Jamin Hegeman

Tag: interaction design

  • Words Fail to Describe

    —

    in

    I won’t tell you where I found time to read “Strong Words” by Véronique Vienne in the March/April 2007 issue of PRINT, but I did. The article questions the wisdom of changing the AIGA’s name a year ago from “American Institute of Graphic Arts” to “The Professional Association of Design,” and has a very interesting…

  • BTW, Resumes Due Tomorrow

    —

    in

    Due to some unfortunate miscommunication, the resumes that the design grad students need to submit for distribution to the companies that will be courting us during a job fair later this month are not due on Monday, but tomorrow. Lovely. So guess what I’m working on? Fortunately, my resume prior to grad school is in…

  • Drafting My Definition of Interaction Design

    —

    in

    Tomorrow we are required to turn in a two-page, single-spaced essay answering the question What Is Interaction Design? This is a question that many have attempted to answer, but for which there is no consensus given the multidisciplinary background of interaction design and its intangible nature. Incidentally, I finished Dan Saffer‘s Designing for Interaction tonight.…

  • Swimming in Interaction Design

    —

    in

    What is interaction design? I have to answer this question every time I meet someone new, which I say here a lot. Though the answer changes each time. It evolves. Sometimes it is clearer to me what I’m talking about. Sometimes it appears clearer to my interlocutor. This week, I have been swimming in the…

  • And So It Begins: Semester II

    —

    in

    Thus the silence is broken. The spring semester began today, albeit a half day due to MLK. That meant I only had one class, Seminar II with Jodi Forlizzi. Since “Seminar II” probably means nothing to you, the syllabus says, “This course will explore interaction design through definition, the history of the field, what disciplines…

  • Happy New Year

    —

    in ,

    New year’s eve means parties. And parties often entail meeting new people and telling them what you do. So I got a lot of practice on new year’s eve telling people what interaction design is. It’s still difficult to do. I usually start off just telling people I study design and hope that don’t ask…

  • Plugg: Wearable Music Player for Commuters

    —

    in

    For the final Interaction and Visual Interface Design project, my team created Plugg, a wearable music device for commuters using public transit. We researched the experience of commuters, looked for opportunities to improve the experience, and also create something that users would form an emotional connection with. The resulting system involved wireless headphones that communicated…

  • Interaction Design Not a Selling Point

    —

    in

    I caught a commercial for some Braun product this evening, and became intrigued by the mention of “German engineering.” I can’t remember the product, and I’m not sure it matters, but it occurred to me that Braun thought “German engineering” to be a selling point. This got me thinking about the evolution of design thinking and the…

  • Practicing Design on Wicked Problems

    —

    in

    In response to a previous comment, I tried to define what an interaction designer does in rebuttal to the assertion that the goal is to build a better mousetrap. I wrote: From an interaction design standpoint, you might ask why we have mousetraps? Are mice the real problem? How do mice get into areas where…