections on today’s class. I am yet to receive the rapid reflections from Mindcraft (please drop your link in the sheet)
• Vibe Coding – see above and remember the clock is ticking!!
• High school students: Please remember to talk to your parents about the research consent forms

The momentum is building, and I’m excited to see where we go next.

Finally, an update on my Media Effects vibe coding project. Short answer: I am stuck and it is super frustrating. I have come to realize that the project needs a complete overhaul, a reimagining from bottom up because it is a bigger and more complicated project than I had initially envisaged. Hopefully I will get some time to take that on, soon. On the positive side, I made a design move, and reality pushed back. And I learned something. That is the design process. 

Despite this frustration, I did create something cool yesterday using AI, a website that addresses a common statistical misconception, namely that just because two things change in synch does not mean that one is causing the other. In other words, correlation is not causation. For my project, I decided to go the opposite way, by arguing that correlation IS causation! On this site you can learn things that will make your head spin! For instance, did you know that engaging in mindfulness practices (such as meditation) can lead to an increase in use of social media! Or that plastic pollution improves human health! You can learn all this and more by going to the Correlation is Causation website! Let me know what you think. 

It’s Sunday and time for the 691 newsletter. It is getting cooler (at least in the mornings) and I just got back from a walk with my dog Omi. He had more energy and so did I. As the weather turns, so do we in 691, moving into a new project (reel design thinkers) and digging into our vibe coding assignment with greater urgency and agency.

All that aside, I do think I need to address two things that have been troubling me about last week’s class. The first has to do with me and the manner in which I designed the discussion on the readings. In structuring our discussions, I took the 15 ideas from the videos, converted them into 5 themes (for the 5 groups) and then asked each team to come up with value judgements. That was a bit too much. Clearly I over thought it. That said, I was pleased to see that the discussions were rich, despite my best efforts to complicate matters. So thank you all, who were in class, for that.

Which brings me to my second concern, which has to do our responsibility to each other in this learning community. Three students were absent last Thursday without any communication to me. While I understand that life happens and I’m willing to make the class accessible via Zoom if needed, there’s a responsibility to each other that we need to acknowledge. Beyond missing the feedback session on your Vibe Coding projects, clearly a cost you were willing to take, your absence denied others the benefit of your input and participation. The cost of your absence is felt by others, and that is wrong. I was similarly disappointed to see people deleting names that had already been entered in the Design Thinker research signup. Respect for each other is critical to the community we are building. In both of these instances, it is important that we bring our best selves to the class and take responsibility for our actions and commitments to each other. Showing up on time, being present, physically and mentally, doing the homework, and engaging with the ideas and with each other in a respectful manner is a pretty low bar, as expectations go.

We can do better. 

Coming up this week

Readings

• Blog post: Complicating the idea of Design Thinking (in Education)
• Article: Complicating Design Thinking in Education: A University-School District Partnership to Design and School for the Future. (Warr, Mishra, Scragg, Powers, Wong, 2022) 
• Optional questions doc.

Also

• Come prepared to discuss the readings AND to give brief presentations on your two design thinkers.
• Crezia to present Good/Bad Design examples
• MindCraft to create AfterClass—Rapid Reflections on today’s class. I am yet to receive the rapid reflections from HIVE (please drop your link in the sheet).
• I will be meeting each of the groups about your individual vibe coding project. Please come prepared to discuss your project, have something to show me, add your link to the signup sheet. I just see a couple of names there – this table needs to be filled up!
• High school students: Please remember to talk to your parents about the research consent forms.

Quote of the day

I felt that the class seems to have settled into a good rhythm now. We start with examples of good/bad design, segue into a discussion of the readings, with some random a-musings from Punya thrown in, and then it is time for the groups to work together on our various projects. I am guessing we will be following this structure for most of our class meetings, though I do reserve the right to change things, if this structure gets too predictable.

Reflecting on last Thursday’s class I have to say that the level of discussion was much better. It was clear that people had done their homework which made for a deeper more engaged and thoughtful conversations around the themes of the class. I also appreciated all the people who posted their notes in the doc. I know this is optional, but it does give me some insight into what some of you are thinking. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the posters that were created at the end of the discussion, take a moment to do so (I threw them into a google slide-deck.) They are so fun. 

Going forward, I hope that we can continue this pattern of doing the homework and keeping the focus on design. These ideas will stand you in good stead in the future AND will inform how you approach the other projects we will do. 

Coming up… 

• 4 videos from the series Understanding Design (lectures by Prasad Boradkar)
  • What is Design Thinking?
  • The characteristics of Design thinking Part 1
  • The characteristics of Design thinking Part 2
  • The characteristics of Design thinking Part 3
• Questions/Comments submitted based on these (optional)
• Team Harmony is responsible for sharing examples of good and bad design (slide deck). Please add your names to your examples. Team Hive should come prepared to document our session.
• I can’t wait to listen to the Artificially Sponsored Commercials, which are due 9/11. Please place your link in the Signup Sheet (as many have done already). This will close out our first Meso-assignment. 

At our next meeting we will: 

• … focus on finalizing your idea for the semester-long Vibe Coding for Learning project. You should have written out a description of your topic/idea (or descriptions if you are exploring more than one) for us to discuss and respond to.  I also hope you have gone beyond just thinking about it to actually jumping in and trying to create something with AI. That is really the best way. You can also ask the AI to offer alternatives, improvements and more. 
• … introduce our second Meso-Assignment: Reel Design Thinkers (9/11 – 9/25). More info will be given in class. 

Finally, some random fun: A project I did last semester was called Double Vision: The Creative Dance of Type & AI, a multimedia exploration of meaning-making at the intersection of typography and AI. If you have 8 mins 52 seconds to spare, you can watch a video of this exploration. This is best enjoyed on a tablet or screen with headphones.

I am thrilled that we now have a full class—25 participants (making it so easy to create same-size groups). Unless someone drops out, this is the team we will be working with over the semester, and I must add that it is exciting to have such a diverse group all playing and learning together.

I think we had a good class last Thursday (see below for how we could do better). As always, everything we did is archived on the page of the day, including the After Class Rapid Reflection created by Team Crezia (Isabella, Yash, Utkarsh, Atharva, and Emmanuel). Thank you, team.

Upon reflection, I think we could have done a better job on our discussion of the homework materials. First, it wasn’t clear that everybody had done their homework, which made the discussion a bit superficial. Second, the discussion in class went too deep into AI and not deep enough into design.

It is critical that we keep in mind that 691 is NOT about AI. It is about DESIGN, specifically design as it plays out in education. GenAI just happens to be the context within which we will seek to develop a better understanding of the meaning and process of design in education. This is why ALL of the articles we read, the videos we watch, and podcasts we listen to are about design, not AI. Keep this in mind as you engage with these materials. In short, there are 2 key take-aways:

1. Do the homework. I have taken effort to make the writings, podcasts, etc. accessible and engaging. But none of that matters if you don’t engage with it.
2. Keep the focus on design. AI will come and go. I have taught versions of this course for over 20 years, and the projects we do have changed dramatically over time. What has not changed is the importance of engaging with this beautiful, messy, complex, human process of design.

Coming up…

• We will discuss the following:
  • What is Design? (video)
  • What is design (Chapter 1 from the 2005 book Design: A Very Short Introduction by John Heskett)
  • Questions/Comments submitted based on these (optional)
• Team MindCraft is responsible for sharing examples of good and bad design (slide deck). Please add your names to your examples. Team Agora should come prepared to document our session.
• IMP: Please add your google drive link to the signup sheet (if you haven’t done so already).

There are two key Assignments coming up:

• Group: The Artificially Sponsored Commercials are due 09/11.
• Individual: Bring to class an idea (or ideas) for your semester-long Vibe Coding for Learning project. Here is a list of examples for you to explore. I recommend Melissa Warr’s AI Equity / Bias Explorer and the video she made for us, showing how the project came to be. It would be good for you to write out your ideas. For instance here is a description of my project: The Double-Edged Tools of Human History:
  • This timeline explores how a range of human innovation—from stone tools to writing to AI—has been a double-edged cognitive tool. Each technology not only gave us new powers and possibilities, but also changed what we lost, what we valued, and how we saw ourselves. Inspired by Neil Postman’s insights, this project treats technologies as ecological transformations: they don’t just add something new, they change everything that came before.

Thank you for a wonderful first meeting. It was great to meet all of you and begin an exploration of something I care deeply about—design. I am also thrilled (and humbled) at the composition of our team, from high-school students to faculty, all in one space, as equals, on this journey together.

Welcome also to Anchal & Atharva for signing up for 691. Glad to have you on board and looking forward to meeting you in person this coming Thursday. Take a moment to look through this website and familiarize yourself with the Assignments.

Speaking of our first meeting. You can find everything we did on the page for August 21 (including my slides, the way in which we introduced ourselves and more). And if you want to relive our first meeting check out the AfterClass—Rapid Reflections song created by Group 3.

We started off with intros
Orchestrated by Group 3 (Alex, Kavya & Yaqin); Lyrics by Google Gemini; music by Suno.ai.

We started off with intros, a community in bloom,
Then saw how design shapes everything, escaping the classroom’s room.
We dove right into Generative AI, with its educational value and its creative use,
An ecological model of design, with no time to lose.
We learned the scope and sequence of the course, from micro to the macro,
And about our projects and our groups, the big ones we’d soon tackle.

(Chorus)
What happened last class in Education by Design?
We took a look around, saw the world through a different lens, you and I.
We started on this journey, this path to understand
The building blocks of teaching, a better future we’ve planned.

Looking ahead to August 28

• There are a few videos to watch and podcast episodes to listen before our next meeting (you can find all that here). Optional: You can choose to place your thoughts, questions in this working doc which I shall review and include in our discussions.
• Group 1 is responsible for sharing examples of good and bad design. You can put your examples into the slide deck created for that purpose. The examples I shared on the first day are there as well.
• There are two key Assignments coming up: one group and one individual.
  • I hope the groups have started working on the Artificially Sponsored Commercials (Due 09/04 09/11).
  • Individually, each of you need to start thinking about ideas for your Vibe Coding for Learning project. I have created a list of examples that you may want to explore.

A moment of silliness

Last Friday, for no particular reason, I created a few visual bilingual puns… a weird esoteric challenge that would make sense just to people who understand both English and Hindi. Utterly pointless. Great fun. Check it out at Bilingual Tomfoolery: Phonetic Visual Puns & Puzzles

Finally, Herb Simon “On Design”