Last winter luck would have it and we had an amazing conference here at SCAD called Interaction 10. Why does SCAD bring conferences like these to Savannah? Well, to give our students access to stuff that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. There were relationships made, internships found, lessons learned. One such event of serendipity is that one of the founders of the Arduino project (an open source physical computing prototyping kit–hardware and software) was here. He is continuing his work in the area of developing tools so that designers and artists can easily prototyping with physical electronics in ways only previously available to electronics engineers.
Well this person, Massimo Banzi of Torino, Italy was here doing a workshop and he brought with him his latest offering called TinkerKit. The kit was an arduino board, a sensor shield, wires and custom manufactured sensors. Everything you need to do some exploration. Well, he was kind enough to leave one of these with me and to put me in touch with his manufacture so I can buy some more for my students. 8 Students took up the charge to learn both the programming side and the physical computing side. I must say that I had very low expectations, but as usual whenever I do my students always prove me wrong and do oh so well!
The direction was vague for this first class. Just create a product that serves some utility. Innovation or originality was not required, though some of the ideas are pretty interesting. My fave statement from a student was during the final (paraphrasing):
I wish I started working on the hardware side of my project earlier. It was really great to see how ideas shifted as I was working in the physical form.
A teacher of physical prototyping could never be happier than to hear a student make a comment like that.
So here are the final presentations and videos (sometimes done in 1 shot).
Today the social network of the Interaction 10 conference got started–http://interaction10.crowdvine.com
I’d like those of you who know you’ll be attending whether you registered or not yet to register there. For example a student from afar is already asking for help. Would be nice of students show the true hospitality of the Hostess City.
IxDA has launched today its first Interaction Design Student Competition.
All the information about the competition can be found at the conference web site: http://interaction.ixda.org/student-competition/
The exciting bullet points:
1) Submissions are of previous work by individual students or recent grads (undergraduate and graduates are both welcome; up to 1 year out) of work done as students. (no teams)
2) There are 2 major stages of the competition:
* Stage 1 is the submission of a substantial telling of your student project in the form of a process book. This will lead to 5 finalists.
* Stage 2 will bring those 5 finalists all expenses paid to IxDA Interaction 10 | Savannah where they will compete through 3 onsite challenges which will include elements of public voting.
3) Stage 1 submissions will be done between Nov 23 & Nov 30 via the conference web site. Announcements will be made when opened, but preparations should begin immediately.
For more information please go to the conference web site: http://interaction.ixda.org/student-competition/
This student is posting some of his impressive work as it is happening, and thus giving the world a glimpse in real time to the curriculum that SVA’s new MFA in IxD is producing. Impressive!
Check out this video that demonstrates a new way of thinking about desktop interaction at both the hardware and software level. I’m duly impressed. A link to my critiques follow.
The team of students are working hard on their social exploration game for Interaction 10 and CSCW 2010 which are both taking place this coming February here in Savannah.
First check out the presentation on their process to date:
All IACT classes are going to take 90min out of their class time to work on the following design challenge put forth by Core77 and Portigal Consulting. I will be coming to class next week with more details for everyone.
For all my students and anyone else who is studying or practicing IxD and wondering where to look to see GREAT IxD research. THIS is gold! This utterly the best presentation of the behaviors of interacting using Near Field Communications (NFC) technologies.
The folks at the Oslo School of Architecture & Design (AHO), Touch project (http://nearfield.org) have always presented great work (Take a look at their archives). But this piece in particular is the perfect combination of IxD theory, material execution, and theoretical visualization all in one video.
