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  1. Workshop: Designing Work Worth Doing, with Lauralee Alben and Marc Rettig

    How do your deepest passions meet the world’s urgent needs? Are the projects, initiatives, and business you go about every day designed to achieve the greatest impact? Join Lauralee Alben and Marc Rettig to learn how design thinking and techniques can clarify what “meaningful work” means to you. Work worth doing expresses your calling and produces sea changes: positive, profound, and lasting transformations. Greater productivity, prosperity and creativity result.

    Led by Lauralee Alben, Alben Design LLC and Marc Rettig, Fit Associates

    September 18-20, 2009
    9AM-5PM
    School of Visual Arts
    Interaction Design Department
    New York City

    Fee
    $1195
    Early registration discount before August 21: $995

    Questions?
    For general questions regarding the workshop, please contact Marc Rettig by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or phone at 412-441-3818.

    Register

    What to expect
    In this three-day workshop, you’ll experience the Sea Change Design Process, which has been used to ignite creativity at Intel, Procter & Gamble, Sun, startups, and small and medium-sized companies. The workshop is a combination of lectures, visualizations, writing, and storytelling. It will mix personal reflection and creative activities in an interactive, design studio format, so come prepared to create and communicate!

    Who should attend?
    Emerging and active leaders. Those who want to enhance their own personal creativity. Business executives who know creativity is the lifeblood of all organizations. Consultants and entrepreneurs. Colleagues and partners who want to explore their work together.

    What you will gain:

    • Access to or a deepening of your own creative flow
    • Insights into what is profound and meaningful in your work and the world
    • Answers to what sources your creative inspiration, acts, and commitments
    • Experience with powerful design tools, like RipplingSM, which maps the ripple effect of your work on customers, stakeholders, society, and the planet
    • A creative network of leaders focused on shared interests
    • A plan for your first steps in carrying out your calling


    Learn more:

  2. Announcing Graduate Portfolio Days

    The MFA Interaction Design Department will again participate in this year’s Graduate Portfolio Days. Representatives from the department will be available to speak with prospective candidates in New York City and Chicago this October and 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 the new graduate program at 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

    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, visit the National Portfolio Day Association.

  3. Video Notes from the Field

    As part of Career Camp, a series of talks at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, New York, that commenced this week, Liz Danzico discussed how to ask good questions in the face of career changes—whether those changes are in the pursuit of learning within your own company or a more significant career change. She advised the audience to ask themselves, “Who do you seek out when you think about change?” and “Who inspires you?” when considering where or how to move forward.

    To help frame the evening, she sought out the advice of digital designers and designer conspirers far and wide, to ask them to respond to the following:

    So you’re thinking about becoming a designer? If I could tell you only one thing about going into the field, my advice would be ___________ .

    Below are their responses.

    “You have to be empathetic to your users, toward your clients, to the people you’re working with on your team”

    Jennifer Bove / San Francisco / Principal, Interaction Design / Kicker Studio

    “Remember to think about more than just design”

    Kevin Cheng / San Francisco / Director of UX / raptr, ok-cancel

    “Hire the one who can write”

    Jim Coudal / Chicago / Founder / Coudal Partners

    “Fully understand the problem before you attempt to solve it”

    Whitney Hess / New York City / User Experience Designer / Independent Consultant

    “Don’t let anyone tell you how to do your job”

    Robert Hoekman, Jr. / Phoenix / User Experience Specialist, Author / Miskeeto

    “Have passion—have undying, unending passion for what it is you do”

    Jon Kolko / Austin / Associate Creative Director / frog design

    “Having a camera, taking it everywhere, and taking pictures”

    Michael Mandiberg / New York City / Senior Fellow, Eyebeam, Assistant Professor, CSI/CUNY

    “No better high than knowing something you created changed someone’s perspective about their own life”

    Melissa Pierce / Filmmaker / Life in Perpetual Beta

    “Focus: Find a topic, find a topic, find a method and focus all your efforts on it”

    Joshua Porter / Cambridge / Author, Social Web Design / Bokardo

    “Seek and out embrace different perspectives from your own and to solve for those perspectives”

    Steve Portigal / San Francisco / Design Research and Business Strategy / Portigal Consulting

    “Bridge the gap between where your talent is and where your taste is”

    Ryan Sims / San Francisco / Creative Director / Virb

    “Find the middle ground between clever and stupid”

    Jared Spool / Hotel Room / CEO, Founding Principal / User Interface Engineering

    “Digital isn’t a one-time shot, but a constant upgrade”

    Michael Surtees / New York City / Creative Director / Daylife, DesignNotes

    “Plea for a better user experience”

    Alissa Walker / Hollywood / Design Writer / Gelatobaby

    Thanks to everyone far and wide for participating, and good luck to aspiring designers everywhere!

     

     

  4. The Feast Workshop with Liz Danzico

    “The Feast” is a cross-disciplinary series of programs addressing social innovation and new ways to make the world a better place. “The Feast Workshops” is two words: hands on. For those who want to roll up their sleeves, and turn their learning and inspiration into application and action. 

    Ways of Seeing: Instructions for Getting Lost
    Hosted by Liz Danzico, Chair, MFA Interaction Design

    At a time where boundaries are blurred and things unfamiliar, we’re grappling our way through media unfamiliar and unchartered. We’re lost. Feelings of fear, isolation, and even panic set in as we grapple with strategies for making our way out of out situations. Yet what is often overlooked is the simple value of being out of one’s element. With being lost comes increased awareness, heightened perspective, and the potential for experience. John Dewey described this as “having an experience,” writers describe it as “being objective,” and designers describe it as “getting perspective.”

    This workshop teaches intentional strategies for gaining perspective—the same strategies one might use when you get lost—giving you insight and critical perspective. Take that perspective back to your work so you can achieve a fresh and close way of viewing the world.

    Details
    Friday, August 7, 2009
    1:15-2:30PM
    MEET at the Apartment
    101 Crosby St, New York

    More information and tickets

  5. Lifetime Achievement Award: Bill Moggridge

    The National Design Awards honors Bill Moggridge with the Lifetime Achievement Award on the criteria of excellence, innovation, and enhancement of the quality of life.

    About Bill Moggridge: Bill Moggridge is a co-founder of IDEO, a global design consultancy, creating impact through design. A Royal Designer for Industry, Moggridge designed the world’s first laptop computer. He pioneered interaction design and is one of the first people to integrate human factors into the design of software and hardware. He has been a trustee of the Design Museum; visiting professor in interaction design at the Royal College of Art in London, lecturer in Design at the London Business School and a member of the Steering Committee for the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy. He is currently consulting associate professor in the design program at Stanford University. His book, DVD and Web site “Designing Interactions” tell the story of how interaction design is transforming our daily lives.


    In the early 1980s, IDEO designed the first notebook-style computer for GRiD Systems

    About the National Design Awards: The National Design Awards were conceived by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum to honor the best in American design. First launched at the White House in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council, the annual Awards program celebrates design in various disciplines as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world, and seeks to increase national awareness of design by educating the public and promoting excellence, innovation, and lasting achievement. The Awards are truly national in scope–nominations for the 2009 Awards were solicited from a committee of more than 800 leading designers, educators, journalists, cultural figures, and corporate leaders from every state in the nation.

  6. Galapagos Career Camp with Liz Danzico, Khoi Vinh, Jason Santa Maria, and Erin Sparling

    “The Galapagos Art Space Career Camp is a low-cost, high-value, five-part lecture and networking series for professionals (employed or otherwise!) living in New York City. This series responds to the need for discussion, meaningful interaction, and a means to act upon ideas within a community of local professionals. Career Camp brings together industry-leading thinkers and next wave ideas in order to stimulate discussion, sharpen skills, and illuminate the career landscape.”

    The series kicks off with Digital Design on Tuesday, July 28 with Khoi Vinh, Design Director for NYTimes.com, Liz Danzico, Chair of MFA Interaction Design, Jason Santa Maria, graphic designer, and Erin Sparling, Lead Design Technologist at the Wall Street Journal. 

    Doors: 6PM | Start: 7PM
    Tickets: $5 advance & at the door

    More information and tickets

    Upcoming sessions will include.

    • August 11: THE FUTURE OF GREEN
    • August 25: DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
    • September 8: CULTURE & CONTRIBUTION
    • September 22: SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE CAREERS

     

  7. The Human Race: Jill Nussbaum’s Story from the Front

    Ever wonder what other designers do or say to get their jobs? Jill Nussbaum, with three designers gave a group in DUMBO, Brooklyn the opportunity to be a fly on the wall for other designers’ presentations. Five people recreated actual presentations that won work or solved problems, demonstrating skills in PowerPoint, patter, and bravura. Short descriptions of the original RFP/Design Briefs were presented and pitches presented on stage.

    Jill, Creative Director at R/GA, presented work she and the team did for The Human Race, “the world’s largest 10K race to benefit charity”—part of a project for Nike and the Nike Plus project.

    Stories from the Front is part of a series put forth by the venerable AIGA/NY chapter.

     

  8. Can Khoi Vinh Save The New York Times?

    In another contemplation of “print is dead,” NYtimes Design Director and faculty member Khoi Vinh is profiled in the latest issue of The New York Review of Ideas as the man of the future. Vihn is part of a conversation that presents interaction design as a new way of thinking about communications. From his early days of starting Behavior Design (with fellow faculty member Chris Fahey), to fostering a new generation of thinkers in the MFA Interaction Design Department, “Black, White, and Read Online” is a sweeping look into how definitions, platforms, and different disciplines will meld in the years to come.

    Read the full article at The New York Review Of Ideas.

  9. Onya Judges Rebekah Hodgson and Alex Wright

    Faculty members Bek Hodgson and Alex Wright will be traveling to New Zealand as judges for the Onyas. Created for the celebration of New Zealand’s web industry, the Onyas include categories in “Best Visual Design,” “Best User Experience,” “Best Use of HTML & CSS,” “Best Content,” “Best Mobile Application” and more. While there, Hodgson will be teaching a workshop on “Entrepreneurial Design,” and Wright will be presenting a workshop on “Stalking Your Users.” Webstock caught up with Bek for a quick interview on what makes good design on the web, the origin of “Entrepreneurial Design,” and her top five desert island discs. Below is an excerpt.

    Webstock: Tell us about what you’re currently doing and how you got there.

    Bek: Currently, I am in semi-stealth mode working on two really exciting new startups here in New York that will be unveiled in the spring. The first is in partnership with Rob Kalin, founder of Etsy, for which we are aggressively harnessing the power of the web to redefine and enhance learning and the exchange of knowledge. The second is a community site I co-founded for writers. This site not only enables writers to promote and connect, but provides tools enabling quick, easy and beautiful publication - both on the web and in print.

    The path to get here has been over a decade long adventure - a cocktail of the early-on design bloopers, a traditional design education at Art Center College of Design, working with a host of inspiring startups like Etsy and Blurb, and a fierce dedication to creating purpose-driven solutions that enable multitudes of folks to have a wider reach and potentially greater impact.

    Webstock: What makes good design on the web? What makes something great, instead of average?

    Bek: For all its complexities, I believe good design on the web simplifies environments and experiences. Understanding the medium, and how it is used, is paramount. It challenges us to say more with less and to make navigating, sharing and collaborating truly intuitive. Making something great, instead of average, means nailing all such things and adding a dose of brilliant execution. Details that delight, language that inspires - revealing unwavering genius.

    Read the full interview on the Webstock blog.

  10. Summer Intensive Week One

    The Summer Intensive in “Communication Design” with Nicholas Felton, “Interaction Design” with Carla Diana, and “Practical Programming” with Ian Curry have officially begun. Here are a few scenes from week one.


    Department Chair Liz Danzico reviewing the syllabus with Nicholas Felton before class.


    Carla Diana in a lecture about wireframing, prototyping, and work flows.


    First lesson with Ian Curry: how to program a human! Ian asks students to direct verbal instructions at him to make a peanut butter sandwich.

  11. Incoming Students Unite

    While the MFA Interaction Design Program hasn’t started yet, this summer, its inaugural class banded together to find a project to work on. Sparked by a suggestion from Interaction Design Association (IxDA) local leader Derek Chan, MFA Interaction Design student 2011, some of the local students got together to work on the Mozilla Labs Design Challenge, a series of events to encourage innovation and experimentation in user interface design for the web. It aim was to invite designers, students, and design-focused people from all around the world to develop new ideas and mockups for the future of the web.

    We were interested to talk with one of the students about how the collaboration took place, so we got some time with Russ Maschmeyer, MFA Interaction Design student 2011, to discuss how the project went.

    1. The program hasn’t started yet, and no one has been formally introduced. How did you come together to work on this?
    A few of the future students were living in New York at the time, and we had started to get to know one another at the Dot Dot Dot lectures (the MFA Interaction Design lecture series). We formed a Google group to start gathering the troops both in New York and outside so that we could start getting to know each other. Derek Chan, who’s involved with the IxDA (a partner for the Mozilla Design Challenge), suggested we submit an entry, to which everyone who was in New York replied in the affirmative with a heavy use of caps lock.

    2. You called your project “Tablines.” How did the idea come about? Can you describe the process—from mockup to the moment when the team decides “this is ready.”
    Seven of us got together (two others would join later) for an informal brainstorming session about what kind of solution we wanted to deliver—whether we wanted to dream the big dream or think more practically; whether we wanted to use tabs as they are now, or go for a completely different metaphor. The idea was a simple system that draws connections between your open pages using your paths of navigation to those pages. That got everyone thinking of the different visual metaphors for a branching storyline. We spent a few meetings looking at that approach from a few different angles and identified some new benefits and drawbacks that such an approach might invoke. Then we took aim at emphasizing those benefits while finding solutions for the drawbacks. Everyone contributed tremendously, and it was just a meeting or two a week for about 4-5 weeks where everyone sort of ruminated the idea until it was fully formed.

    3. What was the most challenging aspect of the design challenge? Coming up with a viable idea? The creative process? Working with eight different people?
    The toughest part of the challenge was not necessarily the revolving participation due to working around everyone’s schedules or organizing the workload. Everyone did a fantastic job of working together and volunteering their time when they had it, and a few people really stepped up in terms of organizing. So what could have been a logistical nightmare was pretty naturally seamless. The toughest part was really arriving at a viable new system that solved the old problems and elevated the browsing experience in general, without causing a whole slew of new problems or annoyances itself. The team came together beautifully, and as a result I think we’re all really pumped to be working together for the next two years.

    4. What have you learned; what are your expectations from the program now that the project is completed?
    It helped to identify the group dynamic that we can expect to see in the next two years—namely open, enthusiastic, fun, and damn smart. We would all agree that prototyping and finding quick ways to explore big ideas from a user experience perspective will be useful to hone. All in all (and I think I can speak for everyone on this), I’m really excited to be spending the next couple years with these folks.

    RELATED

     

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

    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!

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

    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.

  14. Walkman Nostalgia

    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.”