I just watched the One More Thing event about the new Apple M1 chip. I noticed on social media many people treat it as just another announcement of a new chip—better performance, higher efficiency. However, I believe it’s more than that. Here are my quick thoughts.
Continue reading “Quick Thoughts on Apple Silicon M1 Chip”
Author: Catalium
My Comment on California’s Reopening Plan
I rarely comment on social news or politics, but I just heard California is reopening its economy—people start gathering and dining in restaurants—while it keeps popping up 3K more COVID patients each day. I’m deeply concerned about the situation in the coming cold weather.
Maybe for economic reasons, people have to work to make a living. But if we do it in the same way as we did pre-COVID, we spent 6 months fighting the virus in vain.
People tend to forecast the trend of COVID transmission based on the stat chart. When the daily new case gets to a lower level, they cheer and vow for reopening.
But I hold a strong opinion that the visual trend on the chart is MEANINGLESS for forecast—for a virus-based pandemic, each day is DAY ONE. Whenever there is one active carrier on the street, the exponential growth could spark again.
Attached two screenshots from JHU’s stat site. Data from European countries have proven my opinion. Take the Netherlands as an example, in June, the Netherlands government believed the virus was in control and thus lifted bans allowing bars and restaurant to reopen. Then from the second half of June, we can see a surge in the infection (COVID has a latency period of 7–14 days). And it went way beyond the first wave.
So why California is so confident it’s the time to reopen? If they don’t care about the China experience, does it bother to take a look at Europe? Do Californians want to lock down again when the daily new case jumped to 25K?
A friend of mine’s parents who live in California were just diagnosed with COVID. I feel truly sad about it. And I genuinely hope the politician can prioritize people’s life and death beyond economic interest. Money only matters when people are living well!
Uncle Sam, please be consistent, please be resilient, please make prudent decisions for the sake of human life.
Postscript 01/07/2021
Almost four months after the original post, California now books 40k new cases per day. 10x the level when they loosened the control.
Conceptual Design: Nest Water
The case I’m sharing is a small piece of work I had done at UW for the Industrial, Interaction, Visual Design Studio. Please be aware that this was not meant to be a complete design project, but a minor exercise for us to practice using a design guideline to expand an existing brand’s product portfolio. So the persona analysis, user journey walkthrough, full scope of workflow chart and visual language definition process was omitted.
The conceptual design was based on Nest’s business model, tech capability and design language.
Background
Assignment for TECHIN 524 course at UW GIX—Nest New Product Design Brief
General Objectives
- Imagine and communicate a potential new product design and identity to propose as an addition to the Nest portfolio
- Produce a design brief that outlines the visual, interaction, and industrial design considerations
- Develop a logotype for the product name
Date of Finish
August 11th, 2018 (we spent several days to finalize the concept, I finished the design and document in one day.)
About the Team
Ryan Wu, Maksim Surguy
Role in the Project
I developed the concept based on Maksim’s original input. I finalized the physical design and designed the whole digital experience. The original digital experience was in grayscale wireframe format. I spent one night to explore the visual language and finish the GUI for the version posted here.
Road Trip Around Western Washington and Oregon
In the past holiday season (Dec. 2018), my friend and I had a road trip around Western WA & OR.
We spent 4 days touring around the Cascade Range, experienced heavy snow on the Stevens Pass Highway, mist in the Yakama Indian Reservation, gale in the Columbia River Valley, breeze along the Pacific Ocean Coast, thundershower in the very south end of the Olympic Peninsula.
I’m here to share pictures I took during the trip. At the end of this post, there’s a video I made with clips from the camera, the dash cam, and my phone. I hope you find it enjoyable.
Continue reading “Road Trip Around Western Washington and Oregon”
What I Have Learned in This 15-Month Intensive Master of Science in Technology Innovation Program at University of Washington GIX
Why I Write This?
December 14th, 2018 was my last day on enrollment at the University of Washington’s Global Innovation eXchange Institute (GIX). I graduated from there with a Master of Science in Technology Innovation degree.
There have been some requests from grad school applicants asking me for first-hand information on the study experience at GIX. To make the information accessible for more people, I am writing this post to share my observation and reflections on the journey.
Who Am I?
To better understand my perspective, you need to know more about my background. Before coming to GIX, I had spent five years in the industry—two years at a Beijing-based startup as Product Manager and experience designer, three years as a User Experience Designer at consultancies. I have a B.Eng. in Industrial Design degree. I learned how to code in Python and develop web layout with HTML/CSS by myself before coming to GIX. To know more about me, please check my LinkedIn.
Things You Need to Know
There are two tracks at GIX so far, MSTI and Dual-Degree. Dual-Degree has components from both UW (MSTI) and Tsinghua University (MEDSIT). Dual-Degree students share the MSTI track with MSTI-only students; in addition, they need to spend half a year at Tsinghua in Beijing for further study and research. Although the MSTI part is shared, Dual-Degree students need to do some research work even while on the MSTI track. So the experience of the Dual-Degree student could be slightly different from MSTI-only students. I was an MSTI-only student, so what I share here solely applies to the MSTI-only track.
Please be advised that what I write here are subjective, other cohort students might agree or disagree with my comments. I encourage you to reach out to past graduates who have a similar background with you for feedback which would align with your track. The program is evolving, we the first cohorts have given significant feedbacks to GIX for iterations. For instance, the sequence of the course for Cohort 2 is different from ours. It is a living program, everything is going better and better.