Getting Simple

Nate Peters on democratizing design tools and using his design skills for good, dealing with internet junk, potential misuses of machine learning, and more.

Nate Peters is a computational designer and software developer with experience in design optimization, digital fabrication, and machine learning. Nate received his Master of Design Studies in Technology from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and his Bachelor of Architecture from Iowa State University. Currently he works in Boston as a software engineer in Autodesk’s AEC Generative Design Group. At Autodesk he has assisted in the design and construction of multiple large scale research pavilions, and is currently focused on Project Refinery, a new generative design tool for architects and engineers in the building industry.

Connect with Nate on NathanPeters.us, on Twitter at @_natepeters, and on Instagram at @nate_peters.

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Harvard University's Andrew Witt on the power of ruminating ideas, understanding complex problems, curating signals, geometric simplicity, introspective automation, and finding time for reflection.

Andrew Witt is co-founder, with Tobias Nolte, of Certain Measures, a Boston/Berlin-based office for design futures and an Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University. Trained as both an architect and mathematician, he has a particular interest in a technically synthetic and logically rigorous approach to form. His work has been shown at the Centre Pompidou, Barbican Centre, Futurium, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, among others.

Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn and Certain Measures.

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Scott H. Young on quickly mastering hard skills, acquiring knowledge, and becoming good at things that seem impossible to you right now.

Scott H. Young is an author, entrepreneur, and ultralearner. After learning MIT's 4-year computer science curriculum in less than twelve months, Scott taught himself four new languages in a year. In his book Ultralearning, Scott shares the principles and methods that he and other ultralearners employ to quickly master new skills, acquire knowledge, and become good at things that seem impossible to you right now.

Connect with Scott on scotthyoung.com, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

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Technologist and artist Cristóbal Valenzuela on powering your creative work with artificial intelligence, co-founding RunwayML to put machine learning in the hands of creators, and his take on simple living and creativity.

Cristóbal Valenzuela is a technologist, artist and software developer interested in the intersection between artificial intelligence and creative tools. He is co-founder of Runway and researcher at New York University ITP.

Previously, he co-founded Latent Studio, a creative studio specializing in machine learning and artificial intelligence. He also contributes to OSS and helps maintain ml5.js. His work has been sponsored by Google and the Processing Foundation and his projects has been exhibited in Latin America and the US, including NeurIPS, Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art, ARS Electronica, GAM, ACADIA, Fundación Telefonica, Lollapalooza, NYC Media Lab, New Latin Wave, DOCLAB, Inter-American Development Bank, Stanford University and New York University.

Connect with Cristóbal on his website, Twitter (@c_valenzuelab), or GitHub (@cvalenzuela).

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Artist and illustrator Pier Gustafson on living a simple life with what makes him smile, the messy creative process behind projects, clients, and deadlines, and being an artist in the twenty-first century.

Pier is an artist who presently designs maps, monograms, logos, invitations and other illustrations usually for print. His passion is drawing. Though he explores various media from simple pencil to the iPad he tends to favor vintage fountain pens, which he collects and repairs and sells to other artists and calligraphers. (A pen made 100 years ago still works and works better than anything made today.) He is a “maximalist” in that he surrounds himself with objects which can “spark joy” when arranged and juxtaposed in creative ways. His man-cave is complete with jury-rigged “stalagmites” made of shelves balancing atop filing cabinets filled with stuff which may be used in his art.

He does like to smile by making others smile. The art he creates for himself has a simple goal: to make you think and to smile.

He is single, has a sharp-fanged cat named Orca, plays the ukulele and rides a bright red, fat-tired bike to do his shopping.

He’s about to turn 63 years old, but still has yet to grow up.

Connect with Pier on YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, or his Website.

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Panagiotis Michalatos on the luxury of choosing to be simple and the emerging trend of simplicity, the power of intuition, questioning our creative interfaces and workflows, and his love for screens.

Pan Michalatos is an architect, lecturer in architecture technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Principal Research Engineer at Autodesk. Between 2006 and 2010 he worked as a computational design researcher for the London-based structural engineering firm AKT.

Along with colleague Sawako Kaijima, Pan provided consultancy, and designed computational solutions, for a range of high-profile projects. They have also developed a range of software applications for the intuitive and creative use of structural engineering methods in design.

Simplicity is an emerging trend; a luxury not everyone can afford.

For the last 10,000 years, human biology has barely changed — yet our lives feel more complex, accelerated, and stressful than ever before.

What are we trying to slow down from?

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Theme song Sleep by Steve Combs under CC BY 4.0. Background sounds of people playing golf, vehicles, dogs, bugs, and birds, happened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while we were recording.

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Nono Martínez Alonso on forgetting who you were trying to help, the main point behind creating tools, and the case of Machina, with Jose Luis García del Castillo y López.

Computer programs help us do things we couldn't do before. Often, programs provide new ways of doing what we were already able to do — faster, easier, more precisely — fostering experimentation and unleashing our creative potential.

At times, though, we get lost along the way. We focus on small details and forget about the whole picture. Trying to make the tool a bit better, we forget about what problem we were trying to solve, who we were trying to help, and why.

My friend Jose Luis (whom you might know from a previous episode) created Machina, an open-source program that intends to make a pretty hard task — controlling robots — a little easier.

In this episode, we learn about how Jose Luis managed to focus on why (and for whom) he was writing software; using Machina to help other designers quickly get going with robots.

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Theme song Sleep by Steve Combs under CC BY 4.0. A wink to Seth Godin's podcast, Akimbo, by mimicking his greeting (and goodbye) phrase.

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CEO of NuVu, Saba Ghole, on creating an innovation school & reinventing high school education; growth mindset; art and design as expressive mediums; changing places; simple life habits; technology; and more.

Opportunities to talk to people like Saba Ghole and learn about how they understand life and what drives them to do what they do every day, is what moves me to continue with the Getting Simple project.

"I had a chance to reminisce with Nono about what it means to get simple and embody a growth mindset on his very special podcast. Mixed in are bits about my childhood, my artistic pursuits, and my current love and passion, NuVu Studio." —Saba Ghole, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of NuVu Studio

If you're intrigued about how growth mindset can be taken to reality, listen to this episode and learn about how NuVu, an innovation school for middle and high school students, helps students build long-lasting core competencies and creative skills.

Saba Ghole (@sabarani) is an entrepreneur, designer and artist. Around 9 years ago, she co-founded NuVu Studio, an innovation school for middle and high school students. NuVu builds creative skills in youth with a strong focus on real world interdisciplinary projects. NuVu is based in Cambridge, MA, USA, but its pedagogy and programs expand to cities around the world. Prior to founding NuVu, Saba studied architecture and urban design at MIT. While working in architecture and planning firms, she focused on the re-design of urban centers and designing new health-science-technology buildings in the Middle East and Asia. Saba also has a passion for designing and building large-scale interactive art installations that use technology and biofeedback — like Pulse and Bloom, a widely-featured piece — to raise social awareness and strengthen community connection.

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Tesla's Matt Jezyk on his rituals to slow down and stay afloat amongst all the things competing for your attention; embracing change and automation; techniques to be more creative; the rationale behind his ten-year life cycles; why he just transitioned from Autodesk to Tesla; and a lot more.

Matt works as the Sr. Staff Software Engineer at Tesla in the group that designs and builds the "Gigafactories." He develops software to smooth out the design, fabrication, and construction process. Matt’s group is responsible for developing smart factories for upcoming Tesla products.

Prior to his current role, Matt was the Senior Engineering Manager for AEC Generative Design at Autodesk. He has been in the AEC industry for 23+ years and has spent the past 20 years developing Autodesk Revit and various other design tools. Matt helped build Revit Architecture and Revit Structure and led the team at Autodesk responsible for developing Dynamo (computational design) and Project Refinery (optimization and generative design). Dynamo is now being used around the world and has an amazing community of users who now teach these techniques at many events and conferences.

Matt's group also has explored new ways of building by connecting computational and generative design directly to digital fabrication tools and robots. Examples of this have been shown in the Autodesk BUILD Space in Boston and presented at conferences like ACADIA, SmartGeometry, and Robots in Architecture.

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Antonio García Guerra, PhD from the University of Oxford, on the importance of physical activity, social time, and information to be more creative and perform at your maximum cognitive capacity.

Antonio Garcia Guerra is a recently graduated PhD student from the University of Oxford. He was born in Badajoz (Spain), but grew up by the sea in Málaga. In his own words, "The sun didn't wash the nerd away." Antonio studied Biotechnology as an Undergraduate at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. Before graduating, he took a detour and stayed in Boston (USA); where he was privileged to visit Prof. Ali Khademhosseini tissue engineering's lab at Harvard, and remained as a visiting student at MIT. For his PhD, he joined Prof. Andrew Turberfield’s laboratory at the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, where he have developed novel theranostic CRISPR tools and several nano delivery systems for nucleic acid-based therapies.

"Whenever I have time, I love to go to music shows, and spend as much time as I can with my friends. I run on coffee, and enjoy pizza, maybe too much."

Connect with Antonio on LinkedIn.

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