Thought-Crumbs

Talking to first years Alex, Chloe and Kevin about studying interaction design (I umm and emm a lot) one lunch break. Nice to talk to guys in the same position as I was 4/5 years ago. 

It really was an excellent course, and has prepared me well for working life as a designer - I’m not sure it’s captured so well here (I’m a bit bumbling, but the interviewers were great) but the skills learned from the course; an appreciation for a user centred design process in interface, product design, learning to tease innovation from user insights, a little design research and introduction to design ethnography and graphic design have set all of us in good stead to begin our careers. The interview is not meant to be insightful in my view of interaction design (by the way, that innovation sentence, what I meant is, from an understanding of user behaviour, you can learn how to improve their experience, and if the solution enables a new experience or information to be given to the user that helps them better complete a task, it is an innovation) but more how I chose that path and where it has led me now; guys, get an internship (or many) and work out what you like to do from there. The interaction design umbrella covers a wide spread of skills that you can focus on; the next step from uni is still to work out what area you want to develop in, and not be afraid to say what you want to do and what you don’t want to do. 

http://interaction.dundee.ac.uk/

The future of Tablets (thanks @oreneeshy)

Your photos, your friends photos, all dated and visualised on a timeline - it’s a startup so no interface examples I could see but, it’s nice idea and the integration with your friends will be interesting to see.

Timelinks

“Best phone manual ever!”

Works for me as an ad but I tend not to read manuals anyway… it’s a sweet idea for communicating how to use your new complicated gadget though, instead of relying on on-screen instructions. 

Good find @JohnOxton