Today, I had the opportunity to speak with Joseph in more detail about the next assignment — the 3,000 word coursework based on answering the question, “The problems with my practice in the 21st Century?” Over the last few weeks I had been considering writing explicitly around the impact of the iPhone. However, Joseph wanted me to come out of my comfort area, and consider looking at design in a more macro sense.

The Macro Approach

This macro approach led to me to thinking more of what kind of a designer I am, and only recently I realised that my area of expertise is user-centred design, which covers quite a large area from User Interaction, User Experience, Information Design and Usability to name a few.

Joseph suggested reading some extracts on the “Design Studies: A Reader” book, as well as looking at “Lev Manovich – The Language of New Media” to help me apply their theory to answer or provide a possible solution(s) to the problems within my practice area.

Multi-discipline

To answer some of the problems I will be looking at user-centred design pieces across different disciplines and to analyse its approach on the effectiveness. I will also be looking into commodities, democratic (sharing), and the process of removing the barriers to entry from the user’s perspective.

Action Agreed

To continue reading into the work of Edward Tufte, Don Norman and Lev Manovich, and to create a detail plan of the different sections I will focus in on for the 3,000 word assignment.

Yesterday, I did a Presentation on the Intelligence of Interaction as part of our coursework for the Design Thinking module. My task was to take a single design object — iPhone and look at theory by Nicholas Negroponte on User Interaction. Most of my research was based on Negroponte’s book, Being Digital, and a video of him on TED.

Brainstorming

Slides

I had originally agreed with Joseph if I could postpone my Presentation on 17th November to the following week — 24th November, as I had a plan to be at an iPhone training course. Unfortunately, the course was postponed to the following week, so it was best for me to present on the original date.

Assignment – Presentation

The assignment was to take a single design object, and discuss it in terms of theoretical reading. The Presentation to be between 10 – 15 mins, accompanied with a 500 word written statement.

Interaction v’s Packaging

Joseph had simplified the process for me, and told me that he was looking for one theory, and one object. I was very interested in working with a theory of “Intelligence of Interaction” by Nicholas Negroponte. I was also interested in the role of packaging, and looking at Adrian Forty on the Lucky Strike redesign by Raymond Loewry.

Action Agreed

To either take Interaction or Packaging, and find one theory and one object for the 10 minute presentation.

It was great to finally get talking to Joseph McBrinn about the two assessments. I really did not what to do for each assignment, and was good to talk to Joseph as I was finding a lot of the reading material very difficult to comprehend. Although I did notice that from reading the difficult texts, I found reading other material to be much easier and my overall understanding was improving.

Assignments

For the first assignment we discussed about looking into the theory of designers such as Nicholas Negroponte, and Don Norman and apply the emotional design and the how we will interact with touch sensitive screens.

For the second assignment I will have to look more so at the area of my practice — iPhone Development, and we talked about:

• Look at the bigger picture how does the iPhone affect the way we interact with the world.
• If stranded on a beach would an iPhone be one of the 3 objects you would take with you?
• In 9 months Apple have reached over 1 Billon iPhone App sales, and how can this effect the economic values of the world and its competitors.
• The pros and cons of the iPhone device.
• The possible effect of the much anticipated Mac Tablet have on the consumer market?

Action Agreed

We agreed to start looking at different theories by individuals such as Nicholas Negroponte, and Don Norman, and how these theories can be applied to the object — iPhone.

As part of our Design Thinking module, Joseph, Chris and Debbie organised the whole class for a field trip to London, to visit the V & A Museum, The Design Museum and The Tate Modern. It was a great day out, and it was a new experience for me as it opened my mind to the context of design, and to get me away from the laptop for awhile.

I took some photos of the exhibitions on my iPhone:

V & A Museum (6 Photos)

The Design Museum (11 Photos)