I recently participated in one of those joint school-company training sessions. I will just call the company “Acme”, and state that they provide a large assortment of design tools that we all know and love. I was quite disappointed with it. I can deal with being shamelessly advertised to, but this event was particularly bad because “Acme” was trying to force me to use their tools in a certain way and telling me how I should think about my own design process. Scary stuff. Continue reading »
Chad
Oct 272009
So this week I embarked upon a new journey in my HCI/d education in Indiana University’s Master’s program. The ship I am on is called Interaction Culture, and it is headed by Captain Jeffrey Bardzell. In this class we will look at how theories in the humanities, specifically aesthetics and critical theory can be applied to the field of HCI/d. Looking at literature and drawing upon the wealth of philosophical debate and experience in the arts brings up the obvious question: How does this apply to HCI/d practice? This can be quickly followed with thoughts such as “I am a practitioner so I have no use for theory,” and “While you are theorizing I will be busy actually designing stuff.” Continue reading »
Jun 202009
This is sort of a continuation of the previous post about designing to change behavior. I am not really arguing one side or the other here, rather I am searching for some insights about design. To that end I have chosen a few books to dive into this summer, among them the book Freakonomics. One of the main themes of the book is about how we are creatures of incentive. Most people think only of business and marketing when they hear the word incentive, but Freakonomics speaks more about psychological and social motivations. Continue reading »
Jun 122009
I have read a lot of articles that specifically say a designer’s job is to change behavior. Perhaps I am but a naive designer, but I don’t know if I buy into that statement. I have been thinking a lot about it, and I had a fellow student ask me why I thought this. Here is my response to him: Continue reading »
May 182009
I have always loved RPG games. I often think about how RPGs and MMORPGs can relate to HCI. There are probably a ton of people who could talk on this subject better than I will, but I will spit out my couple of cents anyway. I am considering doing my Master’s capstone project on the subject, and this post is just the tip of the iceberg.
From a truly human-centered design perspective, that is, taking core human values into consideration when designing and implementing technology, MMORPGs have many great things to offer. I will give an example from my own experiences to elaborate on some of them. Continue reading »
May 182009
After attending CHI 2009 I gained some perspective. It seems that the industry that I am about to dive into, full of youthful exuberance and naivety, has grossly understated the value and potential of HCI. The field of HCI seems to still be very focused on user-centered design, and sometimes uses the phrase human-centered design interchangeably. I don’t feel that human-centered design is user-centered design. This is not a new topic, as it has already seen some play in Interactions Magazine among other places. In what follows I will explain what I feel the difference is and why it is important to note it. Continue reading »
I, along with my classmate Thalith Nasir, have started a discussion group at school and it is going quite well. We meet every other week for about an hour and a half to discuss a variety of topics related to HCI. In a interdisciplinary field like HCI, if you look hard enough you can always pull some insight or lesson from any topic. Continue reading »
After watching Bill Buxton’s talk about Microsoft starting to understand design better, I proceeded to view the comments, knowing full well what I would endure. It was pretty much the standard fare for any talk about technology when Microsoft’s name gets brought up: people missing the point and then valiantly defending their OS of choice while vehemently bashing any others. I have seen it a million times before, and this time it sparked the following thoughts. Continue reading »
Apr 152009
I love my Mac. However it seems that because some products are loved so much, we don’t offer up the critique that they need in order to be even better. Contrary to popular belief, Macs are not perfect. The purpose of this post is to illuminate some often glossed-over issues with Apple based on my use of a MacBook and MacBook Pro. I am not going to discuss this by comparing Macs to PCs. Not everyone who has a problem with a Mac will be satisfied by switching to PC or vice-versa. Continue reading »
After reading this paper, Interaction Criticism: A Proposal and Framework for a New Discipline of HCI by Jeff and Shaowen Bardzell, I came away with several insights to add to my personal design philosophy.
In the paper the authors claim that the HCI design process is missing an integral final step, the step of interaction criticism. There are many other art and design oriented fields, such as film and literature, which already have a culture of expert critics. Continue reading »
