Interaktionsdesign 1

Overview

This course runs at 50% study speed during the whole spring semester, and is a practical master-level course with weekly design critique sessions, literature seminare, as well as several concrete design and writing assignments. Each project is documented online.

This year, the course begins with a four week project in groups to make a submission to the SIDER conference (Scandinavian Interaction Design student conference). Here you will use established methods and tools for interaction design work, in the form of sketches, interaction scenarios, and making and presenting prototypes. This work also result in the writing of a short academic paper. 

Thereafter, four weeks will follow, working around a series of small exercises, design theory, reading and discussing. Themes are interaction critizism, autobiographical design, and reflecting on the past while envisioning the future of interaction design.

The second half of the course is structured around a final project, in which students work in groups of 2-3 to develop a design and present it in a final exhibition. Each project will start out from recent research in the field.

During the project you will:

• Read up on latest trends in one area within interaction design
• Design and build a working prototype/interface that can be tested with people
• Test and give feedback on the designs of your peers
• Illustrate the design and scenario in an attractive way using video
• Present your project in a public exhibition

Feedback on all practical activities is given as group design crit sessions, where everyone provides feedback on each others work. There are also scheduled sessions for discussing your project alone with a teacher.

Learning Objectives

After completing the course, participants should be able to:

• Discuss and analyse use qualities of interactive artefacts based on concepts and frameworks from literature.
• Name and discuss current research problems in the area of interaction design in terms of contemporary commercial products and international research projects.
• Apply adequate design methods for the development of interactive systems in the different phases of system design: exploration, conceptual design, prototyping and evaluation.
• Show proof of practical experience of different interaction design techniques, in the form of a small portfolio of interactive systems.
• In academic writing reflect on a completed project, with reference to relevant literature.

Prerequisites

Introductory course in Human-Machine Interaction

Literature

The course is based on the book Designing for Interaction, by Dan Saffer (2009). 

Sample pdf of the first 24 pages:
http://www.designingforinteraction.com/designingforinteraction2_sample.pdf

Selected chapters from Interaction-design.org (Interaction Design, User experience,  Contextual Design, Philosophy of interaction, Affective Computing)

Additional litterature for reading seminars are sent out in digital form.

Students are also expected to search and select additional research papers based on personal interests, e.g. to support project work.

Tasks and marks 

All tasks will be performed in small groups of 3-5 or individually.
The course marks are Pass / Fail. 
For passing the course you have to:

• Conduct all tasks (activie participation in grou project, and hand in of all individual assignments).
• Be present and active in the crit seminars (you are allowed to miss two seminars).
• Together with another student conduct a final project and present it in the form of video as well as in final mini conference/exhibition. The video will go through a peer review. process, and the final version must take all comments in the reviews into account.
• Write a short reflection at the end of the course.

Teacher 
Ylva Fernaeus, lecturer in interaction design (YF)