I started to think about how different theories constrain and open up the space for design but got caught up in trying to sort out how exactly these theoretic traditions (rationalism/cognitive science, phenomenology, activity theory) are similar and different. It would be nice to have some sort of philosophical foundations of HCI cheat sheet. Here…
Stephen Prince argues that “To date, theory has tended to minimize the importance of perceptual correspondences, but the advent of digital imaging demonstrates how important they are and have been all along.” Things like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park or the impossibly realistic landscape in True Lies each highlight problems with traditional film theory, exposing…
There are two ways that undertanding and working with things becomes more challenging: it’s too fundamental or it’s too complex. This idea is captured in Jeff’s 3 paradigms of art creation in multimedia tools: from scratch, primitives, and components. From scratch is so fundamental it’s hard. From components is so complex it’s hard. But primitives…
Jeff- I really loved your presentation… and I have a few questions. Or, rather, some themes from your talk that I was hoping you might elaborate on. Obviously, I don’t expect you to answer all these…but maybe you could comment on one or two 🙂 AMM >What are the defining characteristics of AMM? What is…
The readings so far in this course have generated so many questions in my mind having to do with the relationship between media and tools and intelligence and creativity. For instance… According to Buxton, “Both sketching and design emerged in the late medieval period, and this was not accident.” Did a rise in creativity follow…
Read more creativity and the design of tools, and more tools, and more tools…
I meant to ask this a while ago, after Erik’s lecture… What is the difference between a tool and a material?
The dialogue following Marty’s post raises some questions about why we design, what should the role of the designer be, and how do we value our designs (e.g. is beauty a need? is a particular design “superficial” or “deep”?). One distinction I see get thrown around a lot to describe design is the needs/desires distinction……
On pages 15-16, Manovich makes several interesting observations + Cultural representations are inevitably biased + Cultural objects both represent and construct. + Representations construct new referents He gives an example of hierarchical and non-hierarchical file systems to illustrate his point that software interfaces at as representations. Clay Sherky elaborates on Manovich’s example of hierarchical and…
Jeff asked Clearly, understanding the digital interface as a “material” with “qualities” is going to be very important in our ability to design a language of interaction design. What are some of the material qualities of the digital interfaces you use? This question got me thinking, and my initial comment to Jeff’s post somehow turned…
I was particularly drawn to two ideas in the piece by Gillian Smith. (i) Computation is a design material (of interaction design). (ii) Interaction design is still drawing on the language of previous creative modes, and has not yet fully developed an independent language of interaction true to the medium of computation, networks, and telecommunications.…
Interaction Culture 