[This is going to be a 2 part piece discussing first why designing for contexts of use is so important by analyzing kayak.com as a great example. Then part two is going to ask for a new metaphor to be be used to describe this type of design across a ...

Finally got 2 seconds on my friend's iPad today. Can't walk into Best Buy because I don't trust myself. I played with it for maybe 5min tops and a lot of that time was with my little boy tuggin' at my sleeve saying, "What's this?" So this is by no ...

In my last piece, I discussed an important part of design education which is lessons in humanities especially rhetoric and comparative literature. I discussed the importance of frames as well as narrative. But it doesn't end there. These concepts--frames and narrative--are just tools for something bigger, which is meaning. As human ...

[Continuing my series on design education] I feel blessed to have come to design in a serpentine path. I came to be a designer after being an anthropologist. Not only did I get the obvious dose of social sciences like anthropology, sociology and psychology, but I got a strong does of ...

Continuing what is now becoming a series I want to talk about the importance of Art and add a well rounded Art education inclusive of fine arts, art history and art criticism as part of any solid design education. 15. Art: Expression, craft, context & criticism Design's history comes from the arts. ...

Recently I posted a bit about design education. I realized this evening that the 13 points that I made in that post were very one sided. They are sided heavily on the vocational requirements of design education. I even go so far as to say in #13 that design is ...

It seems of late in my life there have been a perfect storm of events driving me to focus my attention on re-designing design education. As many if you know, I'm a professor of interaction & industrial design at the Savannah College if Art & Design (SCAD). So obviously the ...

You will have a distinct advantage reading this if you are very familiar with the highways of the East Bay of California's San Francisco Bay Area. I have been trying to figure out how to talk about the experience of Interaction 10 (@ixd10) for the last 2 weeks. I knew I ...

February always comes in like a rocket and leaves even more quickly even on leap years (yes, I know this is not a leap year). For me coming into this February was one of the most crazy of my life (just ask my wife). Being on the ground planning a ...

I just had this idea. In education we have lots of opportunities for students to gain access to professional practice to prepare them for professional life: coops & internship abound. What we don't have are ways for faculty to stay engaged in practice that is sustainable, feasable & practical. Sonny idea ...

There are few projects over the last year that have excited me as much as this one, except maybe the work I did for the Freescale Smartbook project. But "Mate" a game project I did w/ my undergrad interaction design human factors class here at SCAD turned out so amazing. ...

I've been resistant to publish stuff here that says, look over here for something I've said. But this piece in particular is something I put a lot of attention on and struggled about whether or not it should be published elsewhere or on my blog. As I've been teaching this past ...

This year as part of its completely redesigned annual global conference the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) is organizing a Student Competition searching for "Excellence in Interaction Design". Entries have already been streaming in from students representing programs from around the world. For more information about goals and rules of the ...

Today the Jury of the IxDA Student Competition announce 2 changes to the competition. 1) That the deadline is extended to 31-Dec (Happy New Year!) @ 11:59pm US/PST. 2) That we will now be accepting submissions for groups. Get the announcement and learn all about the student competition. Yes, I know, this contradicts my ...

For those that may have missed it, I'm the chair person for the first IxDA Global Student Competition in Interaction Design. Since launching the competition there have been a slew of people asking if their team of 2-a billion could enter the competition. I have even been told that for ...

Whether you are a practitioner, student, educator or prospective design manager, I'd love to get your feedback on this survey. It should take a little bit of time, especially for employers, but I will do my best to make the information public once compiled. Thank you in advance. http://bit.ly/IxDEDU - dave

Watch This! before continuing: (It's an amazing video prototype that re-thinks multi-touch for the desktop.) 10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo. First Clayton, I'm incredibly impressed by this video. It shows an attention to detail in production value, theoretical analysis, and overall solutioneering that I know many can learn and be inspired ...

I'm really proud and excited about the work this class of mine is doing. Check out their 4wk progress.

It is so hard to not become a victim of our surroundings and this post is trying really hard to not do that. I have a pretty multi-facetted history; however, that history has been linear in its movement away from technology and towards design. Not that these are opposites, but they ...

In February at Interaction 09 | Vancouver, Kim Goodwin's closing keynote entitled "Each One, Teach One" (video) urged us all to take on the role of teaching as part of our practice. I'd like to agree in triplicate. My first experience as a teacher began when I was in college. The summer ...