The information age has just begun, and the implications of new technological innovations are still being discovered. Current technological trends greatly limit our understanding of what a digital product should be, and visions of the future rarely deviate from the "cyborg cyberpunk" genre. Futuristic products will indeed be shaped by technology, and as their complexity grows, our successful interaction with physical and digital form becomes imperative to a product's success.
This class looks at the visionary, experiential and futuristic aspects of interactive products - both physical and digital, and the closing gap between the two - and encourages a human, experiential attitude towards interactive product design. The objectives of this Interactive Product Design class are:
- to understand the implications of designing for a digital medium
- to look towards the future of interface design, where standard widgets are no longer relied upon and traditional interface paradigms are rejected
- to think analytically about interaction design in the future
- to visually document an interactive design process
IACT317 is a part of the Interaction Design minor at SCAD. Students taking this course explore the nature of experiences, with an emphasis on the structure of poetic and resonate interactions.
In the course, students are introduced to design problems in various settings and are expected to develop both the physical and digital form, function and characteristics of an interactive product.
These lectures are used to emphasize main ideas, techniques, and readings. I speak to each slide for nearly five minutes, but the structure of the content may be useful for others engaged in teaching this sort of material.
Each file is a .pdf of mini-slides. Feel free to email me for the larger version.
- Introduction to Interactive Product Design
- A Software Design Manifesto
- Poetic Interaction Design
- Flow
- Futuristic Interactive Product Design
- Interface Culture
- History of Interactive Product Design
- The Role of the Artist-Designer
- The Dynamics of Instruction
- The Structure of a Product Presentation
- Design Languages
Steven Johnson, Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate. 1997. Harper Edge. ISBN 0-06-251482-2
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. 1996. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-092820-4.
Terry Winograd, Bringing Design to Software. ACM Press. ISBN 0-201-85491-0
