Engineering News, October 10, 2005

October 10, 2005 Vol. 77, no. 7F

WORD UP: ME graduate student Catherine Newman with her MOTTO postcards. Each card contains six sayings of inspiration. (Photo Credit: Rachel Jackson)

Better than a horoscope and as much fun as a fortune cookie, without the calories

Every month, subscribers to MOTTO receive a postcard in the mail with six sayings. They aren’t your typical quotes of the month and range from thought provoking (“If you can help someone turn information into knowledge, if you can help them make sense of the world, you win.”) to goofy (“Yo, I think these Band-Aids give me street cred.”)

ME graduate student Catherine Newman (B.S.’03 ME) created the MOTTO postcards as a way “to express a feeling or inspire an alternative perspective” for her subscribers. The postcard features words or sayings “to laugh at and throw away, or adopt for a day, or live by, whatever you decide,” she explains.

Newman works in ME professor Alice Agogino’s BEST (Berkeley Expert Systems Technology) lab, where researchers specialize in design theory. So when she came up with the idea for MOTTO last spring, Newman carefully considered the product design. She chose a postcard format because it was something people could easily discard without guilt, but still enjoy getting in the mail. And there are six sayings so readers have choices. “For me, that’s a statement about people having many different facets to them,” she says. “Not all the sayings will speak to everyone. It’s okay to have a single solution for a math problem, but it’s not meant for people.”

To create MOTTO, Newman collects phrases from a variety of sources, including billboards, song lyrics, or overheard snippets of conversation. Then she designs it on her computer, picks out the paper, sends it to the printer, and hand addresses each one. Today, she counts about 60 subscribers, who’ve each paid $15 for 10 issues. People have responded positively, but Newman says her goal isn’t to make a killing or even start a business (she’s just beginning to make back her initial investment). Her own motto right now is simple: just produce another collection of 10 cards.

Need a MOTTO of your very own? Go to www.postmotto.com for more information.

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