11. Walk the walk.

Last week, one of the professors for my course on effective implementation said, "The real work doesn't happen in [class]. It happens out there, in your life."

After spending several hours yesterday in the cold, rainy streets of Boston with almost 100,000 other concerned Americans, I'm realizing Professor Hartmann was right. Going to one rally is a great start, but the real change will take shape when a large number of us build dissent and resistance into our daily lives.

I am continuing to push forward my projects (my own form of mini-resistance), but I feel inspired to start developing projects that are more directly confrontational.

Work In Progress

03/30/2025 -04/06/2025

Cartograph

This project continues to evolve in unexpected and fun ways. My user tests are now well underway with around nine individuals starting to use Cartograph and providing feedback on how to improve the experience.

The initial feedback suggests that my core hypothesis (that a visual and mostly analog tool for self-reflection) is compelling but needs a lot of refinement. I am already incorporating this feedback and the result is an almost game-like experience that incorporates "smart" illustrated prompt cards and a simple digital experience. Expect some fun and big changes over the next few weeks!

Informal Robotics

This class continues to be a bit of an emotional reprieve. My team and I are having fun in the lab and are exploring a relatively novel soft robotic mechanism that we hope to use to allow a jellyfish-like robot to traverse both water and land.

Looking forward

I've got about 5 weeks left in my program and a mountain of work ahead. I am excited because this journey with Cartograph has been long and winding, but I feel like I am FINALLY getting close to having something that I can bring to market and share

As always, thank you for reading this far and for sending me little notes. It's always really nice to hear from folks.

Until next week,

Max