Summing Up the Summer Intensive
August 18, 2009
The first Summer Intensive in Interaction Design wrapped up at the end of July. As such, we talked with two students, Ray DeLaPena and Erin Moore, about how the courses went.
Ray has been a software and systems designer for nearly 10 years before discovering interaction design as a discipline. He took all three tracks in the program and completed three projects in the theme of “time” Erin is a visual designer with formal training in print design and publishing, but had always fostered a strong interest in systems, information design and interdisciplinary projects. She took “Practice of Interaction Design” and worked collaboratively to design a personal alarm clock targeting suburban moms.
Carla Diana’s class, Practice of Interaction Design
SVA: What were your expectations coming into the classes? And what overall insight did you leave with at the end?
Erin Moore: Coming into the “Practice of Interaction Design” course, I knew that the ideas surrounding the field resonated with me, but despite all my reading, research and conversations with people, I still had a pretty vague idea of what interaction designers actually did. I learned quickly that unlike some of the other design disciplines, interaction designers don’t design things. They design people’s interactions with things. There is not one process or five programs that I needed to have mastered. The success of our group project relied on our ability to perceive, interpret, translate, and plug into people’s everyday experiences.
Ian Curry, Practical Programming for Design
Ray DeLaPena: I have a particular interest in visual thinking and communication so working with Nicholas Felton in the “Elements of Communication Design” course was an incredible treat. Nicholas gave the class a quick primer in typography and grid design and followed up with projects that opened the door to be creative and make beautiful work with specific communication goals.
Carla Diana’s “Practice of Interaction Design” class gave me more than a peek into the process of interaction design and how things work at companies I greatly admire. We were guided through the process and able to experience a few of the most exciting aspects of design: sketching, collaboration, iteration, and critique. Carla touched on the many directions there are to go in this field and encouraged the class to find the areas we are passionate about, and delve into them.
I have been working very closely with developers for a long time. A good designer needs to be able to communicate with developers. We need to speak their language. The best way to do that, as with speaking a new foreign language, is to just open up your mouth and start speaking. Ian Curry’s “Practical Programming for Design” class was a good introduction to the building blocks of all programming languages and showed us that it’s not that hard to dive in and start coding.
Nicholas Felton and class, Elements of Communication Design
SVA: How did the courses help clarify your understanding of interaction design?
EM: Interaction design is expansive, combining an infinite number of disciplines and areas of expertise. It uses multiple tools, employs many methods, and will undoubtedly create new methods when existing ones don’t work. The course communicated—on many levels—what interaction design is right now, and made clear that the field will keep expanding as people keep interacting.
SVA: Who do you think would benefit from taking these courses next summer when they’re offered again?
RD: I would recommend them for people new to the field who want a better idea of what directions there are to go, for specialists looking to get a feel for other areas of experience design, or for people who want to understand what the vast landscape of interaction Design looks like today and help start down one of the myriad paths there are to tread.
SVA: After an intensive four weeks, what did you take away from the summer program?
RD: There’s a huge range of activities going on around interaction design. If you are passionate, creative, and dedicated to developing your craft, you can contribute to creating beautiful experiences. There is a palpable excitement about the development and direction of this profession. There is good that can come of it if we continue to keep empathy, collaboration, and continuous iterative improvement as core values in our design and the growth of our community.
