I like the example Jeff has given about the coke bottle that got dropped on the primitive culture. I was told a couple years ago about a book about an anthropologist who is researching a society. That society had a lot of very strange objects and methodology. As it turns out, the anthropologist is actually…
One line in Gimhyewon’s post got me to thinking about a topic that comes up a lot in art and design – the notion that creative work always feels incomplete and that a mature artist/designer develops the ability to know when to walk away from their work. I’ve seen this play out in a particularly…
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…
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…
From Harry Potter and Wikipedia to Persian poetry by Rumi, literature is designed. Phenomenologically, we may read into literature as a mirror reflecting the author. Structurally, with language as the basis of cognition, literature is its own source for both the author and reader. Literature can be approached by just about any design school to…
Marty gave me a valuable lecture for writing. Thank you Marty! Before prewriting, I have been struggling to pick a topic up to write. A lot of thoughts fly around my head, but I can’t catch one of them. Because, it seems that they are impossible to connect each other because they didn’t have any…
In Buxton’s book ‘Sketching User Experience’ he talks about the nature of sketches. He says sketches are fast, cheap, plentiful, ambiguous, etc. He also talks about how sketches have their clear vocabulary and distinct gestures. Examples of this vocabulary and gestures would be how lines extend through endpoints and how they are not tight or…
Christian Briggs and I were recently discussing the role of feedback (i.e. focus groups, formative and summative evaluations, etc.) in the design process – specifically how it can be a real double-edged sword when you’re developing an original idea. While there’s undeniable value in having your work evaluated from a fresh perspective, there’s also the…
I meant to ask this a while ago, after Erik’s lecture… What is the difference between a tool and a material?
So, I wrote Jeff an email mentioning that I was really curious about the design orientation of the program. The more I’m here, I told him, the more I appreciate the interdisciplinary approach to informatics that the program embodies. So many different perspectives, so much emphasis on social and aesthetic aspects – it’s all very,…
Interaction Culture 