[IxDA Discuss] "Elements of Interaction Design"

[Jonas Löwgren]

Dave writes on one of the mentioned blog pages:

"All in all, I think that Dan’s chapter is a great start for  
important work that will be very relevant to a studio education in  
IxD. I hope schools look at this type of break down and start  
developing curricula around it."

As an interaction-design studio educator, my experience is that  
general taxonomies such as Dan's are double-edged swords. One one  
hand, they are very useful for experienced people to structure and  
communicate their practical knowledge. It seems that the kind of  
practical knowledge best suited for such structuring is evaluative  
knowledge (the ability to assess and judge designs) as opposed to  
generative knowledge (the ability to create designs).

On the other hand, inexperienced learners typically do not benefit  
from reduction into aspects -- what they seem to need the most in  
early stages is generative knowledge, which requires more holistic  
entrances into the field. Specifically, the first priority is for the  
learner to build a repertoire of examples and core ideas in the  
design field or design genre of interest. (This is one of the reasons  
for the long-standing tradition in any mature design field of  
maintaining a canon of important designs.)

However, I am not saying that there is no value in general aspect  
taxonomies. I can see how they would be very useful in structuring  
reflection and discussion around examples and other, more holistic,  
units such as the notion of desirable experiential qualities. This  
could hold in teacher-student dialogue during the design process as  
well as in presentations, critiques and other reflective assignments.

But I would certainly not develop a curriculum around it, if that is  
taken to mean a module on Motion, followed by modules on Space, Time,  
Appearance, and so on.

My approach is rather to structure a curriculum by design genres  
(labels I would use for modules are on the level of Mass media and  
interactive media, Pervasive computing, Interactive visualization,  
Calm computing, and so on) and bring general aspects such as Dan's  
suggestions and Dave's additions to bear as needed to support  
reflection and assessment in each of the genres addressed.

Jonas Löwgren

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Arts and Communication
Malmö University, SE-205 06 Malmö, Sweden

phone +46 7039 17854
web http://webzone.k3.mah.se/k3jolo