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Plagiarized?

So I was checking my web stats, and the following phrase was googled 5 times this month:

“design is finding defining and solving human problems pragmatically through the creation of products.”

The thing about that phrase, is that I wrote it last spring (as part of a paper discussing the definition of Interaction Design for Jodi Forlizzi’s seminar).  I also posted that paper here on my blog.  If you do a google search with the phrase in quotes, then my blog post is the only thing that comes up.

So why on earth would anyone be Googling that phrase?  The only thing I can think of is that someone somewhere stole it and put it in a paper they called their own.  The smart person grading/reviewing that paper then noticed that the phrase didn’t fit with the rest of the writing and decided to Google it to see if it was lifted from somewhere else (which of course it had been).

If whoever has been googling that phrase reads this - please let me know, I’d love to hear the story.  I hold no ire - if anything I’m rather flattered that someone might like my definition of interaction design enough to steal it.

October 27th, 2008
Posted by Paul in CMU, Design Thinking | No Comments »  

New Portfolio

I’ve put up a new portfolio with a larger selection of work (and it’s prettier than the old one too!)

Take a look: paulrobare.com

October 21st, 2008
Posted by Paul in Uncategorized | No Comments »  

Thesis as Design Process

I have asked myself many times why writing my thesis is such a struggle.  If I were to be simply handed a topic and told to write a 20-30 page paper I could easily knock it out in a weekend and be happy with what I did.  With my thesis, however, I have had to fight forward every step of the way.  Until now, I couldn’t understand why this was.

I’ve figured it out though (why its a struggle, not the thesis).  The design process, you see, is all about the simultaneous emergence of both problem and solution.  As Dick Buchanan has argued, design is fundamentally concerned with the indeterminate (thus wicked problems).  The issue with wicked problems is that they are not clearly defined (thus indeterminate), and so require the designer to iteratively specify them in attempt to create a solvable problem (because wicked problems are, by definition, unsolvable).

In the thesis process, however, we are tasked with nailing down a “topic” which we are repeatedly told must include a definition of the problem we wish to solve.  If we could nail down the problem, however, the answer should be obvious and the thesis essay a breeze.  The reality is, in true form to the process we are taught in this program, that we must iteratively reformulate the problem which we are researching in an attempt to specify it in such a way that meaningful insight can emerge.  That sounds fine, but it plays out as many (if not all) of us feeling like we are not making appropriate progress on our thesis (because we are in the process - quite natural to design - of researching:problem re-framing: researching: problem re-framing and so on, but were told that we should have defined the problem last spring).

Now the only question, then, is whether this revelation can act as a salve to my anxiety, or was simply an excuse to take a break from writing my thesis and blog instead…

October 19th, 2008
Posted by Paul in CMU, Design Process, thesis | No Comments »  

Accidentally Visual

As I’ve been working on my thesis, which looks at sound in computing (and digital products in general), I’ve also been looking at the history of the graphic user interface.  One of the things that strikes me most, is how nearly accidental the evolution was of computing into an almost entirely visual medium.  The earliest computers had no visual outputs but relied almost entirely on punch cards for both input and output (though most also had speakers - called hooters - wired into them to directly sonify their workings).  It seems that had it not been for Doug Engelbart and the NLS Demonstration (and the work at Xerox PARC that followed), computers might today be a very different sort of thing.  The first raster displays created by Xerox were made to look like a sheet of paper because Xerox was a photocopying company.  What if a company that made stereo’s had funded PARC?  Might modern computing rely more on audition than sight?

As I do more research into the matter, it occurs to me that in pre-digital technology, the visual modality was often given equal weight with sound and/or touch.  Think of Babbage’s difference engine, for example; one would hear such a contraption working (or not working) much more clearly than one could see it.  Perhaps the time has come for designers, engineers, and others involved in the creation of technology to move beyond the visual and realize that truly rich interactions are those that take advantage of all of the sensory modalities in engaging ways.

October 12th, 2008
Posted by Paul in Design Thinking, thesis | No Comments »