lunedì 21 gennaio 2008

Thought 1_Interaction design

As a first task, last week, we have been reading literature about interaction design.
It was an overview about the history and contemporary practice of this field.
We had to pick out with five words or concepts that for us were interesting related to the different texts.
Natacha and I choose the words: “people”, “skills”, “information technology”, “products and us” and “context”.
The last concept according to me was the most valuable. We looked at the literature through that point of view and I think we came out with some interesting considerations.

Of course the context is a basic point for interaction design, but when we are talking about fictional products that becomes vital. Fictional products are those that don’t exist for real, but we can visualize them because of prototyping and to diffuse them through internet.
So people are able to create and spread these ideas thanks to the computer. If that wouldn’t exist, these concepts maybe would never been generated.

In the article “ Cultural Probes and the value of uncertainty “ the designers from the Royal College of Art tried to understand better the users involving them in the research phase, asking them to interact with their own house and analyzing the relationship with it and happening inside it.
In this case they used interaction design to understand the customers and to create new products. So they used interaction design to produce industrial design, having as a context the house and the family.

The role of context is very relevant also in the study made in Tokyo, Los Angeles and London to understand how portable devices mediate relationships to urban spaces and infrastructures.
The authors realised quite quickly that things were changing, based on the different city, but at the same time that everywhere people tried to create their own context inside the city context, generating phenomenon like “cocooning” and “camping” where they try to create their own space for example inside a public space.

Also in the article “Don’t design for “mobile” – design for mobility” the context concept is significant. In the past designers were designing thinking that people would remain in one place for a long period of time, but now the environment around the user is more and more dynamic.
We don’t have to design for the device, but for the context in which the device is being used.

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