I noticed that the generic ACM template that was posted earlier on the blog is actually a little different than the official CHI format found here: http://chi2008.org/chi2008pubsformat.doc I’m sure that both templates are acceptable and not much different in length. Basically the CHI format has larger body text but smaller section headings. However I do…
I was looking at some portfolio sites for inspiration and came across this one, which I realized is a great example of Manovich’s principles of new media. Notice the lighting effects and smooth cinematic transitions–evidence of transcoding from the language of film. The extensive interface options are a perfect example of the logic of variability.
For my capstone, I aim to create a website that helps dorm residents become more aware of and reduce their use of electricity. To do so I plan to hold an energy-saving contest and then display real-time data from electric meters on the site. My inspiration comes from a project done at Oberlin College: http://www.oberlin.edu/dormenergy/…
I thought an interesting issue came up during our discussions of paradigm and syntagm last week. The concept of syntagm helps us to understand how the sequence of different signs in an expression is constitutive of their meaning. This would seem to be a useful concept for HCI, considering that interactions, as much as any…
Yesterday a friend sent me this link, and today Erik posted it to the HCI listserve as an example “worth reflection and critique”: http://www.infinityart.ro/ I think this site is a great artifact to which we can apply the critical approaches we have been learning in class. Using a phenomenological lens, my first thought is that…
An interesting outcome of this whole prewriting exercise is that I’ve begun to make better use of diagrams as tools to understand readings and organize my thoughts. This happened somewhat by accident. I started out just trying to make some rough concept maps as an initial prewriting exercise. Soon the sketches consumed my attention, and…
For Erik’s class we read a chapter from Peter-Paul Verbeek’s What Things Do, which presents some pretty interesting ideas relating Heideggerian concepts like “present to hand” to the sustainability of products. He also claims to draw on the perspective of postphenomenology. Since Wikipedia was no help, I’m wondering if Jeff or someone else can explain…
At the beginning of the semester, Gillan Smith’s article set up the challenge to develop an “independent language of interaction” that fully exploits the medium of computers — similar to how the early techniques of cinema eventually stabilized into a coherent visual language. While its contentious that such a singular language can be created for…
As Adam and others have observed, last weeks classes on pre-writing interestingly revealed the similarity between the process of design and the process of writing. This is a really great insight for me, and I am surprised that I haven’t contemplated it before. I recall my early frustrations struggling with the design process. I’ve always…
So Erik presented his notion that interaction design works with a ‘material without qualities’. By this he means that digital artifacts can take on so many different forms–and the forms possible are constantly shifting due to technological advances–that is very hard to pin down a set list of qualities to describe the medium, as say…
Interaction Culture 