#11 - Nik Spurgetis

At one point, I said I was not an I300 loser, but it seems that I am, as I totally forgot to post this yesterday :-/

Kaizen is analagous to our idea of continual redesign. When I see the word kaizen, my mind isolates the "zen" and that evokes feelings of wisdom and peace; taking it slow and steady. Thus, my personal interpretation of kaizen is colored by the notion of tiny, inspired changes instead of huge overhauls.

One concept my group has for Project 6 (pre-kaizen) is that of a glorified tablet computer serving as the dinner table in a restaurant (see: Microsoft Surface). Without going into too much detail of what exactly would be displayed on the table, our first vision of this system was that the whole tabletop was going to be a touch-responsive screen. However, this would probably prove to be "overkill," as we would probably not fill the whole area with content, driving component costs up, and being too much of a distraction.

Applying the concept of kaizen, we decided that the screen area should be limited to the center of the table. This modification of screen position is ostensibly cosmetic, but it changes so much about the overall design--now parents can easily see what their children are doing on the computer, and the content is much less likely to be obscured by dishes, silverware, etc.