« October 03, 2004 - October 09, 2004 | Main | October 17, 2004 - October 23, 2004 »
October 16, 2004
First Draft, First Third
I turned in the first draft of the first third of my thesis paper to my advisor Shelley Evenson yesterday. The first third is mainly on the traditional and current view of metaphor, plus the criticism of using metaphor in interaction design. The next part, the bulk of the paper, is about using metaphor in the design process. I'm hoping to have that part done in early-mid November.
Posted by Dan at 09:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 14, 2004
Undergrads, Beware
I've been asked to teach Interaction and Interface Design again in spring semester. I need to evaluate my class from last year , the feedback I got from students, and my own thoughts on the previous class.
Plus, now I've been in, taught, or TAed three very different classes on the fundamentals of IxD, so I should be able to better craft a syllabus and lesson plans this time around. I've also begged for a better time slot and got it: Mondays and Wednesdays 9-11. Much better than last year's Tuesday/Thursday 6:30-8:30, which was deadly in terms of energy.
Posted by Dan at 09:03 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Intermorphable Alphabet
I finally finished my intermorphable alphabet (120k java applet) for my interactive graphics class. The project was to come up with a "font" in which any letter can morph into any other letter. Mine is a "block and bubbles" alphabet, composed of bubbles inside blocks that move around. I tried (unsuccessfully) to get the bubbles to break out of the blocks while moving, but I never got it to work right.
Posted by Dan at 12:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 11, 2004
Political Party
Hong has posted up some pictures from when we gathered to watch the first presidential debate at her apartment. Most of us were flush left.
Posted by Dan at 01:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Obvious Observation on Thesis Paper Writing
In some ways, it's a lot easier to go to class and do projects and other homework than to sit alone in your office and write your thesis paper.
Posted by Dan at 01:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Robert Reimann Visit
Robert Reimann, co-author of About Face 2.0 and currently the manager of User Interface Design at Bose, visited Carnegie Mellon last week for a few days, sitting in on classes and thesis meetings and giving at talk at the HCII seminar series. I got to sit in on a Q&A session and went out to lunch with and a group of interaction design students.
I jotted down some of Robert's answers to some questions that were asked by the master's students:
- What makes a good interaction designer is someone who can take inspiration from all different areas of life. It makes sense for us to cast as broad an eye as possible in finding solutions. We're synthesizers of everything. A good interaction designer is all about finding creative solutions to human problems.
- Nuance in interaction design is about reading between the lines in what you observe in research to make solutions.
- Letting users decide everything [as far as personalization/customization] is abdicating design responsibility.
- Look for places within your organization to provide design assistance. This will help forge personal relationships with people and demonstrate the usefulness of design. This is a critical part of the design role and the best designers all do it.
- If you can solve users' top two problems in a product, you are doing really well and will be ahead of most of the competition.
- Personas. Personas need to be based off actual user data. You need to use qualitative research methods to build personas. They are really a method of analyzing user data to understand usage behaviors and goals of actual people. The ability of personas to communicate outside the design team is very significant. The picture of the persona is a critical component that really makes the persona come alive. Personas by themselves aren't very useful. They are the end of the research process, but just the beginning of the design process. They only help translate needs into solutions. You need to do cognitive walkthroughs using the personas as your guides. Personas are a yardstick to use throughout the process to measure all design decisions against.
- At Cooper, they found over time that there were two different types of interaction designers: interaction designers and design communicators. The two types work well in combination.
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