Blogs

  • Digging the crates: how DJs improvise like banjo players

    Steve Benford Posted: Mon, November 04, 2013 - 10:43:07

    If I hadn’t been a banjo player then perhaps I might have been a DJ. After all, both are cool, hip, and generally down with the kids. There are other…

  • Finding protected places

    Jonathan Grudin Posted: Wed, October 30, 2013 - 10:28:39

    In a memorable scene, a boy is taught to swim by being thrown into a lake. In the movie, it worked. In real life, training is desirable, whether for heart…

  • A note on ‘compositional design thinking’

    Mikael Wiberg Posted: Tue, October 29, 2013 - 12:17:17

    Design thinking is growing as an explicit approach to interaction design. By acknowledging the thoughtful aspects of making, our community simultaneously acknowledges how design is both about doing/making and about…

  • My Apple was a Lemon

    Aaron Marcus Posted: Thu, October 24, 2013 - 12:04:00

    In August 2011, I bought an Apple MacBook Pro. No surprise; we’ve been a devoted Apple customer since January 1985, as well as a vendor to Apple, and even a…

  • Letter from Aarhus

    Deborah Tatar Posted: Fri, October 11, 2013 - 12:02:29

    I am spending my sabbatical at Aarhus in Denmark. Aarhus is quite a hub for design research activity. DIS 2010 was held here; the Media Architecture Biennale was here in…

  • Deconstructing UX design

    Monica Granfield Posted: Wed, October 09, 2013 - 12:39:16

    In engineering there is reverse engineering, the process by which you take something apart to see how it was built. This is a great way to learn how something is…

  • Designing discomfort

    Steve Benford Posted: Mon, October 07, 2013 - 10:22:03

    Why is the Imperial War Museum North like Oblivion, the world’s first vertical drop rollercoaster? Sounds like the beginning of bad joke doesn’t it? But actually they do have something…

  • Artifact invention and research

    Jonathan Grudin Posted: Mon, September 30, 2013 - 11:33:38

    I asked several talented inventors whether there is more to research than invention. It was not a new question for them, but not an easy one either. “Get back to…

  • Learning from ePatient (scholar)s

    Richard Anderson Posted: Mon, September 23, 2013 - 10:30:36

    Increasingly, patients are making invaluable contributions to the redesign of our broken healthcare system and the patient experience. Designers working in healthcare should be aware of and leverage these contributions.…

  • Can we afford no affordances in our user interfaces?

    Monica Granfield Posted: Mon, September 16, 2013 - 4:40:22

    Lately, flat design has been a topic of conversation in the design community. It seems there are two main camps: those who love it and those who don’t. Flat design…