Dutch Design - Day 1 - Walking Tour "Hi Swan"

Today was another rough morning, but less so. It was a bit of a hassle for me, Joanne, Steven, and Kenneth as we had to shift hotels again and having to deal with moving our luggages. Steven wasn't able to sleep much and I couldn't fall asleep after I woke up at 4am. We decided to just give up on trying to sleep and woke up at 8am to get some breakfast.

Looking around the Bos En Lommer neighbourhood in the morning

Strolling through nearby Erasmuspark was a nice awakening as we made our way over to a place I found on yelp, Broodje Daan. The cafe was a very gezellig breakfast hangout. You could feel the character of the neighbourhood as you see the locals coming in to have their morning meals. Our waitress was really nice though her English wasn't good at all, but that made it more fun trying to interpret the menu as they only had a Dutch version. The sandwiches from this place are delicious and the overall cost of the meal is cheap. I would recommend the ones with egg and cheese. The one I ordered was a pekelvlees (vleeswaren) sandwich which was some type of cured meat, I'm not exactly sure what it was, but probably pork. Definitely worth visiting if you are in the neighbourhood looking for a breakfast place or coffee.

Erasmuspark

Broodje Daan

Pekelvlees vleeswaren met koffie

(Random side note: saw a sheep at a local nearby school/playground)
After returning to our apartment, we braved the descent down the stairs with our luggages and trekked our way to the long term apartment Htel Amstelveen. We hit a few bumps in transit getting lost and getting off on the wrong stations but we managed to make it out there on time before our scheduled meeting of 11am.

Stressed at getting lost

Htel Amstelveen

We had a brief respite to get some groceries and rest up before we headed downtown to start our walking tour. Prior to departing, we had a brief meeting to go over our objectives and the general plan of attack for the tour and orientation.

Team briefing

We started by taking the Tram 5 line from Ouderkerkerlaan in Amstelveen to Amsterdam Centraal. We walked down Oosterdokskade to visit the Amsterdam Public Library. It is an amazing sight and I think it is one of the best libraries I've been in. The view at the top is also a beautiful sight to see central Amsterdam from the northern point of the region.

Amsterdam Centraal station

View from the top of the library

Claudy Jongstra designed tactile wall

Claudy Jongstra designed tactile wall

Amsterdam Public Library

Entering into the center of Amsterdam, we made our way down the Damrak and took a brief look at the Beurs van Berlage building. Brief only because we couldn't enter the main hall, but we walked around and through the cafe. Working down through Dam Square and then into more of the Grachtengordel. We encountered a funny sight as we saw a swan minding its own business in the canals being annoyed by two European men who kept saying "Hi Swan" over and over again for 5 minutes.

To get a better view of the city, we took a tour of the church tower of the Zuiderkerk. It was a great experience climbing up the wooden staircases and learning about how the bells operate. The view from the top was spectacular as I got a 360 degree view of the city around the tower. I had a somewhat arduous time going down the stairs due to my size, but it was really fun traversing it. It reminded me a little about exploring the church towers in Assassin's Creed games.

Next stop, Droog! YAY. After two previous trips to Amsterdam, I was finally able to get a chance to check out Droog and the Droog Hotel. This is a designer's paradise for seeing design work. It was really meaningful for me because I have researched a lot about the products and the companies in my previous design classes that were presented and showcased in the store.

Briefly passing by Rembrandtplein, we made our way towards De Pijp and got a quick view of the Sarphaatipark before we ended our tour with a refreshing drink a la fresca at a bar called Chocolatebar.

Beautiful day in Amsterdam!

Food Notes:
I made my own lunch today from groceries bought at Albert Heijn. I really enjoyed my delicious sandwich made from Tijger brood bread, with some mosterd plakken cheese, ossenwurst (ox sausage), and topped with some Calvé mayonnaise. YUM!

I also picked up these delicious cookies from AH. These 'kletskoppen' are AMAZING. They are also known as Bruges Lace Cookies. I had no idea what they were (and I am hoping to continue purchasing  and trying out new random food and treats that I have no idea what they are to explore culture in a food medium). =D

Elan picked up some Vla today which I got to try. It's some type of custard and I'm already wanting to go buy some for myself! Hehe

Highlights of the day:
-Amazing weather
-settled into our apartments where we will be for 3 weeks
-visiting the Amsterdam Public Library was a treat to see a well-designed architectural landmark
-got to visit Droog!
-crazy Europeans saying "Hi swan!"

Overall it was an amazing day as the beautiful weather was accommodating for us and I can only hope the weather will be like this for our entire trip.

Day 0: Dutch Design In-field - Arrival into Amsterdam

Since I got accepted into the Dutch Design Field School program back in December, it feels like we, the groep, has been preparing all term for when we arrive in the Netherlands.

I took the 16:00 KL0682 flight from Vancouver to Amsterdam travelling with my fellow groepees Kenneth, Steven, and Joanne. The 9-hour flight was long and I guess it was as comfortable as it could be.  We had an adventure as we landed at Schiphol (at 10am) trying to figure out how to get to our AirBnb hotel. Although I have been here in Amsterdam before, I was still disoriented. We took a roundabout trip going down to Amsterdam Centraal and then getting our OVchipkaarts only to go back on the same route to Amsterdam-Sloterdijk to get on the right trams.

We had a difficult time traversing the stations and trains with our luggages having to lug it up and down stairs (and also having to loop back on the same stairs because we went the wrong way). *Kadunk* *Kadunk* *Kadunk* up and down so many sets of stairs.
As we finally got on the right tram down to Bos En Lommer, we spent another half an hour trying to read the directions and walking+looping around in the rain before we found it. Upon finding our apartment at 1pm, we were happy to finally be out of the rain until we saw more stairs, and then commence another session of lugging our suitcases up three flights of classic tiny-step Dutch staircases *Kadunk**Kadunk**Kadunk*.

We were greeted by our host Margarite who was really nice in welcoming us in. Most of us were tired from the flight and we promptly fell asleep and slept away most of the afternoon. We got up around 6pm and got a chance to meet our other AirBnb host Max.

We didn't want to really take the tram somewhere else so we explored the area around our hotel. Explored the Bos En Lommer area a bit and walked for a few hours looking for a place to eat, we wandered to the Westergasfabriek area near Westerpark and had our dinner at Toko MC. This area is really nice with the greenery especially at sunset providing great photography opportunities.

Things that really hit on day 1:
-OVChipkaarts are not the easiest system to learn, especially when you don't know where the check-in stations are at the train stations
-Getting lost in Amsterdam is really easy
-Stay out of the bicycle lanes. No. Really. They will mow you down.


Onwards to Day 1 tomorrow when our in-field experience officially starts!

On the KLM flight!

Untee lugging her stairs down the first wrong stairs detour at Amsterdam-Sloterdijk station

More stairs *kadunk*

Lost in Bos En Lommer

Asking for directions from locals = not helpful

YAY. We found our hotel

The apartment's classic Dutch staircase

Kunstenhuis at Westergasfabriek

The canal by Westerpark

Dutch Design Prefield Research - Rotterdam Architecture

Erasmusbrug by Niels Dukker

I just finished a presentation this week on Rotterdam architecture to my Dutch Design field school group and I was really excited about presenting the Erasmusbrug in Rotterdam. I dived into studying more about cable-stayed bridges and went on a tangent during my presentation talking about the technicalities of bridges especially with the different types of cable-stayed bridge designs. My fascination of it was also coupled with the Erasmus Bridge's secondary personality of being a bascule bridge and I also went on a sidebar talking about the difference between single-leaf and double-leaf bridges.
It is starting to hit me now how soon I will be departing for field school. I am hypnotized and intrigued with all the research we are doing and the build-up of preparation and anticipation.

One really big aspect is that I was able to visit most of the cities we will be visiting in the Dutch Design/Northern Europe Field School. I have seen a lot of the sights before but was not familiar with the relevance and information as I am studying them now. I am anticipating an in-depth experience of comparing the stark contrast in seeing things without and with knowledge and analyzing the perception from both perspectives.

Self-Signalling

I'm reading Dan Ariely's The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie To Everyone. One of the ideas being covered is making me think hard now about certain behaviours of people.
Ariely talks about the idea of self-signaling, a concept used by social scientists to explain behaviour that occurs when a person acts a certain way and influences themselves. Ariely describes this:

"The basic idea behind self-signaling is that despite what we tend to think, we don't have a very clear notion of who we are. We generally believe that we have a privileged view of our own preferences and character, but in reality we don't know ourselves that well (and definitely not as well as we think we do). Instead, we observe ourselves in the same way we observe and judge the actions of other people - inferring who we are and what we like from our actions."

The research the book describes is about running an experiment regarding wearing a branded product. They found that when the participants thought they were wearing counterfeit products (which they weren't), the participants were more likely to cheat and be dishonest at a certain task. This indicates some type of negative self-signaling where the individual loosens their moral restraint merely by the fact that they believed that they were wearing a fake product. Not only does this make people more likely to cheat, but it also causes them to think others are being dishonest as well.

While the above example is about self-signalling regarding behaviour, I am also thinking about actions that drive self-signalling or vice versa, self-signalling behaviour driving actions. Would I do something because it would make me feel or think better about myself? I think it is a good topic to ponder on and see how the subconscious can make decisions for us without conscious thought. (On a side note, this is related to self-perception theory by Daryl Bem).

Usually people only think about social-signaling where their actions and behaviour are driven by what they want to reflect to the people around them, however, with exposure to this idea, now I find myself having to think how my own behaviour is driven by what I wear, surround myself with, and the actions I take.

I find myself considering the relationship of self-signalling with behavioural priming.

Researching more about signalling theory in general, I am really fascinated with how signalling is ingrained in the psyche of all life and not just humans.

Interaction Design Methods Midterm Portfolio

I'm currently taking a class on Interaction Design Methods (IAT333) and we just finished our midterm portfolio at http://team100percent.wordpress.com.

We're currently researching a prenatal yoga group as our interaction research participants.
We have launched cultural probes, and through analysis of these probes, created personas and foundation sheets. Exploring these personas, our team developed informances and journey frameworks to try and understand possible problems that exist in our participant's lives.

Our current problem definition is about reducing back pain and improving mobility for these pregnant (and also post-partum!) soon-to-be mothers.

Our team had some fun especially with convincing one of our team to pretend to be pregnant and act out a scenario :D

Haema

Haema is a project designed to create critical reflection. It plays on people's sense of safety and security with the sight of blood. This is a speculative design meant to create a conflict in understanding. For the person wearing the shirt, they are concerned about the welfare of someone in their family while bystanders are concerned about the health of the person appearing to be bleeding.

The xx - Coexist

The xx's (iTunes) new album Coexist comes out September 11th, 2012. I love their music. They are classified as alternative, but I think it's a little more like ambient alternative with their very chill, soothing melodies.
Definitely check out their eponymous debut album, The xx, as well if you like what you hear.

If you have a chance take a listen and take a look at their data visualization that tracks how their music is shared. The visualization is pretty cool at seeing how the hmm... not the social network, but rather the human network of people sharing between distant places.

Thinking about thinking

I just recently finished reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. I'm probably shifting away from cognitive psychology books for the next little while as this has been a very comprehensive read on the history and very thorough breakdown of the current state of cognitive psych and behavioural economics.

This is a dense read in terms of the amount of content but is a good book for those wanting an in-depth tour of the landscape of thinking, decision making, rationality, memory and the far reaching consequences it has in daily life, economics, politics, and the understanding (or at least the observation of how) people make their decisions.

Thinking, Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in the field of psychology and economics and of the previous books I've talked about before. There is a tendency for these books to eventually cover the same concepts and cases, but this is a very thorough guide for those who are not as familiarly versed with the pitfalls of human decision making. Even if you are well read in this field, it's always good to read about the subject from one of the foremost experts in the field. Daniel Kahneman is one of the world's leading psychologists, a Nobel prize winner in economics for his work on prospect theory (which is definitely covered in the book!), and considered as the father of behavioural economics.

minimalMarvel - Avengers

I'm enjoying the recent discoveries of illustrations, posters and wallpapers of minimalistic superhero + typography posters, the Avengers recreated as medieval knights and adorable illustrations, half-faced portraits, splatter paintings, art deco posters.

I'm a big Marvel fan and with limited illustration skills I relied more heavily on typography principles.
This is an exploration in type, and more specifically colour, as each character in the Marvel (or hero) universe has a very particular colour scheme. Since I'm just having fun, I'm mostly trying out different art styles which is really fun trying to learn and change really rapidly between each work.

This set is specifically the Avengers as I just finished watching the movie (which I thought was amazing!) as well as the first season of the animated 2010 series The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

I'm looking forward to doing more of these. =D

minimalMarvel - Avengers

(I know there's still a lot of Avengers to go, and that I haven't done Hulk and Black Panther for part of the original Avengers, but I need a break for now and I just want to show what I've finished).

A Typographical Kind of Day

PBS Off Book
I am really starting to fall in love with PBS' Off Book (@PBSoffbook) series and the different topics they cover. Here are a few of the more interesting ones that are typography-related.







Books on Typography

This list of 10 Essential Books on Typography by Maria Popova over at Brain Pickings (which is one of my favourite sites for learning and overall good stuff) is a good list for typography fans and enthusiasts. One of the recommendations listed is Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton. I have to admit it's one of my beloved typography books especially because it was the required textbook for my first graphic design course. I highly recommend it as the first book for those just starting to learn typography or graphic design! =D

Superhero Typographic Classifications

[image from Behance]

Matthew Olin showed his project, Superhero Typographic Classifications, at his MFA Thesis Exhibition in Dec 2011 with a series of typographic posters and correlating classifications of typefaces with specific superheroes relating characteristics between both to let people connect the qualities and drawing the similarities within the paired relations.

Introversion Follow-up: Myths

I just saw a tweet about this article: 10 Myths About Introverts. It's highly relevant to my previous post and it references a book that I want to check out called The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World by Marti Laney, Psy. D.

The title of the book makes the allusion to my point in the previous post of how societal norms is an extroverted world. I'm glad I looked this book up on Amazon though as one of the comments has given potential future avenues of research into discovering different types of introverts.

Quiet

Take a look at this TED video of Susan Cain on Quiet, which I recommend watching first, and then read the book afterwards if you're still interested on this topic of introversion.



If you're still interested, this leadership talk at Google dives into her research a little bit more.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

by Susan Cain [thepowerofintroverts.com]

I love this book. Cain has enlightened me on how people have internalized the values of extroversion and society-driven expectations that everyone should have an outgoing personality. Society has given rise to the outspoken individual usually becoming the ones rising to roles of leadership regardless if they are the ones who have the best ideas or qualifications. For me, this drives at the underlying concept beneath the social norms that drives me to be more talkative even when I don't feel comfortable doing so, and wonder why it's driving me to do so after the fact.

Introversion and extroversion is commonly stereotyped as the only two polar personality types, but Quiet delves into the deeper discussion of exploring the personality attribute as a spectrum. It's given me a better understanding of myself and where I fall in the spectrum and allowed a flash of insight into why I feel like I fluctuate between the two opposites (and rather how it's moving in between different points in the spectrum). Identifying who we are as individuals on this spectrum is critical to comprehending ourselves in forming our identity, and after doing so, allows for strategy in putting ourselves in the optimal environment with the appropriate amount of stimulation. (The idea of stimulation is explained in the book of how introverts/extroverts require different amounts of stimulation).

I have learned some considerations that I will apply into my future relationships in dealing with people as this has allowed me to open my mind in understanding how people function. What I will take most is to apply this knowledge when dealing with group dynamics and making sure to listen even more carefully to those who are quiet and making sure that the volume of those who like to talk isn't forcing me to only listen to them.