{"id":1862,"date":"2017-03-26T21:11:34","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T01:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ccsmfa.wordpress.com\/?p=1862"},"modified":"2021-01-18T18:59:42","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T23:59:42","slug":"be-part-of-the-evolution-of-interaction-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/2017\/03\/be-part-of-the-evolution-of-interaction-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Part of the Evolution of Interaction Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Fall 2017, the MFA program at CCS<\/a> is introducing a new studio course called “Interaction Design Evolution.” The course\u00a0invites students to riff on prior innovations in the history of interaction design and then to invent their own. Seriously.<\/p>\n

\"memex\"<\/a>
Rendering of Vannevar Bush’s MEMEX concept from 1945<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One example from history: Vannevar Bush’s “MEMEX”<\/a>\u00a0comes from the 1940’s. Bush conceived it as a desk containing vast amounts of information stored on reels of microfiche<\/a>\u00a0(because digital magnetic media didn’t yet exist). Bush imagined\u00a0retrieval of information based on what we now call tagging<\/a>, achieved here by visual splotches on\u00a0the edge of the frames of microfiche. We’ve got tagging in modern, digital web browsers (with vastly greater numbers of tags and vastly\u00a0greater speed). But Bush also imagined\u00a0two displays\u2014not one, as we have today. Why?<\/p>\n

Because two screens would\u00a0directly support the cognitive operations of the human operator, such as simultaneously seeing\u2014and therefore easily comparing\u2014both the overview of a topic and\u00a0its details. Or generally enabling “compare and contrast” across\u00a0two viewpoints, which is a foundation for\u00a0critical thinking.<\/p>\n

Bush also wanted to\u00a0preserve journeys through knowledge that could be retrieved and shared. Sounds like browser history, you say? Yes, kind of, but ever try sharing those with a colleague? If you have, you’ll realize that browser designers never thought you’d want to share them\u2014no less to annotate or\u00a0edit them.<\/p>\n

So\u2014while we can do some of what Bush imagined 70 years ago, you have to go through contortions to even close get. Bush’s concepts are valuable but not baked-in. Why not?<\/p>\n

One reason is that the history isn’t well known. (In conversations with researchers at famous design labs<\/a>\u00a0I’ve been\u00a0surprised at the limit of shared historical knowledge.) There’s MEMEX, or\u00a0Ted Nelson<\/a>‘s “hypertext<\/a>” from the 1960’s,\u00a0or even Bill Atkinson<\/a>‘s “Hypercard” (video<\/a>) from relatively recently in 1987\u2014heard of those? Know what was new about them? Or what they still have to offer, even today?<\/p>\n

Perhaps another reason the history is somewhat lost is that most designers begin from the logic of technology and not from the logic of interaction<\/a>. Feels backwards to me. These researchers started from what made human sense, and imagined the technology to achieve it.<\/p>\n

In sum, the\u00a0goal of this course in Interaction Design Evolution is to bring those significant inventions back into focus, along with two others:\u00a0Alan Kay<\/a>‘s \u201cDynabook with Message Semantics<\/a>\u201d and\u00a0Nicholas Negroponte<\/a>‘s \u201cArchitecture Machine<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

After studying each invention, students reproduce its\u00a0core insights with a mock-up or prototype that utilizes\u00a0modern technology. By making a version of it, they more deeply understand it. For the final 5 weeks of the course, they create their own future for interaction design in the form of an unrestricted design of their own imagination. In this\u00a0way, students become part of the evolution of the practice of interaction design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Fall 2017, the MFA program at CCS is introducing a new studio course called “Interaction Design Evolution.” The course\u00a0invites students to riff on prior innovations in the history of interaction design and then to invent their own. Seriously. One example from history: Vannevar Bush’s “MEMEX”\u00a0comes from the 1940’s. Bush conceived it as a desk … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Be Part of the Evolution of Interaction Design”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,9],"tags":[84,85,91],"class_list":["post-1862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interaction-design","category-pangaro","tag-hypercard","tag-hypertext","tag-interaction-design-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paKWzH-u2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1862"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3590,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862\/revisions\/3590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pangaro.com\/designconversation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}