Blog
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Introducing Confabulate
Students and faculty gathered this past weekend for “Confabulate,” a student lecture series. Founded by Derek Chan, the event aims to complement the curriculum with a monthly set of informal presentations delivered by MFA Interaction Design students. These short 10-minute lectures are meant to teach other students (and faculty) about a particular topic, revealing more about the presenter’s interests or skills outside of the program.
MFA Interaction Design student and founder of “Confabulate” Derek Chan kicks off the event on a Sunday afternoon.
This month saw Katie Koch presenting “Lost in Translation: Letterpress and Modern Typographic Arts,” John Finley showing us how “Document-final-BACKUP-LAST VERSION.doc” can be avoided in “Version Control for Non-Programmers,” and Stephanie Aaron on “How to print out and put together a staple-bound booklet without cutting your fingers off, ruining your piece or, damaging your lungs.”
MFA Interaction Design student and presenter Stephanie Aaron not cutting her fingers off during a demonstration.
Thanks to Derek for organizing and everyone for coming out. We’re looking forward to watching the tradition grow.
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Continuing the Conversation: A Philip Johnson Glass House & MFA Interaction Design Partnership
The MFA in Interaction Design at the School of Visual Arts is committed to providing students with unique and exciting opportunities beyond the walls of the studio. A recent partnership with the Philip Johnson Glass House will further this commitment to six of its inaugural students in an engagement that will challenge each student with a variety of opportunities.
This past week, the student team was invited to the Glass House in an “immersion trip” to better understand the historical significance of Philip Johnson and his vision for the Glass House. They were joined by faculty mentor, Jason Santa Maria, and department chair, Liz Danzico.
Four members of the student team approaching the Glass House on their tour. (From left to right: Eric St. Onge, Russ Maschmeyer, Derek Chan, Katie Koch)
The morning half of the visit consisted of a private tour of the 47-acre property where the Glass House is situated. With the autumn leaves falling and the sun just peeking through the otherwise overcast sky, the team was treated to a breathtaking demonstration of how the emotional experience of a natural landscape can curate a conversation.
Russ Maschmeyer taking a break in the Glass House.
During the afternoon, the team met with the Glass House staff to discuss the vision for the new project. Using the collection of valuable content captured from past conversations in the Glass House, the team knew they were beginning a very special undertaking. Check back frequently over the course of the next few months to see what the student team will be doing to “continue the conversation.” The team will be live-blogging the project’s progress.
All photos are taken by Jason Santa Maria. For more photos, see his Flickr page.
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Jason Santa Maria on Web Typography
Bello Pro by Underware from Typekit website Following the recent release of Typekit, faculty member Jason Santa Maria tackles “what happens to our designs once we have lots of typefaces to choose from” in this week’s A List Apart. On Web Typography Until now, chances are that if we dropped text onto a web page in a system font at a reasonable size, it was legible. But with many typefaces about to be freed for use on websites, choosing the right ones to complement a site’s design will be far more challenging. Many faces to which we’ll soon have access were never meant for screen use, either because they’re aesthetically unsuitable or because they’re just plain illegible. Jason Santa Maria, a force behind improved type on the web, presents qualities and methods to keep in mind as we venture into the widening world of web type. Read the article
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Students Design Neighborhood Currencies
Last month, students in Jason Santa Maria’s Communicating Design class were assigned the task of designing their own local currency. Inspired by Ithaca Hours and BerkShares, students pulled a neighborhood out of a hat, and were asked to research their neighborhood to determine what characteristics should be represented on its currency.
The color, shape, and texture of the resulting designs reflect the diversity of the various neighborhoods. Below, a few students talk about the thinking behind their designs. All of the students’ local currencies are currently on display in the department.
Stephanie Aaron: Upper East Side
My local currency is for the Upper East Side, which is home to more museums than any other neighborhood in New York City. The currency’s name is the “Mula,” which is an acronym for, “Museums: our Local Asset.” The currency comes in denominations of five, ten and twenty Mula, and each museum would put its art on a set of the three denominations, yielding upwards of thirty different designs. The design of the Mula is based on the golden section, and the colors used are the three primary and three secondary colors. The three typefaces on the Mula were all created by Hofler Frere-Jones, a New York City firm.
Kristin Graefe: Midtown
This local currency is designed for midtown Manhattan. The back of the notes features the map of midtown Manhattan while the front has one famous building in that part of Midtown on it. By putting all notes together the whole map of Manhattan is shown. Each of the banknotes has its own color and is issued in $100 (Empire State Building), $50 (Grand Central Station), $20 (New York Public Library), $10 (Museum of Modern Art), $5 (St. Patricks Cathedral).
Michael Katayama: Financial District
The Financial District is known for its day traders and office workers. But, I wanted to focus on the people who make the neighborhood their home. There is an increasing number of young couples buying their first homes and starting families.
For the design, I took photos of the neighborhood and found some interesting patterns and landmarks. I tried to find a balance between commerce and family life by using a muted natural color palette and choice of type. The geometric patterns represent the energy of the neighborhood.
Russell Maschmeyer: Little Italy
Little Italy has shrunk over the past 50 years from a rich, wide area of Italian-American heritage and family life to a three block row of tourist-trap restaurants. So my goal in designing a local currency for the all-but-gone neighborhood was to establish a link between using the currency and reversing the trend of encroachment from the surrounding neighborhoods. To create that link I not only designed bills that reflect periods in Italian design and typography, but also turned the bills themselves into a real map of Little Italy, which grows in size as the denomination grows with it. When visitors spend the higher denominations within the community, its directly suggested that they’re acting to tangibly re-grow the boundaries of the neighborhood to the size suggested on the denomination. It’s an economic and cultural battle cry of sorts.
Eric St. Onge: Chelsea
Rather than designing a currency for the large and diverse neighborhood of Chelsea, I decided to focus in and design a currency for one building in that neighborhood: Chelsea Market. Chelsea Market was built as a factory for Nabisco, but it now hosts offices, grocery stores, retail shops, and restaurants. The building’s architecture is inspired by its factory roots, so I thought it would be interesting to design a currency inspired by its former factory products. Each denomination in my currency adopts the form factor of a Nabisco cracker: Nilla Wafers, Fig Newtons, Oreo Cookies, Ritz Crackers, and Saltine Crackers. The geometric design from the face of the Oreo Cookie is used to tie all five of the designs together.
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Jeffrey Zeldman Uses This
With the release of the third edition of Designing With Web Standards, faculty member Jeffrey Zeldman has been on full publicity mode, appearing for various interviews and features on the web. Listen to Jeffrey’s thoughts on DWWS3e in the Creative Expert or Author Talk interview. Read a chapter excerpt from DWWS3e. Find out about what tools he uses to get the job done from The Setup. Register for one of the five An Event Apart 2010 conferences “for passionate practitioners of standards-based web design.”
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They’re listening: A quick Twitter case study
Students in Jason Santa Maria’s Communicating Design class had a quick brush with Twitter notoriety last week, and a lesson in the immediacy of the medium.
During a guest lecture by type designer Jonathan Hoefler, a discussion ensued about the range of opinions to which a typographer’s work lends form. In exploring the example of Gotham’s use by the Obama campaign, and its subsequent adoption on GOP.gov, students noticed something else altogether on the Republican website. In two separate places, they’d misspelled the name of their party.
Jonathan quickly tweeted to Hoefler + Frere-Jones’ 5000 followers: “Can you spot the typos? @jasonsantamaria’s class did. gop.gov”. A series of retweets followed, and within the hour (at 8pm on a Thursday evening) one of the typos had been corrected. A second surge of tweets ensued surrounding the missed second correction, and by Friday morning, all spelling errors on the page seemed to be removed.
Student Eric St. Onge observed, “I think everyone was surprised by how an offhand comment in class resulted in a flurry of tweets on Twitter and by the speed of GOP.gov’s quick response to the discovery. As students, I think it provided a lesson to us in the rapid effects of social networks, as well as the value of proofreading your content before going live”.
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ABCD ... IXD
Sometimes creating a visual language can be exactly that: creating the visual representation of a language. When the Interaction Design program began, we worked with The Heads of State who masterfully crafted the identity for our department. All department print materials—from posters to brochures to buttons—have been designed by the unstoppable duo, and they’ve helped guide us on translating those principles to other media.
When we continued to extend their work this month on The Deck, an ad network for reaching creative, web and design professionals, we thought it overdue to mention the custom lettering they did for the program.
They used Gotham in many of the early versions of the brand (and ultimately in the final version as well) and the connect-the-dot lettering ended up being based on Gotham but with some adjustments. “We wanted something that could communicate a number of metaphors but would primarily look clean and eye-catching,” Jason Kernevich, designer, commented. “We wanted it to feel more like interaction than literally being about interaction.”
The full alphabet
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The Future of Web Design New York City
Chair of the program Liz Danzico and faculty members Paul Ford and Jason Santa Maria will participate in a panel discussion at this year’s The Future of Web Design, the conference for “web designers, creatives and anyone who cares about web design.”
The Long and Short of It: Panel Discussion
Hemlines. Javascript. Haircuts. Search queries. Attention spans: It seems they’re all trending toward short. At a time where every character is one more toward 140, and every pixel counts, are we just designing and writing for what can be digested at a glance? Do longer or more in-depth experiences still have the ability to connect with audiences, or is short more meaningful? Panelists who artfully practice both sides of the form will briefly examine methods, design strategies, and contentions around practicing the long and the short of it.Details
Tuesday, November 17
New World Stages
340 West 50th Street
New York, NY 10019 -
Chris Fahey at Web 2.0 Expo: Products are People, Too!
Faculty member Chris Fahey will be giving a talk at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo NYC—the showcase for the latest Web 2.0 business models, development paradigms and design strategies for the builders of the next-generation—on November 18.
The Human Interface (or: Products are People, Too!)
More and more, users are interacting with web sites and software on a conversational, physical, and emotional level—just like we’ve always interacted with other people. UX designers, then, must stop thinking about interfaces as dumb control panels and begin imagining them (literally!) as human beings. This talk will discuss past, present, and future ways of humanizing the user experience.DETAILS
Wednesday, November 18
9:00AM
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
655 West 34th Street
New York, NY 10001 -
World Usability Day 2009: “Designing for a Sustainable World”
MFA Interaction Design has partnered with NYC UPA and IxDA to present a half-day program for World Usability Day 2009 at the School of Visual Arts Theater. The conference will explore the challenge of sustainable design with leaders in social entrepreneurship, product design, and interaction design. Liz Danzico, Chair, will give the closing remarks on the department’s approach to innovation and social responsibility. Speakers from IDEO, frog, Smart and more will share their stories and their successes, and discuss how they have overcome obstacles to create provocative and engaging new products.
DETAILS
Thursday, November 12
1:00PM-6:30PM
School of Visual Arts Theater
333 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011 -
Design Criticism Open Lecture: Jake Barton
Faculty member Jake Barton will speak at the MFA Design Criticism Department at The School of Visual Arts on “Collaborative Storytelling and the Dissolution of Technology” on November 17. As Principal of Local Projects, Jake has been spearheading projects such as StoryCorps which generates content from the audience into a single curated archive.
Details
Tuesday, November 17
6:00-8:00PM
MFA Design Criticism
136 W 21 Street
Second Floor
New York City -
MFA Interaction Design Fall Lecture Series: Andy Budd, “Designing the User Experience Curve”
This fall, the MFA Interaction Design Department welcomes visiting lectures in an intimate twice-a-month series to inspire conversation, pursue change, and incite creation.
Designing the User Experience Curve
These days people expect more from a website than a handy set of tools and a pretty interface — they want an experience. From the moment somebody enters your site they’ll be judging you on everything from the way the site looks to the tone of your error messages. And they won’t just be judging you against other sites. They will be judging you on every customer experience they have ever had, from the rude man at the train station to the lovely hotel clerk that checked them in while on holiday. So in order to compete, we need to up our game and look at experiences both on and off-line.
In this session Andy Budd will look at 5 key factors that go into designing the perfect customer experience. By taking examples from the world around us, Andy will discuss how we can turn utilitarian experiences into something wonderful.
About the Speaker
Andy Budd
Clearleft, Founding PartnerAndy Budd is one of the founding partners at User Experience Design Consultancy, Clearleft. As an interaction design and usability specialist, Andy is a regular speaker at international conferences like Web Directions, An Event Apart and SXSW. Andy curates dconstruct.org, one of the most popular design conferences in the UK. He’s also responsible for UX London, The UK’s first dedicated Usability, Information Architecture and User Experience Design event.
Andy has helped judge several international design awards and currently sits on the advisory board for .Net magazine. Andy is the driving force behindSilverbackapp, a low‐cost usability testing tool for the Mac. Andy also wrote the best selling book, CSS Mastery and occasionally blogs at andybudd.com.
Details
Friday, November 20
6-8PM
MFA Interaction Design Department
132 W 21st Street, 6 Floor
New York City
(View Map)About MFA Interaction Design
The MFA in Interaction Design program trains students to research, analyze, prototype, and design concepts in their business, social, and cultural contexts. It explores the strategic role of interaction design in shaping everyday life, and intends to increase the relevancy of design to business and to society so designers can make a difference.
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Lecture: Steve Portigal, “Getting Generative: User Research Applied to Business Decisions”
Getting Generative: User Research Applied to Business Decisions
Too often the tools of user research are applied to closed-ended problems (“Should the button be on the right or the left?”), leaving tons of great insights on the cutting-room floor. By taking a more considered view of what research to do, when to do it, and what to do with what has been learned, we can uncover and address any number of business challenges: organizational structure, process, branding, positioning, design language, new product/service opportunities, and of course, features. Steve will lead an interactive discussion about using research for more than merely informing design decisions.
RSVP for this event This event is open to SVA students only. An SVA ID is required for entry.
About the Speaker
Steve Portigal
Portigal Consulting, PrincipalSteve Portigal is the principal of Portigal Consulting, a bite-sized firm in the San Francisco Bay Area that helps organizations to discover and act on new insights about themselves and their customers. In addition to consulting with innovative businesses like Sony, Belkin, Nestle and Plantronics, he writes regularly for interactions magazine, Core77 and the Portigal Consulting blog, All This ChittahChattah. Steve is an avid photographer who has a Museum of Foreign Grocery Products in his home.
Details
Friday, November 20
12-1PM
MFA Interaction Design Department
132 W 21st Street, 6 Floor
New York City
(View Map)About MFA Interaction Design
The MFA in Interaction Design program trains students to research, analyze, prototype, and design concepts in their business, social, and cultural contexts. It explores the strategic role of interaction design in shaping everyday life, and intends to increase the relevancy of design to business and to society so designers can make a difference.
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Jake Barton at the SEGD Dynamic Environments 3 Workshop
From Local Projects: Faculty member “...Jake Barton and his team at Local Projects / WXY Architecture have created a visitors center for the digital age, transforming what was once a warehouse for printed brochures into an interactive launchpad for the New York City tourist experience. The Official NYC Information Center is a happy hybrid of boutique retail design and interactive museum experience, with media elements that ‘…make the correlation between moving through the space and searching the content.’”
See the Official NYC Information Center and meet Jake at the SEGD Dynamic Environments 3 workshop November 12 and 13 in New York.
Details
SEGD Dynamic Environments 3
The Intersection of Information, Experience, and Architecture: Collaboration Required!
November 12-13, 2009
New York City -
A Cab Ride with Rachel Abrams
Faculty member Rachel Abrams’ in-cab interview with Cassim Shepard, editor of UrbanOmnibus, investigates the routines involved in an iconic New York act—riding a yellow cab—and what they may reveal.
“So, everyone knows what’s involved in taking a taxi. But sometimes breaking down even the most obvious of processes into their constituent elements can provide insights into how design thinking can reimagine, and improve, everyday experiences. She (Rachel) took us on a cab ride in mid-summer 2009. Through her design thinker’s lens, Rachel’s understanding of the basic elements of daily transactions can offer insight, suggesting the touch-points where technology can usefully, appropriately, seamlessly intervene.”
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Phi-Hong D. Ha: On Service Design
The latest Voice: AIGA Journal of Design features an interview with faculty member Phi-Hong D. Ha by MFA Design Department Co-founder Steven Heller. Ha discusses what “service” means in today’s design world: “service design is a collaborative process of researching, planning, and realizing the experiences that happen over time and over multiple touch points with a customer’s experience.” In three lessons, Ha also advises MFA students to “embrace people,” “learn from others,” and “make it visual” while learning and practicing service design. Below is an excerpt.
Steven Heller: I have been hearing the term “service design” a lot lately. What is it?
Phi-Hong D. Ha: From a design perspective, it’s first useful to define a service and understand how it differs from a product we are more familiar with designing. Services themselves cannot be designed in the way you expect to design a product, because you can’t control the delivery of a service that invariably involves some degree of human-to-human interaction. Beyond that, services are intangible, delivered over time and non-storable. They are co-created by provider and consumer with the aim of creating a benefit for the consumer— by changing their position, their physical possessions or their intangible assets. Services are made up of touch points, the points of interaction between the provider and the consumer.
With all that in mind, I think service design can be summed up in this way: It is a cross-disciplinary practice that looks at the touch points of a service within the context of a customer’s journey. In designing those touch points, we seek to create the conditions for a positive service experience.
We encounter services all the time—from using the ATM to withdraw funds to receiving medical care at the hospital to riding the bus to work—that have been consciously created, but not typically with the use of designers, design research and the needs of the service consumers. The attempt to consciously design these services is the foundation of this new practice.
SH: You teach classes on service design in the MFA Interaction Design program. What are the three most important take-aways that you impart to your students?
PDH: I was a student in Shelley Evenson’s service design class at Carnegie Mellon in 2004, which I believe pioneered the education of service design in the United States. Because it’s such a new discipline, part of what is so exciting is that the field has yet to be fully defined. We are shaping it right now, and students who are motivated by that prospect have the opportunity to make a big impact on the discipline. Beyond that, however, there are three lessons I have found will be useful in learning and practicing service design.
Embrace people. Not literally, but services revolve around people, whether that means the person making your coffee, the doctor talking to you about your chronic illness, or the CEO giving the OK to add a new service. All the stakeholders play a critical role in the success of a service delivery. Therefore, as a service designer, you must engage with people in many ways to truly understand how customers will experience your client’s service and then to help your client build a long term relationship with those customers because each time they use a service, they are interacting with your brand. You might find yourself talking to patients, investigating the barista’s work environment and compensation package or “bodystorming” with the client’s CEO. And since the human factor can never be completely controlled, the more you know the people involved, the more situations you can account for.
Learn from others. Service design is cross-disciplinary. Customer journeys can take paths through hospitals, retail stores, down the street. Because of this, being able to engage experts in other industries and disciplines is often just as important as being a designer on the team. We have the opportunity to learn from architects, doctors and patients, bus drivers… the list goes on. Take that opportunity. The concept of the genius designer cannot thrive in this field. Use methods like participatory design and co-creation sessions to open up possibilities for design ideas that are difficult to reach on one’s own.
Make it visual. There are two ways this is important. First is in the design process itself. Because services are intangible, the ability to communicate to the client the experience a customer has with its services—where the pain points and the areas of opportunity are—helps to get everyone working together toward the new or improved services. Visualize through mapping customer journeys, sketching service ideas, enactments of service concepts, etc. The second is in the design of the service, in communicating its use, benefits and overall value. Use all senses available in making the experience tangible—giving the service form does not need to be limited to visual solutions. Birgit Mager had a great term for this: She calls it creating “perceivable evidence,” which helps to make the service memorable. These could be manifested in the mints on your hotel pillow, the website that “remembers” what you like or the follow-up phone call from your doctor.
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Fall Lecture Series: Matt Mullenweg, “Fireside Chat on Design, Entrepreneurship, and Open Source”
This fall, the MFA Interaction Design Department welcomes visiting lectures in an intimate twice-a-month series to inspire conversation, pursue change, and incite creation.
About the Speaker
Automattic, Founder
Matt Mullenweg blogs at ma.tt. He is best known as the founding developer of WordPress, the blogging software he guided from a handful of users to the most widely used open source blog tool. In late 2005 he left CNET to found Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Akismet.com, and Gravatar. In his spare time he enjoys taking photographs and playing jazz.Related
Details
Wednesday, November 18
6-8PM
MFA Interaction Design Department
132 W 21st Street, 6 Floor
New York City
(View Map)About MFA Interaction Design
The MFA in Interaction Design program trains students to research, analyze, prototype, and design concepts in their business, social, and cultural contexts. It explores the strategic role of interaction design in shaping everyday life, and intends to increase the relevancy of design to business and to society so designers can make a difference.
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Graduate Portfolio Day: Chicago
The MFA Interaction Design Department will be available to speak with prospective candidates at The School of Art Institute of Chicago this Sunday at the Graduate Portfolio Day. Stop by to get answers about the program, feedback on your portfolio, or just find out more about the faculty or students. For more information, visit Graduate Portfolio Days.
Details
Sun, Nov 8, 12:00-4:00PM
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
MacLean Center
112 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60603 -
1 Hour Design Challenge: Winners Announced
Earlier in October, students participated in Core77’s 1 Hour Design Challenge: The Future of Digital Reading for Jason Santa Maria’s Communicating Design class. Based on Portigal Consulting’s Reading Ahead initiative, students had the opportunity to digitally interpret the act of reading through e-book devices, social mediums, and ecosystems. Winner for the challenge, Hot Studio, was announced today, with MFA Interaction Design students Stephanie Aaron, Kristin Graefe, and Eric St. Onge swooping the Notable with their PaperBack device. Congrats to all student participants!
The PaperBack by Stephanie Aaron, Kristin Grafe & Eric St. Onge
Gene Lu, Chiawei Liu
STAX “Bendable Book” by Richie Lau, Evinn Quinn, & Michael Katayama
The Reading by Clint Beharry, Katie Koch, & Colleen Miller
The Folding E-Book by Beatriz Vizcaino, Derek Chan, & Russell Maschmeyer
Carmen Dukes, John Finley, & Angela Huang
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December Open House
We’re happy to announce our second Open House of the year. If you missed the October Open House, join faculty members, students, and staff for another afternoon of informal presentations, questions and answers, and open discussion to learn more about the program.
MFA Interaction Design Open House
Saturday, December 5, 2009
2:00-4:00PMSchool of Visual Arts
132 W 21 Street
6th Floor
New York CityFor more information, please contact the department at interactiondesign [at] sva.edu or 212.592.2703.
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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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- Breaking Ground at the Visible Futures Lab
- Value of Web Presence, or on No More Resumes
- Paul Ford on the Epiphanator On The Media
- Getting Together: Interaction 12, Day Two
- 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
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