I'm a bit out of the loop for "recent," but just to rail off a few from the top of my head:
Moodle, the open source e-learning courseware support platform, has arisen largely from academic research into pedagogical interface design. Most of the best research into advanced VR interfaces and evolving interface conventions have come out of academic research labs. Carnegie Melon is starting to really kick ass in this area too, aren't they? Beyond CAVE and the other usual suspects. The most rigorous HCI and usability testing methods can be found in academia, which is not bound by many of the expediencies that can bias results, such as you find in industry usability practices, which are often very sloppy and possibly invalid most of the time. Then, when you add in the innovations in wearable computing interfaces, ubiquitous computing/ambient interface effects, and interactive cinema interfaces that have come out of places like the MIT Media Lab and GA Tech, I'd say the scale tips way over into academic research as being quite a bit more innovative. You could also count Google coming out of Stanford, right? At a time when everyone thought that search interfaces were cluttered portals, and that no new innovation could come into that area. Take Stanford out of the picture, and would you even have Google? (going back into the day... we could also link Lycos to CMU, and didn't WebCrawler come out of a university as well?) Again, I hearken back to history, but a lot more has come out of NCSA at Champaign Urbana than just Marc Andreessen. Perhaps most significantly, we might notice one interface in particular that DIDN'T come out of academia, or really what anyone would call "industry" for that matter either: blogs. After the development of the graphical browser at NCSA in 1993, I'd say the innovation brought about by blogs (and not just Dave Winer and RSS) has had the largest effect on the landscape of the Internet. Hum, maybe no. I might have to put Google ahead of blogs and RSS, and social media after that. Think of how we can now divide our universe. For a while, it was pre-web, and post-web. Now, I like to refer to our world as BG and AG, meaning Before Google, and After Google. I think also we are reaching the point where we might also make a division of the world into BB and AB, meaning Before Blogosphere, and After Blogosphere. Chris On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 9:57 AM, J. Ambrose Little <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi folks, > > Following up on the recent thread about higher degrees in design and such, > I > find myself very curious to know about how current or past research/higher > degrees have already advanced interaction design. Do you all have any > examples of, e.g., dissertations, theses, acadmic projects, or professional > work from folks with higher degrees that have concretely advanced the field > of design? > > I think of Norman's POET (or DOET :)) as maybe such an example of research > having a notable influence (not sure if it was innovative, though--maybe > someone with more experience/knowledge of the field could chime in on that > point). Also, Designing Interactions has some interesting stories along > these lines; interestingly, seems like most of those were spurred more by > private (not academic) interests/investment. Have there been more > recent innovations that came out of research programs that either have or > you think will have notable impact? > > --Ambrose > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
