Category: HCI
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Some Thoughts About Design
I’ve been thinking about a question put forth by people smarter than me about Design. John Heskett articulates it best: [Why has design] never cohered into a unified profession, such as law, medicine, or architecture, where a license or similar qualification is required to practice…? [1] I’m wondering if an…
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Quantification and Goal Setting
Preface: I wrote this in an email exchange in early January, and the idea is still bouncing around my noggin. I’d love to get a dialogue going with anyone interested in any aspect of this content… Before reading further, you can watch this video: TEDx talk on Keeping Your Goals.…
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Some Thoughts on Purpose
I’ve been skimming a wonderful article written by Per Galle called Philosophy of Design: An Editorial Introduction. You can find it in Design Issues Volume 23. Put simply, Galle’s agenda is to explain what is the philosophy of design and what it’s good for. The section I’m about to (briefly) rant…
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McCulloch and Pitts’ Logical Calculus
Prompt: Several days ago, a Professor assigned us a reading. “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity.” This is not the kind of reading I’m used to doing. It’s science. It’s (shudder) math. Nonetheless, I dove in with an agenda. We were asked (as a preface to…
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Experience Design | Manipulation | Perversion
I’ve been thinking about morality and manipulation since class today especially as it pertains to experience design. I get the impression that when we talk about manipulation we generally do so with an implied value judgment: manipulation = bad. But when we were talking today about theme parks and movies,…
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Design and the I Function
I was re-reading an essay I wrote about The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function several years ago. Currently, I’m in the process of becoming a designer and part of that process entails thinking about everything — or at least trying to think about everything — in a…
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Is Clarity the Path to Enlightenment?
While revisiting the notes I jotted down when I read Buxton‘s Sketching User Experiences I stumbled across this line of text: Clarity is Not Always the Path to Enlightenment It’s the chapter heading for a few pages that describe the ambiguous nature of sketching in design. I especially love this idea:…
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Growth as a Designer
**reblog…I wrote this entry as part of a reflective journal in my first-semester graduate interaction design class at Indiana University‘s SOIC** Bill Moggridge’s book Designing Interactions was waiting on my desk when I got home tonight. After taking care of a few lingering project 4 tasks from the day — and after…
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HCI Study Journal
Last week brought with it a slew of activities: project submissions, presentations, and exams. The weeks in this program end soon after they begin. It’s wonderful. Our third design project for the semester centers on time, and I find this apt because — even before the design brief was released…
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What do designers do?
One of the tasks in my introductory design class is a weekly reflective journal. I got in the habit of keeping a study journal over the summer, and I think that this reflective journal is akin to a study journal. It’s more formal, though. And so I find myself approaching…
jordan beck, phd 