I wanted to let you all know that this coming fall (just 2 short weeks away) 2 of the IACT classes will be project classes centered around designing iPhone applications & games for 2 upcoming conferences.
IACT 317 (Interactive Product Design) will be designing an iPhone application which will be at the crux of the mobile experience for attendees of the Interaction 10 | Savannah conference. The international Interaction Design conference organized by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Besides the content of the class, you will be working with a couple of superstars of the user experience and interaction design communities, Will Evans (@semanticwill) and Todd Zaki Warfel (@zakiwarfel).
IACT 375 (Cognition & Perception Human Factors) will be designing an iPhone game for both the Interaction 10 conference and the CSCW ’10 conference (which is happening the same weekend as @ixd10. Because of the nature of the project, we will be spinning this class towards game design theory more than the more traditional interaction design side the course usually takes.
Both classes have lots of space, so if you want an elective or you want to maybe switch around the order you take your IACT classes (pre-reqs still matter), then please feel free to come on in!
I’m eager to find non-ID students to join either of these classes, so if you have friends in either graphic design or interactive/game design who are seniors who have some experience designing for human beings, let them know I’d give them pre-req waivers. (I do realize it is late, but ya never know!)
Have fun all!
– dave
ps. These courses are going to be INTENSE! so be ready to work hard. Get a leg up by looking at my delicious bookmarks for your classes: IACT 375 | IACT 317
Hey Dave,
Can you put up your presentations/notes on a presentation sharing site? I’d really love to see what you are teaching!
while on one hand i really look forward to the opportunity involved with working in a medium and context with so much exposure to members of the design communities, on the I’m really disappointed to learn that ipd will be…. an iphone app.. and cognitive and perceptual human factors will be an… iphone app, in my opinion both of those classes are going to go completely wasted, and not worth my money. Now if they where just studio electives or otherwise non core principle classes that i feel should exist free of the apple iphone sdk, no problem, glad to do it, but it seems as if all the nuances of physical interaction will be totally thrown under the bus in favor of exposure? Can i divert this/my course?
hope im wrong, im sure you can convince me, just by my good ole negative Nancy self, granted, the possibles for awesome apps is endless, i just hoped to see something much different and more physical in these two classes ( not that iphone apps cant be physical )
look forward to the reply
ian-
I agree with Ian. In terms of progressive projects, an iPhone app is an extremely safe, elementary realm to address in a class I feel should be more about higher-level thinking (IPD). Although I’m sure people will come up with some really interesting conference apps, I’m not sure putting so many creative resources toward something that, at the end of the day needs to be very simple, practical, and focused on implementation makes sense. I don’t want to be too negative either, but if I was taking this class I’d hope for more than an opportunity to slap some augmented reality into a database app.
I’m both at the same time encouraged and discouraged by these 2 responses.
1. the encouragement is that I’m always excited when students (anyone for that matter) is hunting for what they perceive to be the bigger challenge.
2. the discouragement is in the lack of ability to see the infinite large challenges in what is being presented.
Chris in particular “simple, practice, and focused” is using this rhetoric to describe something less challenging, but I would argue that being truly simple and practical and focused is some of the hardest challenges out there today and is a lot more work and talent to achieve than doing a high-gloss concept design that no one ever will or can use. (I’ll just ignore then whole AR thing, except to say that the game side of things I was actually thinking of including AR elements in the game.)
To Ian’s point about getting physical … I assure you that on the game side this will be quite physical and on the app side explorations in real theory and practice of NUIs is part of the agenda for sure.
Are you designing a device? Of course not. But this is interaction design, not industrial design. My last foray Winter quarter into the IPD class taught me that the IxD of physical design products actually needs its own class and that even the most senior and brightest students were distracted by trying combine IxD with ID. It is just too much to do in a 10wk class well, or appropriately without having a much deeper experience level. (I’m thinking grad program).
So I suggest a different tact in both of your analysis. Embrace constraint as a designer. There is an opportunity here to do something NOW that will effect hundreds of people as opposed to a personal concept piece that odds are will go nowhere outside of your portfolio. I would further argue that a practical piece that is used by real people who can put real reviews on your design is 100x’s more valuable to a portfolio of student and something that most students never get the chance to do.
To answer Ian’s question about deferring to another quarter, I do not know nor can guarantee when these classes will be repeated again this term.
On a brighter note, I would say I appreciate both of your candor and while it is risky to do so in such a pubic forum, I appreciate the ability to have this dialog and am still open to what you are saying.
Hmm, my original post was a bit dick-like. I actually agree with you pretty heavily now that you’ve responded with a bigger intention. The ability to experience the entire process here, from research to design to implementation to actually seeing hundreds of people using a product for its intended (or not) uses will yield a ton of valuable insights. I also agree that in comparison to going wild-out-there conceptual, being a part of a project with a collection of constraints is a lot more like the real world and will present students with new things to consider and new methods to make them work. I think my responses to comments like these will always be grounded on selfishness. When I have the chance to share an opinion about a class, I will think of myself before I consider the value for all the other students. Since I’ve worked on projects like the one suggested here in the past, I couldn’t find so much initial appeal as it didn’t seem new and ambitious enough.