(an experiment in open source design and interaction design education)

Introduction

What I’m about to start is a huge project. I won’t be doing it alone (at least not for long, 1 way or another). I want to create a series of tutorials that take on the multiple facets that lead to the design of great software. The project is about educating ourselves and each other. Like an Unconference where no one comes to purely consume, everyone who enters this project is a co-teacher, mentor, and student.

What we are here to do is design and prototype (at all levels of fidelity and manner) GREAT software and services for software. But we are also looking to reframe the open source project as a design centric one. We are here to make huge mistakes, get terribly embarrassed, teach each other, and learn from all.

Project Goals:

1. To create an educational framework for interaction design specifically and all aspects of digital design more generally. Hopefully the framework can be repeated as a long-term and remote capable curriculum.
2. To be a framework for others to plug-in their educational expertise in topics that I am unable to elaborate on. This is a major requirement as there are definitely facets of this project that I will definitely be recruiting help for.
3. To e a framework to push my own learning in areas that I am lacking as a designer, as a developer, etc.  And in so doing be a framework for others to fill in their own gaps as well. Being a teacher teaches you one thing so quickly–that you have so much more to learn.

Why twitter

1. confined and easily understood space
2. while confined it is cloudware + unproduct + traditional software product all wrapped in one
3. it covers traditional desktop, iPhone, webkit, mobile (other), widgets (blog, dashboard, google gadgets, sidebar)
4. there are actually fairly different and exciting contexts of uses and user types (aka personas that can be explored long term)
5. there is a robust collection of existing tools out there for deconstruction
6. basic functionality is small but could be built upon and grow complexity over time or through iterations of design & development
7. there is a large design community and larger developer community already fairly invested in their own use and possibly invested in being involved in this way

Get involved

While the end goal of this project is go all open, the early days, weeks, and probably months are going to need to be more closed. Not opaque from view, but rather we need to create a glass box.

So with that in mind I’m looking for people with interest in the concept for the project, believe in open education, and have something to bring to the project that I don’t have. Here’s the list:

• Visual design: especially in regards to interactivity
• Game deign/theory
• True programming skills: Flex/Flash, iPhone, Java, HTML 5, Databases, APIs, Web Services
• Service design
• Business
• video prototyping
• visual thinking
• social theory, especially around social networks

Everyone should consider themselves a creative contributor and remember that one of the goals is related to design-centrism.

To this regard people interested should send me an email (me(at)davemalouf(dot)com). In it should be the following:

1. explaining what contribution they hope to bring to the project,
2. how twitter makes a difference to their lives and the people around them,
3. a vision statement about open source design,
4. and finally what they most want to learn through this project

The glass around the box

So how will the rest of you benefit from all this?

1. All participants will be encouraged and expected to blog frequently about this project.
2. Calls for participation in the form of pure student roles will come up often. Outstanding students will be asked to become full contributors .
3. Everyone reading this and other blog posts will be encouraged to give feedback to the work as it is presented. The eventual hope for the project as it grows and flourishes is to apply more resources towards better transparent & inclusive systems.  (I didn’t want plain free wiki-ware, so am using socialtext which does not have “public” abilities in its free version.)

Well for now, just put your feedback here in the comment form below and let’s get this party started.

[Disclaimer, I'm sure the Blackberry by RIM has improved over the years, but it still ain't no iPhone.]

So I was in New York City recently. Mainly I was in Brooklyn. Today was my first day back in Savannah, and I had this very geeky thought:

New York is a Blackberry city and Savannah is an iPhone city.

Now, of course, nothing is really that simple, but here is the breakdown of the thought.

Both devices have pain points, but from opposite directions of human experience:

On the one hand you have a Blackberry. Probably one of the most robust functionally you can put in a mobile device. It is mission critical solid. The pain though is the entry to the functionality. The interface to all of it, is so f’ugly and cumbersome and system driven that it takes a little piece of your soul every time you hit the escape key.

The NYC analog here is you have soooo much incredible stuff to do and see and engage with. it is ALL there. But try getting around and you want to just kill yourself (well you really want to kill the smelly person who sat next to you on the crowded subway). The stress level of “interfacing” with the city is just insane.

On the other hand you have an iPhone. Where you turn it on just to see & hear it turn on. You actually don’t care if you accomplish anything for the first few weeks of ownership and then while your options are fairly limited, even months later, you are still so enamored in being able to do the very limited things you can do, that you don’t really care what you can’t do.

In Savannah, it is really easy to get around. REAL easy. Car, scooter, bicycle, it is pretty easy to get from A to B. But where are you going? and what is there when you get there. Oh! and it is really beautiful in even the bad parts of town. But there are some really great spots to go (beach, historic districs, malls, etc.).

anyway, in the end there isn’t a better or worse option and there are many parts of Savannah that feel like a Blackberry and many of NYC that feel like an iPhone. I think my last trip this past week to NYC really confirmed for me that I am over NYC. All my now 15 years there has told me is that I’m just not as urban hip as I’d like to think I am.

I’m ready for my pickup truck, boat trailer, lawn mower (w/ edging option), BBQ, etc. Who knew?