Upset by Bad Design or Inspired by Good Design

A lot of design writings are based in the "mantra" that the world is filled by bad and terrible designs and we need to change that. I do not like that approach to design. To me it often (not always) implies that good design is both possible and almost easy to do. Good design is possible, I agree with that, but design is far from easy. The world is not filled by bad designs because people do not care or do not try. There are bad designs all around us because good design is difficult. I am much more fascinated by the fact that, despite the difficulty of design, good designs can also be found all round. It is amazing how often good designers are able to come up with designs that defy the complexity and difficulty of the challenge at hand. So, let us be inspired by good designs and let them prove to us that amazing design is possible. Even in the most restricted design situation, the design space is (relatively) infinite. Within this space there are opportunities and risks to come up with a bad or good design. Great designers are those who surprises us all with a wonderful design when we thought the situation did not lend it self to any possible good designs.

The Toyota Problem, Interaction and Complexity

I guess everybody has heard about the Toyota car problem. This is a terrible situation for Toyota, of course. At the same it also exposes some interesting interaction issues. Without knowing anything about what has really happened and how much Toyota really knows, I think this is a kind of situation we might see more of in the future.

When artifact complexity increases as a consequence of growing features "need", new problems emerge. The blend of mechanical/physical material with digital material seems to be part of the Toyota problem. A spokesperson said something about "not being able to locate the problem". A modern car is highly complex and is an example of an system where parts "collaborate" in a highly intricate way. So, is the gas pedal issue a mechanical problem or a digital problem. According to an (TV) expert, Toyota is hoping and praying that it is a mechanical issue, since it will be possible to locate and hopefully add or remove some mechanical parts. If it is a digital issue then "locating" becomes increasingly difficult. Maybe the problem only happens with a highly improbable occurrence of combination of system states, mechanical as well as digital. It might actually be an untraceable problem. And it might be impossible to test. No usability testing, no matter how comprehensive, might catch or isolate the problem. However, every day millions of drivers round the world conduct a full scale usability experiment, in rare situations with drastic consequences.

As a coincidence, my colleague Lars-Erik Janlert and I, will have an article in the ACM ToCHI in a few months where we explore interaction complexity and actually use the brake system in a car as a core example. I can't see any simple solutions or obvious things to learn from the Toyota case. Well, there might be one solution...design systems that have reduced complexity so they are possible to comprehensibly test.

In our article we discuss how less system complexity usually lead to increased interactivity complexity. For instance, ABS brakes move control from the driver to the system, since the brakes almost becomes an on/off digital button while the mechanical brakes relies on the exact (analog) pressure from the drivers foot. So, there is a design choice---safety in form of brakes that can adjust to the surface or safety in form of a brake system that is less complex? That is where we are today with many of our artifacts.

As a side note, I wonder how often old cars had mechanical problems that led to serious accidents? Maybe the problem is not that today's cars are less safe, of course they are not, but that the acceptance of malfunction is being reduced to a ridiculous low level.

Journal of Information Architecture

There are many academic journals around and new ones are emerging all the time. One quite new that seems to have quite interesting content to anyone in HCI and interaction design is the Journal of Information Architecture. All the content seems to be free online, at least the current issue is.

It is also interesting to see how the field of HCI, interaction design, information architecture, experience design, are all blending into something new. Even product design and "real" architecture is part of the mix. All this is of course a natural reflection of the technological development where physical material is combined and infused with digital material and all products become a new form of artifacts that needs to be designed as a whole.

And since it is that time of year. Happy New Year!

Milton Glaser

My son Adam showed my this short video about the famous graphic designer Milton Glaser. Just watch it. Nothing more to say.

"GOMS: Get out of our head and in situ"

This is link to a great video made by two of our wonderful HCId students. Thanks Nina and Anna!!

2nd annual HCI CONNECT at IU

[I am posting this on behalf of our program]

Is your organization looking to recruit high-quality User Experience Designers?

Did you know that the School of Informatics and Computing at IU has one of the top Master’s degree programs in the nation in Human-Computer Interaction Design?

Please consider joining us for the 2nd annual HCI CONNECT.

How do we describe this event: It’s a ‘day of interaction,’ or a ‘chance to experience talent,’ or a ‘relational on-ramp’ with some of the top students in the field. Visit www.hcidconnect.com for details, registration info, and pictures of last years event.

Who is Invited

User Experience Design Managers and Team Members - each organization may bring up to 3 people (We highly encourage attendance of HCI-Design Alumni)

All the graduate students and faculty in the HCI-Design Program (About 75 students)

Event Details

January 21 & 22, 2010

21st: 7:00-9:00 pm: HCI Faculty, Student, and Employer Reception

22nd: 9:00 am - 3:00 pm: CONNECTing students and faculty through interaction, discussion, and brief employer presentations

Employer Cost & Benefits

$500 per organization includes:

· Resume Book of all students in attendance
· Portfolio Reference Guide - which provides links to almost all HCI Grad student online portfolios
· Extensive discussion time with students and faculty
· Opportunity to share your design team dynamics, culture, and process.
· Hors d'oeuvres and drinks with faculty
· Lunch for up to 3 on Friday


Registration Process

There are two steps in the registration process.

(1)Make sure you are an employer user in Informatics Career Link, our online connection system (see below)
(2)Register for CONNECT thru Career Link.

· To do both of these steps, visit: iuinformaticscareers.com
· Once you are a user in Career Link, log-in and click on the 'career fair/events' tab.
· Then Click on the CONNECT 2010 event link to register.

You will receive confirmation of registration, including more details about the event following registration.

We look forward to your attendance.

Very Best,
Jeremy

jeremy podany . director of career services

indiana university . school of informatics and computing

Design Thinking Readings

I was recently asked by a friend if I could make a short list of good readings on design thinking. I tried and here it is. This is a first attempt. The criteria for choosing a text has been if the reading has meant a lot to me. I have also picked texts that are not for the moment but are useful for many years (more or less timeless). So, this is a list of design thinking readings that I constantly use and go back to (I have probably forgotten some really important ones :-)

Alexander, C. (1979). The Timeless Way of Building. Oxford University Press.

Buchanan, R. Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. In The Idea of Design. V. Margolin and R. Buchanan (eds). MIT Press, 1995, 3-20.

Buxton, B. (2007) Sketching User Experience – getting the design right and the right design. Morgan Kaufman.

Cross, N. (2007). Designerly Ways of Knowing. Birkhauser, Basel.

Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Books.

Dorst, C. H. (2003). Understanding Design. Amsterdam: BIS Publisher.

Dunne, J. (1993). Back to the Rough Ground: ‘Phronesis’ and ‘Techné’ in Modern Philosophy and in Aristotle. Notre Dame, IN. University of Notre Dame Press.

Frayling, C. Research in Art and Design. Royal College of Art Research Papers, 1, 1 (1993), 1-5.

Heskett, J. (2002). Design – A Very Short Introduction. Oxford. Oxford Press.

Janlert, L-E. & Stolterman, E. (1997). The character of things. in Design Studies, Vol 18, No 3, July (1997), 297-314.

Krippendorff, K. (2006) The Semantic Turn – A New Foundation for Design. CRC Press.

Lawson, B. (2005). How designers think – the design process demystified. Architectural Press.

Lawson, B. and Dorst, K. (2009). Design Expertise. Architectural Press.

Nelson, H. & Stolterman, E. (2003). The Design Way -- Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World. Educational Technology Publications. New Jersey.

Pye, D. (1969) The Nature and Aesthetics of Design. Cambium Press; Reprint edition (July 1995)

Rittel, H, W. & Webber, M. M. (1974). Dilemmas in General Theory of Planning. in Design Research and Methods, 8 (No. 1): 31-39.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. New York, NY. Basic Books.

Schön, D. A.  (1987) Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Simon, H. A. (1996). The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Stolterman, E. The Nature of Design Practice and Implications for Interaction Design Research. in International Journal of Design, 2, 1 (2008), 55-65.