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.
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.
Lindsey Estep decided to research Melanoma for her time series project, and she found some interesting data.
Although melanoma of the skin appears less significant than other major cancers, its incidence rates have been steadily increasing. Perhaps surprising, the effects of this stealthy cancer are not limited to sunny, coastal areas.
Her graphs show that while the occurrence of melanoma is much lower than other cancers, it has steadily increased over several decades at a rate many times higher than any other cancer. The final chart compares melanoma incidence and death rates in West Virginia and California against the U.S. average.
I’ve been seeing a lot of questions recently along the lines of “Should Interaction Designers know how to do visual design?” and “Should Interaction Designers know how to code?” My opinion on both questions is that they are the wrong questions.
There are very talented, successful, and influential IxDers that can do neither, so it is already proven that a good IxDer doesn’t have to. The question we should be asking is, “What skills will make me a better Interaction Designer?” The answer will vary greatly depending on the context of your work. The type of company you work for, the makeup of your team, the types of projects you work on, and even what you want to be doing in the future all have a bearing on the skill set that will make you most effective.
I have a hard time imagining being an Interaction Designer without being a visual designer, because that is my background. I have a degree in Graphic Design. CMU, where I got my masters degree in IxD, teaches it with an emphasis on visual design. I consider the majority of IxD to be visual communication, and I draw the most from my visual design skill set. But that’s me, and I’m not about to say that it is the only way, or even the best way, to do it. I have too much respect for others in the industry that are not visual designers. In fact, I make a point of impressing on my design students the importance of the multidisciplinary makeup of the design disciplines.
So, I will strongly disagree with anyone that makes broad claims like “Interaction Designers should not be developers,” or “Interaction Designers without visual design chops are inferior.” IxDers don’t have to be visual designers or developers, but both skill sets have much potential to make us better Interaction Designers.
If you really press me, I will probably argue that a designer with skills in both areas has the most potential, but realization of that potential is dependent upon the context in which one practices.
This semester, I will be teaching my information visualization course for fourth time. It has been two years since I taught the course, and in that time, three noteworthy books have been published on the subject.
Manuel Lima’s Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information is an absolutely gorgeous collection of network visualizations. I have yet to read the book, but from flipping through it, I could see that the first three chapters and the last two contain the majority of the written content. The juicy middle two chapters are a gallery of beautiful and complex visualizations with very short descriptions. Consider the book to be visualization porn; if you are into data visualizations, this book will definitely turn you on.
Then there is Beautiful Visualization: Looking at Data Through the Eyes of Experts, a collection of essays edited by Julie Steele and Noah Iliinsky. I’ve read the first chapter of this one, so I can’t give it a review yet, but with contributors ranging from artists and designers to scientists and statisticians, I expect it to be well worth reading. There is less eye candy, and they are generally smaller, than in Lima’s book, but most spreads have supporting examples.
Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics by Nathan Yau is the book I’ve decided to use this semester as a companion to The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte. Yau’s book is not one to pick up for pretty pictures. It is a practical guide, giving the reader an overview of where to find data, how to acquire it, how to transform it into a useful format, and how to render it using a variety of technologies and tools available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. This is exactly the type of instruction that I’ve known was missing from my course, and I’m anxious to work it into my assignments.
I’m looking forward to sharing my students’ work with you. Stay tuned.
