As part of the Unfinished Business Lecture Series we are pleased to announce that we have an exciting line up for 2011.  The five new lectures in the new year will look at different aspects of design. Don’t miss out, join us now for a series rate of just $59.00.  

Unfinished Business Events are monthly lectures and workshops co-organized  and designed by Torch Innovation, Normative Design, and Strategic Innovation Lab at OCADU. The lectures share perspectives on creativity, design and innovation and the accompanying workshops provide attendees with practical skills that they can use in their teams and organizations.

The Complexity of Simplicity, January 20, 2011, 5:45pm to 7:30pm

DAN SAFFER, Kicker Studio

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." So said Albert Einstein. But how? How can you take complex pieces of functionality, put them all together and make them as simple as possible? This lecture will outline ways of framing problems, working through concepts, and creating affordances and interface layouts that emphasize and promote simplicity—even with difficult, powerful systems.

How to Tummel: Design for Conversation, February 16, 2011, 5:45pm to 7:30pm

HEATHER GOLD, Unpresenting 

How do you create the conditions for conversation for many people? How do people genuinely connect with each other and with you or your company?  Influenced by the web and her community of it's earliest makers, innovative comedian Heather Gold began creating a way to involve the "audience" in her shows, scale conversation and hasten intimacy over a decade ago.  In this lecture she'll show the basic differences between presentation and conversation and the assumptions underneath each. More entertainingly (and usefully) she demonstrates these ideas by creating a great, relevant conversation in the room so that all can feel the difference.

Understanding Culture for Design, March 10, 2011, 5:45pm to 7:30pm

STEVE PORTIGAL, Portigal Consulting

Culture is everywhere we look, and (perhaps more importantly) everywhere we don’t look. It informs our work, our purchases, our usage, our expectations, our comfort, and our communications.This lecture will explore the ways we can experience, observe, and understand diverse cultures to foster successful collaborations, usable products, and desirable experiences. 

Design of Visual Complex Networks, April 6, 2011, 5:45pm to 7:30pm

MANUEL LIMA, Microsoft Bing

Interested in the visualization of complex networks? This lecture will leverage the existing pool of knowledge from VisualComplexity.com to convey a current portrait of network visualization. It will illustrate some of its current trends and representation methods, and explore the reasons behind the recent outburst of interest for data visualization. It will highlight some seminal contemporary executions as well as remarkable examples from the past.

Exposing the Magic of Design, May 11, 2011, 5:45pm to 7:30pm

JON KOLKO, Frog Design

As the world deals with increasing complexity, both individuals and organizations are searching for a form of problem solving that can deal with the unprecedented levels of ambiguity.  This lecture will describe the "magical" process of design synthesis.  Design synthesis is a way of thinking about complicated, multifaceted problems of different scales with a repeatable degree of success.