I’m writing stuff for the phD and I’m reflecting on a project I worked on a while back with Reuben, where we were trying to crack the idea of ‘groups’ of elements in a presentation app.As we worked on the solution, and it became more elaborate with implementation feeding back to experience and [...]
Category Archives: phd
aha! moments in design
October 4 10
I can remember some great ‘aha!’ moments in my time designing. You know, when things suddenly gel for you, and the lights turn on. When I reflect on them as milestones in my career and growth of understanding, they’re helpful to shape the journey of what I think is important in design, and for designers [...]
The forensic wall: a way and artifact of thinking
September 20 10
Over the last few years I’ve been working on a phd looking at interaction design. On friday I reviewed where I’m at, and things took little turn. The topic remains the same, but in the process of arranging all my material – artifacts produced in projects I’ve run, thoughts I’ve had on these artifacts and [...]
What I learned about ambiguity
August 30 10
I gave a short (10 minute) talk called A (very) short history of ambiguity at UX Australia last week. I think it went well. Building the presentation certainly helped me to explore some ideas I’ve been trying to work through in my phd around ambiguity and affinity. Heres’ the slides, with notes. I’ll try get [...]
Visualization as reification
August 6 10
I’m thinking of the presentation I’m giving in a week or so at uxaustralia titled “A (very) short history of ambiguity”. Its related to my PhD, and I need to be careful to hit the right tone as its not an academic conference or audience.
One thread of the presentation will discuss Etienne Wenger’s take [...]
Affinity & Artifacts: linking the inside with its activator
February 21 10
I’m currently writing two papers. At this point, bits of these papers seem to resemble two chapters of my thesis.
(Teaching) Models of Models
February 20 10
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 [...]
on design literacy
October 7 09
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.
design. experience. interaction.
September 25 09
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 [...]
