February 2011
19 posts
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The Art of Video Games
The Smithsonian is preparing a new exhibition, titled The Art of Video Games, to run from March 16, 2012 to September 30, 2012.
The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. The exhibition will feature some of the most influential...
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VADS
The Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) is an outstanding online resource for educators, students, researchers, and anyone with an interest in art and design. The site provides access to 47 collections of photography, paintings, posters, and other imagery. Some are relatively small, such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Northern Italian Sketchbook, containing 94 pages of his architectural drawings,...
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Interaction 11 Student Competition
Liz Danzico and Andy Polaine organized the second-annual Student Competition, focused on the concept of “Use, not own”.
Great interactions can connect people to create opportunities for experiences that outweigh the “joy” of ownership. How can we reduce our environmental footprint by sharing products or services?
Four finalists (two of which were two-person teams, so six students total) were...
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Interaction 11 Coverage
There has been quite a bit of excellent reporting of Interaction 11. Johnny Holland was on the ground, giving detailed coverage of every session, which has been compiled into four lengthy posts with photos:
Interaction 11 report: day 1 overview Interaction 11 report: day 1 - inside-out design innovations and design meets branding Interaction 11 report: day 2 Interaction 11 report: day 3
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Design for Evil
Kaleem Khan’s Interaction 11 lightning session Design for Evil: Ethical Design seems to have created a fair amount of discussion—there has at least been a lot of Twitter traffic about it—and as that seems to have been his intent, one might say it was successful. However, I did not find the talk to be at all illuminating and was frankly put off by his overly dramatic and condescending presentation...
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Design of a Conference
One aspect of Interaction 11 that everyone seems to think worked very well was the session format. Thursday and Friday both started with single-track sessions in the morning. Thursday had two tracks in the afternoon, and Saturday saw two tracks in both the morning and afternoon sessions. Friday afternoon found attendees bussing off to activities around Boulder: everything from the design of...
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Tweetscape
Catalyst Group put together a wonderful little piece of work for Interaction 11. The #ixd11 Tweetscape tracked the conference hashtag and visualizes the Twitter traffic by session. When the page first loads, it gives an overview of the most used keywords and hashtags, the most prolific tweeters, and a photo timeline. Clicking a keyword, hashtag, photo, or person results in a listing of the related...
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Whining About Defining
There were a number of Interaction 11 attendees that expressed annoyance at the fact that many of the sessions, including several keynotes, were dealing with the definition of Interaction Design. Carl Alviani explained how we should be describing IxD to the outside world, Richard Buchanan addressed who we are, where we are, and where we are going, and Bruce Sterling’s closing was equal parts...
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Where’s the Exit?
I took this photo in the St. Julien Hotel. I’m all for safety, but this is overkill. Furthermore, the main staircase, the most direct way out of the building from this location, was directly behind me.
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That’s a Wrap
Interaction 11 has come to an end, and what a trip it has been. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with MJ Broadbent, Jon Kolko, and the talented team they assembled to organize the conference. After a year and a half of planning, it’s hard to believe that it is over after a few short days. I’ll write more about the conference in the coming days, as it will likely occupy my thoughts for...
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Bill Verplank
Certainly, Bill Verplank is one of the legends of Interaction Design. He is the type of person that doesn’t take anything for granted, constantly surveying, analyzing, and understanding his environment. He showed us the sketches he drew during his flight to Denver as a way to understand how his flightpath compared to the rising/setting sun. I had the distinct pleasure of riding back to the hotel...
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My New Pet Peeve
My wife has two cats. My older daughter has a newt. My younger daughter has two rats. I have a bunch of peeves, and I just got a new one. I’m really tired of wireless networks that require you to try to view a website before you can get an internet connection. Rather than seeing the webpage you expect, you are redirected to a different page. Sometimes you have to press a button, and other times...
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Interaction 11 is so on!
In case you didn’t know, Interaction 11 is happening in Boulder right now. I’m here, helping make it happen. Posts will likely be spotty this week, or non-existent. We shall see.
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The Number of the Counting Shall Be 3
I was trying to order outlet strips for use in the workshops at Interaction 11 next week. I need 30 of them, and I figured I would take advantage of my Amazon Prime membership to have them delivered to Boulder, saving us having to shop for them there. After adding the outlet strip to my cart, I increased the quantity from 1 to 30 and had it recalculate my total. I sent the figure to the conference...
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Donation
Those of you that have been reading DesignAday for awhile know that I only ever skip a post for a holiday or occasional business trip. Well, today’s post is forfeit to Interaction 11 logistics planning. Y’all do want a good conference, don’t you?
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Interaction-Design.org
Interaction-Design.org is on a mission to make research accessible. They just announced their new encyclopedia, taking a curated approach, rather than using Wikipedia’s model.
We are proud to introduce a new type of top-quality and free encyclopedia dealing with Interactive Design, Usability, and User Experience. It has taken the opposite approach of Wikipedia and crowd-sourcing: All entries are...
