Last night, a group of us went out together with our families for a pre-celebration, and tonight, on this rainy Saturday in Pittsburgh, I'll do it again with just my family, my friend Jeff Howard, and my advisor Shelley Evenson. I'm sure we'll raise a glass and toast CMU.
What Dick Buchanan said on the first day of school is ringing in my ears: "We will teach you to do design so well that we will, at the end of two years, call you a master of it." And so it has come to pass. I hope you've enjoyed reading this blog, especially those of you who have been following it since the beginning. I'm glad to have done it--almost as glad as I am to finish it.]]>
And hey, if you've enjoyed this blog and want to buy me a graduation gift, well, here's my Amazon Wish List.]]>
I also cleaned out my desk, which had me recalling when I picked my first seat last year, and picking my seat this past year at orientation.
It's gone by so fast.]]>
One of the documents I had to drop off was the project documentation (5.3mb pdf) for my thesis project. Seeing as how it was put together in a flurry of frantic activity yesterday and printed and bound late last night, it's no masterpiece. But it will do. It has to do.]]>
I presented my own thesis project of course, the final prototype of which can be found online, or downloaded for Windows (1.9mb Flash) or Mac (2mb Flash).]]>
CMU is supposedly better at building things than some other schools that have lots of cool ideas and slick videos to go with them, but it could be better. I suppose one could argue that this is what the thesis project is for: to take an idea out to the working prototype phase, but it seems like too important a thing to save until the very end of your graduate education. Especially considering that many people don't make it to the working prototype phase in their thesis work, or do projects that would be almost impossible to do that with without a team of developers.]]>
Designers can use strategic conversations to figure out what values an organization holds. Values, being deeply and collectively held, are difficult to change, and usually do so only slowly, but it can be done.]]> my first class at CMU.]]>
I feel like I'm hitting a string of Lasts now. Last class. Last crit. Last food from the CMU trucks. Etc. It's making me a little blue. But then, all good things must pass, and I know I couldn't bear another year in school. I can barely stand another two and a half weeks. Two and a half weeks...is that all that's left? It's hard to believe, and to come to terms with.]]>
My class last year and my class this year were markedly different. In some ways, last year's syllabus was better. In other ways, this year's was. I'm still trying to find a balance between tactical skills like making wireframes vs. conceptual skills. Last year, I erred one way, this year, I erred on the other side. Oh well, there's always next time. If there is a next time.]]>
Moggridge, along with Bill Verplank, coined the term "interaction design" (after "SoftFace" was deemed too weird) to take the values that design had to computer science. Interaction design is about feeling results more than knowing them. Designers, unlike other disciplines, are able to move toward solutions that aren't wholly understood.
Interaction design, for Moggridge, is at two levels. At the broad level is that it's the design of everything that has technology in it. At the narrow level, it's about the subjective and qualitative in technology design. The main quality that determines something's interactiveness is its responsiveness.
Moggridge defined six categories of interaction design: games, screens (software), products (screens in an object), places, internet, and services. Games have the best feedback for failure in interaction design, because they vanish quickly if they don’t work well.
Services are the next frontier in design. The reason service design has become a design subject is because of technology--balancing technology with humans. Services are things we pay to use, not own. They are environmentally good.
Each service design project will have a different way of mapping it. Finding that "map" and analyzing it is part of designing.
Failing frequently means you are going to succeed sooner, so prototype things as quickly as possible. Don't worry about it being crude.
Couch important decisions as the client's. Put the information in front of them and let them choose. You can tell them you disagree, but you need to be modest--it's important that clients comes to the decision themselves.]]>
The first formal discussions about ethics in design were in the mid-90s, but ethics has become a matter we just can't not discuss. It's how we can distinguish between well-done design and design that shouldn't be done. It's about what can be done when we're asked to do work that is questionable. It's about consequences; if there were no consequences to what we design, there'd be no need for ethics.
In discussing ethics, we need to make the distinction between preferences and values, although this can be very difficult. Preferences reside in us. They are personal choices that range from whether one likes chocolate ice cream to whether one believes in the death penalty. Most of the things we run into in the world are preferences, and they have their roots in psychology and culture. Values reside in things in the world. Values spring from two sources: faith and reason.
This of course, brings us to the problem of pluralism. We know there is a pluralism of preferences, but is there a pluralism of values? Is there one truth with many ways of saying it?
Values and preferences gives rise to judgments, and design is about making judgments. Not judgments after the fact, but before. To be a moral agent means to make choices informed by ethics. Thus, designers should be moral agents.
There are four parts to being a moral agent as a designer:
How does one talk about or evaluate a moral act? By looking at three things: the nature of the act, the circumstances of the act, and the motives for the act. Motives can be personal or ethical.
How do designers deal with the clients they serve? Do designers adopt the client's preferences? Nazi design was both exquisite and horrible. How then do we relate to clients and the organizations that hire us when we have a responsibility to create a world that is better and does less harm? There needs to be a balance between the designer's personal ethics and the company's ethics. And if a balance cannot be struck, a designer may have to change the values of an organization.
One of the roles design can play is to draw out operating values. Designers can encourage conversations that help identify what values the group really holds. When a value is held collectively, it's no longer a preference. How do you find the common values between people? You can do what designers do: visualize them with diagrams, images, words. Seeing them makes people less cynical and can help facilitate the workings of people.
Ethics is about how we deal with emotions in the workplace: how we handle our own emotions and the emotions of other people. What emotions are appropriate, and when and why. Emotions are a central part of our work.]]>