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.

This semester the subject is centered on the new roles of Social Media producer. Check out these three job descriptions

Even watching Kyla’s intro makes me think about upgrading my ancient copy of tinderbox.. but then again.. at this stage in my PhD, I need another writing environment like I need a hole in the head. (this is being written in scrivener)

There’s a thread in this issue about how the outcomes drive the tools – Scrivener looks easier to me to fit in the dissertation (ie linear) format. Tinderbox is great for the non-linear type of writing project. But come to think of it, when I’ve use TB in the past it has been to use my ability in the non-linear to create what was essentially a linear work. Rendering a reading of the thought networks flat.

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.

nice example of the law of reciprocity in action.

I’m currently writing two papers. At this point, bits of these papers seem to resemble two chapters of my thesis.

The first paper discusses what I’m calling the affinity gene (apologies to Peter F Hamilton) or a way of framing design capability in terms of affinity. This idea came out of a lot of reading, practice, and the realization (while presenting on a public panel at ozchi 2009) that just about every aspect of design has a dependence on the designers ability to activate and modulate their perception of affinity between objects.

If I was writing science fiction, I’d say that better control of affinity makes for a better designer. Which leads me to the second paper.

Designers use artifacts to activate their perception of affinity. There, I said it. Seems obvious, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Krippendorf has talked about this, and I particularly like his expansive take on artifacts, ranging from objects to discourses.

In this second paper we’re not looking at this aspect of activation, mainly because it relies on the first paper, and neither are published yet . My colleagues Hugh Macdonald, Yoko Akama and I are using Dewey’s model of the expressive object to frame artifacts in terms of how they help people inhabit an experience. In Dewey’s terms, some artifacts are statements, that lay out the circumstances under which an experience may take place; while other artifacts express an experience, or are an experience. These expressions are what we’re talking about when we say that artifacts can help people to inhabit experience.

I’ve been thinking about where this term inhabit came from, and realised that I’ve picked it up from James Wood. In How Fiction Works, Wood uses the term in two ways. Initially, he suggests that writers should inhabit their stories – or attempt to empathize with their characters. Secondly, he describes the “free indirect style” – a technique writers use to help readers inhabit the experience of a character.

So, lets riff on this for a moment, as we follow Diana, an interaction designer, down the street… The cracks in the sidewalk slip away as a couple round the corner, spines scrunched in an iPhone gait, oblivious to anything outside their user experience bubble…

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.

Simon & Buchanan think it always has, but one thing I keep seeing is a ‘resistance’ to using the word “design”.

I think there are a number of reasons for this, one of them being that many people don’t think they ‘do’ design. It’s about this thought that I’ve been thinkin’…

One workshop participant described two courses they have introduced in an IT program. Both courses gave students a grounding in conceptual foundations of programming and the web, and the program saw an immediate increase in the number of students who passed subsequent courses.

To me, this sounds a lot like teaching students to be better designers by teaching them how to ‘read’ as well as ‘write’.

Design is a literacy, and we experience its literature every day.

• 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 )

Inge Scholl, 8 May, 1950
The view behind the foreground. The political history of the Ulm School of Design (1953-1968)«. Stuttgart 2002.

Photo: Hannes Rosenberg: Inge Scholl bei der Arbeit für die Ulmer Volkshochschule. November 1949., originally uploaded by ReneSpitz

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.