demand the deep understanding of audiences so necessary for achieving this transformation? And just who is going to argue with saving the whales? So where in these “social” projects do students learn to reconcile the competing values that are so typical of today’s design challenges?
September + October 2008
interactions
education is individual performance, ownership, and a belief in designer control. Our frequent location within a school or department of fine arts reinforces this perspective. And as faculty we do little in our construction of student projects to undermine the notion that the role of the designer is as the arbiter of meaning and value, both of which are presumed to reside solely in “good form.” We invite design speakers to our programs to share their personal portfolios and to tell war stories about what they were able to “get past” a client, inculcating students in a we/they culture. For the typical design student, clients and users are exotic others, understood from the student’s own observations and assumptions, not through much input from real people. And even when the student is aware of different demographic groups as potential audiences for design, there is little comprehension of the uphill task of persuasion.
David Rose shared this model with several of us at an AIGA Experience Design meeting in Telluride several years ago. I’ve never seen it published, so I’m going from a sketch on a cocktail napkin. David’s model describes the transformation necessary to take someone from “not being ready to know something” to “being an advocate” and suggests that different channels of message distribution may more or less be appropriate in reaching people at different stages of acceptance. Think about Glaser’s poster, “We are All African,” or any of the social-message projects that permeate today’s design studio classes. In what way do they
I’ve come to think that if I hear the phrase, “The computer is just a tool” one more time, I will shoot myself. This is the ultimate “know-how” viewpoint. I am eternally frustrated by books that segregate discussions of print from discussions of interaction design and by courses that isolate the design of screen displays from the larger technological systems and experiences of which they are a part. We are confronted daily with evidence of how technology mediates and transforms our perceptions, intentions, reasoning, and actions.
In the majority of college and university design programs, however, we have “curriculum by accrual.” The study of digital media is tacked on to a print-based armature; students get to networked communication courses only after they have met their traditional requirements in print and only if the human and material resources of the program go far enough to support additional coursework. As a result, these digital media classes frequently encourage the transfer of print-based values
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