[IxDA Discuss] Microsoft Surface (Who Made It)

[David Malouf]

What a great discussion. 

first, I want to thank chris for challenging us. I have to say I
agree with a lot of what he says about "design critique" on this
list. I do think though that it isn't as bad as he puts it, but I
have noticed issues.

I think that the medium (not the community) plays a large part of the
reason why we are skewed a bit. I think it is a lot harder in email
(or even web board) to be thoughtful in your criticisms, and for that
matter to be positive.

Further, I do think that we all jump to conclusions and often do not
look at complete scenarios and total contexts of the designs &
products being presented. What that means is that often the
technology and business cases for design decisions are not made
apparent to us and for good business reasons are often kept secret.

I do like the direction that Pauric has taken the initial thread
about Surfaces and asked the question about what good uses
multi-touch has. 

The one big push-back that I would give Chris is his expectations
about what can be done in a public forum of some 3000  people. Even
if you only count the some 50 or so active participants, you end up
with a very large "studio". Further, this group spans many
different work environments which skew us all. When we are in a
design studio, well we are all working in that studio. We have a
chance to do proper presentation before the critiques and we also
know that b/c we are in a studio we will have the same chance to
critique those who have criticized us. That is not the case here. We
aren't in some program in person, face-to-face together.

But this brings up something the NYC Face-to-face group of IxDA is
working on, hopefully for this coming fall, and that is exactly this.
An in-person studio/salon that meets on a periodic basis, with the
guidance and supervision of a "master" interaction designer (or 2
or 3).

This would be something that would be open to practitioners of all
levels, that people can bring in their existing work, or we can work
on new ideas together and it would be something that people have to
pay for and commit to coming to on a periodic basis (weekly,
bi-weekly, monthly). Something not too hard to commit to, but not too
far way that you forget about it.

The details are not all squared away yet and we have an idea for a
1-time evening workshop that we are working on as well as a trial
run, but its an idea we are working on.

I personally don't see the list as a place to get true design studio
criticism. I try to punch out provocation to get spirited debate to
see where that makes my own mind lead me. I learn a ton from the
popcorn cooker of ideas and thinking that comes out of this machine,
but coming here for direct practice level critique feels like a poor
use of this medium.

Now, does that mean we can't find some way to do things in a virtual
way? I guess we could. we would have to have a more closed list, with
full active participation, something about non-disclosure. Make sure
everyone is in a non-compete situation, and set up a heft set of
rules of etiquette. Short of that, this list is for people to ask
advice, and to make their brains explode. That's why I have always
pushed people to create off-line face-to-face communities of IxDA.

Maybe we can create some spaces like this at future conferences.

One example of this, was what Christina Wodtke led on behalf of the
LA Times at the IA Summit. We got to work with a senior IA or two on
a real world problem from a company. We weren't given critique per
se, but we got to learn from each other while working on a "real"
project.

Maybe we can do this for say an open source project or two. Maybe the
studio idea I mention above is geared towards that. Maybe if we do
this right, we create our own open source project built from the
ground up with IxD and design research in mind.

Maybe different locales can do the same and share back to the global
universe their findings, designs, etc. and at congresses we can work
towards melding the local group work into a larger whole. maybe we
can find an active engineering organization like our own that can
work with us and help us actualize and execute the outcomes of the
project.

Lots of maybes, eh?

Anyway, just some ideas.

-- dave


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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://beta.ixda.org/discuss?post=16809