Here's my most honest, undefensive take. IxD is emergent through the new application of artificial intelligences found by applying silicon chips to devices. Objects started to have a level of complexity that required new thinking, methods, and practices. They even required a new way of thinking about aesthetics.
In the US a very scientific approach was formed. It built off the work being done in Human Factors and called itself HCI & its method collection as User-centered Design. In other parts of the world, especially in Europe, designers began applying THEIR methods and practices to understanding this in a fairly different way. Both had similar goals of making the solution better.for people. They both understood utilitarian needs, but one had a much richer understanding of emotional needs (the Euro side). As the technology permeated more ubiquitously through mainstream cultures the need for BOTH sides of this equation not only began to grow but also began to permeate unexpected "forms". Some of these didn't have form at all, per se. What emerged though were separate collections of the same tool sets. Pieces that had wide or narrow overlap. That overlap though was not universally understood, nor did it need to be to have relevance. The reality is though that groups & communities never define themselves by their similarities to others, but by their differences. There is a saying in anthropology (or at least in UC Berkeley Anthropology) "that there are more differences among the individuals of any defined group than there are between any two unique groups." But the other reality is that people don't care if their identifications are indeed arbitrary and meaningless; they are still constructs that have created psychological value embedded into social systems. That is all to say, no one ever defines themselves based on their similarities. it is always about juxtaposing contrasts and finding those people who believe in the same contrasts. But to the point of the thread. even if everything is technological (as in related to software). Like a keypad design and back-panel design and button layouts, etc. How and what you need to do to make different form factors or pieces of different platforms work, to say they are all "software" is pretty disingenuous to the point. And to the greater point, while most of the people here may all be doing the same mouse, keyboard, monitor, software type design, there are still significant #'s of us who are not. AND there are even other parts of the puzzle beyond sheer medium that matter. Maybe we are THOSE interactive software designers that think about aesthetics of motion, or even conceive that there is such a thing to discuss. (BTW a topic you would never see on other UX lists from what I can tell, but one started in an ID blog--Core77-- and transferred here.) I think that it is from here (That Euro school of design thing) that many are unaware of, b/c they haven't looked for it, or otherwise experienced it, but THIS is what for me has made IxDA and IxD a richer platform for thinking about people-centeredness across a host of mediums that converge around added intelligence within systems design. (too much distraction by an amazing tweet convo. I apologize) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40619 ________________________________________________________________ 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
