It's so funny he says this when you look at who we have brought to attention at the first IxD08 conference. Yes, we had 2 people who you could call luminaries in software, but I'm not sure either of them Cooper or Buxton really are as limited as that. But our two other keynotes were from Industrial Design and Architecture. In fact, the latter, Malcolm McCullough has written one of the best examples on the convergence of IxD & Arch in Digital Ground (seriously people if you haven't read this book you really need to.)
But the real point is that every discipline had its moment where it looked inward to create a base before looking outward to gain more influences. And we all know that nothing has a true bounded beginning. There is always influence. And it is funny that this piece decries Norman and then does the same thing he did, which is to wrongly create definitions that fit the argument instead of building the argument around reality. What's funnier for me is going back to last year's keynote by Robert Fabricant and looking at the ancient stone that Robert called one of the earliest pieces of IxD. Jeez, Adam, you're about a couple of thousand years late in your examples and a whole year late in relevance. So much of the IxD community has moved forward, but the reality is that all the reading in the world is not going to get people to be better designers and this farce of academic chauvinism flies in the face of the real practices of design, which well exist as practice first and foremost. That being said, I would agree with his generalization in so far as it is that, and thus ignores the great work that is going on in expanding IxD beyond the confines of the history of HCI. Good programs are doing work outside of classical interactivity including my own. But the real issue is not practice, but rather education. IxD is not solidified in education as a research discipline. Yes there is HCI, but that is not IxD. And by its name fits the very issue that Adam brings up. Thinking about "computers" today is irrelevant. Mice, monitors, keyboards, even gestures and tablets is irrelevant indeed. But it is only irrelevant for those that have this luxury. You can't expect the 5-10yr. designer (who in our world is often called SENIOR) and who has little to know design education (and whose design education is at the level that Adam wishes) to do more than accomplish the tasks put in front of them. Because we have so few people who are engaging IxD at the 15-25 yr. experience level there is no critical mass of true masters for us to be mentoring from. Just look who is writing our books today (and no offense to any of them, as I have deep respect): Both Kolko and Saffer who I feel have made the best attempts to bring a solid literature to IxD are less than 20yr. veterans at that. The work of Buxton and Moggridge in the last period are good contributions, but are purposeful in their sphere. The last point I want to make is the ahistoricity thing b/c I think it points out to something important. I don't see urbanism or architecture of history directly connected to IxD. yes there are lessons to learn in all the disciplines of design. Hell, we have coopted Alexander's patterns in the UX field quite completely, no? But why we look at D. Englebart as a "moment" is because of the addition of intelligence in the systems, not because of the focus on UI. Architectures don't behave. They afford possibilities. We can analyze patterns and use them to better predict, but the systems themselves are non-responsive. They can be manipulated, but that is not the same as respond intelligently. It is this intelligence and the moment in time we are still spanning through which constantly increases the intelligences of the systems we are designing that forces us every day to re-define what it is we are doing. But Doug's demo was that moment when we saw for the first time what it meant for ME what an intelligent system can do and that an intelligent system needs to be made to behave. So yes, I still look at that time as A beginning for IxD. But I also think our beginning is constantly folding on itself and starting anew. I also think that as McCullough said, "IxD is the humanities of design" (paraphrase), and thus to study humanities correctly one must be well versed in a survey of ideas. You can't only rely on the discipline's own. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47932 ________________________________________________________________ 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
