Jack Moffett's Blog

2404

2404

Graphic design will change the world right after rock and roll does.

Graphic design will change the world right after rock and roll does.

David Carson

How I Use AI: Curriculum Design

AI is going to play a significant role in the class I’m teaching this semester. Just as my team is doing at Boeing, I’ll be encouraging my students to experiment with various ways AI can enhance their process and we’ll discuss how it’s impacting the industry.

As such is the case, it only makes sense for me to use AI to aid in the design of the course. I started by feeding ChatGPT this prompt:

I’m developing a curriculum for a masters level design course titled “Visual Communication for Innovators”. All students already have a design background. They are in the Master of Integrated Innovation for Products & Services program in the Integrated Innovation Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

My goal for the course is to teach them how to use visual communication methods in the context of a product or service development team where they will work closely with software engineers and architects, product managers, subject matter experts, and other designers. They should be able to effectively capture and visualize ideas in a way that promotes common understanding of problems and shared vision for solutions. They should understand how to deliver designs that developers can easily understand for implementation. They should know how to validate concepts with users.

The course should teach white boarding skills, facilitation techniques, storyboarding, prototyping, speculative design, and how AI can be used effectively in all of them.

This needs to be planned over 17 class meetings (Tuesdays and Thursdays). Each class is 1 hour and 50 minutes long. I’ll have 24 students. Most work will be done in teams. A secondary goal is to prepare them for their capstone projects, which will be sponsored by real companies like NASA, PNC, Canon, and Volvo.

I want you to help me plan the curriculum, schedule it out, and find appropriate resources and examples.

With that, it gave me a full-blown course outline. In fact, it gave me two and asked me to pick the one I preferred. That was more about the style of the response than the content, I think, but there were differences in the way the concepts were being prioritized and presented. Now, it wasn’t perfect by any means, and I spent several days adding things, removing things, rearranging, and revising.

At one point, I realized I hadn’t accounted for Thanksgiving and finals week, meaning I had too many class sessions in my plan. I explained this mistake, and in a matter of seconds, it adjusted the plan to fit the actual class schedule. Again, not perfect, but pretty close.

With the general outline of the course nailed down, it generated a syllabus for me ready to enter into Canvas. Now I’m going through session-by-session and having it help me block out my lessons.

There have been times that it has changed things without me asking it to. It always seems to want to embellish, even after I’ve decided something is the way I want it. For example, if I just ask it to change the order of a couple activities, it may very well rewrite their descriptions to include a discussion about something related.

I’m not convinced that the course is going to be better because I used AI. I think I would have ended up in pretty much the same place without it. However, it has reduced the time it is taking me to organize my thoughts and document everything. It’s also giving me more confidence that I’ve considered alternatives and settled on the best way to do things.

In this exercise, AI has definitely been more of a help than a hindrance.

Advanced Visual Communication for Innovators

In couple weeks, I’ll be teaching again. Last year, I designed a completely new curriculum for “Visual Communication for Innovators,” a half-semester class in the Master of Integrated Innovation for Products and Services (MIIPS) program within the Integrated Innovation Institute (III) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). This year, I assumed I would only need to make some minor adjustments, but a few weeks ago, I met with the director of the program, and she had other ideas.

After the class last year, I told her that the class was too big. Teaching around 50 students in a project-based course is really difficult. There just isn’t enough time for critique, and critique is the most important part of teaching design. On top of that, the integrated nature of the course made it impossible to meet the needs of all of the students. The program is comprised of designers, engineers, and business admins. The latter two need to learn the basics of design, whereas the designers need a challenge.

This year, we’re splitting the class into two sections: an advanced class for the designers and the class I taught last year for everyone else. That means I’m once again developing an entirely new curriculum.

I’m not complaining too much. It’s fun work. But it is a lot more work than I was expecting.

Monarch on Milkweed

Monarch on Milkweed

One Week

1. Meeting with Military Leaders — “War From Within”Trump addressed ~800 top officers at Quantico (Sept 30), telling them the U.S. faces an internal “war from within.”Urged training troops in American cities — naming San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — as “training grounds” to confront domestic threats.Warned officers that dissent could cost them “your rank, your future.”Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth echoed calls to end “woke” policies, loosen rules of engagement, and toughen physical standards.2. Declaration of Armed Conflict with CartelsTrump formally told Congress the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with certain drug cartels, citing them as terrorist organizations.Used this to justify military strikes against vessels linked to Venezuelan groups in the Caribbean.Critics warn this skirts Congress’s war powers.3. DOJ Restructuring and CutsJustice Department announced a sweeping reorganization:Disbanded the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces.Closed the Office for Access to Justice and Community Relations Service.Merged Tax with Criminal & Civil Divisions, restructured liaison offices.Roughly 275 positions affected, with 140 jobs eliminated outright.4. Immigration Courts & Military LawyersOver 100 immigration judges dismissed.Army Reserve & National Guard lawyers are being appointed as temporary immigration judges to reduce the backlog.Critics: many lack immigration law experience, raising due process concerns.5. Cuts to Clean Energy FundingCancelled $7.6 billion in federal grants for clean energy projects in 16 states.Most were in states that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, raising charges of political targeting.6. New Tariffs on Timber & FurnitureAnnounced tariffs under national security justification:10% on softwood timber/lumber.25% on kitchen cabinets & wood furniture (effective Oct 14).Threat of up to 50% tariffs unless trade agreements reached.7. NSPM-7: Domestic Terrorism ExpansionIssued a new National Security Presidential Memorandum expanding indicators of domestic extremism.Includes ideological stances like “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” or “anti-Americanism” as red flags.Civil liberties groups warn of overreach and chilling dissent.

You should find this concerning.

Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.

Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.

Jeffrey Zeldman

How I Use AI: Song Research

I’ve had a lot of fun writing the Ultimate Playlist posts. As a songwriter myself, I’m very interested in the stories behind the songs. Of course, some of the songs are a little more obscure than others, and there isn’t much information publicly available about them. Lyric Genius has been a good source for information, as has Wikipedia. But there have been a few songs for which Google has failed to find anything interesting.

For example, I knew for a fact that the song “Tommy the Canexican” by Eddie From Ohio was written about another singer the band was friends with. I knew this, because I attended a concert here in Pittsburgh at which the singer, whose name is Tom, was also in attendance, and they explained the connection. As I mentioned in my , I have a photo of my wife and I with EFO, and Tom took the picture. However, that happened in September of 2001, and I couldn’t remember who the artist was.

I turned to ChatGPT. It dug through interviews, fan Q&A’s, live set lists, album credits, and archives. It followed my clues about the date and location of the show, checking local press. I was able to give it the general location of the club, but not the name. It found Tom Prasada-Rao, a prominent singer-songwriter in the Washington, D.C. area (where EFO is located), but that wasn’t it. It offered to email the band.

Finally, I specifically stated that the singer was born in Mexico but moved to Canada—hence the theme of the song. That was the final clue it needed. The AI turned up Tom Landa. It couldn’t confirm that he performed with EFO in Pittsburgh on that date, but it did find that Tom and EFO both played at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in July of that year.

That was a lot of work to go to for one song in one of my silly blog posts, but I felt good having the accurate information to back up my personal story.

Here’s the photo. That’s me on the left beside Mike Clem, the bassist. Third from left is one of my wife’s co-workers, then Robbie Schaefer, followed by my wife Susie and Julie Murphy Wells. Susie and Julie were both pregnant. Another of my wife’s coworkers is next, and then Eddie Hartness, the drummer, for whom the band was named.

Ultimate Playlist: Men’s Names, U–Z

Ulysses by Franz Ferdinand
Taking its title from Homer’s wandering hero, this song uses the name as a metaphor for escapism, indulgence, and a restless search for experience.Leningrad by Billy Joel
Joel wrote this song after his six-concert tour of the former Soviet Union in 1987. It’s about Viktor, a real circus clown in Leningrad who traveled across Russia to see all six of Billy Joel’s concerts.Vincent by Don McLean
Subtitled “Starry Starry Night,” the song honors the tragic life and death of Dutch impressionist Vincent van Gogh. Don wrote the song on the veranda one morning while reading a biography of the artist.Virgil by Paul Simon
The Capeman is a Broadway musical written by Paul Simon about Salvador Agrón who committed a double murder in 1959. Virgil is a prison guard who submits that the main character doesn’t deserve to go to college or earn his freedom while Virgil can’t afford his own children’s education.Virgil’s Refund by Michael Clem
I’ve found no evidence showing that this song is based on an actual letter received by Mike or his Eddie From Ohio bandmates, but it seems plausible.Washington On Your Side by Lin Manuel Miranda
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Aaron Burr complain about Alexander Hamilton’s policies while wistfully wishing for George Washington’s favoritism.Captain Wedderburn by Great Big Sea
This is a contemporary take on an old Scottish ballad from 1785 or before. There are many renditions with different titles and variations on the lyrics, which find a woman challenging Wedderburn with a series of riddles she doesn’t expect he can answer. To her surprise, he answers them all correctly and takes her to bed.You Are Old, Father William by They Might Be Giants
The Johns set Lewis Carroll’s poem from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to music.Down On the Corner by Creedence Clearwater Revival
This catchy tune depicts a fictional band, Willy and the Poor Boys, who play on the street corner. Amusingly, the name of the band was inspired by Winnie the Pooh.Doctor Worm by They Might Be Giants
The song was derived from many discussions about “Dr. Love” by Kiss. It may seem a little nonsensical, but it’s about a person who has a fantasy about who they want to be, but nobody else will buy into it.Yoda by “Weird Al” Yankovic
This parody of the Kink’s “Lola” is sung from the viewpoint of Luke Skywalker as he meets Yoda, soon to be his mentor, in The Empire Strikes Back.My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors by Moxy Früvous
I put this song at the end of the playlist because it name drops a bunch of authors, most of which are male.We Didn’t Start The Fire by Billy Joel
I chose this song as the finale as it lists rapid-fire over fifty men from history.

And there you have it: 242 songs containing men’s names. I didn’t find songs for X or Z—all other letters are accounted for. I should also note that this playlist dwarfs the playlist, which came in at 164 songs. I found it interesting that the majority of songs about women were about generalized women: Emily or Sherry or Wendy weren’t specific people and were only given a first name. Most of the songs about men, on the other hand, were referring to a specific person, be it from history or a character in fiction, often including a last name.

Should you want to listen to the , I’ve created it on Spotify.

Lower Harbor

Lower Harbor