Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
The idea I'd brought up at our IxDA Board meeting was to begin an IxD Timeline that specifically wouldn't lead to the type of arguments our community has traditionally wallowed in. The idea was to create a very open project, where individuals could add elements to the timeline representing a wide range of criteria (examples: careers, groups, projects, ideas, essays, books, etc.) - all things that occurred at points or periods in time. Each entry could have links to project case studies or groups or whatever constituted supporting material, information, and media. Each addition could have a variety of attributes attached to/associated with it. Types, categories, domains, styles of approach, people/designers associated with, etc. (also open to addition by all contributors - could be simple tagging or include or extend to other means of attribute association). These would be helpful in later being able to analyze and visualize the accumulating data in interesting ways. One of the key reasons this would be valuable for our community is that it would allow a rich accumulation of data points representing people, projects, events, and relationships that comprise our field. It's an accumulation much more an agreed-upon consensus. This type of initiative would be different from the who are the most style questions that we often discuss here. This would be a comprehensive, ever-growing map of as much as could be added. It's not a replacement, but rather an alternative way of accumulating rich data we can use as a valuable resource going forward. I've spoken with some of our overlapping friends from the Information Architecture field about this, and there is some interest in pursuing this. The idea is to design it to be very open and easy for people to add to. There will likely need to be some administration, but the spirit should definitely be to foster openess and participation towards building a very large and comprehensive IxD Timeline (time is just one organizing attribute here, of course, but is key to the historical aspect of the initiative). I'm pretty excited about it, because I think we'll all be surprised at the richness of such a database once it begins to accumulate. I would be particularly interested in seeing the entries going back decades, where much occurred that's not widely known, or readily recallable in the context of our field's history and multiple threads of careers, work, and relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 18, 2009, at 1:37 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: On Feb 18, 2009, at 8:53 AM, Christopher Fahey wrote: The difference you describe exists today, but it didn't exist ten or twenty years ago. We can hardly blame folks in the 1980's and earlier for blurring engineering and user experience design, as they were doing both. Thomas Edison thought a lot about user experience when he was engineering the fountain pen and the stock ticker, but obviously he was focused on the engineering. Even the people who created all those classic Atari 2600 computer games -- the gameplay, the graphics, the sounds -- were almost without exception engineers... yet it's hard to argue today that their primary contribution to the universe was in engineering. To be clear, I wasn't looking for blame in this sense. Further, I think you're taking it a bit too far and making the same mistake that plagued the user experience crowd in the late 90s and early 00s. The it's all user experience, even if they didn't know it! I don't think I suggested that it was all user experience. I said they were doing both. My twist, I suppose, is that when solving UX challenges the great creators of the 80's and earlier were often going beyond what their engineering training and responsibilities would usually require of them. I just wanted to make sure folks were looking for the right people, which in the past context means they are almost always looking for engineers. Again, I think that was the point I was making. -- that we should realize that great user experience innovations have come from engineers. Sorry if it seemed otherwise, or if you mistook someone else's comments as mine. Cheers, -Cf Christopher Fahey Behavior biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com me: http://www.graphpaper.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
This is a great discussion. Can anybody suggest a way of adding the individuals, teams and concepts discussed here to a list of some sort that can be navigated, edited and visualized? Timo Arnall, Anne Galloway et al have created http://www.nearfield.org/retouch/ for exploring touch-related interaction. Why don't we create something along those lines and make it editable, wikified, give it multiple means and axes of navigation and add a bit of interaction visualization too? I'd be happy to *help* create one, who else would like to pitch in? - Fredrik Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 19, 2009, at 3:16 PM, Christian Crumlish wrote: On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Peter Merholz pete...@peterme.com wrote: If you're going to include Tim Berners-Lee, I think you need to also include Marc Andreessen, as his innovation of bringing imagery into WWW was fundamental in making it of broad interest. I thought the earliest prototype browsers had imagery (as well as read/write, and note-taking functionality)? I realize this is a quibble, though and the experience I shared with no doubt many people on this list was going from www/lynx to Mosaic. Asked around because I had forgotten the evolution of this and was pointed to: http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html The exchange is interesting. Make of it what you will. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Chief Design Officer, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. and...@involutionstudios.com c. +1 408 306 6422 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Ok, if we really need, I agree with the fact that we should consider a wider spectrum. So, I would like to mention to... ... Enric Bernat, creatorof the Chupa Chups lollipop. ... King Camp Gillette, inventor of the safety razor. ... Emilio Bellvis, re-inventor of the mop. Ferran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
For completeness, adding Ted Nelson to the list of greats. (Named hypertext, and his motto is A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.) Dan Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
To be fair, this didn't read as a statement for shoehorning author/ities based on categories, but there is a decent question to be raised about the number of women (etc) being seen as IxD Greats, whether it's presentation, representative imbalance, industry culture and history, oversight and publication and so on. The same goes for other groups - for a field that would seem to consider ethnography as significant, I think ignoring these aspects would be a mistake (even if not a subject for this thread). /tangentially yours, Scott On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 5:12 PM, Angel Marquez angel.marq...@gmail.com wrote: That is like me saying their should be more mexican people on the list. I wouldn't say that. -- In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. -Patti Smith Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Dan's and Christopher's lists are the best, though I wonder what the following people have designed that warrants inclusion: | - Hugh Dubberly - Jaron Lanier - Ted Nelson - Terry Winograd - Herbert Simon - Claude Shannon - Marvin Minsky If you're going to include Tim Berners-Lee, I think you need to also include Marc Andreessen, as his innovation of bringing imagery into WWW was fundamental in making it of broad interest. Other people I would add: John Maeda (his interactive toys/tools from the 90s...I wish he'd stop theorizing and get back to making stuff http://www.maedastudio.com/index.php) Lisa Strausfeld Jake Barton (http://localprojects.net) Dan Bricklin (VisiCalc) Kai Krause (already mentioned by others) Marc Blank, Dave Lebling (creators of Zork/Infocom) Steve Jobs (also already mentioned) --peter Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
So maybe a different way to consider this topic: What products, design ideas, or other innovations have been created in the field that have lasted the test of time or made a significant impact, and who was responsible for them? Then you'd get a more practical list and provide create where credit is due. So, rather than list people, which is prone to popularity and unreliable memories of the audience, you'd ask yourself things like... Who created hyperlinks? Who created the desktop model for the graphical user interface? Who created the bezier curve drawing interface? Who created the painting interface? Who came up with the notion of bookmarks? Who created the WASD + mouse model for first person 3D environments? Who came up with Copy Paste? Who came up with Undo? Who came up with the core notions of choice, resulting in Checkboxes, Radio Buttons, Menus and core Form controls? Who designed the Mac IIci? Who developed the Palm Graffiti input system? Who designed Microsoft Word 1.0 (or whichever version was the first to use an optical mouse instead of pure keyboard input like Wordstar) Who designed VisiCalc? And so on and so on... Obviously, again, this line of question is computer and software tech heavy. I know the answer to many, but not all. Would be nice to get the collective wisdom of the crowd to find all the answers. Getting a list like this made would also go towards a long way of collecting more core fundamentals around interface design and software, which has been missing for many years now. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Chief Design Officer, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. and...@involutionstudios.com c. +1 408 306 6422 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
The victor writes the history. Did the wright brothers invent the airplane or the montgomery? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 7:58 AM, dave malouf dave@gmail.com wrote: Why do I say this. I might have invented in the past the most amazing interactive systems. BUT did they really practice interaction design clearly not, not having had studio training they weren't doing design at all, right? ;^) Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Peter Merholz pete...@peterme.com wrote: If you're going to include Tim Berners-Lee, I think you need to also include Marc Andreessen, as his innovation of bringing imagery into WWW was fundamental in making it of broad interest. I thought the earliest prototype browsers had imagery (as well as read/write, and note-taking functionality)? I realize this is a quibble, though and the experience I shared with no doubt many people on this list was going from www/lynx to Mosaic. I want to add Brewster Kahle but I can't really justify it. -x- -- Christian Crumlish I'm writing a book so please forgive any lag http://designingsocialinterfaces.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Andrei, I agree that the artifacts are as important to acknowledge as the individuals who created them. I like the timeline approach for that reason. It's a way to aggregate the artifacts; such as applications, components, and publications - and the people that created them in a format that illustrates how each built on what came before. Since all entries can presumably be cross linked it allows one to follow whatever thread of connection catches one's interest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Is lynx better than links? I've been using links for phase1 and the only draw back so far is not being able to open gmail in it. Terminal commands seem to have a more intuitive progression than a lot of interfaces. Unix international? Sent from my iPhone On Feb 19, 2009, at 3:16 PM, Christian Crumlish x...@well.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Peter Merholz pete...@peterme.com wrote: If you're going to include Tim Berners-Lee, I think you need to also include Marc Andreessen, as his innovation of bringing imagery into WWW was fundamental in making it of broad interest. I thought the earliest prototype browsers had imagery (as well as read/write, and note-taking functionality)? I realize this is a quibble, though and the experience I shared with no doubt many people on this list was going from www/lynx to Mosaic. I want to add Brewster Kahle but I can't really justify it. -x- -- Christian Crumlish I'm writing a book so please forgive any lag http://designingsocialinterfaces.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
I really don't see the point to all this for us in this community. A timeline of the greatest interactive inventions of all time seems really pointless as a means of expressing the history of the discipline of interaction design. Despite Christian's snide comment, what I was referring to was less about design but about using methods, applying known theories, and understandings for achieving great IxD, as opposed to well, genius. One might say by acknowledging these earily genius' we are saying that everything we believe in as a discipline and a practice is well meaningless. On the other hand lauding these accomplishments in such a way that outlines what makes them great interaction designs. What part of their aesthetics? their use of time? the quality motions? their use of affordances? etc. etc. And most importantly how did they impact behavior? It might even be worthwhile to create a set of criteria that makes something a great interaction design as opposed to us just randomly using our gut to express these notions. Again, though I'm not so sure that saying great invention is the same as great interaction design. - dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 19, 2009, at 4:46 PM, dave malouf wrote: It might even be worthwhile to create a set of criteria that makes something a great interaction design as opposed to us just randomly using our gut to express these notions. This seems appropriate. I would presume that before you can ask questions like Who created Copy Paste or Who developed Graffiti for the Palm? you'd have to first test whether they passed the criteria. I just didn't make that explicit. Again, though I'm not so sure that saying great invention is the same as great interaction design. How is there a practical difference? How would we know that Rand was a great graphic design without the work he did at Direction or the various brands he created, or that Dreyfuss was a great industrial designer without the telephone? I mean... the books they wrote are certainly inspiring and insightful, but what makes their opinions relevant is the fact they had the body of work to back it up. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Chief Design Officer, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. and...@involutionstudios.com c. +1 408 306 6422 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Hi Andrei, I'm not sure why you went that way. I totally agree that its in the artifact (the DESIGN) that we need to look at the designer and not the thinking. In fact, I don't think that I was even suggesting looking at the designer at all, nor their thinking. I thought I was suggesting 2 things: 1) that in choosing what might go into a timeline we develop criteria for what is a great example of interaction design. 2) I would also suggest that not every great invention is great interaction design. I.e. the cotton gin was instrumental in industrializing the production of cotton, but is that great IxD? I have no idea! There are a host of inventions that were culture changing for good or bad that I'm not sure were good IxD.But then I haven't seen the answer to #1 suggestion. To be clear at no time was I suggesting that we should judge anyone on the basis of their thinking. THOUGH I do think there were pioneers in design education who we may want to judge on the work of their students, and their total contribution to the field/discipline, but to me this is a different but still important category. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Inventions that employed reification, polymorphism and reuse should be allowed into the ixd fame domain. That would include the origins of machine uses of transportation communication. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Ford, HenryHR Giger On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk aherasimc...@involutionstudios.com wrote: On Feb 17, 2009, at 5:09 PM, dave malouf wrote: But in general, your list is my list. If you're going to use software technology examples, considering we are still in early stages of that tech, we should acknowledge that most of the great interaction designers up until now haven't been designers at all. They've been engineers. It's going to be like that for some time. In Dan's list, more than half of those people were engineers first, and would probably call themselves engineers still, not designers. Mike Schuster? Thomas Knoll? Those two basically made Illustrator and Photoshop happen. Mark Hamburg? Definitely up there. The engineering team on Mac System 7? Better toss in Andy Hertzfeld into the mix as well. Then there's the guys behind things like AutoCAD. The engineers behind Alias, Wavefront, and SoftImage, cutting edge 3D which is one of the most difficult interface and interaction problems you've got in all of software design. The original PageMaker team! Which if you can travel back to 1986 was about as cutting edge and genre defining as it gets in this field considering what they created, how they did on a 9 black and white screen with 640x480 pixel resolution, and with what computing horsepower they had at the time. Could easily go on and on in this fashion. Designers like a Rand, Eames or a Dreyfuss type -- if you are trying to make parallels to this field -- are probably just getting out of high school at this very moment, if they've even gotten out of junior high. Until they come along, should give the engineers who made all of this happen the credit they are due for being great designers as well. And there have been plenty of great ones. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Chief Design Officer, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. and...@involutionstudios.com c. +1 408 306 6422 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
That metatools guy that did kai's power goo. Those interfaces were amazing on mac os 7.5.3 3D has come along way since ray dream designer and specualr indiniD. I think 3DS max has the 'best' ux going on these days even though it is PC only. I agree, the clone wars were minimal when bryce and metacreations were making the wow UI's. Autodesk kills it. Their products are real tools that meet real needs. On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 12:01 AM, Angel Marquez angel.marq...@gmail.comwrote: Ford, HenryHR Giger On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk aherasimc...@involutionstudios.com wrote: On Feb 17, 2009, at 5:09 PM, dave malouf wrote: But in general, your list is my list. If you're going to use software technology examples, considering we are still in early stages of that tech, we should acknowledge that most of the great interaction designers up until now haven't been designers at all. They've been engineers. It's going to be like that for some time. In Dan's list, more than half of those people were engineers first, and would probably call themselves engineers still, not designers. Mike Schuster? Thomas Knoll? Those two basically made Illustrator and Photoshop happen. Mark Hamburg? Definitely up there. The engineering team on Mac System 7? Better toss in Andy Hertzfeld into the mix as well. Then there's the guys behind things like AutoCAD. The engineers behind Alias, Wavefront, and SoftImage, cutting edge 3D which is one of the most difficult interface and interaction problems you've got in all of software design. The original PageMaker team! Which if you can travel back to 1986 was about as cutting edge and genre defining as it gets in this field considering what they created, how they did on a 9 black and white screen with 640x480 pixel resolution, and with what computing horsepower they had at the time. Could easily go on and on in this fashion. Designers like a Rand, Eames or a Dreyfuss type -- if you are trying to make parallels to this field -- are probably just getting out of high school at this very moment, if they've even gotten out of junior high. Until they come along, should give the engineers who made all of this happen the credit they are due for being great designers as well. And there have been plenty of great ones. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Chief Design Officer, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. and...@involutionstudios.com c. +1 408 306 6422 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Angel, After Andrei's post I thought of Kai's Power Tools as well. Kai Krause was the guy's name. Along with Phil Clemenger a little later on. Steve 2009/2/18 Angel Marquez angel.marq...@gmail.com That metatools guy that did kai's power goo. Those interfaces were amazing on mac os 7.5.3 -- Steve 'Doc' Baty | Principal | Meld Consulting | P: +61 417 061 292 | E: steveb...@meld.com.au | Twitter: docbaty | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevebaty Blog: http://meld.com.au/blog Contributor: Johnny Holland - johnnyholland.org Contributor: UXMatters - www.uxmatters.com UX Australia: 25-27 August, http://uxaustralia.com.au UX Book Club: http://uxbookclub.org/ - Read, discuss, connect. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Correction: Phil Clevenger was the other guy's name. 2009/2/18 Steve Baty steveb...@gmail.com Angel, After Andrei's post I thought of Kai's Power Tools as well. Kai Krause was the guy's name. Along with Phil Clemenger a little later on. Steve 2009/2/18 Angel Marquez angel.marq...@gmail.com That metatools guy that did kai's power goo. Those interfaces were amazing on mac os 7.5.3 -- Steve 'Doc' Baty | Principal | Meld Consulting | P: +61 417 061 292 | E: steveb...@meld.com.au | Twitter: docbaty | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevebaty Blog: http://meld.com.au/blog Contributor: Johnny Holland - johnnyholland.org Contributor: UXMatters - www.uxmatters.com UX Australia: 25-27 August, http://uxaustralia.com.au UX Book Club: http://uxbookclub.org/ - Read, discuss, connect. -- Steve 'Doc' Baty | Principal | Meld Consulting | P: +61 417 061 292 | E: steveb...@meld.com.au | Twitter: docbaty | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevebaty Blog: http://docholdsfourth.blogspot.com Contributor: UXMatters - www.uxmatters.com UX Australia: 25-27 August, http://uxaustralia.com.au UX Book Club: http://uxbookclub.org/ - Read, discuss, connect. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Hey Steve, Yea, I just looked him up. I have pleasant memories of the people the time and how that was all introduced to me. I started my professional career path' on mac 7.5.3, illustrator 7 photoshop 4. It has been interesting to see how things have synthesized over the years. On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 12:22 AM, Steve Baty steveb...@gmail.com wrote: Angel, After Andrei's post I thought of Kai's Power Tools as well. Kai Krause was the guy's name. Along with Phil Clemenger a little later on. Steve 2009/2/18 Angel Marquez angel.marq...@gmail.com That metatools guy that did kai's power goo. Those interfaces were amazing on mac os 7.5.3 -- Steve 'Doc' Baty | Principal | Meld Consulting | P: +61 417 061 292 | E: steveb...@meld.com.au | Twitter: docbaty | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevebaty Blog: http://meld.com.au/blog Contributor: Johnny Holland - johnnyholland.org Contributor: UXMatters - www.uxmatters.com UX Australia: 25-27 August, http://uxaustralia.com.au UX Book Club: http://uxbookclub.org/ - Read, discuss, connect. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Kai Krause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Do we already need a 'hall of fame'? Do we really need a 'hall of fame'? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
I don't think anybody knows who any of the below mentioned men are, East of the Sacramento River. Physical architecture has been around and celebrated as a celebrity- worship-worthy vocation, for thousands of years. *Everybody* in a given region also sees buildings, whereas not everybody uses most pieces of software. Software design has only been a vocation for a couple of decades. My family in Oklahoma still give me blank stares when I explain what I do- and so despite no longer being employed by Yahoo!, I still just blurt out oh, I make Yahoo!, and that's pretty much the only thing that will prompt the raised-eyebrow-nod of comprehension. So they either then get that I work on teh internets w/o any further drill- down clarification (which they wouldn't know what to do with anyway), or they think I'm a hooker- and either, I'm fine with, so long as they quit asking. Raymond Loewy and Yves Behar I also think are only design-community and design-conscious community celebrities... known only among the Prada-wearing or New-Balance sneakers w/ free software-shirt wearing geeks out there. Challenge (perhaps?) for our own community: surfacing and celebrating the women mavericks among us, and lessening the sausage-party-ness of design celebrity. I know the biggest contributor to this problem is that there just aren't that many chicks in the field to begin with... but in a big long list, it does seem un-fit for no estrogen to preside. :D n On Feb 17, 2009, at 2:59 PM, Joel Eden wrote: The Woz is going to be on the next season of Dancing with the Stars...does that count? :-) Joel On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Weston Thompson westo...@gmail.com wrote: Possible exceptions you missed: - Steve Jobs - Jeff Bezos - Sergei Brin - Larry page Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
If you take the view that the simplest form of interaction is reading the written word..(tenuous?) then I'd submit Nevil Brody Personal hero of mine;) John Morse Information Architect Professional Services Group UPA,Prince 2, ISEB IT Architect, AIIM, MBCS Eduserv innovative technology services john.mo...@eduserv.org.uk tel: +44 (0)1225 474395 mob: +44 (0)7500 069524 fax: +44 (0)1225 474374 http://www.eduserv.org.uk -Original Message- From: discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of mike myles Sent: 17 February 2009 14:01 To: disc...@ixda.org Subject: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats? Many of the great architects industrial designers are known to the general public. To name a few (in no particular order): Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, Antoni Gaudí, Frank Gehry, Raymond Loewy, Henry Dreyfuss, Charles and Ray Eames... Who do we feel are the greats of IxD? And to follow... Why are designers of great software less well known than designers of real world objects? Is that a problem? Is there something we could/should be doing to change that? Or is there simply no software equivalent yet to Falling Water or the Coke bottle? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
You may not think of Linus Torvalds as an interaction designer, but he is sort of a rock star in the software and open source community. And if you think of Linux as a product for scientists, engineers, sys admins, and programmers, he really has made it user friendly by sticking to interfaces that is already understood and accepted. Even better, by making it open source the user is included in the design process. Looking at the quality and richness of some open source software, the whole consept of open source software is in my view a beautiful systems. I don't see Linux as universally user friendly, but that wasn't the original goal. The ills about Linux is not understanding how it is not ready for the consumer market, or seriously underestimating the efforts to do so (or is that just indicating the quality of commercial software?). That said, things are improving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
I would say it's most important to not think about people based on whether their profession was IxD or not - given that the term and title have only been around for less than a decade, yet people have been 'doing' just that for a bit longer. Leonardo Di Vinci was certainly not an industrial designer or an anatomist, yet that is exactly what he was because that is exactly what he 'did' - just as Englebart could not possibly have been an IxDer because the title didn't exist, yet he is exactly that because that is what he 'did' - we need to throw titles out the window and focus on what great contributors DO/DID - not what their title was. :-) Though Linux is universally understood by lay persons and designers and the worst possible IxD of all time, it is completely relative to the audience so - for the intended audience, was linux really good IxD? Depends on who you ask - but i think intentionality is key here - did Torvald give a rats ass about IxD, interface, and use goals, needs, activities when he set to work on it? Would he have been just as happy if the interaction model was command line - and all that GUI stuff was just for fun - or because X-Windows had it? Not sure. ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel: +1.617.281.1281 | w...@semanticfoundry.com http://blog.semanticfoundry.com aim: semanticwill gtalk: semanticwill twitter: semanticwill On Feb 18, 2009, at 5:08 AM, Eirik Midttun wrote: You may not think of Linus Torvalds as an interaction designer, but he is sort of a rock star in the software and open source community. And if you think of Linux as a product for scientists, engineers, sys admins, and programmers, he really has made it user friendly by sticking to interfaces that is already understood and accepted. Even better, by making it open source the user is included in the design process. Looking at the quality and richness of some open source software, the whole consept of open source software is in my view a beautiful systems. I don't see Linux as universally user friendly, but that wasn't the original goal. The ills about Linux is not understanding how it is not ready for the consumer market, or seriously underestimating the efforts to do so (or is that just indicating the quality of commercial software?). That said, things are improving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
I love these exercises. They are the IxD equivalent of fantasy dinner parties. To the excellent lists below, I would add: Peter Checkland, who developed and promoted Soft System Methodology Bruce Mau, for his Massive Change project John Ive, because his products delight and mesmerize me even though I do not own any marianne mswe...@speakeasy.net -Original Message- From: discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Christopher Fahey Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 8:52 PM To: IXDA list Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats? On Feb 17, 2009, at 6:45 PM, Dan Saffer wrote: I humbly submit (in order of appearance): Vannevar Bush Ivan Sutherland Doug Engelbart Bob Taylor Alan Kay Larry Tesler Tim Mott Mitch Kapor Jef Raskin Bill Atkinson Shigeru Miyamoto Marc Andreessen Jeff Hawkins Will Wright My criteria was a lasting contribution via products to the shared language of interaction design that has informed and inspired current generations of designers (knowingly or unknowingly). I appreciate Dan's focus on *people who have designed things*, rather than the many people who have *said interesting things about interaction design* or *run interaction design companies*. In that vein, I continue: Immediate predecessors and still-contemporaries I'm sure Dan merely overlooked: - Hugh Dubberly - Tim Berners-Lee - Jaron Lanier - Ted Nelson - Terry Winograd - Herbert Simon - Claude Shannon - Marvin Minsky - Sid Meier Some old school people who shaped our deepest thinking about interaction: - Alexander Graham Bell - Thomas Edison - Charles Babbage Ada Lovelace (it's interesting to observe that we often call truly great design invention) Some bad modernist influences (I love these idealistic crazies, and they're widely emulated, but they're not good designers to emulate IMHO!) - Le Corbusier - Buckminster Fuller I also think that some of the most resonant interaction design concepts that many of us think of every day, perhaps subconsciously, were invented by creators of fictional worlds: - Gene Roddenberry - Stanley Kubrick - Philip K Dick - Neal Stephenson - William Gibson Cheers, -Cf Christopher Fahey Behavior biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com me: http://www.graphpaper.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 18, 2009, at 1:39 AM, Ferran Alvarez wrote: Do we already need a 'hall of fame'? Do we really need a 'hall of fame'? Yes and yes. We should recognize and understand the history of our field and celebrate those who created the interaction design paradigms like cut and paste that all of us use. Dan Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 17, 2009, at 11:35 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: If you're going to use software technology examples, considering we are still in early stages of that tech, we should acknowledge that most of the great interaction designers up until now haven't been designers at all. They've been engineers. It's going to be like that for some time. In Dan's list, more than half of those people were engineers first, and would probably call themselves engineers still, not designers. I would submit that they called themselves and what they were doing are different things. At the time they were working, there was no formal discipline of interaction design. Yes, many of them relied on good engineering to make what they did possible, and in some cases they had to build that themselves. But designers still do this all the time. I build prototypes in code and electronics, but I don't call myself a coder or electrical engineer. We shouldn't confuse title with role, or tools with purpose and methology and especially not in our early history. Dan Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
This is an interesting exercise. I think that moving forward we should actually look at those people who have either moved their conscious understanding of what they do to interaction design, or who currently understand what they do as interaction design. Why do I say this. I might have invented in the past the most amazing interactive systems. BUT did they really practice interaction design, understand the success of that system as good interaction design? Maybe? maybe not? Can they now articulate using interaction design language what it was that made it successful in terms of interaction design? To me this is important. When Eames and Rand talk about their design, they talk about it as designers and understand the language of design around what they are doing. Maybe Verplank, Moggridge, Tog, and some others fit this bit, but many of the engineers that were mentioned, I doubt they do and I would suggest that we do need to understand the difference between engineering interactive systems and designing interactions. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
BTW- I haven't seen Joy Mountford or any other women mentioned... and I know there were a couple of other ladies in the 'ol-skool PARC and Apple UI teams. We've got lots of men and Americans, women? Intl? n On Feb 18, 2009, at 7:22 AM, Dan Saffer wrote: On Feb 18, 2009, at 1:39 AM, Ferran Alvarez wrote: Do we already need a 'hall of fame'? Do we really need a 'hall of fame'? Yes and yes. We should recognize and understand the history of our field and celebrate those who created the interaction design paradigms like cut and paste that all of us use. Dan Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 18, 2009, at 8:05 AM, Nina Eleanor Alter wrote: BTW- I haven't seen Joy Mountford or any other women mentioned... and I know there were a couple of other ladies in the 'ol-skool PARC and Apple UI teams. We've got lots of men and Americans, women? Intl? When I made my list, this was the first thing I thought of too, and Joy Mountford was one woman I considered. I wish I knew more about her contributions (paging Interaction10!). Due to the circumstances surrounding the creation of digital products, much of them were made in the US by men. At least from 1940-1995. (My list stops at about 1995.) Shigeru Miyamoto, designer of many seminal video games, is Japanese. I'd love to fill out the list with more women and non-US contributors. My guess is, however, is that most of those are post-1995, although I'd love to be proven wrong. Dan Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
or Muriel Cooper. On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Nina Eleanor Alter ninav...@bigwheel.netwrote: BTW- I haven't seen Joy Mountford or any other women mentioned... and I know there were a couple of other ladies in the 'ol-skool PARC and Apple UI teams. We've got lots of men and Americans, women? Intl? n On Feb 18, 2009, at 7:22 AM, Dan Saffer wrote: On Feb 18, 2009, at 1:39 AM, Ferran Alvarez wrote: Do we already need a 'hall of fame'? Do we really need a 'hall of fame'? Yes and yes. We should recognize and understand the history of our field and celebrate those who created the interaction design paradigms like cut and paste that all of us use. Dan Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 18, 2009, at 7:58 AM, dave malouf wrote: ... many of the engineers that were mentioned, I doubt they do and I would suggest that we do need to understand the difference between engineering interactive systems and designing interactions. I recently read Mitch Kapor's Software Design Manifesto and was struck by his inability to bridge or describe the very gap you describe. He simply couldn't articulate it as clearly as we can today. (I blogged about it at graphpaper.com, naturally: http://tr.im/fsgt) Twenty-five years ago, the ideas of interaction design and software engineering had not yet become distinct -- much in the same way that, say, in the year 1660 physics, chemistry, alchemy, religion, and philosophy had not yet separated into distinct disciplines, either. Newton called his profession natural philosophy, Kapor called his software design. The difference you describe exists today, but it didn't exist ten or twenty years ago. We can hardly blame folks in the 1980's and earlier for blurring engineering and user experience design, as they were doing both. Thomas Edison thought a lot about user experience when he was engineering the fountain pen and the stock ticker, but obviously he was focused on the engineering. Even the people who created all those classic Atari 2600 computer games -- the gameplay, the graphics, the sounds -- were almost without exception engineers... yet it's hard to argue today that their primary contribution to the universe was in engineering. -Cf Christopher Fahey Behavior biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com me: http://www.graphpaper.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 18, 2009, at 8:53 AM, Christopher Fahey wrote: Twenty-five years ago, the ideas of interaction design and software engineering had not yet become distinct -- much in the same way that, say, in the year 1660 physics, chemistry, alchemy, religion, and philosophy had not yet separated into distinct disciplines, either. Newton called his profession natural philosophy, Kapor called his software design. The difference you describe exists today, but it didn't exist ten or twenty years ago. We can hardly blame folks in the 1980's and earlier for blurring engineering and user experience design, as they were doing both. Thomas Edison thought a lot about user experience when he was engineering the fountain pen and the stock ticker, but obviously he was focused on the engineering. Even the people who created all those classic Atari 2600 computer games -- the gameplay, the graphics, the sounds -- were almost without exception engineers... yet it's hard to argue today that their primary contribution to the universe was in engineering. You nailed it here. The same thing happened in the early 1990s with the web as well. Web designers were often (and still remain) their own coders. We can see the same thing happening now with interactive gestures. In fact, I think we can extrapolate a maxim that while a platform or medium is unstable or emerging, the more mixed the disciplines will have to be to deal with it and design for it. Dan Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 18, 2009, at 8:53 AM, Christopher Fahey wrote: The difference you describe exists today, but it didn't exist ten or twenty years ago. We can hardly blame folks in the 1980's and earlier for blurring engineering and user experience design, as they were doing both. Thomas Edison thought a lot about user experience when he was engineering the fountain pen and the stock ticker, but obviously he was focused on the engineering. Even the people who created all those classic Atari 2600 computer games -- the gameplay, the graphics, the sounds -- were almost without exception engineers... yet it's hard to argue today that their primary contribution to the universe was in engineering. To be clear, I wasn't looking for blame in this sense. Further, I think you're taking it a bit too far and making the same mistake that plagued the user experience crowd in the late 90s and early 00s. The it's all user experience, even if they didn't know it! Not really. You're treaded a slippery slope with this line of thinking imho. However, I just wanted to note that if people are looking for examples of people in the past, I wanted to make sure they were looking in the right spots. Guys like Paul Brainerd and his team have done far more in this regard than many of the people on Dan's list, and in my opinion, can be credited for being the first to truly modernize the concept of interacting with computers through a graphical interface, taking what the original Macintosh team did at the OS and simple software level and evolving it to the next stage. I just wanted to make sure folks were looking for the right people, which in the past context means they are almost always looking for engineers. And as for documenting many of the core concepts in software and interface design that are still 100% relevant to day as they were in 1982, Paul Heckel is still your guy. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Chief Design Officer, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. and...@involutionstudios.com c. +1 408 306 6422 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
I agree with you Chris and Dan, whole-heartily. I was trying to bring structure and purpose to the exercise, b/c it seemed to me that almost anyone from Dyson to Ford who thought about any aspect of human needs and motivations in their designs (of success) could be put in this category of IxD Greats and in my mind that means it looses value to me. Let me explain a bit more. I can look at what Ford did in terms of designing cars as amazing (not the most beautiful, but from an IxD perspective revolutionary). It may inspire me in my own design. I can do the same with Edison, Bell, Marconi, Fulton, etc. I can even be inspired by the humaness of Wright and the abstraction of Gehry. Their genius is totally impressive, and all of them have affected the world I design in as an interaction designer, but I don't think in all integrity I can really add them to an Interaction Design Hall of Fame like the one being posited. The list itself becomes so huge that it starts to loose bounding and meaning b/c we start saying, well if soso is in, then why not this person? and so on and so on. Galileo is on the genius chain that leads to the atomic bomb, but I wouldn't call him an atomic physicist. I really think it a stretch to consider Edison an interaction designer in the same regard, or if Edison is, so is DaVinci and so is the guy who invented controlled fire, and the wheel, too. you've just made the term interaction designer, totally meaningless. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Again - I think the importance here is 'intentionality' - Galileo could not possibly think of himself or his work as interaction design but if I ripped open my time machine and presented Englebart with IxD as I understand it, he would jump on board, until he jumped off it again because his real intention was actually augmenting human memory and thinking and had nothing to do with designing behaviors or 15 other definitions of IxD that would be thrown at him. With the term IxD only/less than 7-10 years old - does that mean there are no greats of IxD yet - since it will take another 20 years for it to sink in? ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel: +1.617.281.1281 | w...@semanticfoundry.com http://blog.semanticfoundry.com aim: semanticwill gtalk: semanticwill twitter: semanticwill On Feb 18, 2009, at 10:40 AM, dave malouf wrote: I agree with you Chris and Dan, whole-heartily. I was trying to bring structure and purpose to the exercise, b/c it seemed to me that almost anyone from Dyson to Ford who thought about any aspect of human needs and motivations in their designs (of success) could be put in this category of IxD Greats and in my mind that means it looses value to me. Let me explain a bit more. I can look at what Ford did in terms of designing cars as amazing (not the most beautiful, but from an IxD perspective revolutionary). It may inspire me in my own design. I can do the same with Edison, Bell, Marconi, Fulton, etc. I can even be inspired by the humaness of Wright and the abstraction of Gehry. Their genius is totally impressive, and all of them have affected the world I design in as an interaction designer, but I don't think in all integrity I can really add them to an Interaction Design Hall of Fame like the one being posited. The list itself becomes so huge that it starts to loose bounding and meaning b/c we start saying, well if soso is in, then why not this person? and so on and so on. Galileo is on the genius chain that leads to the atomic bomb, but I wouldn't call him an atomic physicist. I really think it a stretch to consider Edison an interaction designer in the same regard, or if Edison is, so is DaVinci and so is the guy who invented controlled fire, and the wheel, too. you've just made the term interaction designer, totally meaningless. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Lot's of wonderful discussion! To the IxDA's mission points of Evangelism and Education, should we work to create a Hall of Fame site touting the accomplishments of innovators in computer interaction design? We can learn from our history, and demonstrating the progressive advancement of the craft with innovation building on innovation lends credence to IxD as a profession. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 18, 2009, at 11:02 AM, mike myles wrote: To the IxDA's mission points of Evangelism and Education, should we work to create a Hall of Fame site touting the accomplishments of innovators in computer interaction design? Two things: 1. Hall of Fame is an awful way to think of it. The purpose of creating a list seems to be more about noting influencers and innovators, understanding what they did, what they contributed, what ideas they formulated that last to today, and making sure that knowledge is passed down. 2. Whenever I refer to interaction design being about computers and software, I get the third degree from way too many people on this list. I have no problem creating a list of influential people that should be studied for the purposes of learning and evolving the profession, but I thought that the two things that were verboten on this list was claiming or otherwise tying IxD as a digital technology based craft or that an interaction designer should be expected to know how to draw. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Chief Design Officer, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. and...@involutionstudios.com c. +1 408 306 6422 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Something I keep thinking about seeing all of these individual names is that as opposed to e.g., paintings that are easier to think of as being created by one person, so much of the work done by the names on these lists were really team/group efforts. Aren't we continuing to sell one of the the major myths of innovation (i.e. Scott Berkun's book) by focusing on individuals? For example, I love Alan Kay's work, but I always think of his contributions together with the environment at Xerox PARC and all of the others in the groups that he worked with. Same with Edison, and for most of these people mentioned. And I want to add Christopher Alexander to the list (if he hasn't already been mentioned). :-) Joel On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 2:02 PM, mike myles mmyles2...@yahoo.com wrote: Lot's of wonderful discussion! To the IxDA's mission points of Evangelism and Education, should we work to create a Hall of Fame site touting the accomplishments of innovators in computer interaction design? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Hi folks, I'm enjoying this thread very much, albeit dismayed at the lack of cited women too. (Anybody see Maren Costa's work at Amazon at DUX 2005?) Anyways, I wanted to let folks know that the IxDA Board is playing around with the idea of creating an IxD timeline that would allow IxDA members to add material to it, documenting the fantastic and rich history of our discipline. In my mind, it should have a place for recognizing people as well as projects/case studies. Jim Leftwich is leading this new initiative, and has been sourcing some online tools to make this concept come to life as a collaborative system for the whole IxDA network to contribute participate. Seems like something that will resonate with the community, all right! :) Which comment is in NO WAY intended to stifle this thread -- on the contrary, keep the dialog going and we'll all be able to use this thread as some great source material. Cheers, Liz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Liz, The timeline concept sounds like a great one. It strikes me that people (teams individuals), projects, products and publications all work in concert to show the evolution of interaction design. A timeline could be an effective way to tie all those items together and enhance understanding of the interrelation between them. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
That is like me saying their should be more mexican people on the list. I wouldn't say that. Which brings me this mental model book I am reading where the author is a woman. All of her second person references are 'she'. After reading enough to draw a conclusion I'm not sure me and 'her' are feeling the same when we stroll through a grocery store or go to see a movie. Although she does pin the possible traits of the women I've known in my day it seems like she is designing for women only. How do you people address the gender difference during your user research? Seems like a woman observing a man and a man observing a woman would have completely different takes on their findings. How is this planned for, is their a name for it? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Many of the great architects industrial designers are known to the general public. To name a few (in no particular order): Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, Antoni Gaudí, Frank Gehry, Raymond Loewy, Henry Dreyfuss, Charles and Ray Eames... Who do we feel are the greats of IxD? And to follow... Why are designers of great software less well known than designers of real world objects? Is that a problem? Is there something we could/should be doing to change that? Or is there simply no software equivalent yet to Falling Water or the Coke bottle? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Hey Mike, All the guys (and one gal) you mention were doing their thing 50 - 100 years ago. Maybe software/IxD just needs a bit more time to mature? Suze. Twitter: @suzeingram Blog: http://suzeingram.blogspot.com/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Possible exceptions you missed: - Steve Jobs - Jeff Bezos - Sergei Brin - Larry page As with the architects you list, these people are known as the figureheads of the products they bring to market. They do not necessarily do the design engingeering (or at least ALL of the design engineering). Clearly, some famous architects and industrial designers did more of the design and others did less. Gehry had a whole team of architects working on Disney Hall with him - do you know any of the other names? -Weston On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 2:01 PM, mike myles mmyles2...@yahoo.com wrote: Many of the great architects industrial designers are known to the general public. To name a few (in no particular order): Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, Antoni Gaudí, Frank Gehry, Raymond Loewy, Henry Dreyfuss, Charles and Ray Eames... Who do we feel are the greats of IxD? And to follow... Why are designers of great software less well known than designers of real world objects? Is that a problem? Is there something we could/should be doing to change that? Or is there simply no software equivalent yet to Falling Water or the Coke bottle? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Two names that have greatly influenced my interaction work: Jakob Nielsen Edward Tufte. They focus on very specific aspects of it (usability and visual information presentation), and I don't always agree with everything they advocate -- but what I have learned from them has greatly shaped my work. Other possibilities: Jony Ive (the iPhone design may match Coke bottles, if not Falling Water ;-), Peter Morville, and Jesse James Garrett. I do agree that the field needs to mature before people make these calls. bests, Alex O'Neal -- The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is now. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
The Woz is going to be on the next season of Dancing with the Stars...does that count? :-) Joel On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Weston Thompson westo...@gmail.com wrote: Possible exceptions you missed: - Steve Jobs - Jeff Bezos - Sergei Brin - Larry page Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Tog . . . he's old (sorry Tog). I was just a teen when I heard him give a presentation. A designer's designer. = : ^ ) On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Weston Thompson westo...@gmail.com wrote: Possible exceptions you missed: - Steve Jobs - Jeff Bezos - Sergei Brin - Larry page Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
- Jeff Bezos When his team was attempting to create the One-Click checkout, the first version included a confirmation page. Bezos, insisting it be a single-click process, reportedly said something like, But that's twice as many clicks! If that was the only interaction design Bezos ever did, I'd say he still qualifies. - Sergei Brin Needing an input field through which to run queries in the new search engine he and his partner were creating, he stuck a Search box and a logo on a blank white page and never thought about it again. If that was the only interaction design Brin ever did, I'd say he still qualifies. -r- Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Other possibilities: Jony Ive (the iPhone design may match Coke bottles, if not Falling Water ;-), Peter Morville, and Jesse James Garrett. Name something that JJG and Morville designed that makes them IxD greats. I'm not being antagonistic—I'm genuinely curious. I have no idea what designs have had their fingerprints applied to them (theirs, not their teams'). -r- Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
It's pretty sad that almost none of the people thus far mentioned in this thread are actually interaction designers. I humbly submit (in order of appearance): Vannevar Bush Ivan Sutherland Doug Engelbart Bob Taylor Alan Kay Larry Tesler Tim Mott Mitch Kapor Jef Raskin Bill Atkinson Shigeru Miyamoto Marc Andreessen Jeff Hawkins Will Wright My criteria was a lasting contribution via products to the shared language of interaction design that has informed and inspired current generations of designers (knowingly or unknowingly). Dan Dan Saffer Principal, Kicker Studio http://www.kickerstudio.com http://www.odannyboy.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Bill Moggridge's book, Designing Interactionshttp://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interactions-Bill-Moggridge/dp/0262134748, takes this explicit approach--interviewing folks who've had a big impact on the field. It's a pretty fun/interesting read, and there's a DVD w/ interviews, too. --Ambrose Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Good question. I thought of influence before design, my mistake. I can't think of anything. Reading Dan's list, I'm infinitely embarrassed to have forgotten Miyamoto, whose work I've loved for lo these many years ;-) -- The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is now. On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr rob...@rhjr.net wrote: Other possibilities: Jony Ive (the iPhone design may match Coke bottles, if not Falling Water ;-), Peter Morville, and Jesse James Garrett. Name something that JJG and Morville designed that makes them IxD greats. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
I thought Tog was a good choice from earlier, Dan and not on your list. His work at Apple is pretty, neat! But in general, your list is my list. I have one other addition which I don't think you left off on purpose, but that is Bill Verplank. Ok, another addition Gillian Crampton Smith. Ok, another addition Brenda Laurel. BUT!!! in all honesty people would know Frank Lloyd Wright WAY before any of these, and most designers regardless of discipline knows Eames and Rand. I do not think ANY of the people we listed thus far except for maybe Nielsen are rock stars in that sense, but I would never call Nielsen a designer. One of the reaons we are not great is b/c by definition we don't finish anything. Ive will always be the headliner to an Apple product regardless of who heads the Human Factors Group at Apple. They all remain pretty faceless despite doing some of the best IxD work since the Alto (arguable, but I'll stand by it for now just to be provocative). We do amazing rockstar worthy work, but we aren't called out for it. Some exceptions have been mainly when we called it out ourselves (which usually doesn't lead to rock-stardom). But only WE know about them. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
It is somewhat like naming contemporary artists. If you aren't an artist, you likely can only name famous artists from 50-100 years ago. Maybe the 70s... But artists working right now? Not so much. Some of our fathers are pretty famous. And there have been a few books on IxD that broke out of the IxD camp. Cooper and Platt have books that come to mind. And Tufte and McLuhan and Gladwell could all be considered our fathers and are pretty famous, at least in wider circles than our own stars. I mean. Right now our brightest stars can almost all be contacted directly through this list. And many participate regularly. You have to be really small to be able to do that. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
Ah, yeah - forgot about Verplank ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel: +1.617.281.1281 | w...@semanticfoundry.com http://blog.semanticfoundry.com aim: semanticwill gtalk: semanticwill twitter: semanticwill On Feb 17, 2009, at 5:09 PM, dave malouf wrote: I thought Tog was a good choice from earlier, Dan and not on your list. His work at Apple is pretty, neat! But in general, your list is my list. I have one other addition which I don't think you left off on purpose, but that is Bill Verplank. Ok, another addition Gillian Crampton Smith. Ok, another addition Brenda Laurel. BUT!!! in all honesty people would know Frank Lloyd Wright WAY before any of these, and most designers regardless of discipline knows Eames and Rand. I do not think ANY of the people we listed thus far except for maybe Nielsen are rock stars in that sense, but I would never call Nielsen a designer. One of the reaons we are not great is b/c by definition we don't finish anything. Ive will always be the headliner to an Apple product regardless of who heads the Human Factors Group at Apple. They all remain pretty faceless despite doing some of the best IxD work since the Alto (arguable, but I'll stand by it for now just to be provocative). We do amazing rockstar worthy work, but we aren't called out for it. Some exceptions have been mainly when we called it out ourselves (which usually doesn't lead to rock-stardom). But only WE know about them. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 17, 2009, at 6:45 PM, Dan Saffer wrote: I humbly submit (in order of appearance): Vannevar Bush Ivan Sutherland Doug Engelbart Bob Taylor Alan Kay Larry Tesler Tim Mott Mitch Kapor Jef Raskin Bill Atkinson Shigeru Miyamoto Marc Andreessen Jeff Hawkins Will Wright My criteria was a lasting contribution via products to the shared language of interaction design that has informed and inspired current generations of designers (knowingly or unknowingly). I appreciate Dan's focus on *people who have designed things*, rather than the many people who have *said interesting things about interaction design* or *run interaction design companies*. In that vein, I continue: Immediate predecessors and still-contemporaries I'm sure Dan merely overlooked: - Hugh Dubberly - Tim Berners-Lee - Jaron Lanier - Ted Nelson - Terry Winograd - Herbert Simon - Claude Shannon - Marvin Minsky - Sid Meier Some old school people who shaped our deepest thinking about interaction: - Alexander Graham Bell - Thomas Edison - Charles Babbage Ada Lovelace (it's interesting to observe that we often call truly great design invention) Some bad modernist influences (I love these idealistic crazies, and they're widely emulated, but they're not good designers to emulate IMHO!) - Le Corbusier - Buckminster Fuller I also think that some of the most resonant interaction design concepts that many of us think of every day, perhaps subconsciously, were invented by creators of fictional worlds: - Gene Roddenberry - Stanley Kubrick - Philip K Dick - Neal Stephenson - William Gibson Cheers, -Cf Christopher Fahey Behavior biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com me: http://www.graphpaper.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
The work we do has a very short lifespan. What could be the IxD equivalent of falling water? It is a historic landmark—a monument to be preserved for the ages. Our work gets replaced on a regular cycle. It isn't treasured (yet) as an important part of our society's history. Part of that has to do with the passage of time, as has been pointed out, but I think it also has to do with the nature of our products. The work that has made the industrial designers listed famous has been raised to the level of art. It is no longer considered to be commercial. It is now collected and displayed in museums and galleries where people pay to see it. How long will it be before software and device user interfaces are considered in the same way? I know that the Cooper-Hewitt has exhibited interaction design in the past. Does anybody know if an institution or organization is actively collecting and maintaining what will eventually be considered the seminal works of IxD? How much innovative design has been lost due to computer equipment/software obsolescence? Best, Jack Jack L. Moffett Interaction Designer inmedius 412.459.0310 x219 http://www.inmedius.com Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Albert Einstein Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Greats?
On Feb 17, 2009, at 5:09 PM, dave malouf wrote: But in general, your list is my list. If you're going to use software technology examples, considering we are still in early stages of that tech, we should acknowledge that most of the great interaction designers up until now haven't been designers at all. They've been engineers. It's going to be like that for some time. In Dan's list, more than half of those people were engineers first, and would probably call themselves engineers still, not designers. Mike Schuster? Thomas Knoll? Those two basically made Illustrator and Photoshop happen. Mark Hamburg? Definitely up there. The engineering team on Mac System 7? Better toss in Andy Hertzfeld into the mix as well. Then there's the guys behind things like AutoCAD. The engineers behind Alias, Wavefront, and SoftImage, cutting edge 3D which is one of the most difficult interface and interaction problems you've got in all of software design. The original PageMaker team! Which if you can travel back to 1986 was about as cutting edge and genre defining as it gets in this field considering what they created, how they did on a 9 black and white screen with 640x480 pixel resolution, and with what computing horsepower they had at the time. Could easily go on and on in this fashion. Designers like a Rand, Eames or a Dreyfuss type -- if you are trying to make parallels to this field -- are probably just getting out of high school at this very moment, if they've even gotten out of junior high. Until they come along, should give the engineers who made all of this happen the credit they are due for being great designers as well. And there have been plenty of great ones. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Chief Design Officer, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. and...@involutionstudios.com c. +1 408 306 6422 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
