INTERACTION DESIGN
“How do we interact with someone?”
There are a numerous ways in which we can interact with one another- language, visuals, space, behavior, etc.
— day ONE
The first question I encountered in this journey of interaction design was what are the objects you can interact with and what are your experiences. Everyone started listing out the objects and tried figuring out their experiences.
Every single object from a safety pin to an airplane has its own experience. Every object interacts with us and its surroundings in different ways leaving us with different experiences. The humans have come up with virtual technology that creates an out of the world experiences. One of such technologies is the ‘Google Glass”.
Every young designer has one very important question they keep finding the answer to- “What is a good design?” The ’10 Principles’ by Dieter Rams answer this question for the most of them. It sets certain parameters defining a good design. What is a good design? Is it everything that Dieter Rams said or is it more?
The key takeaway from the first lecture was the role that discussion plays in interacting with one another. How do the visuals in the presentation interact with students and affect their experience than an only text presentation
— day TWO
Do we ever wonder what our house actually looks like? How much time we spend in every room of your house? What are the in-house activities you engage in throughout the day? A ton of questions and just one simple assignment. The assignment was to find out the ways in which I interact with the places in my house. I was supposed to determine how the various odors and sounds change the whole experience of the house.
I mapped down the floor plan of my entire house. Next, I marked the number of hours I spend in different spaces of my house using the color coding method. Anecdotal analysis has always been my kind of thing until I was asked to do the same for the floor plan of my house. The anecdotal analysis of my house was quiet big of a task. The final step of this assignment was depicting the affect of various sounds and odors on the interaction and experience aspect of my house.
Interaction and experience always work hand in hand. The way we interact in our personal space or the collective family space is what defines our personality and what we are. Everything around us acts as a mood stimulator. Do we even realize that each place/space in our house has a special memory or moment in our mind? We interact with that space and experience a particular emotion creating a memory.
Making the floor plan was quite a bit of a chore and so was to analyze your house according to you subconscious from your memory.
— day THREE
We all have our own bizarre shower thoughts. Some are really lame and some are a future fantasy. Sometimes, we end up thinking about a product or a technology that doesn’t exist but sounds way too much useful. Now, why am I writing about stupid shower thoughts? It is because our Day Three assignment was to come up with a concept (technology or product or something related to sci-fi) that would affect our experience in some way or the other. I started off with an interactive surface that can be projected on your wall. It would hold recipe suggestions, to-do lists, weather reports, music playlists and what not. There was only little problem, it wasn’t up to the mark. This technology already did exist. I was back to a blank paper until I came up with my ‘Wardrobe Mirror’. It suggests clothes based on the occasion and also matches the best suitable pairs. I presented this idea to sir and he said it was something different and I could go ahead with it. He asked me to work more on the experience aspect of this concept. The idea of not thinking the working and technological aspect of the product and rather focusing on the change of experience caused by the product was fresh, new and gave us a chance of focusing on the more important aspect of design- experience and interaction.
— day FOUR
Putting the experience of the product on a paper in the form of a sketch/ story/ comic is a whole new level of a difficult task. The first question that came to my mind was- “ How can you even write or draw what you experience?” The mirror is an interactive surface. The user experiences luxury and relaxation. Who wouldn’t love a mirror that saves us the trouble of folding 100s of clothes before finding the perfect one. It was a really tough job to depict and explain the products experience.
The overall interaction design experience and the assignments were a lot of fun. It left me thinking and inspired me in more than one way.