What Carnegie Mellon Interaction Design Program is lacking of.

Undoubtly it was, it is, and it is still going to be the best interaction design program in USA, or the world. Because this program produces people who are design thinkers, practitioners, and entreprenurs.

However, this program lacks a significant part that might actually not being it's fault.

That is we didn't learn much about "form" here, two-year is a short time, this school assume everybody here already has a good understanding of traditional design skills, that includes awesome drawing skills, good understanding of forms, arts, films, animation, communication and media, branding and marketing, a mastery of programming skills and a solid understanding of technology. When we are focusing on strategies, visions, models, systems, services, user research and user-centered design at this school, it pretty surprising to find out that not everybody can carry these high-level things and encorporate them into fantastic design solutions - solutions that illusions people and potentially becomes next-gen best-selling products.

For instance, holding a mixture of backgrounds in computer science, design and art, and being a perfectionist, often times I'm annoyed by the concept of the so-called video sketch thing, it is such a great idea, but not everybody is doing it right, and the terrible thing is people formed a convention here that everybody follows - an underlying rule that stops creativity(I gave bad video sketches a name CMU_VS). I wonder what is the creteria of a good video sketch, in my experience, I have been producing documentation films, animations, SIGGRAPH paper demos, technology showcase, software tutorials and presentation pitches, I know CMU_VS can be viewed as a great delivery for school projects, but not for a larger audience. A great interaction design demo, should carry a sense of professionalism, it should be concise, effective, goal-oriented, and probably, paticipatorily interactive.  I liked Kyle Vice's presentation today, not just for he produced a real piece of software, but the way he pitched it, was just out of expectation and awesome - a real experience is worth a 1000 pieces of videos.

Another example, I think CMU design students should at least independently design a real software as their thesis, meaning, self conduct research, design, build, market, and sell.  Produce hundreds of wireframes, visualize them. And finally, publish a case study paper bridge the research, design and business. This is something I require for myself to do, and I think that should be the requirement for every CMU Interaction design graduate students.