brightly colored food

Jeff Howard, a recent CMU Interaction Design alumna and friend, just put together a set of Amazon Listmania booklists that cover the primary readings for the graduate program, along with a couple of selected courses. They’re all good, but I especially recommend the Graduate Design Seminar and Design Management lists. Both were taught by Richard Buchanan, who’s one of the smarter people I’ve met.

It’s a little sad though, seeing the lists. Like all CMU Design grad students, I took the seminar. The list looks like a network without the nodes. Much of the value I got from the classes was from the frameworks he taught, and the connections between Dewey, Goffman, Weiner, Ekuan, Burke, Rand, Simon, etc are missing. It’s still valuable to have the list, but it’s a bummer that Buchanan hasn’t sat down to write it out all out….

Continuing my penchant for sharing reading lists (see my mislabeled “Books” category for more), here’s one sent out to an anthropology listserv I’m on for Ethnographic Perspectives on Design. I’m guessing Carl or Anne would have some others to add…

Brenda Laurel is editing a book called Design Research that’s coming out in December. Looks like an interesting mix of contributors - you don’t often see Darrel Rhea (weblog) and Eric Zimmerman both writing under the same cover.

Thinking Visually is an excellent book. That’s all.

Keeping with my tendency to collect reading lists, here’s a list of readings on social networks. I’m doing research and early design work around some concepts involving social networks, so suggested resources are welcome.

I was trying to phrase my discomfort about the current trend to apply network theory (especially power laws) willy-nilly to social networks, and thankfully Anne already spoke more eloquently than me. The above stuff is written by social scientists, not physicists, their eagerness to contribute notwithstanding.

From Seb’s Open Research

Looks like Volume One of Christopher Alexander’s four volume series The Nature of Order is now shipping. It’s called “The Phenomenon of Life”. The others will be shipping in the following months.

From Z + Partners

For the science-minded out there…

If you don’t have the time or patience for the almost 1500 pages of Stephen Jay Gould’s The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, you might want to check out the review from this week’s New Yorker. It’s a nice summary of his life’s work, most of which is reflected in the book. Even if you don’t agree with all of his theories, he was one of the best science writers around.

If you don’t have the time or patience for the almost 1200 pages of Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science, you should join me at CMU this Thursday at 4:30, where he’ll be speaking. I’m sure that there are few better places to hear it than at a school as nerdy as Carnegie Mellon.

Also, here’s an interview with Wolfram on Science Friday, an NPR show. Here’s a review of his book by Stephen Weinberg, and another by Ray Kurzweil.

Here’s another reading list to check out. It’s from Timo Arnall, a user experience designer “currently living somewhere between London, Helsinki and Oslo”. Of the list, he says, “The following books cover many disciplines, from Interaction and Visual Design to Filmmaking to Architecture, but all relate loosely to the various processes, ideologies, visions and practicalities of Experience Design.” Well put. It’s one of the better reading lists I’ve come across or been pointed to, and definitely worth checking out.

If I had to give a shout out to anyone on Timo’s list, it would be John Dewey. Through his writing, John and I have been spending a lot of quality time together. I’m working through sections of Art as Experience, Democracy and Education, and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. As experience designers, Dewey is important because he lays out the foundation of what makes an experience and what makes an experience meaningful. It’s difficult to get through at times, but rewarding one you piece it all together.

Are there any other reading lists worth mentioning?

Note to self: add this reading list to my list of reading lists.

Drafts of the first three chapters from Jenny Preece’s upcoming “Interaction Design” book.

Chapter 1 - What is Interaction Design: Interview with Gitta Salmon
Chapter 2 - Understanding and Conceptualizing Interaction: Interview with Terry Winograd
Chapter 3 - Understanding Users

Looking at the contents listing, it looks like about half of the book is interviews. Seems maybe a bit excessive, though most of the interviews seem interesting.

Hope you all had a nice holiday vacation. Things are still a bit hectic around the brightly colored HQ, but in a good way…