I think you both are missing the bigger point. UX is practices by less
than a 1/4 of total software produced today. If you are already using
UX strategies and processes, Alan ain't speaking to you. You are an
interaction designer of some sort b/c you separate the role of design
from engineering
Andrei said:
This is a general comment mostly for Dave Malouf, but the sentiment
Fred is expressing is precisely why I think most interaction
designers or the field of interaction design is a subset of
interface design or the larger digital product design picture and not
the other way around
Hi Alexander,
As in Robert's follow up message. All messages like this one will be
considered at the up-coming retreat.
BTW, someone is working on doing something similar to this right now.
8-) Very early stages.
The discussion, IMHO, is a place to hash things out. What you're
proposing is a
What do people think about this resource?
http://www.interaction-design.org/
I know that UXNet tried to start a relationship with this initiative
awhile ago, but I never saw anything come of it. Despite the title of
interaction-design is it really interaction design or is it just
UX?
-- dave
.
There is something interesting in this ... I mean, not being
interested in sharing your mundane thoughts ...
If I think about the people I follow on twitter, they are mostly the
same people I read their blogs of or go to their talks at
conferences. There are a few exceptions, but it seems that
Katie,
A few thoughts ...
1) since the beginning of this virutal community we have come back to
debates like these time and time again. We always will so long as a
few things continue.
a) People concentrate on what they DO instead of on the discipline
and theory as the core of the conversation and
wow! dan, you have no idea what you just opened up for me. My major in
college was cross-cultural psychology as an antrho major. My thesis
paper was on cross-cultural dream analysis.
Of course, at a biological level we all receive signals
neurologically at the some level of commonality. But I
re: Katie's call to define design I have taken a different
approach. I define the context of use of the term instead of the term
itself. Why? B/c I may actually want to use a generic term like
design in as many different ways as we have already discussed and
then some. Further, it just gets WAY
Kevin,
Not all interactions contain visual elements. what about Voice UI?
Hmm? I think you and I are thinking of aesthetics differently. So I
see aesthetics as the primary. Even if form follows function, the
functioning of a thing has an aesthetic response as much as the
function does.
Take
oh! can i add one more thing?
Do we need such principles/heuristics to be good designers?
I would much rather rely on observational techniques and case study
analysis than guidelines and principles such as the ones being
discussed thus far.
Especially in interaction design as opposed to other
Andrei,
I was just provoking someone like yourself to so brilliantly tell me
I was wrong. ;)
That being said, what is the point of these great laws of the
properties that we manipulate as designers when their
interpretations and utility differ so widely across so many different
axis?
-- dave
--
Robert, if you are an outtie, then I would say, you are the band-aid.
If you are an innie where you mandate is to be the ears of the
organization to end users and customers (not always the same thing)
then no, that is not the case at all. It is a formalization of the
listening process, and further
Machines and humans will NEVER have the same complete set of usability
needs (if you will).
SEO's sole goal is to index. Human's have many goals when it comes
to information and thus their mental models for how to deal with that
information will shift dramatically away from the type of goals that
I'm not an SEO expert by any means, but reading all this talk about
how CSS will effect SEO results really SCREAMS to me my point that
designing for SEO is a flawed methodology for total success. It seems
the Search Engines actually need to optimize for the real world more
than we need to optimize
I understand a lot of the pain that Mark is feeling. I'm in the
middle of a big .NET3 project myself.
If the look feel and detail of the presentation is important to
your overall project, then I really suggest staying away from
WinForms and using Expression Blend.
At Motorola with the guidance
Susie,
There is an IxDA group on Flickr. Any chance you can post them there?
-- dave
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24354
*Come to
A few things ... more officially:
The conference twitter id is at http://twitter.com/interaction08
right now that ID is set up as a regular ID. Conference staff who
have access can post with that ID and notifications go to followers
and to the public stream.
Once the conference starts (or that
Andrei,
I cannot think of any part of interaction design (NOT User Experience
Design) that would not contain a micro-chip at some level of the
equation these days.
The fact that I feel equally strongly that mentioning the word
digital in an organizational definition is unnecessarily limiting. By
I think in the end I'm very happy NOT designing things, but rather
I'd be the more influential person designing the ideas and telling
the person who design things what I want them to do and if they
don't get it right, tell them to do it again.
Or ...
Collaborate with experts in form making w/
Andrei, you lost me completely with this:
As long as the interaction designer is actually building and/or
coding that prototype with their own two hands -- which includes
the
presentation and aesthetic of it among other things -- then I'm
agreement. Now the question would probably be... who
Andrei:
I agree with this, so I'm not sure what the difference is between
us. Our current design education in this field barely does the former
and completely ignores that latter. Most people coming out of
education programs have all sorts of great theory, but not many of
them know how to build
I'm a current user of Expression Blend and I think it is REALLY close
... about 60% of the way there. that missing 40% is painful. I have
had good contacts with that team and I think that if we give them to
3.5 or 4.0 they might get it right.
What I see wrong with their current direction is that
Melvin said:
You identify yourself by the various specialities you have worked
in as well as academically gotten them.
Uh! doesn't this mean creating a title for yourself? I identify
myself as an interaction designer b/c that is my primary specialty
and what differentiates me from UI Designers.
Isn't this just delaying the inevitable?
Sure, (Kumbaya!) we are all Designers, great! (I actually think
that most of us aren't designers, btw, but that's a separate
topic).
Ok, so you get your MD (masters of design). So then what? do you go
for boards in Interaction Design? Oh wait!!! don't you
Scott, if this is who you're dealing with, this is how I would put
it.
the UI Designer, says, the button is left aligned, bevelled, has this
rollover, and that action state, and this disabled state.
The IxDer says how did the user even get to the page with the button,
why is the button necessary
I find there are two ways of looking at this problem.
1) What do I need to do my job today?
2) What will it take to advance practice and discipline and
community?
The first group are designer/developers/engineers.
The latter tend to be interaction designers.
Part of this is about environment.
Please see my response in the other thread.
It highlights why this sort of pedantic response is without foresight
or strategic thought. Why I disagreed with Tog from the beginning on
his titling (as well as many others).
What I find so interesting so far is the USer centricism in the
Yams and sweet potatoes do taste different and a real chef will cringe
at the thought of using one over the other. ;)
BTW, I do like that ... Isn't that just a visual designer? ...
Well yes, it is. It's a visual designer who is expert in interfaces,
as opposed to a visual designer who is expert
I'm not list-priest any more, but there have been lots of examples of
orgs like UIE posting on this list, with little or no complaint from
any user. It isn't a HUGE thing and those that have done it have
been VERY good about it.
I think that as long as it is noted as commercial, and it is kept
Yes, I would call it the interactive design community. But even
then, that might be MORE specific than Andrei was thinking, and that
is my question.
Andrei does interaction design require pixels? I.e. is there always a
need for a screen? Is what the interaction designer/UI designer
working on
Andrei asked:
The larger issue is actually more fundamental: do interaction
designers need to have aesthetic skills?
An unequivocal 1 million % (to quote my American Idol Buddy Randy
Jackson) YES!
Aesthetics is HUGE.
And understanding fundamentals of communication design (Visual,
audio, 3D,
Mike,
Huh? This is a professional organization. Where women are vastly
underrepresented and face challenges that men do not as an
underrepresented group. It totally makes sense for women, people of
color, non-USers, and other underrepresented folks to try and
congregate amongst themselves for
At the postmortem dinner for the conference on sunday night. Myself
Greg Petroff when off on a debate about Agile being good or bad. I
find it interesting that BOTH of our pre-eminent keynotes are both
talking down agile, YET we as a UX community believe it is still
valuable. Yikes! It screams to
I find it really funny that the article tells people to unsubscribe,
but then to read the web site? yes, the format and interaction design
is different, but the content is exactly the same. Heck! I don't even
use the email list any more, except to start new threads.
in general, one of the themes
Pankaj,
I think you are over-generalizing a bit much. First off, an
interactions of any type (computer computer and human human
and computer human) all can be handled by an IxDA at some level.
Usually in the enterprise situation is a mix of all the above that
needs to be facilitated within
In the context of Alan's keynote, I totally agree with Alan. ;)
In the context of a more complex conversation, I'm not sure I agree
with your assertions and assumptions.
In the building world an architect is often partnered with a civil
engineer and both are responsible for different aspects of
I would like to ere on the side of Andrei on this point. Right now
I'm on a project that I did not prototype, and for various reasons
I'm getting burned during the implementation stage.
I believe that if upper management saw some of the realities of the
design instead of filling in the gaps with
the interaction design association
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=25992
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To
Eco-system design is the great next area of IxDers to explore. The
iPodiTunes example is the tip of the iceberg.
I wish I could go into more detail, but I'm treading on where the
work I'm doing is right now. But how does my iPod talk to my PC/Mac
is an interaction design problem, not a system
Andrei, I think there is merit to your point, but your retort was well
a bit off-base and jumped to a lot of conclusions.
First off, I think there are various states of new. I can't talk
about what I'm working on now, but it is new, in the sense that well
it is using a technology in a novel way
Andrew, I don't think anyone so far has been quite as myopic as
you've accused us all. Of course, the properties of interaction
design have been in play since and including the invention of the
wheel itself, but it wasn't understood as such, nor practiced as it
is today.
I totally agree w/ you
hmmm? is missing. I live on backspace. ;)
but otherwise, it seems about right to me. I do do a lot of table
work in most of my word docs, but I imagine that is an industry
thing.
-- dave
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Posted from the new ixda.org
Hi Alex's,
I like this Interaction Design Alex's in London. ;) (IxDA ... ha ha)
There are no private discussion lists that are part of the IxDA
community. There might be non IxDA related discussion lists about
interaction design, but not owned/operated by IxDA.
As to the question of starting an
Hi Andrei,
1) This is not just a problem in SV. At the IA Summit there were 19
sponsors all there to recruit heavily and well from my basic survey,
they weren't all that successful. I know we weren't.
2) Like what David Shaw said. You've gotta be nutz, coocoo, and just
insane to leave anyplace
Jeff H., as the architect of the web site, you and I have discussed a
bit about what it would take to make a true job board. We did some
polling and while the concept wasn't overwhelming, there is
definitely interest in having a separate area for job postings. If we
can do that and maintain it, I
What a great thread! This is one of the best definitional threads
of the last year.
Andrei, I think your articulation of the situation is both brilliant
and off. It is brilliant in that it is open for answers, and tries to
give clear choices. It is off in that it assumes that these are the
only
Ok, back to Andrei ...
Digital vs. Software. Ok, then we are in agreement. I was thinking of
software more specifically, meaning that which is presented
through a screen, but if you want software to mean anything running
through silicon, great. Of course, a lot happens on the firmware
level and
Pauric, I'm confused. Are you saying that portfolios is a bad idea or
a good one? Or bad b/c Coroflot covers it already.
Coroflot has approached us and wants us to do something with them,
btw. They would love if we would use their engine the way AIGA does,
so it wouldn't be redundant per se, but
One of the things I've been exposed to at Motorola is our HR thinking
in terms of the industrial design group. Recruitment is a journey that
often begins with bachelor corporate sponsored projects at schools
that the management have deep relationships with.
I mention this b/c in the software
Andrei, I understand your problem, but hiring junior staff without
first putting in protections for them is a huge waste of time.
I realize that small orgs like yours have limited resources, but
maybe that just means, stick w/ sr. staff. the cold water
approach is just mean IMHO and as human
Hi Charlie,
I shuddered when I read your top 10.
I wrote 5 pages and deleted all b/c I was really upset when writing
it.
I think that you need to re-think the above in the context of IxDA a
bit more. The pull to generalize and break down walls feels noble,
but it is in that light of UPA and CHI
I'll apologize for my part.
I think part of the issue of these discussions is that practice
is so unique. As an enterprise software guy for 10 years now, I got
this in spades. But on this list, we try to engage in discussions
that can be generalized outside of the individual organizational
Matt, that is really similar to how NYC got started.
I might suggest alternatively considering the great conference
content, that you pull a meeting around that content and create a
conversation space.
alternatively you might want to give a repeat performance of your
talk to those who couldn't
Peter B. that is a great resource, thanx.
What I found interesting about it is the sheer variety and how it
doesn't really map against my own experiences with IxDA so far.
Alex, Niklas or Janna will probably be adding you to the local
leaders basecamp we have set up. In that basecamp we are
I want to second Dan's congrats to the new board!
I also want to encourage people to see new opportunities for
volunteership around the world. Whenever there is change in
leadership, there comes new opportunities for engagement (or
re-engagement).
It will be great to see new local leaders emerge,
While this topic is incredibly US-centric, I guess I'll answer it:
The short answer is that if you want a midwestern lifestyle, your
options decrease. But here are cities that I'm pretty sure have some
good stuff going on:
Cincinnati
Austin
Dallas
St. Louis
Minneapolis
Detroit
Pittsburgh
Salt
Jack,
YES! YES! YES!
The only undergrad program I know of is a minor of IxD as part of
their Industrial Design program at SCAD.
I'd love to hear about other programs no matter how tangential (in
this case), but DESIGN SCHOOL, not HCI programs from CompSci or
CogPsy programs.
There might be
Wow! what isn't IxD here. Not sure why the single user makes a
difference.
But the fact that form is not static in a physical device, that fact
that there are innovations in sensing, imaging, etc. will drastically
change the way we interact with devices and what functionality we
conceive to put
I've written two articles that takes the analogy of choreography to
interaction design. One was in interactions about 2 years and the
other is in my Boxes Arrows article on foundations of interaction
design that came out a couple of months ago.
The premise is that whether it is movies, theatre,
Will, are you never near WiFi?
To me the WiFi makes it all worth while.
But more than that, no other OS has the same experience on a browser
(at least not yet and not soon). And in the end, it is the best iPod
I've ever owned. ;)
-- dave
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
First off, those weren't my words.
Second off, Jeez! doesn't anyone have a sense of hyperbole any more?
Of course Nokia and Blackberry are far from Dead, and I would even
say they aren't all that sick either. What they aren't is prepared
for the current war. I would argue though that BB has a
At Motorola Enterprise Mobility (We are not the phone group and are
managed completely separately and have a very different culture
around engineering, business and design) we have what we call the
Innovation Design Studio. It is under the CTO's office, which
is parallel to the product business
HI Jeff,
I used a similar approach but just using my own resources. No outside
consultants.
Where I am now, the cultural change has taken a really long time - I
would gather about 10 years in the making. Obviously, w/ progress
throughout that period.
How the cultural change took place is not a
my career has skyrocketted in the last 5 years (out of 15). I
attribute that to these things:
IxDA - being active here has put me in close contact with
experience. You can't accelerate experience, but you can give
yourself more access to it, and try to be open to other people's
experience.
Maybe it is just that titles aren't saying it and it is in the
coursework, but I haven't seen any studio classes.
My two were Drawing/Sketching for Product Design Studio Product
Design Studio.
Studio courses in general to me are key to ANY design education just
not IxD. They are the cornerstone
Matt,
Huh? My favorite RIA right now is a Flex app. Buzzword.com. It is the
best browser based word processor.
There is also (and I'm forgetting the name) great PPT clone done in
Flash/Flex as well.
I think Yahoo maps is or used to be a flash/flex app.
Goowy.com is one.
And as Will
I would just add that it is the Interactive Design and Game Design
program that does the online courses right now. the Interaction
design program at SCAD is a minor for a bachelor's degree in
industrial design.
Interactive != Interaction ... The former is a craft program about
learning tools for
Uday, I have to admit I struggled with the overly academic nature of
the 1st pieces. But when I got to part 3, I was blown away. Your
quarter of story, performance, utility and style are so on target, I
wanted to yell hurray
Thank you for sharing. I hope others skip back to the top of the
Point of clarification, Sir Joe.
If 911 is your concern. coverage is irrelevant. Put the phone on
roam and you can ALWAYS dial 911. In fact, you can take a phone out
of service (like I just did) on any phone and it can ALWAYS dial 911.
When you donate a phone to the police dept. They give it to
I don't know anything about flight control panels, but UNIX
(including Linux) has had a design akin to fraternity hazing from the
beginning. There was always a right of passage associated with
learning VI and EMACS for anyone who dared. I'm sure that has
changed recently as GUI is a lot more
To be honest, I'm pretty bad at keeping up with long threads like
these. But when I read the question in the subject line, Can we
make it to[o] easy? My gut answer is to want to say, No for
what I believe to be the same reasons that Andrei is trying to put
out there.
However, I DO believe that
Yup, I'm here ... out by Heathrow for now. Drove past Windsor Castle
this evening on a beautiful day. I had NO IDEA it was so HUGE
Wish I had time to go for a proper visit.
I'm looking forward to seeing/meeting as many of you folks as
possible. Should be fun!
-- dave
. . . . . . . . . . .
linguist, translator, story teller but instead of the usual linguistic
elements of words I build semantics, syntax, and narrative out of
conjoined behavior of differing systems, products, services, and
human actors. You could say I'm an improvisational playwrite.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Guys, I've downloaded it and I've opened up some files in it and
well it isn't yet stable enough for me to switch completely to use
for my project work I'm active in. That is a bit sad. I like the new
Look feel of a lot of the components and I like the renaming of
frames to states, but that name
I have struggled getting trained in Blend. I have learned some lessons
a long the way. The BIGGEST lesson I have learned is that to use Blend
you have to think like a programmer and you have to realize that any
weeklong training private or public is NOT enough. You have to invest
in a lot of
Rich is right. Manhattan is so 1990's. Brooklyn is the future. as the
sign says when you enter on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, Believe
the hype!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=29817
My biggest advice to you is ...
Be ready to kill trees. You cannot be TOO specific in your
documentation and general design documentation when working on the
enterprise.
Triple your time for design phase b/c you will get hit with lots of
unexpecteds.
-- dave
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Will you are over-simplifying freedom of speech to an extreme, but
I won't go there at all.
My previous gig was for a financial document management organization.
Our product allowed people to share documents around due-diligence
processes. The people involved were often involved in securities
Nancy,
We are not just car repairman here. There are many in this community
that work for companies like Axure and iRise. I.e. we are creators of
prototyping software, not just users of it. I.e. there are people on
this community board who are on the team for Thermo (Adobe's
prototyping solution
What I find interesting is something that has come up for me recently
when comparing Acrobat.com to GoogleApps.
I LOVE (can't understate this) Acrobat.com, especially buzzword for
document editing (text/Word processing). But I still live in Google
Apps. Why? b/c 'everyone' already has a google
The way I look at this sometimes (sometimes, mind you) expectation is
a subset of user needs. I need to have my expectations met in certain
activities.
To me expectations is a subset of needs types.
-- dave
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new
I totally agree with Jeff on integration. That's a project in and
of itself. But can we maybe put the badge up on the ixda.org site
some place. I don't know where it goes per se but it could be fun to
follow the feed through the site.
Just a thought of getting something quick and dirty.
- dave
What's interesting is that they are still working on the curriculum
and will be adding to the faculty. But I think they are here and it
would be interesting for us to maybe take this opportunity to start
suggesting a list of courses that fit into a two year program that
makes the most sense,
Office 2003 2007 both offer a piece of software specifically
designed for tablet called OneNote. It does what you are looking for
in terms of annotation and audio recording.
Nice stuff!
-- dave
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
Fred, are you kidding? How can you compare a week, a week there
conference experiences to the experience of school? What are you
doing is saying that a vacation is the same as living there and
learning the language? It ain't!
Ok, I'm NOT a degree holder and I miss it every day of my career. I
Just posted a blog post on sketching myself just last night. In it
I'm trying to distinguish between sketching and drawing and
talk about sketching specifically as a design tool.
But to me the importance of lead/ink to paper/wall is less
important than the intentionality. Not everyone has equal
Speaking of sketching. A List Apart (a great Web Design Blog) has a
piece on prototypes (Sketching in code) ... Here is the article:
http://alistapart.com/articles/sketchingincode/
Here is my response:
http://alistapart.com/comments/sketchingincode?page=2#18
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Martin, in practice it definitely does. But not necessarily b/c of
complexity, but b/c of where my confidence (or the groups confidence
is in regards to the element). So sometimes I do more sketches for
the smaller objects.
Ideally though I would to be as prolific in my sketching variety as
What a GREAT conversation.
Angel, I'm sorry if for some reason you are feeling dissed in any
way. I think I've said it before. I have 15 years of experience with
no degree. Sit me in a room with anyone with a degree as a designer I
can hold my own pretty well, I think. However, I also know when
dmitry, a common degree in the US is the 6yr. med program. Many
students enter undergrad knowing they want to be doctors. Why not
IxD's? If I can get an MD in 6 yrs (including summers I think), why
not a Masters of IxD in 5 years including some intensive work (or
required internships) during
Oh, another point to share. ...
In talking to an educator recently, they confessed that with all the
new stuff out there they have no idea how to teach anyone all
they need to know in any reasonable time frame at all.
-- dave
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A less impartial answer here:
Carnegie Mellon
Kansas Univ
Both of these have IxD masters programs right now.
Univ. of Maryland has a masters of Information Systems and IxD.
Bentley is Information and Human FActors
IIT has a masters in Product Design
There are many many HCI courses throughout
Jeff, UW has an MFA in IxD? Really?
It's never crossed my path. Only the MLIS/MIS stuff have previously
but only for IA types. Interesting.
-- dave
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30524
Thanx for the extra info. It looks like it is an ID (or Visual Design
Masters) with a concentration in IxD, but not an IxD program per se
like CMU or KU. (might speak to my other point about design degrees
may need to be about the thing).
-- dave
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I think you are referring to their Design Technology course. I
don't know if it is an MFA or a M. Des. but it is masters level. I
know they teach IxD courses as part of the program, but I'm not sure
I would call it an Interaction Design program. But I've been told by
others that it is.
-- dave
Chrstine,
UCD is a collection of methods, not the act of thinking of users.
So your saying that Google is into UCD I don't find helpful. Heck,
Apple does UCD from that perspective, and so does Walmart. The point
people were making was around the use of the classic IBM class of UCD
practice
Hold on Andrei, Just b/c I need to learn Type to be a good IxD,
doesn't mean Type is part of IxD. As an anthro major, I had to take
stats, linguistics and psyche but no one would argue that Anthro is
an umbrella for all of those courses. Heck, no one would even argue
that under anthro there aren't
Chris, I think your argument is problematic and gives way too much
deconstruction to an area with a very precise history. Serge Larry
designed the first Google search themselves, for themselves from
engineering to the UI. It hasn't changed since. Any deconstruction
that leads to a UCD process
I'm sorry but one of the main goals of UCD is to avoid
self-centered design. Once you go that route in any way, you are
not applying UCD methods. Unless you consider users beyond your 4
walls, it ain't UCD. Simple.
Ignoring our best examples of successful design feels like bad
business. It is
To Andrei YES!!
I would just add a specific class on intro Anthro and another for
applied anthro besides what Dan calls Design research.
And I'm good to go. ;-)
Personally I would also require all undergrads to at least pass the
AP in a foreign language or have 2 semesters of foreign
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