I saw a screening of the film Objectified, after which the director, Gary Hustwit, and two of the designers featured in the film, Bill Moggridge (IDEO) and Dan Formosa (Smart Design), did a little Q&A.
One audience member asked Moggridge to reflect on defining interaction design as a discipline. In his response, he said that it was necessary at the time to define it as a discipline because software was so new and no one knew how to design it. But now that it’s pervasive, interaction design as a discipline may no longer be necessary.
As someone with a masters degree in interaction design, this caught my attention. Though because I have a design job that is neither industrial design nor communication design, it seems that interaction design, or at least some form of design that deals with the less tangible, is needed. However, his statement speaks to the many communication and industrial designers who feel they have had the same focus on behavior that interaction designers, including myself, like to refer to as their domain.
With the interaction design community still struggling to define itself, this statement is worth some thought.
Was this the second screening on Tuesday? Moggridge was in the audience for the first one but not called up; I was not that impressed with the Q&A, which went to huge big picture questions and less about the film and what the film did or didn’t accomplish. My rant on the film is a long comment after this very excellent review – http://www.core77.com/blog/business/core77_film_review_gary_hustwits_objectified_12894.asp
I saw the 10 pm showing on Wednesday.
I like your review. I agree the IDEO brainstorming seemed false, or at least misleading, as it may be interpreted as being the majority of what designers do. It also made design look really fun and easy. It can be fun and rewarding, of course. But a lot of the time it’s really hard. And a lot the super awesome innovative ideas that we dream up, like that marvelous shopping cart that IDEO made, go nowhere.
I also like your call for design to stop lying to itself about its ability to make meaningful and emotional products: given all the crap we own that’s competing for our attention, it’s not possible. Good stuff.
Thanks, Jamin. Even if the comment was eyebrow raising, I think it’s cool that you got some good provocation out of the discussion!
Hi Jamin,
I was really surprised to see this quote from Bill M. Well, b/c I had just met with him at the end of March to discuss a new Masters of Design program in IxD that I’m putting together and he seemed quite excited about it.
Now, something I must add is that there are different levels of education for sure. I am growingly of the belief that at the undergrad level he is correct that one must be focused primarily on a form giving discipline and then add to it concentrations in horizontal aspects like interaction. This is why I really like the format of an industrial design major and an interaction design minor. Students who come out of the SCAD program in industrial with the minor in interaction have ALL the tool that a young designer should enter the market place with today.
At the graduate level though concentrating just in IxD will reap big rewards so long as those entering the program have solid form giving skills. Ya can’t teach these at the graduate level and I believe that many program’s rush to be “open” to non-design students is a conflict of interest to those programs.
— dave
Dave, I’m curious what you mean by form giving skills. I probably know what you mean, but I’m wondering if you’re saying that form giving is the purview of industrial or communication design. I think that design is present in many domains, as it it a fundamental human activity. This is the reason why people are able to come from different, non-design related backgrounds and take up interaction design. Can you expand on what you mean?
Regardless, it gives me something to ponder. Thanks for the perspective.
Hiya,
1st, you and I don’t know each other really well. So “Hello!!!”. Always best to have some pleasantries. ;-)
Form giving design disciplines are those that include a deep learning of craft around areas of design that directly impact those components that are sensed: visual, tactile, auditory, etc. In the areas of product & service design these are communication design and industrial design. Yes, you can also add in architecture, sound design, interior, fashion, etc. But 90% of where IxD is done is in conjunction with either of those first two.
I juxtapose form giving to non-form giving, but rather form guiding disciplines such as IA and IxD.
I’m not sure why you think that I’m saying that design isn’t present in other areas.
In regards to coming to IxD from non-design areas. Bah humbug.
What do I mean by the academic use of “bah humbug”? IxD without form giving is loosing its value. THIS is the primary bit that Bill is talking about and I 100% agree. Prototyping your ideas into tangible usable (not as in usability, but as in those that can be interacted with) forms is required today. That’s what I mean. The day when a a person can deliver diagrams or wireframes or storyboards is enough is really over. It just doesn’t scale.
Now that technology is well understood, that user-centered design methods are done as much by industrial designers as by ixds, and that IDs are doing and learning IxD (and interactive designers, and architects), IxD is to design what o-chem is to medicine. It is important to study, there are people who will specialize in it to advance and experiment, but it is also a topic to be taught to all in the design field who will practice and it by itself is not a singular practice of distinction. (who, poorly written, but that metaphor finally put it into shape for me; until you or another reader tears it apart that is).
— dave
Dave, I’m sure we’ll meet in person one day. Surprising we haven’t already…
It almost seems like you’re saying interaction should be, or is now, inherent to other design disciplines. I’m guessing it’s probably not true in practice, at least universally. But should designers have some understanding of interaction design, definitely. Does that make it the focus of communication or industrial design, no. Maybe we are in agreement here.
I have never come across the academic use of “bah humbug.” ;) Regardless, I’m not sure how you’re defining form. And I’m unclear what else interaction designer should be doing, assuming diagrams, wireframes, and storyboards are not enough. (I’m not saying they are enough.) Design is ultimately about making, giving form to ideas. Diagrams, wireframes, and storyboards are forms, no?
If we flip your point around about IxD being what OChem is to medicine, I would argue communication design and industrial design are important to study as an interaction designer. For masters in any design discipline, there will be crossover.
Thanks for the provocative comments. I foresee some posts stemming from this dialogue when I have more time to think about it.
I think Moggridge is pointing to the emergence of “fourth-order” design ;)
I think Mr. Malouf brings one important paradigm to this discussion. I believe there are many who think in this perspective (“IxD is to design what o-chem is to medicine.”).
I’ve been pursuing, as always, through Dick’s (Buchanan) writings, and he has a radical view – that design could be the next liberal art. If we take a look at history, medicine (using Dave Malouf’s example) was very different from what it is today. During the Middle Ages, it had a completely different “form.” Instead of studying one of the sub-categories of medicine (such as dentistry, or o-chem) people studied medicine as an art. However, these disciplines were radically transformed and restructured as “subject matters” in the Renaissance and have pretty much stayed as subject matters til this day. The problem is, as they broke down into subject matters, they lost their value as liberal arts – and these specializations no longer provide a way to bring some form of connectedness in our day to day contemporary lives.
No one seems to be talking about design as the new liberal art. Personally, this was the whole point of my CMU grad education and this is the context where “interaction design” seems to have its richest form. Now, as we are pushing up against the boundaries of “interaction design,” perhaps this is where the conversation emerges in new territory – the FIELD where communication, construction/artifact design, and interaction design develop.
On another note, this concept of “form” has been on my mind for some time. Of course, there is the one-dimensional way of looking at forms making up a tangible product. Have you read Roger Sessions’, “The Composer and His Message”? He talks about the form and materials (poetics) of a musical composition. Being able to think about concepts like form, material, and function/purpose, from a different perspective encourages creativity and invention … so I would argue that having non-design students is only beneficial to a design program (especially if design is about becoming a new liberal art and about making connections).
There is something about design that is so special because of the fact that there is no set subject matter – that the subject matter arises as we engage with different (wicked) problems. Yet, many are quick to establish a design subject matter in conjunction with a design, or IxD, discipline …