Wow!!!! I disappear into client meetings for a day and this is what I find. Yummy!!!!
First I want to thank Chris and Uday for their wonderful contributions at such a high level of intellectual discourse. That isn't to say other people aren't saying smart things, but in the spirit of pro-intellectualism I must call them out and congratulate them. Thanx!!! Andrei, I'm sooo glad we are finally on the same side of a battle line on this list. ;-) Ok, now to some of the discussion: First, to Dan's defense. Heck! Jason, that was really weird. Your interpretation of Dan & Jared are just way off, and your attack of Dan is well unnecessary. Let's just move on from there, b/c w/ or w/o Jared's quote there is plenty of ammunition to support that the IBM marketing ploy formerly known as UCD is running its course and fading away. On to Charlie, No this isn't a baby & bathwater consideration, in fact it is just the opposite. It is throwing out the dirty bathwater and reminding us of the baby which is well, Design. UCD practices outside of human factors has not nearly had the same successful results as just good old fashion simple design practices. Do these lack attention to human beings? HELL NO!!! and this is the designer's core point. That there have been tons of methods for getting at users for decades before human factors was being applied outside the technological/military fields. Applied anthropology & other design research methods that help designers gain empathy have been around forever it seems to me. So again, this is not about forgetting our past, but it is about reclaiming a "better" past. And heck, if I'm a revisionist, than so be it, b/c UCD just hasn't cut it nearly as well as just from the gut innovations from Dyson, to Kamen, to Behar, to Jobs/Ive, to MySpace, to Google search, and so on and so forth. Now, while the statements above are extreme, I think there is also a balance here. I believe that outside of interaction design there are good uses for usability and other user research methods, but I do not see these to be core/fundamental to interaction design itself. I responded recently to the post on UXMatters basically calling on a unification of UX and my response ended with a statement declaring that IxD has more in common with industrial design and visual design and architecture than it does with HCI, usability and information architecture. I still stand by that. Ok, on to Andrei, "interface" vs. "interaction". I can see how easy these terms can be interchangeable as well as hierarchical. But we have to make a decision and it seems that while you have been using interface for quite some time the rest of the world has moved on to interaction, no? I mean all the lu,minaries of your day (you old man you!) and of today seem to be talking about "interaction design". These are people who created the very core of the patterns we have built every bit of software and hardware on top of: Verplank, Moggridge, Tog, Norman, etc. (Heck, I think most of these folks are older than you, no?) ... Now, that being said, I think Raskin (elder) called it interface design, but still never once in any of his many arguments (with you) on this list challenged the name interaction design. I REALLY have to beg you to give this one up. I think it is a loosing battle. Another reason it is lost is that a whole other continent who is WAY ahead of us in education on this topic has decided on "interaction", as has IDSA in the name of its section and so on and so forth. But that being said, I want to put that aside. You said that everything in Dan's list (and other's) is "interface design" so be it and you asked for what people meant when they said "interface design". Here is what I mean: Interface design is the language used in semiotic, symbolic, metaphoric, etc. forms that is used to build interfaces with. These can be combined, collated, coordinated and coalesced into controls, buttons, knobs, switches, etc. to create a metaphor around affordances to communicate the behaviors (input receivers and feedback mechanisms) that make up virtual and physical products with digital intelligences. Basically, what are the basic building blocks of interfaces? This could be taught in terms of patterns, but I think even UI components would be good. Recently in my class for SmartExperience.org where I have a wide range of students it was clear that a core assumption on my part was that anyone coming to the class understood how to articulate UI the way I described above. The reality is this is not the case and while I don't have time in the class syllabus to fully take this on I realized that I had to help students with supplemental resources they can use on their own time. Now, can this come out during studio? maybe? I think there is some theoretical stuff in UI design like Humane Interface and Theo Mandels work that I believe could make up its own course, but overall studio could be the right place to teach these core elements of the craft of interaction/interface design. -- dave ps. Andrei if you want to take on the interface/interaction stuff, can you spawn another thread? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30515 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... 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