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Saturday, January 24, 2004

Design and Emotion Readings
Seminar readings for next week:

• "Hedonic Tone, Perceived Arousal, and Item Desirability" by Lisa Barrett
• "On the Relationship Between Emotion, Experience, and the Design of New Products" by CMU's Carl DiSalvo, Jodi Forlizzi, and Bruce Hanington
• "How Many Emotions Are There? Wedding the Social and the Autonomic Components" by T. Kempler
• "Core Affect and the Psychological Construction of Emotion" by John Russell
• "The Meaning of 'Emotion' in Dewey's Art as Experience" by P.G. Whitehouse
• "A Multilayered Model of Product Emotions" by Pieter Desmet
• "Emotion and Design: Attractive Things Work Better" by Don Norman

posted at 09:43 AM in readings | comments (1) | trackback (0) | link

2004 Thesis Paper Presentations
I spent most of yesterday in a small room listening to the second-year design students present their thesis paper topics and then field questions from the audience of students and faculty. As with previous years' thesis papers, it was a mixed bag of topics, but some of them seemed pretty interesting and I can't wait to read the final papers.

Unfortunately, I didn't see all of them, but of the ones I saw, there were some standouts: Maggie Breslin's Ziba/FedEx case study, Erin Eisinger's look at military leaflets, Ian Hargraves' idea of "dynamic commonality," Chad Thornton's examination of one-to-many communication systems, and Brian Haven's "Designing for Participation."

Watching the presentations is an interesting foreshadowing for this semester and next year. Later this semester, I'll have to pick a thesis paper topic (and a thesis project) of my own, plus faculty advisors for both. Half of the second year is spent working on them, so it's not a choice to be taken lightly. But seeing what the second years are doing gives you an idea of the scope of the paper and the types of papers that certain faculty advise.

posted at 09:10 AM in classmates, thesis paper | comments (0) | trackback (0) | link

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Issues in Design Research Readings
Some readings about contemporary issues in design research (for Seminar class this week):

• "Design Research: A Disciplined Conversation" by Nigel Cross
• "Children of the Moving Present: The Ecology of Culture and the Search for Causes in Design" by CMU's own Richard Buchanan
• "The State of Design Research" by Susan Roth
• "Elicitation Methods in Experimental Design Research" by Zoe Strickler
• "Taxonomy for Extracting Design Knowledge from Research Conducted During Design Class" by CMU professors John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, and Shelley Evenson
• "Design-oriented Human-Computer Interaction" by Daniel Fallman

posted at 03:57 PM in readings | comments (0) | trackback (0) | link

Design Seminar, Part Deux
This semester, Design Seminar breaks into two sections: one for interaction design, and one for communication planning and information design. The CPID seminar is (reportedly) all about narrative in design, while the ID seminar is all about current issues in interaction design. Issues like:

• How do we promote this discipline?
• Is all communication design really interaction design?
• What are appropriate design research methodologies?
• How do you turn data into an actionable outcome?
• How does design relate to anthropology and ethnography?

Design seminar is also a time for guest speakers from the industry to come in to discuss these issues and others.

posted at 10:05 AM in classes, cpid program | comments (0) | trackback (0) | link

Sunday, January 18, 2004

A Puppy and a Player Piano
CPIDer Ashley Deal had a soiree at her house (!) in Wilkinsburg last night, and was able to show off her new Dalmation puppy. Very cute. But, other than the copious amounts of alcohol, how can you explain groups around the old player piano, singing standards and oddities like "Time in a Bottle?"

posted at 08:13 PM in extracurricular | comments (0) | trackback (0) | link

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