Hugh Dubberly's book: Digital Designer

Hugh Dubberly is teaching an indepedent course here for us. I came across his website today and find this article perticularly interesting, a little bit old-fashioned, but penetrates my own believes.

Here's a link that you can download this book: download.

Here're just two paragraphs from his book:

What are the ways digital designers will be used in the next few years as new devices and better programs are developed?

Some opportunities for designers are easy to see: More games. More web sites. More web-based applications. A proliferation of hand-held devices.

Less obvious is the need for designers to help make sense of changing technology: The long-promised digital convergence has arrived. Your phone is a camera, a radio and music player, a game device, a PDA, and a computer. Soon your TVs will be connected to each other, to your stereo, to your game machines, and to the internet. Computing is becoming “ubiquitous:” Anywhere. Anytime. Wireless will keep us connected. GPS and RFID will identify the location of everything. The distinction between virtual and physical will fade.

These changes create the opportunity for many new kinds of products. Companies will experiment with different combinations of technologies, services, and business models. They will tinker with variations on organization and interface. They will try new things. They will experiment—and all of these experiments will require design and designers.

At the same time, the practice of design is changing. Design has moved from a focus on form and meaning to a focus on action and interaction. Increasingly, designers are faced with the need to design integrated systems. Systems of systems. Connected sets of products and services. These systems form ecologies that grow and evolve. Their outcome cannot be pre-determined. Even the full range of use may be difficult to predict.

The challenge for designers becomes creating expandable platforms. Creating tools for creating tools. Designing for customization. Designing for conversation. Designing for evolution.

Among the biggest challenges for designers will be identity, privacy, and community. + How should people be able to represent themselves online? + How do we preserve anonymity while also maintaining community? + How should progressive disclosure and reciprocating disclosure work? + How do we encourage diversity without losing a shared center?

What skills should the new media and digital designer learn to be literate in this field?

The main thing for designers is to be curious—and to learn how to learn. My ideal curriculum might look something like this.

Design Theory

• Design Methods
• Research Methods
• Information Structures and Key Models
• Principles of Interaction
• Philosophy and Ethics of Design

Visual Studies

• Principles of Visual Perception
• Rapid Visualization Drawing
• Typography (editorial and display)
• Content Management Systems (grid systems)
• Way-finding Systems
• Information Design (visualizing information structures)
• Motion Graphics
• Sound Applied to Motion Graphics
• Film Making

Design Practice

• Information Spaces
• Tools and Applications
• Games and Collaborative Authoring Environments
• Interactive Spaces
• Controls and Haptic Interfaces (physical interfaces)
• Integrated Systems of Products and Services
• Tools for Making Tools
• Systems that Evolve

History

• of Art
• of Architecture
• of Graphic Design and Product Design
• of the Design Methods Movement
• of Science and Science Fiction
• of Information, Computing, and Interaction

Computer Science

• Procedural Programming
• Data Structures
• Object-oriented Programming
• Web and Network Applications
• Building Sensors, Displays, and Actuators
• Modeling with Fractals, Genetic Algorithms, and Cellular Automata

Communications

• Writing
• Public Speaking
• Rhetoric
• Semiotics
• Epistemology
• Cybernetics (science of feedback)

Related Disciplines

• Biology (natural systems)
• Cognitive Psychology (learning systems)
• Sociology (social systems)
• Cultural Anthropology and Ethnography
• Marketing
• Economics
• Organizational Management

Software 2.0 as an art form

I was thinking about a weird concept of software 2.0 as an art form. This idea contributes to my innate artsy faith. Software 2.0, other than the traditional perceived software concept, is a combination of functional, emotional and religional experience existence. It can be a piece of architecture, a graphic design, an app, or a game, it has something to do with traditional software because it's essentially "helpful" and "smart", it has something new there, I'm not sure what, but maybe you can help me figure out.

The Functional Goal: Zero UI

Design is to unfold the nature of a system. A good UI design fits to human's ever-changing flowing mental model. It needs to be simple, transparent and personalized. It is so good that the user barely realize it's presence. It's task-oriented, and barrier-blurred.

The Emotional Goal: Software as an art form

Software 2.0 is a medium, a utility, a tool, a self-transcending stage and a life-enhancing system, it's functional and experiential, it can be a web app, a desktop app, a game, a media, a SNS...or all together. By using it repeatedly, user appreciate it's very beauty in presence, it encompasses multiple dimensions and crosses mediums. Software literally becomes a new art form.

 

The Religion Goal: Ritual

Software 2.0 turns mundane experience into a ritual. Users become both the experience consumers and creators. Software usage becomes a luxurious behavior, and a religion element is needed.

 

Software 2.0 UI design needs collaboration

User experience design and user-centered thinking immerses into every aspect of human life, it encompasses and involves designers from different fields, architects, fashion designers, graphic designers,filmmakers,game designer, and mostly importantly, it needs the users' proactive participation.

Because this idea is pretty weird, I'm afriad my peers will take me as a freak, so I won't publish on my main blog. But at the same time, I have an awesome idea today, and I talked with a couple of friends of mine, we all like this idea of building a platform for young designers from difference fields who concerns about user experience and user-centered design to express their crazy ideas. We all believe young people are leaders of next generation, and this platform can help design idea spreading, design education and open-source design. It'll be a web app that allows any passionate designers publish their voice of design, it may incorproate twitter, but it should be sophisticated enough to promote free and professional thinking. 

So I quickly gathered a bunch of graduate students friends today, from Harvard architecture design school, Yale University graphic design program, MIT Media Lab, IIT industry design program, Stanford design program, CMU HCI and Interaction design program, USC landcaping program, and USC film/animation program. It's very interesting to find our ideas about human experience are so different, often contradicting, but interestingly contradicted.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited. Forgive my mis-spelling english words, I'll fix them later.

User Experience Designer interview questions

Thank God, so far I have interviewed with the following companies, Frog design, Huge, Roundarch, Zaah, RGA, IDEO, Blizzard, Microsoft XBOX, Microsoft Health, Microsoft Office, Simens, Apple, Salesforce, eBay, Amazon, Bloomberg, and several start-ups...

So here's a routine question list for user experience position:

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

2. Why do you choose user experience design?

3. Choose one piece of work that you are mostly proud of, and explain the process.

4. What is your favorite UI design, it can be a website, or application, or mobile UI...

5. Why do you like it?

6. Point to their website, how do you improve our website?

7. Do you have other questions?

Seriously, now I'm a master of interviewee in user experience domain. Wanna know how do I get 6 digits pay number as a fresh graduate student? please dial toll free number ***-**-****.... haha, hope this interview question list helps you. 

A study of GPS and the implications of UCD.

Yesterday at Hugh Dubberly's class, Chris, Paul, Phil, Kyle and I were studying some UX theories.

For some reason Chris began to complain how much he hated his Garmin GPS: It apparently gives him sort of connivence and freedom of exploring a city, but at the same time it makes him lose the ability of way-finding, as he said he wouldn't be able to make anywhere without his GPS in Pittsburgh, where he already spent two years in his life. As he begins to be dependent upon a tool, his life choices are restricted to a certain level, and the original good feeling diminishes - Well, I have the same feeling about my iPhone before I abandoned it.

People talked about GPS like this all the time. However, it makes us think, what is the criteria of a good software?

I think a good software needs to "perform" two fundamental functions:

A. Functions as a tool to help people accomplish tasks in its most convenient and considerate way.

B. Empowers people to feel better of themselves. Let people have a better control of their life, meaning, a GPS has the responsibility to make people feel they are a good driver, not some stupid followers that obey a machine.

A good and successful software = A + B

A quick example is Pandora, whenever I express dislikes for a song, it responses this way" Thank you, I'll never play this song again", it flatters me in a strange way, and it just makes me feel fabulous, even it never speaks like"You are so right about this damn song, I totally agree with you, how about let's play something with taste, my master?"

One thing I don’t like User centered design is that users are given too much meaningless burden, either for concept generation or usability testing, however, in real life users adapt to what they already have, and its’ interaction designers’ responsibility to make the software more humane. I appreciate brave designers impose their own bold visions onto a product, which is a more artistic way of designing softwares - make the users your audience to enjoy the performances, at the same time, give their the authority to twist the product better.

Luxurious software

Sounds intriguing, I know. Software as a luxury. I had a hard time propose and market this idea to my peers. It indeed comes from my terribly artistic psyche, but that's also a buzzword hidden in all the things we talk about today, User-centered design, web 3.0, SNS, etc., I have been thinking about this for a while, and I define the thesis work I have been working on as a cutting-edge luxurious software for collectors to express themselves, manage their collections, and fundamentally, turn their mundane everyday life into a scared, ritual journey. (You may see this work in the next CHI conference).
I want to start with the term luxury. Luxury is the state of great comfort and extravagant living, it is an inessential, desirable item that is expensive or difficult to obtain. This sounds like so contradictory to the definition of a software, which is, traditionally, viewed as a tool that suppose to help people to accomplish a certain task, instead of fulfilling some extravagant emotionally needs. I also assume “luxury software”’s core concept will not be associated to luxurious price, but luxurious experiences.

There’re a lot of existing softwares deal with luxurious experiences, the popular ones are facebook and twitter, perceived generally as social softwares, but essentially contain a large part of luxurious component.

As the concept of luxurious experience comes to the digital domain, we do need a deep study of what existing conventions in the physical world should be borrowed, and which conventions should be abandoned to achieve a better luxurious experience in virtual world. The transition of old-form software(productive product, desktop apps) to new-form software(experience product, web apps) is phenomenal. I tried to avoid the concept of “software as an art form” but “software as an luxurious product”, however, I do see a lot of opportunities for traditional artists, filmmakers, composers and product designers to participate into the process of user-centered design, helping interaction designers to impose better pitches for the creative leap.

And what's the deal? The emmergency of luxurious softwares reflects the needs that people want to play a better role in the specific task they are trying to accomplish, as well as being a better role-player(better than others) in the world.  People do pay a lot of money on things that make them feel better of themselves.