Designers of every generation seem to have met with the same principal challenge at least once in their lifetime. And that is making a new technology more intuitive and ‘for the masses’. What I find intriguing is how this is going to play out over the next decade in the fields of AI, VR, customized medicine, efficient power generation & storage, and so on. Early in the life of most new advancements, it is embraced – warts and all – by enthusiastic supporters. But it takes deliberate experimentation and some missteps for it to be usable, intuitive and adaptable. I am interested in learning more about all aspects of this process.

I would dearly have loved to have taken a few years off and spent time with a host of experts in academia, research, and industry – to study these topics. But that takes a lot of money, and the process is quite tedious. Moreover, I am increasingly of the opinion that crafting your own learning journey has a lot of merit. You learn as much from the mistakes and dead-ends as you do from the wondrous new avenues.

Perhaps I can create just such a program for myself. I need to know what to learn, what to read, what to attempt (problems and projects), and who to learn from. Here, I will curate this set of resources and document my process. Along the way, I will also write down what worked and what didn’t.