Spring Schedule
Some bright CMU student whipped together a webapp for visualizing class schedules, so here’s what I’m signed up for in the spring. Scroll down and click on the links to read the course descriptions. Because I’ll also be taking Thesis Project and Thesis Paper as courses, I’ll probably only be taking two of those listed, [...]
Kids Today
I just read a funny email off a distribution list for the school of Design. It’s from an undergrad, and he’s proposing a no-holds-barred Pictionary match between the Industrial Design and Communication Design majors. Ah, those crazy kids. As you’d expect from a Design program, most of these kids have excellent drawing skills, so it [...]
In the Outback, Tracking the Elusive Concept
Concepts whose meaning, importance to my thesis, and previous usage and development across an array of disparate academic communities has vexed and perplexed over the last few weeks: Presence Social Presence Awareness Connection Intimacy Expression Self-Presentation Relationship Dealing with them is like grabbing eels, herding kittens, or maybe hunting snipes — I’m not sure which [...]
Other CMU bloggers
Dan Saffer is doing a nice job writing about our program. Wish I’d done the same. His posts on what is an art and what is a product are key to understanding the way we think about Design (yes, big D) in our program. So, lots of good stuff, though Rob, who’s a masters student [...]
One or more will do
The School of Design is getting its act together and getting the grad studio a mess of subscriptions to design-related magazines. Our library actually has a pretty decent collection, but it’ll be nice to have have them nearby, borrow them for the weekend, etc. If you had to pick a few of your favorites, what [...]
Marc Rettig knows how to party
Sometimes people surprise you with their skills. Marc Rettig, for example. By day he’s a visiting professor: mild-mannered, insightful, and affable. By night he’s a party-thrower, the seasoned mixologist that keeps a drink in every hand and the conversation lively. Obviously, this is a man who takes the wide view of “interaction design”. It makes [...]
Paper holds books
Using 2 sheets of ordinary 8.5 x 11 inch paper, create a structure that supports the weight of 10 pounds worth of books for 30 seconds. How tall can you make that structure? Hugh Dubberly visited our grad seminar last week week and posed us design problem. Stacking three dictionaries on top of the table, [...]
Schoolwork – part 4
Blow-by-blow of last semester’s course load. Independent Study: Auditory Interfaces. I covered what I did in slightly more detail in a previous post, but to summarize, I looked at how auditory interfaces might leverage spatialization, and how a person might interact with the interface. I’m still finishing up the research, and I’m currently looking at [...]
Schoolwork – part 3
Classes I took last semester… Computing in Design An introductory programming class. We used Java. Not much else to say except that there’s better languages that an interaction design student could be learning, especially ActionScripting and Lingo, or maybe some web scripting or services languages. Hopefully that will change – there’s a proposal up for [...]
Schoolwork – part 2
In my continuing series of oversharing about the classes I took last semester… Graduate Design Studio A studio class taught by Dan Boyarski, head of the school, and by two other instructors – Colin Campbell and Tina Blaine. There were three sections to the class. 1. Interpreting Voice – mostly dealing with typography, both static [...]