GREAT thread. Before I go all up and theoretical, I wanted to point people to Jon Kolko's work in this regard. He is my predecessor at SCAD as the Prof of IxD there. He has his course materials and other thoughts on IxD education on his site: http://www.jonkolko.com/education.php
I think "what I teach" will really depend on the structure. If I was teaching inside another discipline (as I will be) I will only have to teach those things that the primary program does not cover. I.e. I won't be teaching drawing/sketching to a bunch of industrial design students. But if I was teaching in an interactive media program, I most certainly would be. In either case I would supplement a standard sketching lab with tidbits about how to make sketching a more effective IxD tool. But generally, I like how people are speaking about the analog of interaction design. I'm not so sure this is so necessary in a formal education background as it is is a continuing ed background. Especially at the masters level I would expect that complete studio work you will have had to take the materials labs/studios in order to continue your work. "Flash" might be too specific, but basic/intermediate multimedia computer programming is definitely not. Futher, I think the Jeff's example of exploring and re-telling is great! It is really a classic ethnography course exercise but I would add that would "story telling" is a hugely important lesson we need to teach our students, there are some additions here I'd like to make. 1) There is story telling. I would want my stuents to explore this in various cross-cultural forms. 2) There are media. Take the same story and see it played out in various media. The Oddessy for example has been done (to death) as book, graphic novel/comic, TV show, radio show, movie, and interactive CD-ROM. Learning how the story changes both in media and as well over time is really important. 3) Once the critique is done, then it is a question of learning how to take that ethnography you did and then express *A* story in those observations as a problem, that needs to be solved, and then telling the story of the solution. The last point I'd like to make here is that "Does it work?" is the classic problem with UCD related design education. While this may not be the intention of the words, in no doubt do the words themselves focus our attention on "function". While usability and workabilit and stakeholder demands are important, as a design discipline there is more. There are aesthetics in interactions and it is important if interaction designers are to work side by side and be in a position to direct other trained designers (from other disciplines) to be able to walk and talk about aesthetics not just of IxD but of the form designers they will work with. Design History, not just of IxD, but of architecture, industrial design, interior, graphic, etc. is important. A learning of the great design schools of Europe and how they influenced and got turned up-side-down in the US and Asia is also important. Then all of this that I don't see needs to be turned into "critique". Someone recently said (I forget if it was posted on this list) that graphic design is completely subjective with a means of evaluating beyond the personal. HOGWASH! Critique is real in visual design and industrial design, and it just doesn't mean that it can be used, read, or communicated successfully. It speaks about emotions like HCI theorists speak about cognition. While it can be fuzzy, there is predictability the same way 5 wine tasters can all agree on great wine, so would 5 design masters on specific qualities of a visual, 3D or spatial design. I'm not saying that what has been posted already isn't important, but for a design education on IxD, not just a "continuing ed" UX education, these elements were missing from the postings above. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=34437 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
