Why Design is Conversation and Why Conversation for Every Design
Quite a mouthful, that title, but it’s an excellent summary: The connections across those domains are so rich and with so many shared influences, it becomes clear that the history of interaction design—and also its future—is bound up in systems and cybernetics, cultural politics and personalities.
Continue reading “How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design”
When we understand something—let’s say a concept, like a table—we have some formulation of that “in our head”. That formulation is something we can manipulate while we’re thinking or conversing or acting.
Models—good ones, anyway—are valuable in a number of ways.
The best resource I know on the topic is the paper Models of Models by Hugh Dubberly.
My talk at the MWUX Conference, Pittsburgh, October 2015 was an opportunity to present a proposal with rationale for the “literacies” that are required by IxD practitioners:
“Designing for Conversation” is a rich phrase with multiple interpretations—does it mean, designing to foster conversation? Why would that be a good thing?
Let’s imagine we are the catalyst for starting a new project, some design challenge relating to a new app.
First, we all recognize the value of the participants in a conversation. We all experience the improvement in thinking and outcomes when we work with someone else. This seems to say, “more participants means better outcomes”—hah, you know that’s not such a good idea. Too many voices, too much distraction. So, how would we decide whom to have in that first conversation?
The title of this post and the diagram comes from Hugh Dubberly and his slidedeck about how design is centered on models and conversation and politics. Not kidding.
Continue reading ““How to engage designers to ensure great products””
I was struck by the depth of reaction to mentions of ethics and design at recent presentations at Carnegie Mellon and an IxD conference.
In all four situations, overwhelmingly the group Q&A as well as 1-on-1 follow-up discussions after my talks resonated with the responsibility of designers in navigating between “controlling choices” of users vs. “enabling bad choices”.
How do we help design students understand their responsibility? What historical concepts and values ought we to offer for this “age of tech”? Could there be a design elective on “Ethics and Design”?
When I say I teach Interaction Design, I’m usually asked, “What’s that? What is Interaction Design”—I’m asked right away about the interaction part, as if there’s no question about the design part, about what “design” is.
Internationally recognized technology executive & educator Paul Pangaro to head CCS’s Master of Fine Arts Interaction Design program
The College for Creative Studies (CCS) has named internationally recognized technology executive and educator Paul Pangaro as Chair of its Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Interaction Design program. He joins CCS as of April 1 and will begin teaching in the fall 2015 semester. Continue reading “Paul Pangaro, MFA Interaction Design”