isomorpho.us » phd

Designing Interaction Design: a proposal

jeremy — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:44:23 +0000

I’ve recently undertaken a PhD with Soumitri Varadarajan at RMIT University, researching professional and academic notions of interaction design practice. Last weekend I presented my proposal at the twice-yearly Graduate Research Conference.

I’ve added a PhD Proposal page with the relevant sections of my proposal, outlining what I’ll do, why I think this research is worth doing, and how I’ll proceed.

Please let me know what you think…

I’ll follow up in the next week with feedback and reflections from my presentation, and some more detail on some of the projects.

writing up

jeremy — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:02:23 +0000

Had a great meeting with Soumitri today, looking at the recent interviews and workshops I undertook with designers and educators in the bay area.

I have realised for a while now that I need to get me some discipline around writing. Today I think I saw one way forward: do it the same way I learned to draw, start with tracing and then move on to drawing proper.. or in the textual mode, start with really strict templates that prompt a certain response, and then work my way up to things that are closer to a narrative.

like eating an elephant

Research Trip and Board Retreat

jeremy — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:27:24 +0000

I recently returned from a trip to the US and Canada, checking in with Interaction Designers in and around San Francisco for my PhD and undertaking strategic planning with the IxDA board in Vancouver.

lifesaver

On the PhD front, I visited with Prof. Terry Winograd and Bill Verplank at Stanford University, and spoke with them about their work educating for IxD and designing Stanford’s d.School.

While in the bay area I also visited Danny Stillion at IDEO Palo Alto, spoke with Dan Saffer about his new studio and upcoming book with O’Reilly Media, and led a lunchtime workshop on links between IxD academia and industry with Adaptive Path.

Later, in Vancouver, I worked on visions for the Interaction Design Association with the rest of the IxDA board of directors, and pre-conference planning with the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU, for Interaction09.

I am now very happy to be back in the land of real mobile bandwidth.