MFA in Interaction Design: Home

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  1. Physical Computing Final Projects

    Final projects for Fundamentals of Physical Computing are up. Students have documented projects and labs through their blogs and video work. See the result of many whiteboard doodles, post-it notes wireframes, and brainstorm sessions.

    What a wall looks like in the studio on a typical day.

  2. Video: Jared Spool “What Makes Design Intuitive?”

    Using examples of web sites, applications, devices, and more, guest lecturer Jared Spool tackles factors that contribute to counter-intuitive design, and narrows down when design is intuitive:

    It’s basically, they (the user) will just know what to do. They can walk up to it and know what to do right away, and they don’t feel they would need any training, whether explicit or implicit. It’s obvious.

  3. Student Project featured in Magazine

    Cover and page 53 of the Community Currency Magazine feature work by students Gene Lu, John Finley, and Colleen Miller.

    The neighborhood currency project, which garnered much attention last semester, has been extensively featured in the Nov/Dec issue of the Community Currency Magazine. Gene Lu‘s local currency for Alphabet City made the cover of the magazine, and images of other student designs appear throughout the issue.

    Download the PDF version of the magazine

  4. Alex Wright on Museums 2.0

    In a recent Times piece entitled “Online, It’s the Mouse That Runs the Museum,” Alex Wright discusses the effect of social media on museum web initiatives. As one powerful example, Wright talks with fellow faculty Jake Barton on the curatorial process for the Make History 911 memorial website.

    Make History is perhaps the most notable recent example of a museum tapping the collective energy of Web users to help build its collection. While museums have been experimenting with the Web for years, these projects have often consisted of little more than an exhibit photo gallery or online guestbook. In recent years, however, the rise of social media has given Web users the technological wherewithal to play a more active role in shaping the direction of museum collections.

    User-generated content on the Make History website

    Read the article

  5. MFA Designer as Author Podcast: Robert Fabricant

    Faculty member Robert Fabricant recently spoke at the MFA Designer as Author program on social entrepreneurship and the role of the designer as interpreter of social needs.

    Watch or download the podcast at MFA Design

  6. Karen McGrane on Interaction Design

    What is interaction design history? In a blog post over the new year, faculty member Karen McGrane, who taught a course on the History of Interaction Design last semester, investigates the topic at length with classroom presentation slides, as well a list of interaction design history sources. Below is an excerpt from her blog:

    Photo Credit: Columbia University Computing History

    Learning more about computing history is a sort of professional hobby of mine; I have a fetish for pictures of old mainframes and this research lets me indulge my proclivities. When I tell people in the user experience field about my studies the most common response I hear is “I don’t know anything about the history of computers.”

    I think that’s sad. Practitioners in other design disciplines—architecture, graphic design, fashion—would be expected to have some grounding in historical movements and trends. But most people have no formal education in interaction design, and so they’ve never learned the roots of the discipline. I taught a short course in IxD history in the MFA program in Interaction Design at SVA, and I hope that the students in the program know enough now to at least recognize key people and events when they come up, even if their introduction was a whirlwind 5-week tour.

    Read the full post

  7. Application Date for Fall 2010

    Thanks to all the prospective students we’ve gotten to know through our events such as the Open Houses, Graduate Portfolio Days, department visits, events, and email and phone correspondence. The application date for prospective students who are intending to apply for fall 2010 is today, Friday, January 15. Prospective students in the New York Area are encouraged to drop off their applications in person to the main Admissions Office located at 209 East 23rd Street on the first floor by 5:00PM.

    Applicants can expect this timeline from February through April. If you have additional questions for the department, or would like to schedule for a tour or to talk, drop us line at interactiondesign at sva dot edu or call at 212.592.2703.

    We look forward to seeing everyone’s hard work!

  8. Students Design NYC “In Transit”

    For their final projects in Jason Santa Maria’s Communicating Design course, students were asked to identify a problem within New York City’s subway system and to design a solution that addressed the problem. Students researched the system in depth, including a class trip to the New York City Transit Museum, and addressed a variety of problems ranging from learning the subway system to keeping track of how much time is spent in the system overall.

    Below, a selection of students explain their projects. Photos from all projects are available at the department’s flickr stream.

    Children’s Subway Map
    Carmen Dukes

    “I think it’s safe to assume that the MTA’s most passionate subway riders are children, yet nothing within the subway system is designed specifically for them. I think that there are creative opportunities to augment a child’s ability to learn the subway system as well as enhance their overall experience, therefore I wanted to work on a project that tackled a design challenge for the subway’s youngest riders.

    A child’s mental model of the subway system may only contain a few subway stops, so my map is designed to allow a parent or child to personalize the map by only adding relevant subway stops. My inspiration for the icon designs was Ed Emberley’s drawing books. Using his simple drawing guidelines, I was able to create a playful and engaging design for young children.”

    BetterMTA.info
    Derek Chan and Colleen Miller

    “We created BetterMTA.info as a website makeover for the New York City transit system. In our design, we suggest clear functional improvements for riders. Based on a survey of active commuters, updates include live service announcements on the home page, a prominent trip planner, and a cleaner overall layout that streamlines access to important information. We have modified the site architecture to separate different services and corporate data of the MTA system into subdomains for more focused access, in an effort to enhance the user experience. We have also created an app in which commuters can access service updates on their mobile devices.”

    Voice of the Community
    Richie Lau

    “Voice of the Community is an augmented subway application for the iPhone that re-engages New York City’s subway system into one that publicly transports the free opinions and thoughts of its surrounding communities. It allows people to speak without censorship or limitations. The interactive experience transforms the iPhone into a graffiti art supplied tool chest filled with cans of virtual spray paint that allows augmented creations to be posted, seen, and captured.

    To use the application, people download the free application and purchase virtual spray cans. Choosing from an assorted color selection, from Green Apple to Cotton Candy. Purchased cans are then stored in the iPhone’s arsenal of paint supplies. Writers shake their virtual spray cans and listen to the marble that gages the paint levels in their cans. Users point their cans at the wall and spray. Motions and movements are stored in the system at specific geographical coordinates. Users use the application’s augmented viewer to view works left at these locations where snapshots can be taken and stored. The built-in subway map marks locations that people have marked, and shared, allowing one to share their creations with their Facebook or Twitter friends and followers.”

    ReDirect
    Russ Maschmeyer

    “Service changes are bad. Very, very bad. They often involve doubling, sometimes tripling the time it takes you to get where you’re going. To add insult to injury, the accompanying service change signage is such a riddle of dates, times, and re-directions that it often requires multiple readings to glean even a basic understanding of the change. For any transit system experiencing redirects, there are four key messages that need to be conveyed: alert the riders to a change, provide a quick overview of that change, course correct any wayward travelers, and finally, guide riders through the hallways to the proper platforms. If done right, no one should have to stop to study a sign, but study them we do. Currently, the MTA employs a single, densely packed sheet of 8.5x11” paper to convey an entire set of messaging. This is a problem worth solving.

    I approached this problem with the aim to stretch out that messaging over the rider’s entire subway experience, from entering the station, to the turnstiles, to the platform and then onto the train itself. I devised a simple hack to the current station entrance and turnstile signage involving LEDs surrounding the train symbols, as well as the LED route boards on the new R160 trains, which would alert riders to service changes and cancellations. Once inside the station or on the platform during a transfer, riders would find redesigned fliers, which would include iconography, a strong information hierarchy, and a map of the service change. This is of course just a beginning, but hopefully these small changes would go a long way to making these changes a bit more digestible.”

    TrainSpy
    Evinn Quinn

    “Train Spy is an application ecosystem that I developed for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Train Spy utilizes technological advancements with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and the uniqueness of the iPhone platform to offer an up to the minute, real time subway monitoring system. With the RFID keeping track of every train’s position, the iPhone allows you to view this information and plan accordingly. In addition to the application for iPhone users, there is an in-station viewer installed in every subway station that allows for non-mobile users to take advantage of the system.”

    See all student work for In Transit.

     

  9. What to Expect: January through April

    If you’ve given thought to graduate school in interaction design, the deadline for applications is fast approaching: next Friday, January 15, 2010, in fact. Any application received after this date will be reviewed as space remains available in the program.

    What can prospective students expect after January 15? Here’s what the months look like from January through April:

    • January 15, 2010: Early application deadline for prospective students.
    • February 22, 2010: Applicants who applied by January 15 receive notification about a telephone interview. (Admittance to the program requires a personal interview.)
    • February 24 - March 5, 2010: Telephone interviews for select candidates.
    • April 1, 2010: Applicants who applied by January 15 receive a decision in writing from SVA.

    The department is happy to advise you in preparing applications or counsel you in last-minute questions you might have your portfolio. Contact the department to set up an appointment if you haven’t done so already.

    To find out more about the application requirements or read more here. If you have questions, or want to stop by for a tour or a talk, drop a line to Qing Qing Chen, Assistant to the Chair, at interactiondesign at sva dot edu or 212.592.2703.

  10. Barton presents BIKE IT!

    Recently Jake Barton presented BIKE IT! at GOOD Design NYC, presented by GOOD at Nau, a showcase for ways design can serve New York. Local Projects asked, “How can we get more people to ride their bikes?”

    Barton proposed that the real problem with biking is a physical one: People don’t like to go to work sweaty. Barton pointed to Cool Biz, a program that’s already underway in Japan and in other places like Denver, making it culturally acceptable to dress down in the workplace so buildings don’t have to keep the AC cranked. The same dress code changes could be made to allow people to stay cooler after they biked to work, reasoned Barton.