Process not a differentiator?
Last week I had a chat with Jeff Howard, during which I described the presentations at the Service Design Network conference in November. My observation from the conference is that service designers seem to know what service design looks like. The process shown during the presentations looked very similar. This prompted Jeff to suggest that [...]
Bringing Emotion into the Design Process
I’d like to continue a comment about bringing emotion into the design process because I think it deserves its own post. Kip said: Design has some valuable roots in its ties with emotion, but in many ways we’ve lost touch. Can we bring a sophisticated discussion of “emotion” back on the table and include it [...]
Masters Thesis Paper
My thesis paper explores the thinking aspect of design to understand what it is designers actually do so that we can understand our value and communicate it to others. To this end, I read several books, including The Design Way, The Reflective Practitioner, How Designers Think, and Thoughtful Interaction Design. In addition, I reference The [...]
(Final?) Thesis Paper Abstract
Next Friday is thesis paper presentation day, where each second-year graduate student has 10 minutes to present his or her thesis paper and five minutes to be interrogated about it. This is a major milestone of this year. Lucky me, I get to present first! In preparation, I had to submit the thesis title and [...]
Hugh Dubberly Models Innovation
“For the past few years, innovation has been a big topic in conversation about business management. A small industry fuels that conversation with articles, books, and conferences. Designers, too, are involved. Prominent product-design firms offer workshops and other services promising innovation. Leading design schools promote “design thinking” as a path to innovation. But despite all [...]
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 [...]
Thesis Paper Abstract v3
After my Thanksgiving thesis paper writing blitz, I realized I needed to once again revise the abstract to more coherently attempt to express the aim of my paper. While I’m still not 100 percent happy with it, the following abstract represents my latest direction for my paper. It is difficult to talk about the design [...]
Exploration of Possibility
Thanksgiving break for me means time to focus on my thesis paper for more than a day. And I am thankful for that. However, I continue to struggle to stay focused. My paper calls for me to review my notes. My notes lead me to the books I read. The books I read beg for [...]
Thesis Paper Abstract v2.0
With the majority of my readings behind me—How Designers Think, The Reflective Practitioner, Thoughtful Interaction Design—I took a stab at rewriting my thesis paper abstract. I wrote the original abstract a few weeks ago, but it was still too abstract for…um…an abstract, so I didn’t share it. The result is a shift, I believe, from [...]
Why do people want models?
This post is really just a collection of thoughts stemming from my last thesis paper meeting. I’m still mostly reading at this point and sort of framing the argument along the way. My original inquiry had to do with the leap of faith from design research to design concepts. This has led me to a [...]
Defining Design
Is defining design a worthwhile endeavor? Or should we just get on with it, do what we do and not analyze it so much? My rather amorphous thesis paper revolves around the process of design research to design concepts, supposedly within the realm of interaction design, but so far not really staying within that boundary. [...]
Beginning Thesis Paper Readings
With Emergence over, my attention has turned to my neglected theses endeavors. Earlier this week I bought a bunch of books, some of which arrived the past few days. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (Interactive Technologies) by Bill Buxton The Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert A. Simon Design [...]
Thesis Paper Proposal
I had a conversation today with a Henning Fischer, a coworker at Adaptive Path, about design process, which got me blabbering something about my thesis paper proposal, tentatively titled the Leap from Research to Design in Interaction Design. I had not looked at it since writing it during finals week, so tonight I read what [...]
Support for a Connection Between Writing and Design
In relation to understanding the connection in my life between writing and design, I was inspired to read a comparison of the craft of writing to the craft of design in David Wroblewski’s “The Construction of Human-Computer Interfaces Considered as a Craft” from Taking Software Design Seriously. This was required reading for our seminar 2 [...]
GoCoffee Web Process Book Complete
The web process book for my team’s mobile information project is complete. Here’s your chance to see the process and final demonstration of the GoCoffee interface. The next project for the class, designing a digital music player, has already begun with new teams. My team is designing a wearable music device for commuters. Our initial [...]
Cursed Process Book
The process book for my data visualization project is due tomorrow. I initially finished it on Friday. On Saturday, I printed a draft and showed it to someone. Too much white space, he said. Six weeks into design school, I simply cannot ignore a comment like “too much white space.” So I spent time on [...]