Technology will never stop advancing, and thus the job of the interaction designer will never disappear as well. At its core, I believe we will always have to put the user’s needs at the center of everything we do, and will continue the iterative process no matter how far we go. A blurring of physical…
Sci-Fi can teach us a lot about ethics
When conceptualizing new technologies and their implementations, it is important to consider the ethics and possible outcomes. Sci-fi books and movies are a brilliant avenue through which we can explore the implications of futuristic technology, and shows like Black Mirror and Altered Carbon can leave us with a very chilling perspective. In the dystopian universe…
Inclusive Fridge
An interaction that most people go through on a daily basis, and take for granted, is with their fridge. If I were to redesign this, it could go a couple ways depending on the disability in mind. If my users were blind, I would try to integrate voice commands and responsivity based on verbal sound…
Dori Tunstall
Dori Tunstall is a design anthropologist, or someone who studies how design translates values into tangible experiences. After receiving her BA in Anthropology, she obtained a Ph.D. in the subject from Stanford University. She is the first black dean of a faculty of design, and is currently working at Ontario College of Art and Design….
Lola Oyelayo-Pearson
Lola Oyelayo-Pearson is a black woman from the UK who has been working in digital systems for 17 years as a UX and product specialist. She started as a business analyst, before focusing energy into research, design, and development. After gaining her Bachelors of Engineering in Interactive Design Systems from the University of Birmingham, she…
The Appeal of Oregon Trail
Oregon Trail has a certain rustic charm and probably evokes nostalgia for many. The game doesn’t rely on fancy graphics or functions to provide entertainment, but is based heavily on chance and the user’s own decisions. In a way, it is similar to gambling as you take risks and choose how to spend your time,…
Evolution of Mac and Xerox UI
Some of the first concepts and functions of computers that we are so familiarized with today were revolutionary not that long ago. In 1982, the Xerox Star boasted a desktop-like interface in which the user could organize his or her files, folders, and documents. It was accompanied by a keyboard with the regular typing keys,…
Information Landscape/Patterns
The Information Landscapes demo from The Visible Language Workshop initially confused me, as the necessity to display information in a three-dimensional plane has not caught on entirely. 3D modelling is incredibly useful for diagrams and demonstrations, but to display text and keywords on multiple planes reminded me of a simple Google search and made me…
Design Patterns
Christopher Alexander’s spatial architecture and design patterns can be easily overlooked by most of us living in them, but once you consider the profound impact his concepts have had on our neighborhoods and communities, it is impossible to unsee. As someone once oblivious to how housing is set up and the impact location has on…
Information Design
As a student studying Interaction Design, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to create my own information architecture, but every person on the web has been exposed to some form of it. Information architects determine the needs and requirements of users and creators, as well as how to structure and map content out. A website…
Ovetta Sampson – Biography
Ovetta Sampson is an African American female product manager/design researcher/UX designer, and has a wide array of experience in the design world as well as journalism and marketing. This large range of skills has contributed to her ultimate goal to “amplify the beauty of humanity with design while avoiding practices that exploit its fragility.” From…
Club Penguin
Club Penguin is an online multiplayer game for kids and ran from 2005 to 2017. It was shut down by Disney after a dramatic decrease in users, but copycat sites and versions have been put up since. Essentially in the game, the user gets to explore a fun, snowy world as a penguin and play…
Bhavsar_The Mother of All Demos
Douglas Engelbart and the team from Stanford are credited as early computer pioneers, and it is incredibly fascinating to see what their initial visions were. Many of the functions of computers we take for granted today, such as the “tracking spot” or mouse, hyperlink, zooming function, and bulleted lists, were revolutionary during this time. Moreover,…
Ruth Bhavsar – Midcentury Bonus Writing
Mid-century designers participated in a wide-array of practices, all of which ultimately supplemented their viewpoints and work. Their expansive ways of teaching can show us how design in our world is an ecosystem of products working together and riffing off of each other’s features. It’s not enough for a product to be stylistically pleasing; functionality…
Ruth Bhavsar – Midcentury Designers
The Eames couple, Gerstner, and Sutnar were pioneers of Interaction Design techniques, and their work spanned a wide array of disciplines. All of them put the user and usability at the center of their work, and made integral breakthroughs when combining form and function. Ray and Charles Eames designed and iterated a prolific amount of…
Chetana Deorah
Chetana Deorah is an Indian American woman who grew up in Mumbai, India and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for her masters and work. She majored in Biology for her undergrad and after a frog dissection gone wrong, quickly realized that was not the correct career path for her. She received her MFA…
Vannevar Bush’s Vision
In the 1930s, a man named Vannevar Bush suggested a memory augmentation device which would allow the user to link multiple ideas together and encourage the access of information based on association and context rather than rigid indexing. The user would be able to build a trail of many items and add to the statements…
Lovelace and Gilbreth’s Contributions to IXD
Ada Lovelace and Lillian Gilbreth were ahead of their time and definitely not as recognized as they should be today. Both of these women delivered monumental contributions to computer science and industrial engineering, which were often overlooked until posthumously documented. A quick google search shows that the men they were connected to, such as Charles…