Flomerblog


Is a grand piano a good product?

June 17th, 2023

Grand pianos are remarkable objects. In the hands of the right pianist, it can bring an audience to tears. We cart pianos around to funerals, graduations, and weddings. Seemingly every important occasion would welcome a piano with open arms. An alien observing earth might call them "meaning machines" ... read more


Stakeholder-Based Design, an AI essay

May 7th, 2022

People are always arguing for data driven design, user centered design, emotional design, etc. but there's one kind of design that gets neglected far too often - stakeholder-based design. It has a bad name because employees generally don't like being told what to do (sigh) but it turns out that ... read more


How I go about iterating on products

December 20th, 2021

As I have gained more experience as a product designer, I think it has generally gotten easier for me to navigate the process of making products. That's not to say that all my ideas are good. Most of them are bad! But I do have a much easier time figuring ... read more


Play as a Right vs. Play as a Tool

April 4th, 2021

What if educational toys are actually a violation of children's basic rights? As someone who has spent a lot of my career designing toys with educational goals, this would be a pretty big blow to my work. I've always thought that learning is an inherently good thing, so why would ... read more


Reflections on the limits of Consequentialism

September 12th, 2020

I was recently the victim of a crime for the first time. It was just property crime - everyone was safe - but it still had a profound effect on me. "So this is what everyone is so upset about," I thought. In San Francisco, Nextdoor is flooded ... read more


A Letter to Ryan as a Student

July 18th, 2020

So many of the ideas I had about design, a career, my place in the world, have been completely flipped on their head lately. I wanted to write myself a letter, as a means to process some of the thoughts I'm having. First things first, therapy is an awesome thing ... read more


Self-driving Cars & Interpersonal Relationships

May 12th, 2020

I've recently been learning more about machine learning, and I had a realization late at night that I thought was worth sharing. It's an example of how studying computation can be useful for developing ways of thinking outside of computation. The seed for this realization was planted when I watched ... read more


My Experience Working at a Software Startup

September 19th, 2019

From May until September, 2019, I was working at a software startup, Resource. Ever since first hearing Joe Gebbia's story about Airbnb while I was at RISD, I've been fascinated by the story of going out to California (where I was born) and working with a team starting something from nothing. ... read more


孩子该不该玩枪?Should Kids Play With Guns?

January 21st, 2019

During my visit to Anji last year, I saw and experienced a number of things that deepened my understanding of play and its power to help children understand the world around them. One of the most memorable was a conversation between a school principal from Anji, and a principal from ... read more


In Defense of Robot Love

July 3rd, 2018

I have a recurring daydream that my future teenage daughter comes to me on a Sunday afternoon and asks for 10 dollars. "What for?" "Wanna watch a movie with Eric." "Who's Eric?" "He's my boyfriend." "Digital?" "Dad don't use that ... read more


Understanding a Brand Through Play

March 10th, 2018

I've been doing freelance brand design work on the side for a few years. Each time I do go through the process, I become a bit more comfortable and confident in my methods. This year, I finally feel like I'm able to let my branding process be informed by my ... read more


What Chamber Music Taught Me about Learning

January 27th, 2018

Last night, I participated in a chamber music gathering at a friend's place. It was an interesting event to think about in the context of learning. It reminded me a lot of the samba school that Seymour Papert talks about in Mindstorms. There was an equal mix of amateurs and ... read more


Learning About Personas Through Play

November 12th, 2017

I was very lucky to recently join Adriana Young's class at Parsons/The New School. We were looking at User Personas for the students' projects. They are doing human centered design, which basically means you try to understand what people need/what their problems are before you start to design ... read more


Ways of Knowing & How to Learn Them

October 4th, 2017

At littleBits, we have a way of thinking about different types of knowing. We sort them into three categories: Knowledge Skills Perspectives Knowledge is the kind of knowing that you access like a stapler. If I have a problem (two pages not connected) I just apply the stapler, and my ... read more


Play Memories from my Childhood

October 2nd, 2017

In the first Anji Play newsletter, Jesse, Chelsea, and the Anji Play team offered the following exercise: When your goal is to convince someone to take an action, to change their stance or to change their community, you must first allow them to identify your ideals within their own experience. &... read more


Reflecting on Lifelong Kindergarten

September 19th, 2017

I just read Mitch Resnick's book Lifelong Kindergarten, which I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in learning and play and how they intersect. I wanted to write down some of the parts that I found to be the most thought provoking. This post will touch on the approach ... read more


My Body Band Process

August 16th, 2017

This is one of my favorite projects from my time at RISD. Major shoutout to Ben Basseches and Erik Lack for their major contributions to the project. Below are the user testing sessions in order of appearance. Q: Does the interaction between moving a muscle and hearing a sound facilitate ... read more


Code Kit Process

August 15th, 2017

The Code Kit was by far the biggest undertaking I've ever done as a designer. Over the course of my one year on the project, by the numbers the team completed (estimated): 200+ invention ideas 100+ code block ideas 60 collateral prototypes 60 pages of storyboards 45 user testing sessions 10 photo or video shoots 4 iterations ... read more


Lessons from the Educator Advisor Comittee

August 1st, 2017

In the development of the littleBits Code Kit, Chloe Varelidi created an amazing community of educators that were passionate about the Code Kit. I learned so much from the experience that I thought it deserved a blog post of its own. The Educator Advisory Committee was composed of a very ... read more


Reflections on Papert

July 31st, 2017

When Seymour Papert passed away last year, it really inspired me to learn more about his work and the impact it has had on my work. In reading through Mindstorms, and listening in on Thinking about Thinking about Seymour a few things came to mind and I just want to ... read more