Blog
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Form Language, Guinness, and One Big Family: Interaction 12, Day One
February 3, 2012
I wrote a post last year whilst attending SXSW Interactive 2011 on the non-stop cacophony of sans vowel salesmanship. It was an experience packed with startup pitches, BBQ, and swag (and a floor catching on fire). Right now, I’m attending the IxDA 2012 conference in Dublin, Ireland, and my trip couldn’t be farther from the opposite. So far I’ve been treated to breakfast by our Airbnb host, tasted Guinness and Jameson straight from the source, played tourist in most of Dublin, and enjoyed a solid day of conferencing n’ drinking.
To be honest, the conference feels like one big serendipitous family reunion. I unknowingly rode the subway with a design researcher Maggie Breslin, sat next to Michal Pasternak of Huge on the flight over, had a pint with Carla Diana at the Guinness Storehouse, and chatted with former SVA faculty members Rob Fabricant and Ben Fullerton during the opening talks. Aside from some familiar faces, I was able to sneak in a few pints with a few members of SVA IxD’s inaugural class – and conference presenters – Katie Koch and John Finley at a pub in Dublin’s Temple Bar district.
I’m knowingly gushing right now I know, but:
var yay:Number = 0;
for (i=0; i< IxDersAndGuinness; i++) {
yay++;
}The first day full day of the conference echoed a sense of family as Luke Williams, author of Disrupt, addressed the crowd in his opening keynote. He acknowledged interaction designers' familiarity with patterned behavior and cognitive theory as a strength, but also as a fault. He explained that the audience should turn their lens inward, realizing cognitive bias in themselves. This bias could be a barrier for innovation and disruptive ideas, and he challenged that disruptive ideas can be nothing more than annoying, fleeting notions without the right context and audience.
Caffeinated and inspired, we all poured out of the main hall to head for the first presentations of the day. I decided to check out "Design Language for Interactions", a talk by Ziba's Creative Director, Michael Lemmon. Using concepts rooted in industrial design, Michael explained the concept of "form language" – creating cohesion across a product line using surface, material, color, function, brand, and customer. Pertaining to interaction design, he highlighted the use of consistent language, content, visual themes, and interaction to build a solid structure of experience across a multiple devices. Another key takeaway was his organizational approach to digital product development: form design teams around features, rather than devices, to generate higher level rules for core interactions and prevent siloing among team members.
After Michael's talk, I took a breather and joined another SVA IxD alum
Russ Maschmeyer and his co-workers for lunch at Facebook’s Dublin office. We caught up on his recent work with Facebook’s group and community features, enjoyed a view of Dublin from the roof, and headed back for round 2 of the conference’s talks.
The best presentation of the afternoon was RCA co-chair Anthony Dunne (a British Michael Rock, or the other way around) explaining his approach to interaction design and showcasing student work. He pointed out a disconnect in the design profession between problem solving and critique/commentary. His solution to bridge the gap was to generate conversation through designing the possible, the probable, and the potential future. In doing so, designers could, “shift design from how things are now to design how the world could be”. In concert with SVA’s Allan Chochinov, Mr. Dunne pointed out that designers have the unique ability to explain amorphous, forward-thinking concepts by giving them form. This facilitates dialogue around a visible object rather than around an intangible idea.
Closing out the day, a few of us, along with faculty member Jill Nussbaum, headed to a sponsored networking event a few blocks away. As we enjoyed a few rounds of Guinness, we discussed and debated the day’s events, looking forward to what day number 2 of the reunion would bring.
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Thinking Thesis: Erin Moore on Privacy & Information Sharing
January 27, 2012
The thesis work of second-year student, Erin Moore, seeks to “change the way people interact with money.” The latest entry to her daily thesis blog, entitled, “Birthdays, Christmas clubs, weight loss, and micro loans,” ponders the metaphor of the community bank, finance management tools for multiple users, and closes with privacy:
...to what extent does this demographic - people who have grown up with social technology- care about privacy? Does sharing of savings goals and the act of depositing money towards a goal help keep them accountable and give them a greater awareness of what one could (or should) be saving for? When talking about the social motivations and boundaries of information sharing in my thesis, I often use Weight Watchers as an analog. How is it that groups of women, who, under most circumstances will not go near a conversation about weight, come together and not only talk about their weight, share their struggles with losing weight, but also support each other as they work towards their weight loss goals? All of this is done in an open environment where women are encouraged to share only what they feel comfortable sharing and what will personally motivate them. There are few things more uncomfortable and personal than talking about money. Weight, especially for women, is one of them. Weight Watchers is one example of a service who has made the issue of privacy a non-issue. They have achieved this through by providing a framework through which communities can motivate and support each other and individuals can work towards personal goals in ways that are meaningful to them. WW gives users control of the information and also a platform to communicate this information. These insights are driving my decisions around privacy and information sharing.
Read more on Erin Moore’s thesis blog.
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Verge Review: The Language of Geography
January 27, 2012
Even at just a glance, a map can reveal what no amount of description can. Maps are the language of geography, often the most direct and effective way to convey grand ideas or complex theories. —Harm de Blij
This is a statement that was clearly evident in the talk last Friday with Mike Migurski and Sarah Williams as they discussed two of their recent projects. Migurski is a partner and the Director of Technology at Stamen, a San Francisco-based studio that specializes in map and data visualization projects. Williams is currently the Director of Columbia’s Spatial Information Design Lab, which concentrates on connecting social data with geography. This talk was of special interest to me, being a lifelong map aficionado as well as a second-year graduate student whose thesis subject is on geographic illiteracy.
As the first in a series this year of On the Verge talks held here at the Interaction Design Department, the format for these events has changed a bit from past talks. Gone is the lecture podium and monologue. Equipped with a couch, pairs of speakers are invited to introduce, analyze and discuss each other other’s work in a moderated conversation. This approach to dialogue made for a more informative, relaxed experience.
Spatial Information Design Lab’s “Million Dollar Blocks”
Mike spoke about Sarah’s project Million Dollar Blocks which visualizes on a map of Brooklyn where concentrations of prisoners reside in the borough. These locations are color-coded to reflect the amount of government expenditure per capita for transporting and incarcerating these residents. What this map illustrates in an almost perverse way, is where these residents are densely clustered on the map are not only some of the poorest parts of New York City, but also some of the most expensive to maintain in terms of dealing with convicted criminals. Its aim is to raise the questions about incarceration and how money could be better spent within the criminal justice system.
Stamen’s “Oakland Crimespotting”
Sarah then presented Stamen’s Oakland Crimespotting map, their tool for better understanding crime in those cities. The premise under which Stamen approached this project was that public information should be made public. Crime data already existed, but it was either for police or other government agencies, or it was cumbersome, unwieldy and hard to find, buried under a myriad of links. What Crimespotting does is to visualize in real time where crimes are happening in various neighborhoods, giving the user the ability to filter by date, time of day or the type of crime. With this information, people can look for individual crimes or see broader patterns and trends in crime over time. This project is beautifully explained in the BBC program “The Joy of Stats,” which actually makes statistics a sexy subject.
What both of their projects shared was a marriage of data and aesthetics, design and technology to address important issues. Whereas Crimespotting focuses on the crime itself, Million Dollar Blocks investigates the repercussions for the perpetrator and their community. Both projects have garnered attention through their advocacy, bringing attention to these issues to the powers that be: police departments, legislators, community boards, and the mayor’s office.
A question about data neutrality was asked by an audience member—namely, is there any bias within these maps? Migurski and Williams ended the talk with this shared belief and great insight:
Data is never neutral. There is no such thing as raw data.
—Chris Cannon, MFA candidate, 2012
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Icograda Design Education Manifesto 2011 and future of design education
December 19, 2011
The Manifesto 2011 in Spanish
Department chair Liz Danzico was a steering committee member and contributor to the update to the update, which launched during the Icograda General Assembly 24 in Taipei this October. Liz was joined on the committee by Hugh Dubberly, Steven Heller, Jamer Hunt, Dave Malouf, Victor Margolin, Lita Talarico, and sixteen other members of the Icograda network, who have each written a 1,000-word essay on the future of design education.
The Design Education Manifesto 2011 is manifest of a 2-year-long process engaging some of the most prominent design education experts from around the world. The final output addresses the needs and desires of the future of design education in a world both converging and expanding,” said Omar Vulpinari, Icograda President Elect and Co-chair of the Manifesto update.
2011 marks the 10-year anniversary of the Manifesto’s publication, and the 2009-2011 Icograda Executive Board resolved to update it, its intention being “to help steer design curriculum and equip faculty and students to handle current and future issues in design education.”
The Icograda Design Education Manifesto, a key legacy of Oullim, is a core document that defines Icograda’s position on design education. The Manifesto advocates that design education must be a learning-centred environment, enabling students to develop their potential in and beyond academic programs.
The Icograda Design Education Manifesto was developed in 2000 as collaboration by an international group of designers. Participants represented a geographically, politically, economically, culturally, and socially diverse cross section of the design education community. Prof. Ahn Sang-Soo (South Korea) led the project which was translated into seventeen languages and presented at the Icograda Millennium Congress Oullim 2000 Seoul.
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In the span of a click: Prachi Pundeer
December 13, 2011
Each week, Interaction Design’s Social Media Officer Cooper Smith will curate a story from the incoming first-year class. This week’s post comes from Prachi Pundeer.
Three months passed like three weeks. There were lectures, projects, group meetings, museum visits, workshops, first-year special Thursday nights, a party night-out and several project night-outs, Interaction Salons, presentations, and final critiques. So while I wrap up my first semester here and prepare for one final week of presentations, here’s what it looked like through the lens of my Nikon D40.
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Liz Danzico in .net Magazine
December 8, 2011
Department chair, co-founder, and faculty member Liz Danzico was interviewed for this month’s issue of .net magazine, discussing her views on education and learning, and the need for curiosity and improvisation.
The December 2011 cover.
A spread from the interview.
“At .net magazine, we get a lot of emails from web design students expressing dissatisfaction with their courses. That may be the nature of the beast – people don’t often contact the press to tell them how content they are – but the number of complaints is striking. And when I mention this to Liz Danzico, chair and co-founder of the MFA in Interaction Design program at New York’s School of Visual Arts, there’s no surprise in her reaction: she’s heard a lot of similar comments herself.
Danzico’s course, though, takes a different approach. Although many of those who enroll are interested in pursuing web design, the syllabus is less about coding and specific web technologies and more about a wider design philosophy.
Interaction Design is about observing and designing for the relationship between people over time”, [Liz] explains. “That could be how it feels to swipe between screens on an iPad or iPhone, or something as simple as the way a door communicates to you that it’s push or pull.” Rather than just building homepages, her students get to do things such as experiment with prototyping products, using everything from woodworking to 3D printers.
Even when they do tackle coding, it’s not what you’d expect. “The coding class doesn’t actually touch a screen or any kind of device for three or four weeks,” Danzico explains. “So they learn about variables and loops and the logic of code programming in paper format. Among humans. That way, they learn about decision making. And so when they go to actually design for a mobile device or a website, that foundational knowledge they have about how the things work give them a much richer sense in terms of larger system.”
It’s a radical approach that offers wide horizons and rewards an open mind. “It’s not a vocational course,” stresses Danzico. “My students are more interested in the way that interaction design can influence their thinking such that they can apply that to other areas. That may be someone who ultimately wants to go into web design, or someone who’s already a web designer who wants to move into other areas.”
It’s not a unique concept, but it is a rarity. “There are a couple of universities in the States that teach interaction design and a handful in Europe, in Scandinavia,” Danzico explains. “Even for a small narrow field they’re all quite different.” One thing that marks out her course is that all the faculty members work in the industry.
What’s truly fascinating to Danzico is the crosspollination of disciplines that takes place. “You have to consider how this person, who’s studied neuroscience and fine arts, but who now wants to be an interaction designer, is going to work with the industrial designer, who’s always been a practitioner. It’s the mingling of completely different cultures. They all have the same kind of ideas but such different reference points.”
Continue reading in the December 2011 issue of .net Magazine.
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Here and Now: Sana Rao
December 7, 2011
Each week, Interaction Design’s Social Media Officer Cooper Smith will curate a story from the incoming first-year class. This week’s post comes from Sana Rao.
Here and Now
When friends and relatives ask me what this program is about, this program that made one leave all the beauty and comforts of being in one’s own country to stay abroad for such an extended period of time, I am often at a loss to explain.
The weight of the phrase “Interaction Design,” strikes me as an obstacle.
Below I answer questions I have been asked by parents, friends, prospective students, and my bewildered twin sister about what interaction design and this program mean to me, and how all the previous decisions in my life have led me here, now, to the MFA Interaction Design Program at SVA.
First, a deep motivation for inquiry and an incessant need to understand the immense variety of human relationships drove me to writing, to reading, and to design.
I believe it is this need for inquiry that defines why most designers wake up every morning.For me, interaction design examines human relationships, the media we use to communicate what is, but a thought, our reactions to our world, the one within us, and everything in between. It is an ever-expanding and always-flexible thread that binds all the conversations which we have with the world around us.
And now a brief glimpse at the toolkit this Program equips us with. The first and most accessible resource are the fellow students. Each is a uniquely talented individual with expertise in a variety of fields, spanning molecular biology, management information systems, and even economics, and it is fascinating to see the ideas that take shape out of the braiding of such backgrounds. In my brief time here, I have already begun to value and be continuously amazed by the diversity of ideas that come out of the permutations of our collaborations with each other.
In addition, each course in the first semester is designed to not just give us a succinct knowledge of basic interaction design tools, but also to give us a window to entire fields of design thinking, giving us the freedom to evaluate and choose a combination that best reflects our preferred way of working. In each of these courses, we are encouraged to work on issues that appeal to us individually and close to our hearts. What I find the most intriguing about our schedules however, is that in any given week, my mind is challenged to change modes from high-level systems thinking, to strategic business-oriented thinking, to a more detailed code thinking.
I am still discovering where I stand in the world of interaction design and constantly evolving my personal definition, and hope it remains evolving as I move ahead with the program and beyond.
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Project: Interaction on AIGA Design Envy
December 7, 2011
Project: Interaction, the 10-week after school program founded by alumni Katie Koch and Carmen Dukes from was featured on AIGA’s Design Envy blog today.
So much has been said about using technology to revive middle and high school education in America. But what about teaching technology? Or teaching design? As it turns out, it’s not just a way to spark education, but also a way to positively enact social change through disrupting social patterns and expectations.
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Fonderie 47 in The New York Times
December 1, 2011
Earrings by Fonderie 47.
Fonderie 47, an organization founded by faculty John Zapolski and partner Peter Thum was featured in The New York Times.
“We saw the AK-47 as an opportunity because it’s such a successful design,” [Peter] said. “It’s something that’s globally recognizable. What better way to turn things around than with this object, which represents so many things ugly, and turn it into something beautiful?”
So Mr. Thum and Mr. Zapolski set up Fonderie 47. The partners acquired AK-47s that the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo had confiscated from its North Kivu Province. The receivers, barrels and other steel components were melted down and reconfigured with gold into designs by the jewelers Philip Crangi and Roland Iten.
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Interaction Tour of NYC: Coney Island; Tash Wong
November 29, 2011
Each week, Interaction Design’s Social Media Officer Cooper Smith will curate a story from the incoming first-year class. This week’s post comes from Tash Wong.
If I were to put together an interaction tour of New York, the first stop would be Coney Island. The Coney Island of today is not a place that conjures up the wonder of Apple’s next device. In fact, I think the only technological improvement recently is the location-based digital layer added by foursquare. Historically, however, Coney Island’s association with technology is quite a different story.
With the expansion of transportation systems at the turn of the last century, Coney Island underwent an enormous transformation. In the mid 1800s, Coney acted as a retreat for the city’s well-heeled; it was a destination valued for both its isolation and connection to nature. By the early 1900s, this isolation disappeared through the construction of bridges and train extensions, allowing the metropolitan masses to also enjoy the coastline.
This explosion of visitors brought with it the demand for entertainment. Satisfying this demand was explored most intensely in the first decade of the 20th century, through 3 parks - Steeplechase, Luna Park, and Dreamland. It is during this phase of activity that Rem Koolhaus, in Delirious New York, calls Coney Island “a place for the ‘new technology of the fantastic’, from which stem the strategies and mechanisms that came to shape Manhattan”.
These explorations used technology to amuse, subvert, and extend the experience of visitors. Roller coasters were invented here, allowing riders to leave gravity behind by making the most of breakthroughs in steel and railroad construction. Switzerland, a ride at Dreamland, allowed visitors to experience a space “as cold and as full of sweet pure air as can be found among the picturesque Swiss mountains…” as they rode through an artificial landscape on small red sleighs.
The burst in technological exploration for amusement didn’t last long. A string of disasters and scams brought this golden age to an end around 1914. It did not take long, however, for the explorations made by the inhabitants of Coney Island to be claimed by the more formal world found on the next island over, Manhattan. Koolhaus puts it this way - “To support the alibi of “business,” the incipient tradition of Fantastic Technology is disguised as pragmatic technology. The paraphernalia of illusion that have just subverted Coney Island’s nature into an artificial paradise: electricity, air-conditioning, tubes, telegraphs, tracks and elevators- reappear in Manhattan as paraphernalia of efficiency to convert raw space into office suites. Suppressing their irrational potential, they now become merely the agents of banal changes such as improving illumination levels, temperature, humidity, communications, etc., all to facilitate the processes of business.” (1997, p. 87).
The first stop of the tour serves not only as an excuse to ride the Cyclone, but to remind us to think of the fantastic as we make and experiment with technology - regardless of the scams and disasters we encounter. We are building and playing with new mediums that will change lives in ways we can’t yet know and we must stay focused on the experience. We are, after all, designing for people.
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The Die Hard Index on AIGA Design Envy
November 23, 2011
The Die Hard Index, a project by alumni Russ Maschmeyer from Information Visualization, was featured on AIGA’s Design Envy blog today.
According to Maschmeyer, “I’ve created a formula that can accurately predict how fervently supportive a team’s fans are. Here I’ve calculated the DHI for Major League Baseball, but ostensibly you could do this for any league with the right amount of data.” I love the tone set in this statement; it’s an invitation for others to try similar analysis.
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“Some people even call us unicorns…”
November 23, 2011
Frequent second-year collaborators, Kristin Breivik and Carrie Steins joined forces once again for a short film, “Interaction Design Beyond School Walls”. They called upon MFA Interaction Design students to talk about their internship experiences during the summer of 2011.
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Five Projects Just Like Yours: Barbara deWilde
November 22, 2011
Each week, Interaction Design’s Social Media Officer Cooper Smith will curate a story from the incoming first-year class. This week’s post comes from Barbara deWilde.
Five Projects Just Like Yours
Criticism, often considered an unwanted guest at other parties, can be your closest confidant during the design process. Criticism in the brainstorming phase helps me avoid ridiculous ideas that turn my head and lure me into a corner for long hours of frivolous distraction. In the iteration phase, she is a sage advisor more focused than I on the goal…I tend to fall in love with details while the big picture stands unseen in the wings. Finally, when it’s all over, she tells me frankly what worked and what didn’t work, and hopefully, I don’t make the same mistakes twice.
If criticism is so integral to the process, why is good criticism so hard to find? Like dating, the whole dance has yielded to a fast and unsatisfying substitute, comparison. During my brief exposure to interaction design, I often hear the following: “what you’re doing reminds me of…,” or “let me send you some links,” or “I can think of five projects like yours that you should look at.” While references are useful, they are not methodical and worse, they’re dangerous. At least, they’re dangerous for me. I’m easily influenced and influence is not process.
Comparison came to eclipse criticism with the rise of blogging as the preferred method for design discussion. As a design community we aggregate, curate, share and reference design…a lot. Placed end to end, blog content becomes a gloriously long list, but a list is not a method.
In graphic design, the first steps toward problem solving are:
1. to understand the problem;
2. to understand the audience;
3. to understand the limitations around what is to be designed.As a design educator, I know how tempting it is to jump in and do the heavy-lifting that is involved in steps 1, 2, and 3 so the fun work, giving the content form, can ensue. Those steps, however, are so crucial to the execution of a successful design, that the best teaching (criticism) gives clarity to the understanding and defining phase while also developing a methodical design process.
Working methodically is invaluable for interaction design which is arguably more collaborative and iterative than graphic design. Referencing existing interaction designs can aid digital coding and building strategies, and perhaps explains why the comparison method became popular, but is it discardable at this point? Maybe not. It’s incredibly helpful to leverage existing technologies as a means for creating a design solutions. In this application the comparison method is useful, but it’s not enough. References are only valuable if they can be analyzed for relevance and synthesized with meaning.
Perhaps we need to roll back the clock and share lessons from a previous time. My grandmother used a dance card and various suitors would sign up to waltz with her at a tea dance. She would meet all, be charmed by the few with great wit, and choose who would be allowed to dance with her again, supervised with a critical eye by her parents. She made a great match.
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WIRED UK: Cooper Smith’s “Info Porn”
November 3, 2011
“Info Porn.”
Student Cooper Smith with the November 2011 WIRED Magazine UK issue his “Joggers Logged” data visualization is featured in.
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Alumni in Action
November 3, 2011
Dublin image courtesy of Interaction 12
IxD alumna Katie Koch and Carmen Dukes, who jointly founded Project: Interaction, a 10-week after school design program within New York City high schools, have co-authored a paper entitled, “New Methods: Framing an Interaction Design Class to Play a Complementary Role in Core Curriculum”. The two are thrilled to be presenting it at the ICID Conference in Hong Kong next week.
In February 2012, Katie and Carmen will be joining the Interaction 12 Conference in Dublin, Ireland, giving a talk called, “People ARE Software – The Story of Project: Interaction”. The two will be joined there by fellow alum, JP Finley, who will present his talk, “Interacting with Sound”, the product of his effort to “highlight an aspect of interaction design that I thought was underrepresented: why certain things sound the way they do, and what that means for how we use them. So much of what we as designers create is visual, but our sight is not the only sense at our disposal.
Much like we can craft an interface using color and shape, we can also craft one using pitch, volume, and timbre. And it’s already around us if you listen for it. These kinds of interfaces are present in telephones and doorbells, in car engines and video games. My talk is about exploring the diversity and utilization of the things in our lives that make noise.”
Looking forward, alums!
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Not all updates belong in the curriculum, and the Interaction Blog is where we talk about news and events around interaction design far and wide.
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Recently
- Form Language, Guinness, and One Big Family: Interaction 12, Day One
- Thinking Thesis: Erin Moore on Privacy & Information Sharing
- Verge Review: The Language of Geography
- Icograda Design Education Manifesto 2011 and future of design education
- In the span of a click: Prachi Pundeer
- Liz Danzico in .net Magazine
- Here and Now: Sana Rao
Read more in the Archives.
