Its great to see how other teachers introduce their projects.
Today I’m adding a 20 minute section to a subject introduction seminar (post about my bit here), and it’s great to be back in the theater. Kyla’s intro is awesome.. using tinderbox to situate her subject this semester in the context of previous subjects, and what kind of skills you’ll both need and develop during the semester. It’s really encouraging as an example of the pedagogical ideas that the Media program began renewing a few years ago coming to fruition.
got handed this today. It’s a loyalty card for a local café.
Interesting thing about it is that they make it really easy for you to get your first “freebee”: by giving you 4 purchases on the card you only have to purchase 1 coffee to then experience the satisfaction of a free coffee.
Hugh Dubberly recently published an article called Models of Models where he introduces the concept of models and then breaks down the constituent parts so the reader can think about how to make and evaluate models for themselves. (hint – read the pdf, it communicates more richly than the post. the article also appears in Interactions Mag )
I was looking at this while thinking a lot about my PhD and some curriculum review that IxDA is currently undertaking with BDW. The following thoughts particularly resonated:
Passing models from one generation to the next is a responsibility of teachers and managers. Models are what students take away from school and what young people take away from early jobs. Models are what you remember after leaving.
I recently spoke with Hugh about a wide arc of ideas and histories related to interaction design, cybernetics and education. The issue of literacy (of systemic or ecological thinking) came up repeatedly, and re-reading this article reminds me to write a little about it.
If models are (as Alan Kay states) where “we do most of our work” (and I think they are) then why not teach modeling as well as models?
Let me explain. It is my belief that education is obsessed with trends; what’s relevant now? who’s hot now? what extends the canon? etc. These invariably manifest in a model of some sort; frameworks, theories, templates and protocols can all be traced back to a model. These are important to pass on. Reinvention is silly, except when it can help us understand.
Yesterday I presented our research on using data visualization inside the social web at Web Directions South. Here’s the slides from the presentation, and an associated report we published for the research.. You can read the notes with the presentation over at slideshare …read more
After yesterdays chat with Dan Hill, the EdDirections workshop, and werock event last night, I’ve been thinking about how design moves out of the studio and into the cubes & labs. …read more
so – after a few weeks getting my head very damaged, I’m feeling a lot better about were I am wrt a meta discourse on interaction design. Highlights from the past few weeks for me were:
Herbert Simon’s use of the word “cookbooky” in Sciences of the Artificial
Richard Buchanan’s “placements” and subsequent alignments I started to see with
Dewey’s “expressions” as opposed to “statements” (via Jodi Forlizzi’s thesis)
The notion of “free indirect style” James Wood uses to describe the way novelists will slide from third person to a semi-first person perspective, in order to put you into the head of the character (without being so explicit)
I’m pretty excited with this last bit, as it leads on from some of the thinking I’ve been having around design fiction (particularly sci-fi) – namely that the fictitious novel form has a way of leaving enough out so that the reader can inhabit the experiences of the characters. The experiences are re-simulated (ooooh nice, just thought of that )
“… the creative person who thinks politically and is familiar with modern methods, and who with social responsibility and his own creative talents designs the lifestyles of our technological and industrial age.”
Inge Scholl, 8 May, 1950
The view behind the foreground. The political history of the Ulm School of Design (1953-1968)«. Stuttgart 2002.
here’s a 3″ album I released in 2002 on the mythical 4×3 label.
I decided to put it up on soundcloud.. if you like it, let me know, and look out for more to come in the coming months.
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