International Student Classroom Interaction

Tonight I had an interesting discussion with a group of first year HCI students regarding the CHI 2008 design competition. We are all working on it as part of different classes but face similar problems.

The part of the discussion I found the most interesting was how people design and where their inspiration comes from. For some it comes from research others from the actual subject themselves or a population close to the subject at hand. It is really interesting to watch these students start to find who they are in the design realm. Everyone has their own ways of finding inspiration and these first year students are just starting to develop their design processes and voice.

Something I have really started to internalize over the past few days is my design inspiration and voice. I have realized that I am really a human-centered designer. The reason I came back to school was to learn more about usability which is a very human-centered field. I have learned so much more than just usability in the domain of HCI in the past year and a half. I have realized people are my inspiration. This is how I helped my team come up with our CHI solution. I saw a problem some interesting points and found a possible solution.

Much of my research for capstone has been papers that talk to people or statistics about people. My capstone is about a group of people and I am waiting on Human Subjects Committee approval to survey this group of people. It is kind of funny when you finally internalize something that was there all along.

Another topic was the PRInCiPleS framework and its merits as a design system. One of the students debated that this was not a useful way to design and that his team had thrown it out. Other people from other teams talked about how they are using it and how it is helpful. The PRInCiPleS are not intended to be a end all be all solution for everything they are just a framework that helps you make sure you have everything covered to create a solid design argument. Also as someone else said if you get stuck it is a good place to come back to and say ok where am I and can this help guide me toward a solution. Thinking about my capstone project I started to try and fit things in to the PRICPS as we lovingly call it and realized that I am doing it without really thinking about it.

As has been said many times before design is a very non linear process. I believe everyone has to take the ideas that are out there regarding design and find their own way to design.

Find your own process and run with it.