Interaction Design

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I have mixed feelings about posting this video, and WordPress won’t let me paste the object/embed code–not sure what’s up with that, so here’s a link instead: http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/ifc/2008/01/23/sundance_newfrontier/index.html It is supposedly a work of “multimedia art” (in the words of the usually hip Salon.com), shown at the usually hip Sundance, which shows how virtual sweatshop…

Read more Lame and Obvious Multimedia Art or Novel Ecommerce Prototype?

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Here is an article that I meant to share with all of you sooner. It is a framework for critiquing interfaces, from Bertelsen & Pold. You may find it helpful as you work on your papers. From a philosophical standpoint, I have some issues with it. But from a practical standpoint, I’m really glad it’s…

Read more Interaction Criticism

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We can divide the issues discussed in this class into three broad categories: concrete, particular designs; the underlying design concepts, insights, principles, and strategies that they rely on; and the deeper philosophical implications beneath them. Here’s one of my patentable scientific diagrams: At the top are actual, concrete designs: “dialing from favorites list on this…

Read more Concrete to Abstract: On the Goals of the Course

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One thing you will find in abundance are libraries of interactions, often called widgets. Richie Hazlewood posted this link to the HCI distribution list earlier today, but it’s not the only one. The “components” that ship with Flash are another set, and information architect folks (e.g., Garrett) likewise have a standardized collection of interaction diagrams.…

Read more “Library” vs. “Language” of Interactions

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In both major readings for next week’s class, the concept of “materiality” looms large. In Lowgren & Stolterman, the first several pages talk about materiality–for instance, the notion that a carpenter knows that wood (his material) has special characteristics or “qualities”: wood can be cut into useful pieces (i.e., it can be shaped) but it…

Read more Materiality and Qualities (A Prelude to Next Week)

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G. Smith concludes her Forward to Designing Interactions by saying that interaction design as a field has solved one set of problems, and it now needs to move onto a new set. However, after twenty years of drawing on existing expressive languages [e.g., film, typography, icons], we now need to develop an independent language of…

Read more Key Quote from Readings