to the screen. Faculty complain that there is too much to teach, yet are unwilling to reconsider the time spent in traditional content leading to media-based work. So just as my American history teacher in high school never quite made it through World War II before the end of the school year, the technological education of graphic design students runs out before they fully understand designing for a digitally mediated world. They’re left with thinking that Web or interaction design is about buttons and page flipping or about making things move.

If we understand the role of technology as the mediation of our interactions with people and the world, not just as visual representation, we design differently. Working from the original writings of Russian psychologists in the 1920s and 1930s, activity theorists describe human beings as motivated to influence something; human plans underlie human actions. This notion demands that the scope of analysis for interaction design be extended from the mere execution of a task to the meaningful context of people’s interaction with the world. If Google thought only about executing the actions of keyword searches, it would be far less successful as a company. But the ways in which Google allows us to customize what we’re looking for, to find meaning in the popularity of certain sources, to view concepts from a variety of representational perspectives depending on our motives and use, and to share and collaborate acknowledges the larger context of our activity and the effects we hope to achieve.

I would argue that all design is the mediation of interaction and that we can begin teaching that concept at the earliest levels of the curriculum. Graphic designer Massimo Vignelli’s design of the Audubon Field Guide to Birds is no less a database than shoes.com. The graphic instructions for assembling a piece of furniture from IKEA or using a prescription inhalant are no less interactive than the sequence of actions necessary to use computer software. And all are connected to larger social contexts and users’ motives to influence their environment.

In design schools we tend to view curriculum as a collection of content categories. We define courses by the objects made (motion graphics), segments of practice served (Web design), or technical processes employed (Photoshop), not by the students’ developing awareness of concepts that transcend these categories, by critical or problem-solving frameworks, or by the intended mediation by design. Again, such courses are about know-how, not know-that. In this environment, technology is rarely positioned as transforming cognitive perceptions and social practices; it remains a tool, an effect, a venue.

 

Trend: The importance of understanding community Assumption: The underlying principles of “good design” are universal

It wasn’t until I lectured in South America a decade ago that I really understood the dilemma of globalization and designing for communities other than our own. I was part of a

group of American presenters, including several who suggested that design efforts at globalization were simply a euphemism for selling American products in less-developed countries and that efforts should be taken to preserve cultural specificity. And in fact our discussion was right next door to one by Landor on ramping up the marketing of Coca-Cola in non-Western nations. Later, over dinner with designers from Uruguay, we were asked, “Who are you Americans to say that people in our country should not have Heinz ketchup, if it is better than what we produce ourselves?” In other words, our mistake was in valuing historical consciousness to the exclusion of life goals.

This potential problem of misreading communities isn’t restricted to work in other countries; it is present every time designers are asked to work in or for a culture other than their own. How do we resolve the tension between retaining cultural authenticity and a desire for progress? And what do these communities tell us about the issues that really matter in design?

Anthropologist Dori Tunstall describes the characteristics of online communities that surpass a simple collection of shared tools and venues:

• historical consciousness

• life goals

• organizational structure

• agency

• relationships

To define a community in
terms of only one dimension is
insufficient if our purpose is to
foster online interactions that
are as rich and robust as those

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September + October 2008