006: The Spectrum of Craft ft. Leah Buechley and Ron Rael

Who are product managers? What do they do? How will the future of product management unfold? In this episode, we interviewed Shiva Rajaraman, an experienced product manager lead at Facebook who has also worked at YouTube, Spotify, and WeWork. We'll hear about his insights about the potential risks and future outlook of the data-driven product development process.

Everything can be seen from all kinds of perspectives, especially in design. Right and wrong, true and false, success and fail, yes and no, contrasting objects are common in our design decisions, and in our life. For Purin Phanichphant, art creation is a channel to communicate a million shades of grey and express his spiritual world.

Craft exists on a spectrum that encompasses disciplines, materials, tools, and cultures, all of which are constantly evolving. To explore the spectrum of craft and all of its permutations, the high and low end of craft, cultural linkages, traditions, tools, and materials, and the act of making, we spoke with Ron Rael and Leah Buechley, design professors interested in the culture of craft.

As designers, we often think of making as the act of taking abstract concepts and creating tangible products that can be manufactured and deployed. But what are ways of making that aren't so obviously tangible? We had the opportunity to meet with Lilly Irani, a design ethnographer activist, and professor at UC San Diego to talk about unconventional forms of making.

What does it take to implement future-facing design and concepts? What are the implications? Melodie Yashar is a co-founder, designer, researcher, instructor, and technologist who works with cutting edge technologies, such as 3D printing and robotics, with the focus on human factors, to create space architecture for human exploration and settlement on the moon and Mars.

We are living in a world where data has been used to influence almost every aspect of human life. Data and digitalization has changed the way we work with products and the way we produce products. We talked to an expert, Mike Kuniavsky a UX pioneer and lead researcher at Accenture, who works on applications that facilitate digital transformation in manufacturing.

How does Jaron Lanier become entangled with digital activism and why should we pay any attention to him? Well, it turns out he has a remarkable track record of predicting digital ethical issues way before his time. Jaron is a computer science philosopher, writer, and activist against giant social media platforms. Oh, and we almost forgot, he is also known for being the father of virtual reality.

Out of the over 1.2 million species ever discovered, only one has been observed to make tools that help create other tools: The human. One specific human, fittingly named Andrew "Heumann," represents the spirit of designing tools like no other. He is a designer, architect, and software developer who made a decade-long career out of creating digital tools to facilitate automation.