We have been over this many times before, I am sure, but hopefully
the practice will make us better at stating constructive points
concisely. I'll try.
--------
- Interaction design as a discipline is fundamentally multidisciplinary.
- As a teacher, I claim good results from 10 years of recruiting
students from different backgrounds to our two-year master's program
in interaction design. Most common backgrounds are product design and
graphic design, computer science and programming, behavioral science,
and media studies. Some artists always show up as well. Portfolios
and interviews are crucial in picking the right people.
- Throughout the education, one of our goals is for the students to
"learn a common language" of interaction design and to understand the
contribution that other specialties bring to the design process.
- We tend to find that students are not fundamentally transformed
during the education -- a graphic design bachelor will still excel in
visual aspects of interface design, and will typically not become a
skilled ethnographer -- but as they reach the common-language/
understanding goal, they are able to communicate and collaborate
effectively in practical design.
--------
- I think there is a difference between adequate and outstanding
interaction design ability.
- Monospecialists trained in a multidisciplinary program like the one
I discussed above become capable of performing adequately in
multidisciplinary design teams.
- Outstanding design ability tends to correlate with a more profound
understanding of the design material. Here, I am thinking
specifically of two aspects of "understanding the material."
- One is the ability to "sketch interaction" by experimenting in code
(or hardware, for that matter). The point is that key qualities of
interaction design are in the interactive behavior over time. If you
want to design innovative interaction, you must be able to sketch
your ideas in forms that you can actually play with to judge how they
feel, in order to guide your further explorations. Wireframes,
storyboards, video scenarios, etc. are no substitutes for
experimental programming when it comes to designing innovative
interaction.
- The other is the sensibility to the aesthetics of interaction,
which are material-specific to some extent and have everything to do
with the feel of the interaction over time. Again, for standard-
compliant or idiom-based interactions this is not as big an issue as
it is for innovative interactions.
--------
- I notice that my last set of bullets seems to define outstanding
interaction design ability mainly in terms of innovativity. I am
actually happy with this interpretation, as I think a main aspiration
for any design discipline is to go beyond incremental design.
- But, of course, innovation in interaction design is nothing without
a rock-solid understanding of users and use practices in the design
sittuation.
- This is why the notion of genre should be recognized more generally
in interaction design (You wouldn't ask a productivity-app expert to
design a game, for example). But that is another thread, I guess.
--------
Hope this makes sense,
Jonas Löwgren
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