Assignment 6: Thoughtful Interaction Design

Standard

Reading
CH 1 from Jonas Löwgren and Erik Stolterman, Thoughtful Interaction Design

To handle the complex nature of interaction design, a designer needs to be thoughtful. Interaction design is complex because it is dealing with digital artifacts which is evolving rapidly. This chapter argues that reflecting on this rapid changes to find reflective position is essential. It becomes designer’s responsibility to ask a question what is a good design and what is a bad design.

A good design depends on the context. Who use it and what’s its relation with the environment. Hence, it’s relative, and continuously needs to be redefined. A designer should develop her judgment muscles to define what a good design is.

A designer’s job is to challenge status quo. She is a problem solver who wants to make this world a better place. As designing is also an ethical matter, she should discern whether to grant all of her client’s wish or not if it will affect the societal goal negatively.

As a follow up to this reading, I have found a video by the author. This video contains his view about sketching to do exploration, doing execution as a form of sketching, and doing exploration (while working with experts).

At the last part, he mentioned that for collaborative art, the work will just begin after the product is launched. He gave an example of a group of students in Sweden hijacking mannequins on fashion stores. They modified the mannequin to look like a human being, dressed it, and put it back to the store display. This work, then, foster a discussion about our distorted perception of women.

I think that these excerpts and video will help me outlining what I should be doing for my FYP process:

  1. Sketching the solution, making prototypes for people to test out
  2. Explore the possibilities of the outcome, working side by side with the experts of the migrants: researchers, activists, and the migrants themselves
  3. Continue the project beyond this 1 year period of FYP, making real changes in the society.

Questions
1. In Singapore, which type of company will hire this kind of thoughtful designer who can really make changes in the society? Maybe because so far, I have only worked as a graphic designer, my job scope is pretty limited to creating visuals on the screen, I can’t really see the impact of my works..

2. How to deal with difficult client who do not understand the need of creating the best solution amidst any obstacle? What if he/she only cares about his/her personal goal without thinking about the society it will give impact to?