MFA in Interaction Design: Home

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  1. MEET- IXD 2012: Bringing Down Boundaries

    The department hosted MEET-IXD 2012 on Friday, February 24, an event that brought a range of companies from start-ups to large brands together with talented students to engage in conversation over work, ideologies, and employment opportunities.

    The afternoon began with a welcome from department chair and co-founder, Liz Danzico, followed by a keynote from Luke Woods, Product Design Manager at Facebook. He talked about the idea of sharing using technology, specifically Facebook to create conversations that one never expects to have. A thought that segued perfectly into the knowledge exchange session just afterwards..

    The knowledge exchange that followed was structured as a series of group interactions between students and companies—few other guidelines. Companies and students had the opportunity to meet with different groups and with each switch, new permutations and combinations generated a new discussion and opened up unique connections.

    For first-year students, it was an opportunity to discuss projects they have been working on and other ideas important to them:

    The part I enjoyed most was being able to have an open conversation with the world’s leading design firms. Having insight into how these companies see the role of interaction design changing their business was immensely insightful.- Tom Harman

    For second-years students, it was a great way to get critique from some of the best minds in interaction design:

    The department creating pathways between potential employers and students is important: it creates community, extends the reach of our department and positions our students to compete for the best jobs prior to graduation. I think most importantly, it externalizes how we, as a department, think about IxD and gives us a chance to see what the evolving potential employer needs are in an designer (they learn, we learn). I also like the idea of employers as mentors—students bringing a project to a mentor mid-steam for feedback. The employer becomes invested in the work; students are invested in the employer by way of their generosity.- Michael Yap

    The event ended with a reception where conversations continued on a more individual note and others beginning.

    We hope that the event continues to create new connections and influence career decisions as our students go through the program and beyond.

    Visit MEET-IXD for more about the event, who attended, and student projects.

    -Sana Rao

  2. Overlapping Worlds

    I recently completed my first semester in the Interaction Design program, and in my second semester, joined Meetup as a part-time intern. From my very first day at Meetup, I felt my school and work worlds overlapping.

    Every new hire receives the book “Bowling Alone”. My group partner, Guri Venstad, and I both took inspiration from this book for our final in Strategic Innovation in Product / Service Design. The book documents the decline in social capital in America. The example (and inspiration for the book title) is that although bowling has been on the rise since the 1980s, the actual number of bowling teams has decreased. There are fewer people sharing the sport together, which results in missing out on the community that can form around a team. Essentially, Meetup seeks to rebuild these relationships. I found myself thinking that my project with Guri which aimed as essentially an exchange of skills amongst neighbors to build a community, was just a different answer to the same question about connecting people to build social capital.

    There was a full day of orientation at Meetup, and while a bit dizzying to take it all in, was nevertheless very useful. One of the early parts of the orientation was with CEO, Scott Heiferman. He didn’t lecture us, and he didn’t show us a Powerpoint explaining why Meetup was producing a better product than company “X”. Instead, it felt very much like he was trying to instill in us the ethos of the company. He talked about what he believed Meetup was, how our best ideas were yet to come, and he asked us genuine questions. I came away thinking that Meetup provides the tools for people to form communities. Individuals must see a value for themselves, before committing to a meetup. That’s the importance of groups - they provide a premise and a common interests for strangers to meet. Although people come for a specific interest, they end up staying for the relationships formed. Guri and I tackled similar problems in our project.

    When Brendan McGovern, CFO, explained the Angel funding and the rounds of venture capital invested, I understood this from my Entrepreneurial Design class, which, coincidentally, is being taught by two great Venture Capitalists from Union Square Ventures - who funded Meetup’s last round of investing.

    So there we go, I am working with Meetup to better improve user experience using basic interaction design skills such as wire-framing, mockups, and other visual design tools. I am also thinking about what I learned in my strategy class, and I am understanding and appreciating Meetup in a way I don’t think I could have before tackling a project based around the same goals. If I am appreciating and using my skills and knowledge from classes already, after only one semester, I can barely imagine how the next three will go.

    -Sarah Adams

  3. Thinking Thesis: Michael Yap’s preliminary prototyping

    Thesis—Prototype 1 from Michael Yap on Vimeo.

    Michael Yap‘s paper prototype testing the hypothesis: “Encoding the physical world with data can create awareness, meaning, and behavior change.”

    Last week, I created a paper prototype and conducted an eight-user test (from February 2–3) for thesis. I edited the video documentation this week and posted it on Wednesday.

    The hypothesis: encoding the physical world with data can create awareness, meaning, and behavior change. The results: mixed but positive.

    All users correlated their health behaviors to the changes in the tomato display: healthy behaviors had no affect on the display, unhealthy behaviors visibly ripened the tomato, creating awareness.

    The display meant different things for users. For some, the display was a manifestation of the current health state of their bodies: if they exhibited unhealthy behaviors they expected the variable tomato to ripen; if they exhibited healthy behaviors, they expected the variable tomato to “un-ripen”. Others derived the intended meaning of the tomato: unhealthy behaviors accelerate the aging process, which is, of course, a uni-directional process. The results confirmed a suspicion that I previously held: some narrative (as complex as a video; as simple as a label) will need to accompany the final prototype in order to make the intended meaning of the display clear.

    The tomato display was not effective in creating behavior change. No surprise, but worth establishing.

    Read more of Michael’s latest thesis thinking.

  4. BIG♥NYC at Times Square

    Image courtesy Local Projects

    Faculty member, Jake Barton and his company, Local Projects collaborated with BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), FLATCUT , just released the BIG♥NYC Project as a part of the Times Square Alliance Public Art Program this Valentine’s Day, which will be on display through the month of February.

    An interactive installation, it is made up of an 8’ x 8’ cube consisting of 400 transparent acrylic tubes and 90 LEDs, coming to together to form a giant red pulsing heart.

    The people and the thousands of bright lights are reflected together in the glass to collectively create the heart of times square, which reacts to affection and touch. Converting the energy from footsteps into light, the installation glows brighter and beats faster as the people around huddle together, hold hands and kiss.

    BIG♥NYC brings a delightful experience in the middle of the chaos that is Times Square, providing an island of love amidst the sea of commercial lights.

    Share what you love at BIG♥NYC.

    -Sana Rao

  5. Changing Perceptions

    Each week, Interaction Design’s Social Media Officer Sana Rao will curate a story from the incoming first-year class. This post comes from Joonseo Bae.

    Prior to SVA, my perception of interaction design used to be technology heavy, screen-based, and commercial. It might have been because I started to notice interaction design after the iPhone had become really integrated into our lives. Now, I believe interaction design is about users, human-centric design, psychology and behaviors.

    This semester, I am learning the value of social networking. I have never been into blogging or Twitter, but now it’s something I want to become comfortable with and good at. I didn’t see much value in writing and sharing on my social network before, but now I feel it will be valuable if I could make a habit of writing and sharing my thoughts on my social networks because it will help me shape my identity, my thoughts and opinions. This very valuable lesson came from our Entrepreneurial Design class with Gary Chou and Christina Cacioppo. This class has challenged my preconceptions, personality, and values through the assignments, what we learn, talk and read about.

    So, if I were to give advice to prospective graduate students, I would say, come with an open mind, and be prepared to be challenged in all aspects of your life.

    -Joonseo Bae

  6. Amit Pitaru in The Atlantic

    Kitchen Table Coders, a weekly salon/workshop in Brooklyn, is the brainchild of faculty member Amit Pitaru and fellow creative coder, David Nolen. This week, The Atlantic featured an article written by Steven Heller on the project, detailing how the duo have established a learning environment that applies the conceptual thought process of creative coding to a broader range of topics, with the real priority being the intimacy of the format.

    “We modeled it after our ideal teaching environment,” Pitaru says about the genesis, “which means we only take as many students as can fit around our kitchen table (a maximum of five, because the small number is ideal for group-thinking). The seating arrangement is important, as we all get to talk and look at each other rather than face a big projection on a wall.”

    After learning to code in the traditional setting of a Computer Science undergraduate degree, I was a little skeptical beginning Amit’s Coding Slowly course in the first semester. However, it turned out to be much more physical, playful and philosophical than my experience would have ever lead me to believe as possible through software development.

    Regardless of whether, you’re new to code or a seasoned pro, I have no doubt that a workshop with the Kitchen Table Coders will inspire you as much as it will educate.

    -Tom Harman

  7. Alumnus gathers accolades

    The Explore 9/11 app that alum Eric St. Onge, worked on during his 2011 summer internship with Local Projects, received yet another accolade, this time at the Interaction Awards in the Engaging category right after winning the gold in the MUSE awards by the American Association of Museums.

    The app was designed to collect and record oral histories from people across the world, on reactions during the time, the places they were in and what they felt. The augmented reality mode, overlays pictures taken on site, on the phone’s camera view, creating a jarring comparison of then and now. The oral histories are collected to be exhibited in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum set to open in 2012. The Jury panel commented on the unique interaction:

    This well-curated and compelling app brings the 9/11 Museum outside, creating a museum experience where one might otherwise experience only crowded sidewalks and a construction zone. By capitalizing on the unique qualities of a mobile app—such as geolocation, multimedia playback, and augmented reality—the museum extends its programmatic mission and creates a compelling contextual experience for its audiences. History comes alive as users follow a walking tour with geo-aware content, listen to passionate first person accounts, and view a timeline of events illustrated by user-contributed photos. The “Explore 9/11” app represents an excellent model for the future of museum applications.

    Eric worked on designing the interactions and developing the software for the app, which has now reached more than 500 thousand downloads since its release, a rarity for a museum app.

    —Sana Rao

     

  8. Thinking thesis: Sera Koo’s grad school survival kit informs her service design prototype

    At left: “Something to wake you up in the morning, afternoon, and whenever you need it!”; at right: “Something for relaxing and hopefully help you sleep! No all nighters, okay?”

    It’s a compilation of items curated for me by one of my closest friends, Heidi. It’s her collection of graduate school survival items that she’s packaged and mailed to me each year. But my most favorite part of the package is the tiny and thoughtful post-it that she attaches to each item. There’s meaning to what she selects for me and a clear benefit, given my circumstances. This is the kind of timely and emotional experience that I want to emulate in my service. A service that is there when I need it, knows me, surprises me, and makes my life easier. ... What excites me is that I’m somehow designing for the convergence of service, social and physical that Dubberly eloquently articulates.
    Read more on Sera Koo‘s thesis blog.

  9. Video as a shared language

    Video is a incredibly powerful medium; it harbors the ability to evoke emotion, weave narrative and unravel complex information. Via formats such as mini-documentaries and exploratory product visions, video has risen to prominence on the web as a popular way to communicate immaterial design concepts to mass audiences.

    As interaction designers at SVA, we are conscious of our mixed backgrounds and divergent futures. For instance, the graphic designers among us have a different set of craft skills to the industrial designers, which makes for great collaborations and conversations about why, but varying outputs when focusing on the what. We often summarize our discipline as ‘designing products, services or systems that focus on human behavior and evolve over time.’ In other words, we work to establish the right emotional tone and focus on the experience people will have when they are in contact with the things we create, whatever medium they may be. As design continues to evolve from creating things toward ecosystems of things, designers face the increasingly difficult challenge of articulating how and why these components fit together and why these are important to a potential user.

    Filmmaking presents a craft that ties our disparate toolkits together, enabling the foundation of a shared language for articulating interaction design. The focus toward time and storytelling provide the necessary hooks to articulate the outcome from any design process, whether that’s a brainstorm, user research, business strategy, or cybernetic modelling.

    I’m not proposing we all become filmmakers, but I hope that a basic grasp of video fundamentals and thinking about things from a timeline-centric perspective will provide a framework enabling consistent communication of our ideas for things that are very difficult to convey through word and image alone.

    – Tom Harman

  10. Registration for Summer Intensive 2012

    The MFA Interaction Design Summer Intensive program is an opportunity for individuals of all backgrounds who have wondered about the discipline or the program to satisfy their curiosity. Some of us seek collaboration with those we wouldn’t meet otherwise. The surprising collaboration with those you wouldn’t work with otherwise, design with otherwise, brainstorm with otherwise, learn from otherwise. You find yourself, side by side with doers and makers, deep in subjects you’d only been deep under or poring over.

    Registration opens this April. To be the first to know when it opens, sign up for email updates or follow us on Twitter @svaixd.

  11. Breaking Ground at the Visible Futures Lab

    Leif Krinkle, Director of the forthcoming Visible Futures Lab, during groundbreaking.

    Nestled somewhere on the 7th floor of 132 West 21st Street through a narrow ramped doorway that adjoins separate building floor levels, sledge hammers and dustbins move furiously, breaking ground on SVA’s nascent and highly anticipated Visible Futures Lab. Frank Bonomo, MFA IxD department system admin, recently caught up with the lab’s newly appointed director, Leif Krinkle, to discuss the planning and opening of this exciting new make/build resource. Slated to open late-spring/early-summer, the Visible Futures Lab or “The VFL” gives students enrolled in the MFA Interaction Design and the MFA Products of Design programs a home to make, model, tinker, and innovate across disciplines, using both high-tech and traditional tools.

    How is the ground breaking going, and what’s the current plan to open?

    The ground breaking has just started this week with demolition of the 7th floor of 132 and 136 West 21st street. Construction is slated for the next 12 weeks and should allow us to begin moving in around end of March. It will take a couple months to install all the new equipment, get it running and put it through its paces. Without being too optimistic, we would like to have a soft opening during the summer semester and be fully running by fall 2012.

    What kinds of tools and work areas will we find at the VFL?

    The VFL is very unique among most labs as we will have a woodworking and machine shop, a rapid prototyping lab, a workshop, an electronics lab and gallery all in one space. There will be a whole slew of traditional woodworking tools including a table saw, miter saw, lathe, router, sanders, vertical mill, grinders, hand tools, etc. In addition, there will be a plethora of digital machines including 3D printers, laser cutters, and a CNC router.

    What kind of planned activities will be taking place?

    Regular events and workshops will be held in the lab featuring salon-stlye discussions and presentations on the labs capabilities, current trends in design and fabrication, and helpful techniques for a variety of skill sets.

    There will also be an Artist-in-Residence program with a rotating cast of amazing artists and designers who will be using the lab throughout the year and presenting their work in the gallery.

    What kind of access will students have?

    Classes from the Interaction Design and Products of Design departments pertaining to fabrication, making, and electronics will be taught in the lab and these students will have access to work on class projects. SVA from other departments can apply to work in the lab for a period of time on a specific project for a nominal lab fee.

    Who are you? Tell us a little about your background…

    I started in Chicago working with musicians, performers, writers, designers, and programmers to create sensor-driven interactive multimedia performance spaces. This led me to New York where I studied at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. There I was exposed to microcontrollers, generative design and human-computer interface. I then worked with the League of Electronic Musical Robots (LEMUR) building robotic musical instruments, and the Madagascar Institute building jet-powered carnival rides.

    What are you most excited about with the VFL?

    The VFL will provide the most cutting-edge tools for students to actualize their ideas into tangible forms. I can’t wait to see how their various talents and skill levels use the tools to create things I never imagined.

    Stay tuned as we bring you updates on the rollout and launch of the Visible Futures Lab later this semester.

    —Frank Bonomo

  12. Value of Web Presence, or on No More Resumes

    Faculty member, and associate at Union Square Ventures (USV), Christina Cacioppo was in the Wall Street Journal last week talking about the hiring process at USV where instead of the résumé, they evaluate an applicant’s “web presence” and a short video that applicants submit to demonstrate their interest:

    “A résumé doesn’t provide much depth about a candidate, says Christina Cacioppo, an associate at Union Square Ventures who blogs about the hiring process on the company’s website and was herself hired after she compiled a profile comprising her personal blog, Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile, and links to social-media sites Delicious and Dopplr, which showed places where she had traveled.

    “We are most interested in what people are like, what they are like to work with, how they think,” she says.”

    Read the full article.

  13. Paul Ford on the Epiphanator On The Media

    Faculty member and writer Paul Ford speaks to Brooke Gladstone from On the Media this weekend about Facebook and “the Epiphanator,” referencing an essay he wrote for New York Magazine.

    He expresses his views on behavior that the Facebook Timeline encourages and the media industry in New York city, terming it “The Epiphenator,” a large machine manufacturing epiphanies, without a beginning or an end:

    When you read a story in a magazine, it tends to have an ending. But when you check in with Facebook or Twitter on a moment by moment basis, you start to have this experience of an unfolding never-ending stream of experience. It doesn’t have an end. It doesn’t conclude.

    When you look at Facebook, you can actually see that they’re trying to deal with this, but they’re trying to deal with this in the way that database nerds would always deal with it, which is The Timeline. Look you made 79 friends in 2010, good for you. But that’s not really how it works. …. However hundreds of millions of people are now starting to get these stories in these streams and they’re not so worried about an end or a beginning. What they want is to have that experience and to swim in it.

    Listen to the entire interview.

    —Sana Rao

  14. Getting Together: Interaction 12, Day Two

    Day 2 was a good day. I got up at 8:30AM, made some breakfast, then walked down to the Convention Center. During the 25 minute walk from our apartment, I got to wander and take in the sights and sounds of the Dublin morning commute. The River Liffey is spanned by many pedestrian bridges, each unique with interesting key features. The Ha’penny Bridge is one of my favorites.

    I managed to make it to the opening key note, Exploring, sketching, and other designerly ways of working with Jonas Lowgren. The talk heavily echoed conversations we’ve had in many of our classes, most recently, Prototyping. One of the sketches he presented was the Mediated Body, a clever exploration in physical computing to encourage strangers to interact with each other. The piece consisted of 2 vests each connected to a pair of headphones. When the 2 people wearing the vests touched each other, they closed a circuit that produced a sound in the headphones. The more physical contact, the more intense the sound. 

    Dirk Knemeyer’s talk Understanding Us: The Next Frontier, is easily my pick of the conference so far. He spoke about the lack of relationship skills in our culture, and how strange this is since the important moments of our lives revolve around interactions with others. We’ve invested much in technological innovation over the last 500 years; we can fly around the world and transplant organs, but we still haven’t figured out how to help people have better relationships, express anger in productive ways, or even enjoy their jobs. Kneymeyer’s work revolves around finding ways to better understand how we relate to ourselves and each other, and translating that to better interaction design. He uses an applied empathy framework to step through different levels of human needs and desires. Current projects include a platform for sharing Meyers Briggs results amongst teams to help members better understand each other and work together.

    After lunch, SVA IxD alum Katie Koch delivered an excellent presentation on Project:Interaction, entitled, “People ARE Software: The Story of Project: Interaction”. This project, a curriculum for teaching interaction design to high school students, was created and taught twice with fellow alum, Carmen Dukes. Katie stepped us through the process they worked through with their students. Enter, an introductory discussion about design and interaction in every day life; Explore, a phase investigating people and working with a variety of materials; a Make/Test/Reflect loop, where students are encouraged to iterate through different ideas and give each other feedback on their progress; and finally Show off, where students get to present progress made throughout the class. It was inspiring to see how readily high school students respond to the communication techniques we often use, such as post it noting and body storming; and also great to see an alum doing so well back in the real world. 

    The day wrapped up with an SVA family dinner organized by faculty member Jill Nussbaum. The conference can be a little overwhelming at times, so it was great to spend the evening with a small group. The 10 of us gathered for a meal at The Church, a former synagogue, and reflected on the day over some great food and wine.

    – Tash Wong

  15. Form Language, Guinness, and One Big Family: Interaction 12, Day One

    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.

    – Dave Bellona