[IxDA Discuss] "Elements of Interaction Design"

[Jonas Löwgren]

Last week, I said that for curricula in interaction design, I prefer  
a genre-based structure aimed at building a repertoire of example- 
based generative knowledge.

Dave replied that there is a need for specific skills (craft skills),  
and the aspects proposed by Dan and augmented by Dave can be seen as  
a way to structure the foundational-skills part of a curriculum.

I agree completely about the need for craft skills. A designer  
without craft skills generally does not understand the materials and  
cannot explore the design space adequately.

I realize that I should have mentioned a couple more things to put my  
comments in a proper context:
- The IxD programs I have worked on are Masters programs that  
students apply to after earning a Bachelor's degree.
- Recruitment is aimed at composing a mix of students from art &  
design, digital technology, usability/HCI, and media production. Each  
of the students brings a set of craft skills from her mother discipline.
- In the first year of study, when the genre-based curriculum would  
be applied, most of the projects are performed in multidisciplinary  
groups where students combine their craft skills to learn from each  
other and explore the nature of the T-shaped knowledge profile needed  
in the field (significant depth in one discipline, enough knowledge  
in a number of other disciplines to be able to work with the  
specialists of those disciplines).

However, for the record I might note that there are no pedagogical  
laws of nature stating that foundational skills must be studied  
before their application. Problem-based learning approaches, which  
are closely related to project-based learning, essentially ask the  
students to identify knowledge needs in real-world situations and to  
learn the foundations as dictated by the applications.

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