They were not only physically out of control, but mentally liberated from expectations and presumptions. For them there’s absolutely no reason why a frying pan shouldn’t talk about its cooking experiences or why you can’t hold your computer mouse the same way you hold your mobile phone. Their minds are not conditioned like ours and that’s what makes them a genuine source of innovation.

We as adults are generally limited to our past experiences. Any ‘new’ thinking or idea we initiate starts with a set of assumptions that will result in marginal revisions to what we’ve encountered before. Our minds are junkyards of historical observations. Those of us skilled or knowledgeable in a field will certainly be ahead of the game when it comes to decision making or when concepts need to evolve into feasible product. But if you’re a innovation strategist or a designer ideating the future of interaction design, you need to stop thinking about where apple is taking us and instead hang out with a 3 year old.

Seriously! Leave a bunch of 3 year olds with toys and a few colored markers. Do a simple experiment, like having a transparent sheet of plastic in the middle of the room where they can draw on and  play with each other from both sides of the invisible border.

You’ll be surprised!

Shift Boston initiated an unusual design competition a few months ago that entailed designing an element of a lunar city in the year 2050. Having done my master’s research in space crafting and microgravity fabrication, I found this to be a rare opportunity to work on a subject like this. Together with a wonderful colleague of mine, Taylor Smith, we proposed Fool Moon* – a cooking kit that includes ingredients and recipes to prepare a three course meal for loonies.  The Gala, dubbed, “The Moon Ball” was held on October 21^st at Boston’s Center for the Arts and featured many speakers including astronaut Jeff Hoffman.

The competition was designed around  two categories, the first asked participants to design an actual lunar base including many technical considerations. The second encouraged teams to think about the leisure side of living on the moon and to think radically in order to design anything from games to making movies.  The open competition welcomed individuals from any background to apply and submit their work. The feedback to the competition was simply spectacular – more than 130 submissions were sent to the committee from all around the world. Teams of one to three individuals worked on their concepts over five months and came up with a pleasantly diverse spectrum of proposals.

This competition, the applicants, and the eagerness to particpate gives us a hint about the thirst in the world for cross-disciplinary projects and active members who promote them and make them a reality.  As I listened to the very inspiring presentation by Dr. Hoffman, I looked around the room and saw architects, professors, engineers and fine artists with huge range of backgrounds and skills and one common passion: Human space exploration. This leads me into my argument that contextual training and collaboration is much more powerful than subject lead tuition.

We constantly identify ourselves with the commonalities that we have with our family, friends and colleagues. We become closer when we have something in common and this in turn influences how intimate and involved we get with the world around us and consequently increases our engagement with our daily activities. This is also the basis of collective learning and peer mentorship, none of which is novel or alien to us. We begin learning and playing with others at early ages. With no doubt, we practice this in much more intuitive and direct fashions during childhood and begin to develop mental barriers as we grow. It is those barriers that ultimately limits us to the sources that feed our learning. But what keeps us from anticipating in multi-disciplinary practices? Is it the anatomy of the institutions that we are members of that does not allow us to work beyond the framework of our disciplines or is it the composite nature of interacting with others that makes it difficult for us to work together? Indeed, constitutions have conditioned us into accepting the hierarchic positions and divisions within our work environment, but there must be ways to look beyond the invisible borders that surround us and to break through the barriers of rigidity.

I believe the key is to find the common stories and interests among us and to apply our unique set of skills and abilities in our shared context. Finding stories will not become a reality unless we accept the importance of collective learning and collaborative work and let our playful part come out. It is only in such a situation that we can foster our creativity and the magic will glimmer.

* The project was mentioned as one of the notably unique submissions. To see more visit:  http://shiftboston.blogspot.com/2010/11/notably-unique-submissions_29.html

This leads me to the following question, are multidisciplinary firms functioning as an extension to the educational body to train the classic designer, researcher or scientist in order to get them ready to take on a project and be able to work interactively with other team members?  Moreover, what about taking a liberal arts approach to looking at our problems and focusing on subjects such as humanities and anthropology that are traditionally associated with liberal arts. What does a new multidisciplinary approach look like? It means a deeper understanding of global and historical contexts and perspectives, a future-oriented focus, one that incorporates social responsibility.

Companies like to train people narrowly so that they do one job really well and they usually don’t like the idea of a “jack of all Trades”. However, there is a new meaning to the phrase when there is need for more emphasis on multidisciplinary perspectives.  The crack really starts to appear when a scientist or engineer comes on board. It is probably for this reason that most design studios “collaborate” with an external party to run the technological/ scientific part of their project.

If the industry has accepted multidisciplinary work as a natural shift from the conventional methodology of execution, educational institutions should take their role in training the “renaissance men” who can smoothly position themselves in collaborative environment and be prepared to face multifaceted projects that they may have not been exposed to. Multidisciplinary design will only be successful in the real world when cross-disciplinary research is promoted in the body of the education.

During my undergraduate studies in Aerospace Engineering I was repetitively told to not waste time thinking about alternative projects and to focus on my tedious schedule and deadlines- I complied. It wasn’t until when I decided to apply for graduate studies that I realized how rigidly our educational systems are designed. The application forms often ask the potential applicants to choose a department and under every department there are distinctive disciplines that you can choose from. But, I was looking for something different.

My wide variety of interests was often pointed out as a weakness during my teenage years and so they would say, she is a “jack of all trades”. Therefore, I decided to follow one of my interests at undergraduate level, which was Aerospace Engineering. Longing to become an astronaut since childhood kept me going during the tough times as engineering student but the experience taught me that being a really good engineer would only take me as far as managing directing engineers who are equally good at what they do. I often found it painful to focus on one small aspect of a very large project with no connection to what the others were doing. Whether it was calculating the size of a fuel droplet that leaves the jet engine or analyzing the seismic loads on a reactor’s structure, I did not have any real perspective of how my work would impact society, who the end users were, or how my work was related to the overall goal of the project.

I was lacking the vision and the interaction between what I was practicing as an engineer and the connection with the outside world was lost. I was frustrated by the rigidness of how scientific knowledge is transferred to the educators in the university as well as the isolation I was experiencing in the work environment- the cubical layout of most of these environments didn’t help either. Group work usually meant completing specific tasks on an individual basis and when reports were due, the “isolated creatures” would come out of their nests and go into meeting rooms to report the outcome. I was intrigued how most people wouldn’t questions the way things were going for more than 15 years. The answer was in the way engineering has been practiced in the academia- a linear methodology that is heavily based on lecturing students and examining them. The question is handed over to the students and they are rarely asked to identify the problem themselves, or to challenge the question they’re given.

With emergence of new science and disciplines, the educational community has been trying to cope with a lag for the past few years. This is evident when one looks at new disciplines that didn’t exist in the educational system twenty years ago. (i.e. Nanotechnology, Interaction design, etc). What’s surprising however, is the sluggishness of the academia in shifting from the traditional divisions and departmental sections to multidisciplinary work that’s being practiced on daily basis outside the classroom.

I don’t think anyone would disagree with me in that there are no problems in the world (no matter how small, or specialized the problem is) that deal with one field of study and therefore can be isolated in one discipline. Even the most rigorous processes are affected by human factors when applied in real world situations. It is therefore, clear that engineers, as problem solvers, will need to be able to adapt themselves to the plasticity of world’s problems and be prepared to apply a new way of thinking when it comes to unfamiliar situations that they haven’t been exposed to. In my opinion, this only happens when problems are contextualized beyond fields of studies and people with specialties collaborate together without isolating the problem at any stage. We need more “jack and Jane of all trades” in order to accelerate a positive influence on our world.

While the ticket prices are predicted to go lower than their current price tag of $200K, it is foreseen that the general public will soon have the opportunity enjoy the experience of weightlessness. Getting the public engaged and updated on the progresses however, is certainly one challenge that needs to be addressed now. The role of education in doing so is extremely important in order to prepare the next generation for the future’s new travel destinations. If people and the private sector are going to play key roles in the future of the private space travel, it is crucial for them to be well informed about the hurdles and the benefits of the space travel. This will in turn lead to better engagement by a larger population and will culture a new generation of entrepreneurs and innovators who understand the challenges and complexities of living and working in this new environment. 

Credit: Virgin Galactic

I recently attended the Next generation of Suborbital Researchers Conference in Boulder, Colorado and I’d like to share some observations that I found very interesting. Firstly, the involvement of the female researchers in this conference, was notably higher than any other professional conference I had been to in the field of space studies. It appears that there is going to be a shift in the male dominated field of Aerospace.

There was also a tremendous amount of attention and time centered around education and the future of suborbital flights. Teachers, professors, and government workers seem to all agree that the K-12 and university institutions need to be more involved in the future of suborbital research and it is the space sector’s role to be more open with their present material, future plans, as well as be willing to get involved in all layers and stages of the education.

T use of social networking sites to publish and engage people was one of the great ideas that was discussed in the conference. The initiative to involve the public by use of social media was brought to out attention by the Planetary Institute- an organization that runs different projects to involve public in their missions. 

An example of this is the mars express visual monitoring camera. European Space Agency’s operation center began a blog in August 2008 to invite the public to process the images received by the camera. They asked the public to take the raw images and process them further. What was important in this initiative though, was the trust created between the space institutions and the general public. It was the first time that data was provided to public as well as the first time public involvement was used in the creation of the final work. Within a few hours someone responded to the post and sent this image back:

This view of Venus is processed by an amateur, Mattias Malmer from 78 Mariner 10 frames captured through orange and ultraviolet filters.

On October 2008 Richaerd Garriet, the game designer and entrepreneur took his first flight with the Space Adventure to the ISS for his 12-day travel in space. Since the flight, Garriet has been giving talks and lectures in number of conferences and has shared his journey to researchers and people in industry. One great innovation by him is the Sports in Space website where people can play different sports on different planets. The interactive design of the game is a great tool to teach people how certain actions vary under different gravitational conditions. 

http://www.challenger.org/sportsinspace/

Whether you dream about playing football in space or simply gaze at the blue planet from the window of the spaceship, the sky is the limit. So, buckle your seatbelt, we’re on the root to an exciting time in the history of flight.

References:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/virgin-galactic/

http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/imaging/data.html

http://www.challenger.org/sportsinspace/