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• Some thoughts about teaching interactions design
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Some thoughts about teaching interaction design

One of the most important challenges in the field of interactions design is how to build a new curriculum that can provide a solid learning and research foundation.

Certainly there are many valuable practices that have emerged from HCI that we can, and should use. For example, interdisciplinary work has become a standard HCI tool for obtaining a broad understanding of a use situation. Methods and practice of performing evaluations has also become a part of a useful HCI toolbox. Teaching how to combine traditional HCI practice with research methods that are rooted in design disciplines and social science is hence increasingly important in education.

For example, given the pervasive nature of interactive technologies, we need to find new ways to understand and examine the relationship between interactive products, on the one hand, and our social and cultural responses to technology, on the other. I have had great success with such approaches, using a design method called “Observation and Innovation” in both research (AtWork system from my PhD thesis, The Emotional Communication project at CID/II) and in teaching (Apple Interface Project at KTH 93-96, Digital Formgiving 99-00 and User-Centred Web design 98-00).

We also need to develop an understanding of the interactive material—finding its potential, its constraints, as well as understanding the relation between the digital interactive material and the physical material. This is fundamental and necessary knowledge for designing interactive products and we need to teach how to work with interactive material, e.g., examining the appropriate tools for developing interactive material, instructing how to build physical prototypes and digital interactive media. In an interaction design course, for example, we organized a workshop in "physical computing". The goal of this project was to give the students some experiences with using basic electronics and sensors so that they could get beyond the idea that a computer is merely a box with a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse. The outcome was exceptional; e.g. students designed a childrens’ fever thermometer that looked like a teddy bear, and playful devices that could “listen” through glass using lasers.

In conclusion I would argue that studying and learning interaction design should focus on:

• Studying the interaction between the artifact, users and the environment
• Defining the form and interaction of the artifact based on real users’ needs, usage, and usefulness
• Learning how to work with interactive materials