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Notes: 1 / 3 years ago from designaday
Teaching Everything
Leslie Jensen-Inman published an excellent article on A List Apart in January titled Elevate Web Design at the University Level. She discusses the fact that universities aren’t able to keep pace with web technologies and that their graduates are not prepared by the time they graduate. It isn’t an empty claim—she interviewed thirty-two web design leaders about the issue. In the article she makes many suggestions as to how institutions and professionals can address the problem.
As a professional interaction designer that works on web-based applications and teaches design, it is an issue that I am quite aware of. As I have explained before, the program in which I teach is a traditional graphic design program, by which I mean web design is not its forte. I’m doing what I can to change that.
The largest problem, as I see it, is that there isn’t enough time to teach everything. Design is not typically taught in High School, so students must go from knowing next to nothing about design to professional in, sometimes, less than four years. In the case of the program at WVU, students don’t have a design class until their sophomore year, after which they must submit a portfolio for acceptance into the graphic design program that continues through the junior and senior years. During that time, there are still other art courses they are required to take, so it is not as if they are strictly focused on design during those two years.
So, how then do you fit in all of the skills that they are expected to know? It’s nigh impossible. And it keeps growing, with the additions of interaction design and the web, service design, etc. When I was a student, I was taught the basics of Photoshop, Freehand, and QuarkXpress in class (although I had already taught myself Freehand). When I say “the basics,” I mean it. It was up to me to continue using the software in my project work and learn it by doing. I was one of a very few that stretched out to learn Director, and the only member of my class to utilize Premiere, Authorware, Infini-D, and Morph during my senior year. In graduate school, there was no instruction in software. I had one class that taught the basics of Java. I learned on my own how to build a webpage in Pagemill, and then later GoLive. I taught myself how to use a Flash competitor that specialized in animating text, the name of which I can’t even remember.
The point I’m trying to make here is that the technology, be it software, hardware, or scripting languages, shouldn’t be the focus of design education. It changes rapidly, and what you learn one year will be obsolete the next. Most of what I was taught in class during my time at WVU and CMU is just as applicable now as it was when I graduated. Students need to understand this and take much of the responsibility upon themselves to stay current with tools and technology.
That’s not to say that faculty shouldn’t worry about staying up-to-date themselves. They should take every opportunity to include the technology in their teaching. For example, I just gave a lecture a couple weeks ago on web typography that was based on a series of HTML and CSS examples. I showed the students how many of the nuances of typography that we had been learning so far could be controlled through a stylesheet. But I don’t have time to teach them HTML and CSS, nor should I. It is my job to instill in them the foundational knowledge of typography that will be applicable regardless of what capabilities CSS 4, 5, or 6 will have.
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Notes: 3 / 3 years ago from designaday
The abilities needed in order to be an Interaction Designer
Carl Alviani writes in his post on Creative Seeds titled Five things Interaction Design probably isn’t:
I went to Interaction09 in Vancouver with an intense personal mission to nail down a clear definition of Interaction Designer, and what abilities are needed in order to be one. Almost every time I asked (and I asked a lot of times), the answer was “I have no idea.”
Well, Carl, I’m sorry you didn’t find the answers you were searching for. I find it somewhat embarrassing. All I can say is that you must have been asking the wrong people. I know a lot of designers attending the conference that would have answered your question in great detail. The answers would likely vary a lot, but that is because there is a wide range of activities covered under the IxD umbrella. I don’t recall meeting you, so obviously you didn’t ask me. Let me answer your question now.
The abilities needed in order to be an Interaction Designer:
- You need to be able to learn about activities and tasks that a person participates in through observation, conversation, and research. This typically involves discovering pain points—things that are difficult or unpleasant—as well as what they identify with. It also involves understanding the larger context, including business goals of your customer and concerns of any other stakeholders. You must be able to record what you learn and communicate it to others.
- You must have a foundation of knowledge about visual communication, human behavior, organization, and the medium in which you are working, providing the skills and experience for number 3.
- You need to be able to creatively develop solutions based on what you have learned. As you point out, for the majority of us most of the time, this involves some type of computing device that will in some way improve the person’s experience, making the activity easier or more enjoyable. It may be a hand-held, a piece of furniture, or the box under the desk. There are many different approaches, techniques, and tools for accomplishing this, and there are many debates as to which are more effective, but as Jamin Hegeman pointed out, “any design field is not about its tools, as tools change. Designers use the tools necessary for the given project, and often learn new tools or make their own.”
- You must be able to document the solution and communicate it to others. This may involve drawing, diagramming, writing, and speaking. It may involve documents, models, movies, animations, and acting. It likely requires different types of artifacts and different levels of detail for the different people to which you must communicate.
- You need to be able to work with other people with widely varying skill sets to make the solution a reality. There’s a good chance you will be working with software engineers. You may also work with sales people, business people, domain experts, cognitive psychologists, graphic designers, industrial designers, information designers, and architects. You will certainly be working with customers and users. You must understand the relationships between them, each of their requirements, and work as a negotiator and synthesizer.
- Finally, you must be able to evaluate success or failure of your implemented solution, which takes you back to number one, starting the iterative process all over again.
Admittedly, this is a very high-level overview of the abilities that are needed to be an Interaction Designer. In fact, for the most part, they are the abilities needed to be a Designer—period. What differentiates an Interaction Designer from other types of designers is in large part the artifact (and I use that term loosely) being designed.
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3 years ago
FriendFeed Email: I think the Email sent to your user should be thoroughly tested. When I scroll down at the end of my email from FriendFeed, I noticed the weird HTML code-leakage. Not a good Human Experience.
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3 years ago
Colorstology: very superb color collection I have seen so far. Perfectly aligned according to Months. Only thing put me in thinking mode is the Arrow key on the right hand corner. At first I thought Arrow key will navigate to another month. But it is for Day of the Month navigation.
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3 years ago from bookmarklet
“UI Does Matter” published!
My article about User Experience of iPhone Apps under the title of “UI Does Matter” is published in iPhone Life Magazine Spring 2009 issue, it is available at your Newsstand or you can check it out the digital version at Zinio, it’s on Page 49.
UI Does Matter!
Until next time!
BonGeek
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3 years ago
Interaction Design for Beginners
For last couple of days I was asking on Twitter that how should I get started in Information Architect, Interaction Design & User Experience arena, it all about the “Art & Science of Human Behavior”, whether it is related to creating a website or designing an iPod or a door knob. It is nothing more than understand the Human behavior toward any product usage and usability. I think I was not so lucky to get some response.
During my commute from Fremont, CA to San Francisco, CA in BART, I usually read books either on my iPhone or a classic way … the paper-backs.
These days I am completing one of my favorite book Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski, while reading about some topic, I came to know about Jack Moffett, at that momet, I try my luck and ask him the same question
“How a person can get basic training in to the Interaction Design field of study? Is he should get some online courses or join the University? Or books are the best bet plus a Mentor who time to time give a beginner done advice?”
I think it was my luck day, got his reply right away… Here is what he said and I asked his permission to share with you guys so anyone like me who is seriously thinking to get in to the Interaction Design, Information Architect or User Experience arena can benefit from it:
“You would find that different designers will have different answers to your question. Personally, I feel that the best way to do it is to attend a University. An on-line course won’t give you same benefits that a studio experience will. You learn as much from your fellow students as you do from your professors when you work beside them every day.
That said, there are the financial aspects. Attending a university is expensive, time-consuming, and location-specific. Some people will choose on-line courses for these reasons. You may still get a quality education in this way, but I don’t believe it will be as rich.
Working with a mentor is an excellent way to learn. Some would argue that this is more beneficial than formal education. Mileage will vary depending on your mentor, of course.
You can learn a lot from books, and there are some good ones out there on the subject, but they cannot replace learning by doing with a mentor or professor, either one.
I would also recommend reading the IxDA forums. Many of the best interaction designers in the industry actively participate in the discussions there. You can search the archives for discussions about the very things you are asking me. http://www.ixda.org/index.php”See, it was that easy! University is the best place to learn the subject, and get along with the Mentor, in any given field we do need a mentor, who help us to start with rolling, crawling to baby-step till we start running and exploring the hidden gems. Second best place is the online-courses, yes there are some draw-backs but if you have mentor at work, would be sufficent.
Thanks to Jack Moffett for his insightful tip. Oh by the way if you are in San Francisco Bay Area, I would be very interested to meet you and the best place as Jack mentioned is a local chapterd of IxDA, email address is follow: sf-local@ixda.org.
Alright folks, next week, I will present you with my findings about a new software that I am evaluating for Wireframe Diagram…Balsamiq Mockups
Till then enjoy the links I usually share on my blog time to time.
Until next time,
Happy Byting!
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3 years ago
These are the apps I use more often.
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3 years ago
iPhone Apps: There is a big user experience flaw in iPhone App or iPhone Architect. I noticed with almost all the iPhone apps, whenever you tap on “Email This Link” in any given app, you are suddenly jacked-out from the app you are using. Now that’s a big User Experience Flaw. I am hoping this is the issue Apple will certainly take care of it in there next Firmware released.
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3 years ago
Web Form Design: if there is only one book you are looking for to read about Form Design, this is it! Written by Luke Wroblewski, foreword by Jared Spool.
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3 years ago
Conventions are your best friends! Deborah Adler, Mix09
What a great weekend it was, especially when you have a baby who just learned to crawl and walk. In the past week great stuff came out of MIX09. It was superb! Some of the highlights were…Silverlight 3, Expression Blend’s SketchFlow, Silverlight Out-of Browser (SLOOB) Experience etc.
The Day 1 Keynote was great, although a few things related to Silverlight 3.0 we already knew, as the .NET Developers around the world were blabbing about it since the Silverlight 2.0 Release. There were a few surprises, which were superb!
As for the Day 2 Keynote-that inpsired me a lot. I loved hearing Deborah Adler’s presentation, including her personal story about what ignited her superb achievement-the ClearRx idea.
After hearing her Keynote of Mix09, I started thinking more about the role of “Information Architects” and “User Experience Experts”: True, very true… It is not always about the “Web App Interface” and “Desktop App Interfaces”, it is about “experience” that a user can gain using certain products. Whether they are bad or good depends on the design, nothing more. What I understand from the Day 2 Keynote that this time Microsoft is truly and sincerely asking Developers to build a better system, and instead of throwing “BSOD” lets throw a nice error like Apple does, or may be even better than that! Because every Operating System has some issues… hey! okay, I am not gonna start the OS War here!!!!
Anyways…as I carry around the “inspiration” I got from Deborah’s Keynote, I noticed something… When I was at Costco with my wife and my 9 month old baby girl, we were looking for her spring clothes, and my wife asked me to look for 12 months size cloths, so I started digging through the pile of clothes on the Baby Clothes Table, which you know is already a mess, things are there but it is hard to find sometimes… Then one idea suddenly struck me… the Color Tagging! They separated the Age-based clothes on the the basis of Color Tagging! Blue is for 12 months old, Red is for 6 months old etc.
Yes!! The Color Rings-we heard about them in the Keynote by Deborah!!! They used the Color Rings to separate the prescription drugs according to the family members. Well the same thing Carter’s does-check this image below:
So I thought that this is not the new idea, it is something already exists, and I think I already read about it, I noticed that Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug already talked about it, and I am sure before him someone else was discussed this issue. For me, Steve’s Don’t Make Think is the “First Step” that I took when I get interested in to the User Experience & Information Architect. Although Steve’s Book talk about Web App Interfaces, but if you really read-in-between-the-line you will certainly realized it is somehow implemented on the everyday products.
I noticed in the above picture and the point that I got inspired from Deborah Adler’s Day 2 Keynote speech is “Color Coding” .. Or I would say “Conventions”… Steve Kurg said somewhere in his book that “Conventions are your friend, use them wisely” and look what Deborah did! although that “Color Rings” is just the part of her whole big idea which is really a good innovation, and I wish Walgreen, and Long Drugs and other retail Pharmacists should implement this, I would highly recommend to watch her Keynote, it is inspiring.
So I think as Software Architect we should remember that by functionatly we are cool, we implement superb and hip algorithm, but we should put our focus more on user-centric approach, and trust me fellas, at the moment on the project I am working we surely putting a very superb-user-centric-approach..hmm sounds like I can make an hip looking abbreviation out that what I said ! SUCA ..ah! Sounds like bad thing! LOL.
Conventions, Natural Interface & Good User Experience. I think they are everywhere from tiny Web Page to the big engine for Space Shuttle, there impact is everywhere. I am hoping that I will successfully transform myself in to the Information Architect / User Experience Arena very soon.
How the Conventions can create the game changing products in any field, take an iPhone for instance.
Alright, I will leave you with that. Until next time.
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3 years ago
The Poster that targets specific User. Nice User Experience!
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3 years ago
Bookmarks: Here I don’t see the Conventions’ proper usage. I downloaded this iPhone app to manage my Social Bookmarks. Alas! Once again hit by the un-usual convention usage in iPhone App arena.
Well this Login/Logout is really not look like a Button, rather it is like a Textbox.
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3 years ago from bookmarklet
Simple UI!
Clever Uses: Simple User-Interface Trick Makes Your Remotes Idiot Proof
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3 years ago from bookmarklet
Superb Tab UI!
EffectiveUI – Award Winning User Experience Design and Rich Internet Application Development
EffectiveUI – Award Winning User Experience Design and Rich Internet Application Development
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3 years ago from bookmarklet
Awesome “User Interface Resource Center”
and User Experience Designer & Software Architect
User Interface Does Matter!
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