My name is
Jack Moffett. I am an Interaction Designer with over ten years of experience. According to
Herb Simon, that makes me an expert, so I must have something worth sharing. I have started this venture as an exercise to spur critical thinking about my chosen profession. I hope that others may find it thought provoking as well.
DesignAday will present a brief thought about Design every weekday.
Did you hear? Registration for Interaction 13, to be held in Toronto from January 28th to February 1st, is opening June 15th. I must assume, then, that the call for speakers won’t be far behind. I’m going to have to figure out how to get my new company to send me. I also need to figure out what to submit this year. I suppose I could submit the same talk I’m giving at Midwest UX in a week and a half—I wouldn’t mind getting some mileage out of it—but I’m also interested in the possibility of teaching a workshop. I am, after all, a part-time educator. If you were to attend a conference, which of the following workshops might you be willing to pay for? These are just initial ideas, but I’d welcome any feedback you have.
Introduction to Typography for Interaction Designers
So, you are an IxDer without a visual design education. Contemporary web technologies are capable of sophisticated typographic layout, and you don’t have the chops. Learn the basics, from terminology and anatomy, to type selection, to typesetting with HTML and CSS.
Working with Developers: Use Their Tools
One of the points I push hard in my presentation is that designers should be using the same tools that the developers use for issue tracking, task assignments, version control, and documentation. I’ll review some of the popular tools in use and show you how to get set up and integrated with your development team. This will be heavily weighted towards web development.
Web UI Implementation
I’ll demonstrate best practices for implementing user interfaces in HTML and CSS. You too can ensure design integrity by delivering production ready code for your developers.
I’ve found that one of the trickier typographical concepts to teach is the proper selection of multiple typefaces for use within a design. That’s where Aura Seltzer’s Type Connection comes in.
Type Connection is a game that helps you learn how to pair typefaces.
Start by choosing a typeface to pair. Like a conventional dating website, Type Connection presents you with potential “dates” for each main character—without the misleading profile photos and commitment-phobes. The game features well-known, workhorse typefaces and portrays each as a character searching for love. You are the matchmaker. You decide what kind of match to look for by choosing among several strategies for combining typefaces. Along the way, you explore typographic terminology, type history, and more. By playing Type Connection, you deepen your own connection with type.
Type Connection is Aura’s MFA thesis project. Exquisitely designed and crafted, the site is a great example of education through gaming. And if your are really interested in type, make sure you check out her resources page.
This is great work. I’d say she deserves to graduate.
The most recent project in my information visualization class was map-based. Kofi continued with the energy theme from his poster and looked into President Obama’s proposed restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from US power plants.
The proposed restrictions will limit new fossil-fuel-burning power plants to no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per megawatt generated.
Kofi begins with a pair of maps showing the projected number of coal-fired power plants per state, based on intentions reported in 2007, along with the projected carbon emissions that would result. The second pair shows the actual number of such plants and their carbon emissions in 2009. The series of smaller maps show the current states of the proposed plants indicated in the first map pair. The final map shows the percentage change in the amount of electricity generated from coal-fired plants between 2011 and 2012.
Kofi’s maps aren’t perfect. The color scale in the final map is misleading, for example, but that is easy to fix. What I’m most pleased with is that he started with relatively uninteresting data, but with further research was able to piece together an interesting and compelling story.
They line the hallway, the one that leads
to the studio in which I learned my trade.
Black on white, positive and negative
plays on space. Symbols and marks.
A leaf, its curves delicately balanced,
thicks and thins and points, but ah…
There’s a bump. And I recall
the repetitions, tiny tremors in the wrist.
He was just an old man. The gruff voice
of not good enough, his breath stank
of coffee and cigarettes. The red ink,
as if he cut my work as deeply as my pride.
Design. I barely new the meaning
of the word. I didn’t recognize
the privilege of learning from a legend,
Rob Roy Kelly, mocked by a sophomore.
But I know now, looking at a slight
swelling on a leaf, the loss of tension,
and I remember the pride in passing
inspection. The smell of Plaka.
Kofi Opoku took on the divide of energy and the environment for his Designing for the Divide poster, and he did an outstanding job of it. The main visualization is a comparison of energy consumption per capita and energy production between France, the UK, Russia, the USA, China, Canada, and Germany. The size of the circle represents total production, while the color of the circle represents consumption per capita. Geographic landmasses are relatively sized, so one can also compare production and consumption based on area. The US is high in both production and consumption, but what’s more interesting is China, which produces and consumes the most energy, but has the lowest consumption per capita. Canada is also of interest, in that it has much lower production and consumption, but its consumption per capita is the highest.
Energy is broken out into sources for the US: coal, crude oil, natural gas, and renewable. The same measures are used, and the circle sizes are proportional to the country totals. Information about carbon emissions from fuel consumption is also presented per country, charted from 1992-2009. Other than China, all countries represented are declining. The large graph spanning the bottom width of the poster depicts US energy consumption by source and carbon emissions per capita from 1980 to 2009. There are quite a bit of additional facts and figures, as well as tips on how to save energy.
Kofi did an admirable job presenting the data in a way that allows the viewer to make comparisons, learn, and draw conclusions. Beyond that, he created an aesthetically pleasing design that draws attention and pulls you into the details. The poster was even included in J. Ford Huffman’s presentation during the conference. I’m very proud of Kofi’s work.
The latest project in my information visualization class was directly tied to the Designing for the Divide conference. The chair, Eve Faulkes, wanted a number of large-format posters that addressed the divides that would be discussed during the conference. Lindsey Estep chose to focus on the economy. She selected four pairs of competing stances, each pair composed of a liberal and conservative view. Each pair also addressed economics from a different level of granularity: global, national, community, and personal. The poster is divided into four columns dealing with those levels. After presenting the argument, the “Meanwhile…” section presents several bullet points illustrating what has been happening while our representatives argue. For example, the U.S. has dropped to 5th in global economic competitiveness while we debate how to decrease our debt. This is then followed by data visualizations presenting evidence of the claims. Finally, at the bottom of each column is a section labeled “But I’m only one person… What can I do?” where readers can learn how they can help by doing their homework, lending a hand, and sharing their voice.
Lindsey really knocked this one out of the park. The overall concept is solid. The details of the individual graphs are exquisitely crafted. The overall aesthetic is perfect for the subject matter. I couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out.
There were a lot of outstanding talks at Designing for the Divide last weekend, but the speaker that really inspired me was Emily Pilloton, a designer that moved from San Francisco to Bertie County, North Carolina, at the behest of Dr. Chip Zullinger, the school superintendent. What started as a request to build an educational playground system evolved into a design-build high school curriculum.
You have to hear Emily’s story in her own words. Check out her article Get Local on Design Mind and her 2010 TED Talk. Those take you up to the beginning of Studio H; Emily told us the rest of the story Saturday morning. Dr. Z. was chased out of the county, and all of his projects, including Studio H, were on the chopping block. Rather than packing it in, Emily and her partner took their plans to the community college and pressed forward. The work they have accomplished with the remedial high school juniors is amazing. I never thought chicken coops could make me teary-eyed, but these are both sculptural works of art and testaments to design process and education. Make the time to look at the projects showcased at Studio H. This is truly great work.
