mTID Gets Panties in a Twist
I’m not sure Carnegie Mellon’s master of tangible interaction design is news to me. I sort of recall hearing something about it last spring. But today was the first time I saw a curriculum for the program. Like several of my former peers, I am intrigued by this program. And as a master of interaction [...]
The Thinking Behind Design
Over the course of the school year, my thesis paper went through quite a metamorphosis as I explored many text and wrestled with what I wanted to say about design. In the end, I titled my paper “The Thinking Behind Design.” Here is the abstract I submitted with my final paper. What designers do—the thinking [...]
eReader and Gestural Interaction Projects
Just want to share the results of the eReader and gestural interaction project I had my Basic Interaction class (undergraduate HCI double majors) do for their final project. This was a six-week project with the following focus: Synthesize needs and opportunities from both potential product users and other sources. Discover the intersection between the needs [...]
Done with Grad School! (the short post)
At 10am this morning, I turned in my signed thesis paper and thesis project, making me officially done with grad school. It’s been pretty quiet on this site the past couple weeks as I tried to get everything complete. This short post is meant to break that silence. But as I have spent many sleepless [...]
Richard Buchanan Leaving School of Design
Today we learned, in an apparent slip, that Richard Buchanan is leaving the School of Design. At the very end of class, in a conversation largely framed around the question of what is design, he mentioned that he would be a professor of information systems, “whatever that means.” There was a pause in the room [...]
Tony Golsby-Smith of 2nd Road Visits CMU
Last week, Tony Golsby-Smith, CEO of 2nd Road, the Sydney-based consulting company that focuses on shaping large-scale change, visited Richard Buchanan’s Design, Management, and Organizational Change class. Over the course of three hours, he shared his perspective on design and its role within 2nd Road. What follows are notes and thoughts from that conversation. Tony [...]
Core Competencies of Design
Richard Buchanan presented the “Core Competencies of Design” in class this week, offering a slightly different version of the list of why designers are valued. I’m not sure if this is just a further iteration or different due to the shift in focus from designers to design itself. The language is fairly similar, though notably [...]
Perspectives on Why We Design
In continuation of our project to design the next design firm, we were attempting to articulate our personal visions for the future of what design might be when we stumbled upon three perspectives for trying to understand why we design. We separated these into design to advance the discipline of design, design to benefit organizations, [...]
Designing Design Teams
As our efforts to consider how current design firms might transition to new areas for design, our team talked about designing design teams as a possible strategy to advance the influence and understanding of design. The idea is that as a design consulting firm, we would create design teams within organizations that could sustain themselves [...]
Earth Day Poster for Whole Foods
For the Color and Communication class I’m taking this semester with Kristin Hughes and Mark Mentzer, we were asked to create a mask out of recycled plastic. The project was inspired by the practice of creating toys from plastic bottles and objects that Kristin saw during a trip to South Africa. We were then asked [...]
Designing the Ideal Design Firm
As an unexpected twist to the end of the semester, for my Design, Management, and Organizational Change class with Richard Buchanan, we were asked to design our ideal design consulting company. The class was split into three groups that are to approach the question from three different perspectives: people, products and services (forms), and brand, [...]
Teaching Gestural Interaction
Today marked the beginning of the third project in the Basic Interaction course I am teaching this semester. The goal of the project is to design an ebook reader taking into account gestural interaction for particular audiences and contexts. I thought this would be a good project because it combines a product with much opportunity [...]
Six More Weeks of Grad School
If you follow this blog regularly, you will have noticed that I have not been regularly updating as of late. Time has been very limited, and the brain power needed for blogging has been diverted to other tasks, like thesis, thesis, teaching, coursework, and, of course, finding a job.There are six more weeks left of [...]
Searching for a New Head
At the end of this semester, Dan Boyarski, the current head of the School of Design, is stepping down after six years. Dan has an inspired character and has done an excellent job representing the school. His personality and teaching ability helped seal my decision to apply to the interaction design program at Carnegie Mellon. [...]
Interview Madness
On Thursday and Friday of last week, about 50 companies attended the School of Design’s job fair. Friday was the big day, with all interviews taking place then. Each interview was 30 minutes. Some of my peers had up to 13 interviews scheduled. I had fewer, targeting only companies I might have serious interest in. [...]
MetaMe — Masters Thesis Project
Abstract When people switch jobs, move to a new city, start school, or have a child, aspects of their identity change. For designers, this presents an opportunity to help people invent and discover who they would like to be in their new roles. But there is little evidence of design attempting to support this behavior. [...]
Interaction Design: Beyond Screens
“Posters and toasters are swell.” If you ever listen to Richard Buchanan talk about design, you’re bound to hear this phrase at least once. I’ve heard it many times, most recently in the course I’m taking this semester, Design Management and Organizational Change. Buchanan believes this to be the most exciting branch of design today, [...]
CHI Paper Not Accepted
Yesterday I received word that the work-in-progress paper I submitted to CHI was not accepted. As it was not my idea to submit to CHI because I do not view it as a good view for design, I was not disappointed. However, I will gripe about the comments I received because they emphasize CHI’s lack [...]
Design Computing Course Evaluations
Last week, the course evaluation results were made available for Introduction to Design Computing, the course I taught last fall. Unfortunately, the feedback I got was not very positive. In fact, it was outright deplorable. Out of 5, the average score for the course was 2.09, and for me as an instructor, 1.91. I must [...]
Design School 2007,
Me in 2008, and a Blizzard
Happy new year +3! What follows is my experience in 2007 as a graduate student and the opportunities it afforded me, as well as what I will be doing in 2008. Finally, I mention the blizzard that is about to hit Mammoth Lakes, California, where I currently am. Design School and 2007 Two thousand and [...]
Identity Design
According to BusinessWeek, it’s all about me in 2008. Identity will replace experience in design. This bodes well for my thesis project, which is all about identity design. I’m so ahead of the curve.
How I Became a Designer
This post is inspired by Jack Moffet’s Mystory, which was inspired by a recent IxDA discussion on when/where/how you decided to become a designer. To answer this question, I could go through my life story—army » engineering » poetry » journalism » web producer » editor » web developer—but that would be rather long and [...]
Service Design Deliverables
After 13 weeks of working with the UPMC Neurosurgery Clinic, directed by Dr. Amin Kassam, we have decided to produce a small communication design piece. Compared with other projects, which have mostly focused on technological solutions, producing a booklet feels a little uncomfortable. I catch myself thinking, “This is it?” Well, actually it’s not. In [...]