Product Design Workshop: Collaborative Environments

Instructor

Thomas McLeish

Course Goal:
The goal of this workshop is to develop skills and experience in applying methods and cognitive/ behavioral principles of interaction to an interactive system design. Particularly the course emphasizes development of working prototypes to explore and experiment with new possibilities of multi-modal interaction methods - physical, graphical, auditory etc. - as will support pervasive computing environments.

Course Context:
The context of the project will be collaborative environments and tangible user[s] interface[s] that support such collaboration. This includes [but is not limited to] children in libraries as in the case of the “ThinkeringSpaces” project. Other scenarios could include executive training centers, residential design tools, family health care facilities, pet care, entertainment, or “your great idea here”. Where, how and why do we collaborate? What are the foundations for supporting this as framed by the readings and other research? How might we build one taking advantage of user experiences enabled by current technologies?

Key Contents:
Prototyping, tangible user interface, pervasive computing, collaborative environment

Activities:
Labs, discussion of readings, project development-implementation-evaluation, in class presentations and critiques.

Reading List:
Buxton, B. 2007. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. Morgan Kaufmann.

[companion videos: http://books.elsevier.com/companions/defaultindividual.asp?isbn=9780123740373]

Dourish, P. 2001. Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Fishkin, K. P. 2004. A taxonomy for and analysis of tangible interfaces. Personal Ubiquitous Comput. 8, 5 (Sep. 2004), 347-358. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00779-004-0297-4

Mccullough , M. 2005. Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Format & Grading

Format:
Labs in prototyping (6 weeks): individual and workgroup assignments
Project Development (8 weeks): individual assignments
Project Realization (8 weeks): team (3-4 students) projects

Schedule:
During the first 6 week, approximately two thirds of the workshop time will be allocated to labs and in the remaining time we will introduce projects, start user studies and develop several concepts. From the 7th week, the class will focus on the project.

Labs:
Lab work will be completed in small workgroups. Tutorials will be given in class developing knowledge and skills for functional prototyping critical to interactive systems design. These tutorials will build upon existing skills you have with Flash as well as introduce some introductory hardware development. Labs will leverage pre-package modules and templates to speed Flash development. We will also leverage existing extensive tutorials and resources available through a popular hardware prototyping platform. Lab assignments will follow encouraging application of prototyping methods to experiments in basic interaction methods. [Making things using new knowledge]

Projects:
Knowledge gained through labs coupled with design frameworks cultivated in other courses will be applied in defining the scope and deliverables for the final project.

Deliverables:
Interaction prototyping tutorial: Weekly assignments
Project: intermediate presentation and demonstration of interaction concepts and mechanisms, functional prototype models with hardware and software, and final report/presentation.

Evaluation:
30% Individual and group assignment in prototyping tutorials
70% Project: 1) Individual contribution to the team and class, and 2) team performance.