For my senior thesis project, I am focusing on the popularization of 3D printing technology and sustainable fashion. My idea is that: offering everyone to have a chance to print the customizable clothes they like in their home with a simple user flow. The current technology and textile are not feasible to allow everyone to…
My thinking of technologies in the future
If the purpose of technology evolution is to help people to live a better and more convenient life, the new technology-related exploration and experiments are worth conducting. However, if the purpose of using new technologies is to create barriers, segregation, and divergence between people, it is worthless to keep researching and developing the future generation…
Arata Isozaki Biography
Arata Isozaki was born on 23 July 1931. He is a Japanese architect and an urban designer from Ōita. He received the RIBA Gold Medal in 1986 and the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2019. During his six-decade career, he has designed more than 100 buildings. Isozaki was born in an upper-class family. He witnessed the devastation of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII when he…
Apple Watch Redesign for the blind
Recently, one of my friends gave me a new Apple watch as a gift. After using it, I feel that the functionality of the device can almost replace a smartphone. However, it is hard for blind people to have the same experience when using the interfaces on the watch because they cannot receive any visual…
Zaha Hadid Biography
Zaha Hadid was born on October 31, 1950, in Baghdad, Iraq, and died March 31, 2016, in Miami, Florida, U.S. She is the daughter of Mohammed Hadid and the sister of Fulath and Haithem Hadid. Zaha studied at the American University of Beirut. After graduating in mathematics in Beirut in the 1970s, she studied architecture in…
The importance of IA
Information architecture is the practice of determining the arrangement of portions of something to be understandable. There are five types of organizing information in IA, which are Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy. Information architectures are on the websites, apps, and software, even the physical places we spend time in. IA helps people to find…
The history of Autodesk Maya
Maya is a 3D computer graphics application software that runs on computers only. It is now available in Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is used to create assets for interactive 3D applications, such as video games, animated films, TV series, and visual effects. That the beginning of 3D computer animation in the public eye was with wireframe animations in films like…
Evolution of community
The early internet like the wells and BBS laid groundwork for future human interaction. The wells provided a platform for people to communicate on the internet for the first time. Compare to what we have right now, the purpose of the technology is beyond the use of communication. It is more about your digital identity,…
Aika Matemu Biography
Aika Matemu resides in Nairobi, an African city known for being the hub of technological innovation and design. In an interview she conducted with Acumen as a fellow, an organization dedicated to the way the world tackles poverty, she explained her passion for using technology to facilitate social change, movement, and revolution. She is currently…
Oregon Trail – The most popular educational game for kids in the 80s and 90s
After playing the 1990 version of Oregon Trail, I feel that although the game was lack of visual images and a bit overwhelmed with the text contents, the background story and the overall-flow of the game was interesting to interact with. During the 80s and 90s, it was hard to find a game that satisfied…
UI in 80’s vs today
The Xerox Star, the pioneer of the graphical digital interface, which was introduced in 1982, had shown lots of similarities compared to today’s UI. Lots of important UI design principles were developed based on the creation of Xerox Star and the first generation of the Macintosh. The idea of signifier, affordance, and feedback was demonstrated…
Irene Au Biography
Irene Au graduated from the University of South Carolina with a bachelor of science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She went on to pursue her master’s degree at the University of Illinois, where she majored in Industrial Engineering/Human-Computer Interaction. After completing her master’s studies, she began her career as an interaction designer at Netscape…
The similar patterns in digital applications
Comparing to Slack, there are many similar key points in the “work community” pattern written by Christopher Alexander. In the reading, Christopher suggests that the workspace should contain a mix of jobs, such as desk jobs, craft jobs, and selling. In slack, we are able to create subdivisions(channels) that form different groups. In these Sub-groups,…
Christina Wodtke Biography
Christina R. Wodtke is an author, professor and speaker, who has dedicated her time, both to the development of high performing and great products. A lecturer in Human-Computer Interactions at Stanford University, she has written extensively on both subjects and has best-selling books including Radical Focus and Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web. Of various…
From Mother of All demos to interaction design
In the video, I was so impressed by the prototype made by Doug Engelbart. Some of the key features of the prototype had a great influence on today’s interaction design. GUI, micro-interaction, user feedbacks, information architecture… All of these ideas were presented by Engelbart with his prototype. The interface allows people to interact with the…
The mid-century designers
Ray Eames was an artist, designer, and filmmaker who had great contributions to the design field. She and her husband, Charles, together working on furniture design, graphic design, architectural design, textile design, and filmmaking that tried to express the idea of playful design. Karl Gerstner was a Swiss designer, typographer, author, and artist. His design…
Bush’s vision v.s. today
In 1945, Vannevar Bush described a computer system that is similar to the modern internet in an essay that was published in the Atlantic titled “As We May Think.” The invention he made was called “the memex.” Bush imagined the memex as a device that would function as a supplement to our own memory. People…
Bauhaus Exercise
As interaction and product designer, it is important to learn about Bauhaus and Bauhaus had a great contribution to the history of IxD. To me, the revolutionary ideas that Bauhaus brought to the world can be concluded in three primary points: 1. Unification of art/design and technology. 2. The purpose of design is to focus…
Xia Peisu biography
Xia Peisu was a computer scientist from China who had a great contribution to the development of computational technology and participated in building the first computer in China. Because of her contributions, she was considered as “the mother of computer science in China,” and received a lifetime achievement award that was given by the Chinese…