Interactive Systems Design Workshop

Instructor

Keiichi Sato

Thomas McLeish

The goal of this workshop is to develop skills and experience in applying methods and principles of interaction design to a design problem. Particularly the course emphasizes development of working prototypes to explore and experiment new possibilities of multi-modal interaction methods - physical, graphical, auditory etc. The list attached below covers some issues and contents of the projects. Approximately one third of class time will be used for learning hardware and software prototyping methods and the rest will be allocated for the design project.

Multi-modal interaction: physical, visual, auditory/voice interaction methods
Spatial and environmental interaction
Prototyping: conceptual, behavioral, hardware/electronic, software

*** The class does not require any techncal background since we will have introductory tutorial sessions for interaction design prototyping.

Project Theme
Interactive environment for bathroom-based activities:
Contemporary bathrooms support a wide range of activities in our everyday life. Activities performed around bathroom are not limited to the traditional concept of bathroom use. Fast changes in social, cultural and technological environments have been transforming the meaning, use, function and concept of bathroom. In this project we will examine the nature and possibilities of bathroom as an interactive environment that forms our physical and metal activities, and explore new interaction paradigms. The project also needs to incorporate social issues such as health care, universal access or inclusive environment, sustainability and elderly living.

Activities related to bathroom include hygiene, physical and mental refreshing, health monitoring, health maintenance, facial/body care, self-reflection, space cleaning, communication and more. Each project team will select own areas of problems.

List of issues and topics addressed in the workshop

Context-sensitivity
Sustainability
Inclusiveness/ universality
Environmental/ Spatial interaction
Bridging physical space and media space for creating new user experience
Physical interaction

Expected output
- Interaction rototyping tutorial: Weekly assignments
- Project: intermediate presentation and demonstration of interaction concepts and mechanisms, functional prototype models with hardware and software, and final report/presentation

Methods

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-Modular Script Scenario (MSS) based method as a design information platform for observation documentation, problem identification, analysis, envisioning and evaluation
-Multi-aspect models to represent different views include:
Function structure
Object relation model
Interaction model
Task analysis
State transition model
Operation flow/ sequence
System configuration
Information/ knowledge source analysis

Format & Grading

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Tutorials in prototyping (6 weeks) : individual and team assignments
Project: 3-4 students in a team (16 weeks)
Grading:
30% Individual and group assignment in prototyping tutorials
70% Project: 1) Individual contribution to the team and class, and 2) team
performance