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  1. Jennifer Bove: Starting a Design Studio During a Downturn

    July 1, 2009

    Faculty member Jennifer Bove is guest blogger at Fast Company this week. From stock market meltdowns to surviving a six month anniversary, follow the chronicles of starting Kicker Studio in multi-parts.


    Our first day open, however, the Dow dropped over 500 points. It made the list of Time’s top 10 stock market meltdowns.


    With our old-economy thinking, mixed with new-company optimism, we estimated that it might take six weeks or so for us to land our second client. And we weren’t really prepared for what would happen if it took longer than that.


    We tried new tactics, such as forging alliances with other design companies who might have more work than they needed. Designers understood us!

  2. Jill Nussbaum x Flyover Channel x I.D. Design Review Competition

    July 1, 2009

    Congratulations to faculty member Jill Nussbaum and Ian Spalter, creative directors of R/GA Design for winning Best of Category in the Concepts category for the I.D. Magazine Design Review Competition. Their concept proposal is an open-source documentary film channel that shows footage cued to views seen from the windows.


    An I.D. Design Review Competition juror enthuses: these are the ecosystems, cultures, and history that we’re going over as we fly.

  3. Walkman Nostalgia

    July 1, 2009

    At the Walkman’s 30th year since its first launch, faculty member Jennifer Bove recounts a recent BBC article about a 13-year-old boy who traded his iPod for old school nostalgia, or just plain old school?


    From the BBC, 13-year-old Scott Campbell invited to swap his iPod for a Walkman for a week.

    The experiment left him relieved that most of the technological advancement in music happened before his time, difficult to imagine that a Walkman was ever state of the art. Although, “you can almost imagine the excitement about the Walkman coming out,” he says, “ as it was the newest piece of technology at the time.” Reflecting on the downside of digital choice, he remarks, “perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis.”

  4. Dot Dot Dot “The Service Designers” Lecture Videos

    June 23, 2009

    Videos from the last Dot Dot Dot lecture “The Service Designers” are up courtesy of The UX Workshop.

    Jennifer Bove, Kicker Studio, San Francisco

    “I think there is something to be said for including your participants in the creation (of participatory design), but also giving them the accountability for the success of the service. Because then they would be more likely to create more successful services.”

    Chendar Fruchter, 311 NYC Information

    “What the people want the government to do and what the government does, don’t match up a lot of the time.”

    Sylvia Harris, Information Design Strategist, NYC


    “We’ve learned that visitor information is not about signs. It’s about the integration of a lot of input that creates the total experience for the visitor, and that the visitor doesn’t make a distinction between these touch points. It’s signs and people and information and brand that all come together and add up.”

    Jun Lee, ReD Associaties, NYC

    “We really changed the conversation with these senior people (at Lego) about what they need to do in terms of going from evil toys that are quick, have sparkly lights, or designed for kids with no attention span to focusing on toys that are challenging, have more pieces. The amount of interest in challenges and mastery is much higher than they had assumed about kids.”

    Lectures will resume in fall at the Department in an intimate weekly series. Confirmed speakers include: Andy Budd, Clearleft, Kim Goodwin, Cooper Design, Michael Lebowitz, Big Spaceship, Peter Merholz, Adaptive Path, Rob Tannen, BresslerGroup, Scott Thomas, Obama for America, and more. Seating will be limited, and attendance by RSVP only.

  5. Robert Fabricant and the Future of Cellphones

    June 22, 2009

    Faculty member Robert Fabricant, along with design experts Ravi Sawhney of RKS Design, Mark Dziersk of Brandimage-Desgrippes/Laga, and Ken Carbone of Carbone Smolan Agency participated in a Design Roundtable at Fast Company on the impact and future of cellphones. Below is an excerpt of Fabricant’s responses.

    How have cellphones changed our behavior—and were they designed with that in mind?

    The Apple app store marks a profound change in our experience of mobile technologies. We are finally moving past the core design problem of making the basic capabilities of mobile devices work. And considering, instead, all of the experiences that mobility and connectivity can enable in areas like health, education and entertainment. We are moving from designing the experience OF mobile devices to designing the experience WITH mobile devices.

    At frog we have spent the last 10-15 years conceiving of different models for the types of experiences mobility will enable. For the first time we have the opportunity to make them real at relatively low cost through the app store. To see if they work in time and space. To see if they make sense in the palm of your hand, in specific situations. We are literally mining a decade or more of concepts that were impossible to get to market in the past. With the iPhone, it’s not just possible to get them ON a device. But they can TAKE OVER the device – Apple was even nice enough to put their logo on the back, out of the way.

    It is remarkable to me how it has taken the iPhone to create this momentum in the US market. To get people to engage with mobile experiences outside of basic communication. When I travel outside the USA, particularly in the developing world, the engagement with mobile devices is so much higher. Mobile minutes are quickly becoming the most liquid currency in africa and other emerging markets. Even in very remote regions, you see people using their devices to transact and fullfill a broader range of needs than we see here in the USA. And that is with the most basic Nokia phone. Forget multi-touch.

    What will cellphones look like or do, 10 years from now?

    In 10 year the phone wont matter at all. We will have moved from a phone-based network to an account based network in which I can access all of my communications data from the cloud, from any phone or devices that is convenient. The tight coupling of my information to specific piece of hardware will be eliminated. Just like email has nothing to do with my PC anymore.

    This is not just the future for those of us in developed markets with access to corporate IT support and MobileMe. This is the future for the masses. There is a desperate need for broad-based access in developing markets that doesn’t require the ownership of a dedicated personal device. For services that allow someone to access their contacts, messaging and credit from any device, whether the phone belongs to their uncle or is a community phone. People will have multiple accounts. Employers will enable accounts as will local health workers so that people can access sensitive information related to HIV or TB without having to compromise the confidentiality of this information on a shared device. This revolution is starting right now with companies like MoVirtu.

    Read the full text at Fastcompany

  6. Design for Dad by Kicker Studio

    June 19, 2009

    With Father’s Day around the corner, faculty member Jennifer Bove shares a Kicker Studio concept project: a phone for her dad. Integrating new product behaviors to basic tasks such as receiving a call, dialing and hanging up, and telling time, the design reshapes experience for differently-abled individuals and invites the question “So what would you design for someone you love? And who else could benefit from your design ideas?”

    Photo Credit: All images by Tom Maiorana.

    “My dad’s new phone would be a VoIP phone designed to sit on a side table next to a chair or a bed.”


    “A natural, rounded shape, oriented vertically, would be ergonomic and easy to hold with one or two hands, positioned like a microphone instead of like a traditional handset. ”


    “Tap: “It’s 4:15 in the afternoon” - easy!”


    “During prime sleeping hours the photos of people he normally calls could be dimmed to indicate that they’re inactive/sleeping and probably shouldn’t be disturbed.”

    Read the full post at Creativity Magazine

  7. Film Screening: “Predictable But Fun”

    June 18, 2009

    The Interaction Design Department cordially invites you to the free screening of “Predictable But Fun,” a film investigating love, marriage, and longevity with a partner, through the lens of our technology-embedded culture. A Q&A with the director, Grace Shulner, follows the screening.

    Predictable But Fun

    About the Film

    The story is told by wedding-gown designers out of Israel and Palestine. Their backgrounds, lives, and art all differ notably, yet in their work, they find themselves having very similar conversations with their respective brides about hopes, dreams, buying that perfect dress and finding “The One.”

    As the Internet changes the way we understand intimacy, computer-mediated relationships are becoming a standard. We are all part of this new digital lifestyle, though some of us are more entrenched in technology than others. Each of the wedding-gown designers showcased in the movie uses technology (web, cell phones, instant messengers, twitter) as part of an always-connected way-of-life. Some are married, some single, some divorced, but in their professional lives all are submerged in the universe of weddings and relationships. Each observes this world from her own unique perspective.

    Ostensibly a comedy, the movie explores many issues including: the role of technology in our lives, stability with one partner, whether technology enhances our love life, how digital platforms are used in our daily communication, the importance of knowing one’s self, online-fantasy versus offline-reality, growing into adulthood, and the overriding theme of the pursuit of happiness.

    About the Director

    Grace Shulner is a technologist and filmmaker, exploring the relationships between people and machines. At MIT Media Lab her work as a student focused on the online-offline dialog, participatory democracy, social media, and online usability.

    Details

    Thursday, July 2

    6:00-7:30PM

    Interaction Design Department

    132 W 21 Street

    Between 6th and 7th Avenues

    (View Map)


    RSVP for the event

  8. Space in Motion

    June 18, 2009

    Another iteration of the department came together last week with the arrival of the accoutrement needed to outfit the floor. Over the course of two days, our team documented the process with a quick video of its progress.


  9. Boris Anthony and Tom Carden on Interaction Data Visualizations

    June 12, 2009

    Faculty member Jennifer Bove interviews Dopplr’s Boris Anthony and Stamen Design’s Tom Carden on the growing popularity and potential of interactive data visualizations. Below is an excerpt from the post at Creativity Magazine.

    There is a lot of buzz about information visualization nowadays. Seems like it’s everywhere! Why do you think it’s gaining such popularity?

    Boris: I think we are seeing info visualizations a lot these days for a fairly simple reason: its means of production has reached a level of flexibility and openness, allowing more and more people to use it. As a means of communication, of telling a story, infoviz is incredibly compelling.

    Consider this: we’ve gone from custom-made illustrations drawn with ink on paper to single-purpose computer programs that could only handle a specific set of data and present it one way, to now entire frameworks that allow someone who is not necessarily a professional to make any kind of visual representation out of any kind of data set.

    It’s very similar to what happened on the web with blogs, and then web publishing frameworks such as Ruby on Rails: someone develops a toolkit, and bang everyone uses it to make different stuff. And the same thing is now happening in hardware frameworks, with Arduino. As you know, Arduino has the same pedigree as Processing, which is one of, if not the top of, the pile of info visualization frameworks.

    And I think people intuitively get information visualizations; they “get” how the hurricane moved along it’s path and struck New Orleans, they “get” how this beautiful orb of rays represents the hours of sunlight per day for a year, etc. without having to be bothered with the thinking behind it.


    Tom Carden’s travel time tube map of London enables one to click on any (and all) tube stations in London. The map rearranges itself around the travel time from that spot.

    What do you see as the potential for information visualizations, say five to ten years from now? Where is it all going?

    Tom: I think the potential for information visualizations is about three things: more graphics, more mobile, and more collaboration.

    Five to ten years from now? Even modest expectations about hardware and network improvements will probably become reality. I think we can expect to add one or two zeroes to the size of the data sets that we can interactively manipulate on our desktops. On the miniature end of the scale, we’ll have something close to today’s desktop capabilities but in our pockets: you only need compare the performance of the iPhone or Android graphics and display with a PC from 1998 to see what I mean.

    I think the move of mobile devices to use the same underlying browser technologies as desktops is huge. I think we’ll see an explosion of collaborative/social infoviz now that that has happened, because there’s no need for separate technologies like Java and Flash. When information visualization on the web can be designed and built by the same people as the rest of the page we’ll see more thorough integration with the mainstream web and that can only be a good thing. Google Maps sets great expectations around online mapping and as designers we need to make software that does that for all kinds of data, not only maps.

    Read the full interview at Creativity Magazine

  10. The Last iPhone, a poem by Robert Fabricant

    June 11, 2009


    The Last iPhone of possibilities. Image from Core77.

    What if you are holding the last iPhone ever made?
    What if the 3G-S looked no different than the 3G?
    What if the 4G looked no different than the 3G-S and so on...?
    What if all iPhones looked the same from now on?

    What if it didn’t matter that the iPhone could be made 1/16” thinner next year?
    What if it didn’t matter that the iPhone could be produced in a host of different colors and metallic finishes?
    What if the design could not be improved upon?
    What if Apple stopped releasing new iPhones?

    What if you could expand the capabilities of the iPhone infinitely through software?
    What if there were a billion different apps available to download instantly?
    What if you could plug-in new hardware modules to extend the capabilities even further?
    What if you could send in your iPhone to have the internal components upgraded each year?

    What if you subscribed to the iPhone instead of owning it?
    What if the iPhone was guaranteed for life?
    What if you never bought another phone?
    What if Apple really decided to think differently?

    (What would you be willing to pay for a Continuously-Upgraded-iPhone-for-Life? I would love to hear your answers...)

    Read the original blog post by faculty member Robert Fabricant’s at Design4Impact.

  11. Summer Intensive in Interaction Design

    June 5, 2009

    We are pleased to announce a new summer program, the Summer Intensive in Interaction Design, a month-long intensive to take place as part of the Summer Continuing Education courses at SVA.

    The summer program gives 15 students an opportunity to engage in an intensive exploration of interaction design. Over the course of the month, students investigate three critical areas: communication design, the practice of interaction design, and practical programming. Bringing together renowned designers and thinkers through studio-based work and lectures, the program allows flexibility for students to focus on one track or all three by unifying the program with a single theme.

    Whether entering a graduate program or continuing as a professional, participants engaged in the program develop a deeper engagement with concepts and methods for designing interactions.

    Course Descriptions


    Elements of Communication Design

    Instructor: Nicholas Felton

    Tuesday, July 7-July 28

    6:00PM-9:00PM

    This course will introduce, over a series of weeks, some of the fundamental elements of clear communication design. It will begin with an overview of typographic standards and best practices, followed by an examination and exploration of grid systems. Week three will focus on information design and the tools for visually communicating data. Week four will integrate these fundamentals into a final class-based assignment that works with the larger theme for the program.


    Practice of Interaction Design

    Instructor: Carla Diana

    Wednesday, July 8-July 29

    6:00PM-9:00PM

    Over the course of four weeks, this course will explore the relationship
    among people, objects, and information through the field of interaction
    design. Beginning with an examination of case studies, students will gain
    a sense of the breadth of interaction design practice. In a series of hands-on, studio-based exercises, students will gain exposure to critical parts of the design process while learning specific methods for human-centered concept exploration and the development of product behaviors. The course will culminate in a final project that incorporates major principles of interaction design and fits within the context of a larger, track-independent theme.


    Practical Programming for Design

    Instructor: Ian Curry

    Thursday, July 9-July 30

    6:00PM-9:00PM

    This course is a primer in practical programming for people with minimal or no experience with code. Emphasizing hands-on encounters with code, the class is an intensive introduction to common programming practices in HTML/CSS and Flash. The course will also provide strategies to help students become more confident in learning these and other programming languages independently. Through a series of demos and exercises building up to a final project, this course will connect interaction design and programming, and help students unlock the creative potential of code.

    Students can register for one course or all three. The cost of one course is $1,400, or $3,600 for the full Summer Intensive. For more information on Continuing Education classes, including the registration process, financial aid help, and more, visit Continuing Education or get in touch with the department at interactiondesign at sva dot edu.

    You can register at the Continuing Education site.

  12. Announcing Graduate Portfolio Days

    June 1, 2009

    The MFA Interaction Design Department will again participate in this year’s Graduate Portfolio Days. Representatives from the department and staff from SVA Admissions will be available to speak with prospective candidates in New York City and San Francisco this October and Chicago this November. If you’re in the area, you can stop by to get feedback on your portfolio, ask questions about your application, or just find out more about SVA.

    Graduate Portfolio Day Event Schedule

    Sat, Oct 3, 2009
    Location: New York, NY
    Host: Parsons The New School for Design
    65 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003

    Sat, Oct 17, 2009
    Location: San Francisco, CA
    Host: San Francisco Art Institute
    800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco, CA 94133

    Sun, Nov 8, 2009
    Location: Chicago, IL
    Host: School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
    280 South Columbus Drive, Chicago, IL 60603

    To learn more about the event, including dates and location, visit the National Portfolio Day Association.

  13. Introducing Typekit

    May 28, 2009

    Something exciting comes this way. After much discussion on fonts, css, and the future of web design as we know it, comes Typekit. Jeffrey Veen’s Small Batch Inc. works with faculty member Jason Santa Maria to introduce a novel concept for online font distribution that is long due.


    An early mockup of the Typekit home page, designed by Jason Santa Maria, from Flickr.

    “We’ve been working with foundries to develop a consistent web-only font linking license. We’ve built a technology platform that lets us to host both free and commercial fonts in a way that is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM.”

  14. The Creative Act of Coding: A Conversation with Ian Curry

    May 20, 2009

    SVA: You’re teaching a course called “Practical Programming for Designers” this summer at the School of Visual Arts as part of the Summer Intensive. It’s a four-week course in the evenings. How are you teaching programming without just describing the languages and what they’re used for?

    Ian Curry: The first thing I always need to do in these classes is convince students that coding is a creative act, and that their artist brains are perfect for programming. Designers actually have a lot of advantages in learning coding because they are likely to be better at visualization and organizing complex systems in their heads. One of the things I really stress is that computer languages are human languages. All of these languages were made up by humans, and they’re meant to be comprehensible to both computers and other humans. If you’ve ever learned a foreign language with all its quirks and irregularities, you will be relieved to discover how refreshingly regular and predictable most programming languages are.

    I come from a literature background, so I can definitely empathize with how strange programming can seem at first. That said, a hugely important part of beginning to learn programming is just getting over the initial fear and beginning to see how beautiful and elegant these languages are. It may be trite to say that code is like poetry but it’s true in some important ways. I’m hoping to teach students to not write bad, confessional, teenage code, but elegant, economical code — like Kay Ryan would write if she programmed. Along with learning the mechanics of programming, I’m going to try to convince people in the class to fall in love with how beautiful these languages can be.

    I’m also going to try to help students learn how to see patterns in how code works so they can learn programming independently. Much like any other language, programming languages have something like a vocabulary of functions. Just like you don’t need to memorize an entire Spanish dictionary to start up a simple conversation, a little knowledge will get you pretty far in a lot of programming languages. What’s helpful to know though is that there are common, core functions that exist across languages. For example, almost every language has a way of searching within a text string. I know the specific vocabulary to do that in several languages, but when I need to do that in a language I haven’t used much, I know that this probably exists and I can look it up. We’re going to learn ActionScript in the class, but I’m going to use that to show some of these core functions. After this class, you should be able to jump semi-confidently into any other language and make some headway by looking for these functions. It’s okay to Google how to do something but you have to know what you’re looking for. Four weeks is not a lot of time and that makes it especially important to have some tools to go out and learn more.

    Most of all, I want to get students excited about what they can do with code. We’re increasingly people who spend a lot of our lives staring into the world of a computer desktop. Being able to code gives you the ability to change that world and to create new things within it. That’s a pretty big opportunity.

    SVA: How important is it for graduate students of interaction design to understand basic programming ideas common to all languages?

    Ian Curry: There are certainly interaction designers who don’t know a lot about programming. I can say that if your work is pushing the boundaries, technology-wise, it becomes pretty important. At Local Projects, we often have to do a fair amount of R&D to figure out whether something we’ve schemed up would be possible. Thinking up those possibilities in the first place is often something that comes through an awareness of what different frameworks and languages are capable of. I’m often in a position where I need to determine whether something is technically feasible enough that we could responsibly commit to doing it. In that case, I have to have a confident sense of how the software could be made, and how long it might take. It would be very hard to do that without knowing something about programming.

    On a more fundamental level, knowing how to work with, rather than against the technology you’re using is a big part of the basic programming literacy that interaction designers need to have. The classic example is print designers moving over to the web. Early on, they’ll tend to design things that may be beautiful, but not easy to cut up into a lightweight webpage. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the underlying technology is key to designing appropriately for the medium.

    SVA: You’re a senior interaction designer at Local Projects in New York City, recently adding the The Official NYC Information Center to your list of accomplishments. How did an understanding of programming help you in the design process for that project in particular?


    Jake Barton and Ian Curry at NYC Information Center, design by Local Projects, WXY Architecture and Urban Design

    Ian Curry: Part of the concept for that project was that it was a bit like an iPhone; it has a pretty minimal physical structure, and a lot of the functionality is in the software. Over time, this framework allows the Information Center to change the space considerably by just changing the software. That also meant there was a lot of emphasis on having software interesting enough to carry the space. I was responsible for turning all our ideas into working software that could last in a long-term installation.

    The core functionality is three touchscreen interactive map tables that recognize objects like the Microsoft Surface tables; an FAQ interactive in 10 languages; the ability to make guidebooks dynamically and print, email, or SMS them; and a 16” video wall with a Google Earth flythrough of all the places you want to visit. All the interactives needed to be able to speak to one another, and the whole thing had to update overnight with content from a content management system. That was a challenging juggling routine, but the fact that we got it all done on time is good example of what I was mentioning earlier about knowing what’s possible or sane in terms of programming. We had a relatively short timeframe to make it all run. Some of it was drawing lines on where I thought we could get the most benefit for the amount of programming work we’d have to do, and cutting things that were possibly interesting but might be too risky.


    One of three touchscreen interactive map tables in the NYC Information Center

    From a technical standpoint, the project ended up being something like 15 or 20 separate little pieces of software, ranging from Processing applets, to Flash movies, to computer vision tracking in C, some browser-based JavaScript stuff, and a lot of PHP on the backend. I worked with some really talented programmers and I also had a hands-on role with a lot of it.

    Having a sense of what was possible and being comfortable with a lot of different programming requirements allowed us to do something a little further out there.

    RELATED

    • Local Projects can also be found at their professional site.
    • “Practical Programming for Designers” is one of three courses offered this summer. Details on Summer Intensive in Interaction Design can be found here.
    • Register for Elements of Communication Design, with Nicholas Felton here.
    • Register for Practice of Interaction Design, with Carla Diana here.
    • Register for Practical Programming for Designers here.

  15. Jennifer Bove on How to Design Enjoyment

    May 18, 2009

    Faculty member Jennifer Bove blogs on behalf of the MFA in Interaction Design program for Creativity Magazine. For her first post on “how to design enjoyment,” she explores the features and decisions that make technology feel more human. From Dopplr, IPhone’s application icons, to her own work at Kicker Studio, interaction design of products and services is defined, at the essence: “more about the humans who use them and less about the technology that enables them.”

    Read Jennifer Bove’s post at Creativity Magazine