–Engage

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 previous post about why we are only accepting individual contributions. But we must evolve. I still haven’t heard anything personally that makes me want to support “all group work” as many of my peers are teaching either in this discussion or from personal contacts. I’d love to hear more about what this newbie educator is missing.

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 some students they really only do work in teams and thus cannot enter the competition despite having excellent projects.

I think that unlike other design disciplines’ competitions this competition is as much about the person doing the design as it is about the outcome of the design itself. We won’t just be judging a person on the final result of the design, but also on the knowledge of interaction design embedded in the design and in the person himself/herself.

In this regard, a team project would be very difficult for us to judge regarding individuals. While we recognize that a lot of work in practice does happen in teams which is why especially in early courses team projects are encouraged, much of the work we do in practice, even as team members is done as the sole interaction designer. We work with visiaul designers and engineers and industrial designers in our teams, but usually there are too few of us to go around to all be working on the same project.

In this regard though it is very difficult to judge where the lines are blurried or crossed. So for us to understand the make up of a team is beyond our scope at this time.

Maybe if the competition occurs next year we can change the competition to have some areas that include team work.

At this time though, the competition is soley for individuals. And we hope you enter!

– dave

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

As part of a press release that was crafted by SCAD for the Interaction 10 | Savannah conference, i was asked for a quote (well a lot of quotes) and this one was put in there:

“Interaction design is not the design of a medium but rather a philosophical shift in how to design for any medium. It answers the questions of why, how and what with a new lens and expanded impact,”

I found it interesting that after a big brain dump on what is IxDA, what is its influence, what is its partnership with SCAD in the past and now in the future and what is Interaction 10, this is the quote they chose. It’s one of those quotes that when you read it you double take as if listening to yourself on an audio recording. Ya know? that sense of disbelief that that is really you.

Then I read it again and I realized I didn’t say anything at all, because the statement is so separated from its context that it just isn’t real. So here is the full paragraph in which I was responding to this question, “What is unique about interaction design at SCAD?”

As far as I can tell SCAD is the only design school that offers interaction design as a minor to its undergrads. The program here at SCAD for the minor is geared towards bringing the design of behavior across all the design disciplines here at SCAD. By focusing on behavior regardless of medium, we have a strong opportunity to bring a new level of fidelity to all our design programs. Interaction Design is not the design of a medium but rather a philosophical shift in how to design for any medium. By concentrating on the dialog that takes place between people products & services and then the effect that those dialogs have on the behaviors of people, interaction design, answers the questions of why, how, and what with a new lens and expanded impact.

Reading that, again really helps fill in the blanks for me and is a lot more meaningful all around.