Critical Mass | brett.ingram@me.com
The downside is our lack of common ground within the discipline. There is no consistency in our educational framework across interaction design disciplines and academic institutions. Consistency provided by similarly structured programs allows other professions (such as architecture) to operate using a common language and a similar, practical foundation. Since many people working in interaction design come to the profession through areas of study that are very different from a focused HCI program, there are many opportunities for miscommuni-cation and wasted professional time, energy, and, most of all, creative vision. By consciously agreeing to be more cohesive in interaction design education (and by learning how to do so from other fields who do it successfully), we have the opportunity to create a common language while maintaining a spirit of experimentation.
November + December 2009
interactions
If you are reading this article, you probably work or study in a field that can generally be referred to as interaction design. No matter the specific role, we are all working toward producing an end product even as we work on different aspects of it. This product typically involves a digital experience and a form of communication, and it increasingly includes an embodiment in the physical world. That impact on and connection with the physical world is becoming ever more important, and it begs reflection upon the holistic thinking and oversight that goes into developing physical artifacts and environments.
There is a field that similarly combines a wide variety of skills, which include engineering, production, art, design, business—even a kind of interaction design—among other disciplines. It is a field that literally involves getting down in the dirt to actualize projects, and yet must exist at the highest cultural levels of society. The practitioners of this field are highly pragmatic, limited by budgets and business needs, yet obsessed with the impact that their work will have on the larger society. In fact, society as a whole has an understanding of what these practitioners do (even if it has been mythologized). This field has an all-encompassing term that is often expressed with a capital “A” the way “art” can sometimes be expressed. The field I am referring to is architecture.
There is much we can learn from examining architecture and how it is practiced. It has grown out of a practical need that has existed for thousands of years, while the modern profession dates back to the 19th century. Architects have had a long time to learn by experience, create an end product, bring together many disciplines, and develop their profession.
A look at some of the differences between interaction design and architecture helps to explain some of our plight. As interaction designers we are applying our skills to a rapidly changing technological landscape. We don’t have thousands of years of experience on which to base our design decisions. What we create is often fleeting and evanescent. It can be changed rapidly and is written not in stone, but often in light.
This ability for rapid change and the newness of the field means we often take the negative impacts of our work far more lightly than architects do. We don’t have to worry about our work collapsing on top of our users—and there is an upside to that. It allows us to experiment freely. It allows for new ideas to constantly crop up. It allows for many people with different academic and professional backgrounds to participate in the process. It allows for a democratic approach. Anyone can become an interaction designer.
A Deep Historical Precedence Architecture is a profession that enjoys tremendous respect. We have architects who are cultural superstars either historically, like Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, or currently, such as Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Santiago Calatrava. I bring up
Photograph by Karen Blumberg
• Fallingwater, the acclaimed Pennsylvania-based house designed by
Frank Lloyd Wright, organically incorporates nature and architecture.
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