Design Thoughts

The world is full of formulas. And no i am not talking only about science or maths here. If we observe closely around us, as humans we seek formulas of success. That which has been once or more than once successful tends to be accepted of considered positively in the society. No i am not generalizing this neither am i saying formulating the world is a wrong thing. Sometimes formalization helps, like formalizing the way I operate a machine helps. Because I dont have to learn how to operate the machine in a new way everytime. Most of the times we see people finding a successful way to operate or perform an action that leads to their goals. While other times when they dont want to put an effort to learn it, they then to pick up ways methods, processes from others who have done the same successfully. So let me give you examples of what i am saying. For example if you see a person go to a doctor for a particular type of disease and then get cured by it. Then you firstly register that the d...

The act of doing something, or for that instance performing the act of doing things, has been always looked upon from the goal oriented manner. Interaction design as a profession deals with the domain of action and the intents or goals of the same. The intent of ones action towards any interaction is generally portrayed in the goal of that activity. As interaction designers we generally follow this on our daily basis with users intent to reach a goal. If we look more closely intent of an action need not always be towards completion of a goal using that action. At times the action has some varied intents beyond the reaching of the goal. Curiosity can be considered as one such intent in which again the goal is to find out what the action leads to. Such a goal is of course not finite since it completely depends on the levels of curiosity itself. Also calling curiosity as an intent can also be logically incorrect considering that most of the times actions due to curiosity is a natural...

You were never born the way you are today...you grew into what you are..when you look back at what you were even some 5 years ago...life looks like a complete twist...as we grow we add some and subtract some from our lives. But at times when the world compares growth with others.. it doesnt look fair. The race of life doesnt start even... Yes some would argue that we all started with the same body mind and soul...but what differed as we grew was our surroundings, our exposures our situations and hence our so called destiny. Not that i am a strong believer of destiny. If we look back to our growth just as a comparative measure with others, then it is surely not fair..what needs to be learnt is the self growth compared to ourselves only. At times people have to tackle years of struggle to reach just one small thing...which others in this sane world may have got in some seconds, which then makes it a growth factor for the former but it is not at all correct to measure him with the later....

Recently i came across a paper in the latest issue of "design issues". The paper was titled "Triangle of design practice, design studies and Design Exploration" by Daniel Fallman The author has very well explained the domain of interaction research, and particularly wats interesting is the classification into three main types of design practice, design studies and design exploration. What was insightful in reading the paper was the good balance given to design researchers in interaction design domain. The broad categories helps you put yourself in domains and helps you realize career directions when needed. Here are some excerpts Particularly when it comes to interaction design research, issues of aesthetics concern not only how something looks and feels, but also the aesthetics of the whole interaction including how something works, how elegantly something is done, how interaction flows, and how well the content fits in. Thus, design exploration is the activity are...

Put any set of strangers in an unknown environment the elements of game theory like factors become evident clearly. Just a thought in my head ….perhaps a story may make it evident…. “ Imagine a set of few individuals suddenly put in a strange environment. Each of these individuals has his/her own amalgamation of what they are their own formulas their own little ways of seeing the world. And trust me each of these combinations are distinct from every other combination in million other ways…. Imagine if these individuals were different plastic balls….each sundried in different parts of the world and colored by thousands of people with their own thoughts also generating their own level of beautiful meanings of the world…. In this sudden new world now each one is on their own….they are now individuals…but wait….we can see some activity going on…..as time passes by some of these individuals interact….yes they start exchanging their inert thoughts and worldly perceptions with the others …..s...

Each one of us gets married to a plethora of tasks in our short lived life. So many of them that we almost get aligned to thousand different things under the title “ To be Done” I wonder what about going reverse, how many tasks do we actually need to survive as a human. As an infant we are do not have many tasks. So when we are small little kiddies we have the liberty to do anything, because our mom takes care of the food, bath and even changing diapers. But as we grow up our tasks line up to be a human. We have to eat food, which includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have to go to toilet when our body gives us alarm. We have to take a bath everyday. We have to cut our nails every month. We have to cut our hair when they grow badly. We have to brush our teeth everyday. As we grow, we carry these tasks are added more and more we have to shave (for girls they have to wax their legs) we have to wear clothes….and so on. As cultures change these tasks vary as age changes many tasks get a...

Excerpts from Schons "Reflective Practioner" Reflective practitioners perform on-the-spot experiments to see if they have framed the problem in the correct way, meaning that the problem can be tackled in a manner that is agreeable to the practitioner and that keeps the "inquiry" moving ahead..... Unlike scientists, practitioners undertake these experiments not just to understand the situation, but to change it into something better. Experiments consist of "moves" like in chess. Any hypothesis has to "lend itself to embodiment in a move." A practitioner makes a move and sees how the situation "responds" to that move, each move acting as a sort of "exploratory probe" of the situation. Dan Daffer Reviews it on his blog