Eduardo F. Ortiz has over twelve years of computer engineering, user experience, and product design experience. Some of his most impactful works have been co-founding Project 100—an organization helping elect progressive women into government—-and &Partners—which teams up with organizations who are helping to improve their communities—, and was the Executive Creative Director for the US…
A woman who has devoted her whole life to design – Eileen Gray
Eileen Gray was born into an aristocratic family in Ireland in 1878. She spent part of her childhood and youth in her father’s Irish estate and the other part in her mother’s hometown London, England. She was one of the first women to study at the Slade. Her father, James McLaren Smith, was a landscape…
Uprise of Computers and it’s Influence on Interactive Design
When we look at original computers back in the early to mid 20th century, we will see machines that were gigantic in size such as the Harvard Mark I and ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). These massive computers took up a lot of space (about the size of a large room) and expected results/calculations…
From a demo to a dystopia?
More than fifty years ago, Doug Engelbart showed a preview of the future. Engelbart’s idea was that computers of the future should be optimized for human needs: communication and collaboration. Instead of punch cards and taking a while to process, computers should have keyboards and screens that are responsive. So, he with his time built…
From zero interaction to passive interaction, to active interaction
Before Doug Englebart introduced his keyboard and mouse prototype, users cannot interact with computers, since computers cannot provide any intermediate results and show running processes to users, and, in contrast, users cannot control and interact with computers. What the users and computers can do is that users can submit computation tasks and computers will show…
Different Thinking About Man-Computer Symbiosis
Licklider said, “Men are noisy, narrow-band devices.” On the other hand, “computer machines single-minded and constrained.” There is a difference between a human and a computer. A computer doesn’t need to take a rest or eat a sandwich. It doesn’t have to rack its brains for an elusive answer.Artificially intelligent machines write many of today’s…
From Doug Englebart’s demonstration to Interaction Design
Doug Englebart and his team demonstrated the oN-Line System, which featured many of the elements prevalent in modern computing, including the use of a mouse and keyboard for efficient navigation and input, video-conferencing, multiple windows, and collaborative work functions. Engelbart’s vision was to shift the focus from the computer to the user, which is the…
Catt Small and Problems of portraying Blackness in Video Games
Catt Small is a product designer, game maker, and developer. In an interview with “Gaming on Tumblr”, she considered herself “a creative technologist”. She is “an artist who loves to learn and explore through the lens of code and other technology-centric resources.” She started coding around the age of 10 and designing at the age…