Challis Hodge’s UXblog

For all you IxDers out there, the International Journal of Design has published a call for papers for it’s special issue on the Cultural Aspects of Interaction Design (pdf flyer).

The International Journal of Design is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to publishing research papers in all fields of design, including industrial design, visual communication design, interface design, animation and game design, architectural design, urban design, and other design related fields.

Currently the organization seems to be viewing interaction design through a product/industrial design lense. Perhaps we can change that with a bit of prodding, participation, and patronage.

Entertaible concept: combination of electronic gaming and traditional board games

The Entertaible concept is a tabletop gaming platform that marries traditional multi-player board and computer games in a uniquely simple and intuitive way. Entertaible comprises a 32-inch horizontal LCD, sophisticated touch screen-based multi-object position detection, and all supporting control electronics. It allows the players to engage in a new class of electronic games which combines the features of computer gaming, such as dynamic playing fields and gaming levels, with the social interaction and tangible playing pieces, such as pawns and dies, of traditional board games.

Initially targeting social gaming away from home in locations such as pubs, bars, hotels or restaurants, Entertaible has the potential to evolve into a gaming platform for the consumer market.

Interesting to note the progression…

Those of us who come from an Industrial Design background understand that these concepts have been in use for the last 50-100 years. In fact, architects would probably argue that they’ve been practicing this stuff for centuries. I would be the first to agree.

What this diagram represents is the formalized intentional practice areas as they’ve evolved over time. Comments welcomed.

Tog and the Nielsen Norman Group are building a new professional organization–IAA (Interaction Architects Association). See Tog’s July Column. Didn’t we just do this with AIFIA? Hasn’t the issue of respect been raised in every generation of designer since Raymond Lowey?

Tog mentions the usability Profession as a model example. Having been a part of that movement, I’m not sure I agree with his assessment.

I also have to say it felt really wrong reading this article while simultaneously being presented with the Nielsen Norman Group User Experience 2003 advert in the right column. Nothing wrong with either one by themselves, but together I’m not sure they work. I need a reality check here folks. What do you think about this?

Sign up to discuss this topic further: groups.yahoo.com/group/interactionarchitects

So, I’ve been having a number of conversations about Friday’s post: What is Experience Design? For the post I retrofit an old diagram to illustrate the many different ways people are defining experience design. Each blue star represents an area I have heard regularly defined as experience design. In a brief conversation with Marc he made a couple of good points. First, the AIGA Experience Design SIG took up the term experience design to represent the newly emerging digital interactive design space. Second, he avoids conversations about experience design whenever possible. Third, He’s completely satisfied with the old term of interaction design.

One of the problems I have with using the term experience design to define only the digital interaction design space is that it isolates digital interactive experiences when businesses are focusing on unifying, coordinating and designing experiences across all channels or customer touch points. As a random example, I opened a marketing brochure this morning and two illustrative phrases jumped out at me.

“Learn to: Profitably optimize the experience these core constituencies have with your organization”

“Melinda Nykamp will cover these topics and help you understand that CRM initiatives and ultimately customer experience is driven by a combination of provider and channel.”

This is the model I have been recently using to illustrate experience design for the Internet or digital interactive space, I envision similar vertical models for all customer touch points (where levels 2&3 are adapted as appropriate), as well as horizontal models that define the relationships in a customer-centered business.

Jodi Forlizzi’s summary of theories of experience. “We summarized the following papers as theories for the workshop; see the bibliography for full citation.” Good summaries of various models of experience. Nice to have these in one place–you might find references to papers you weren’t aware of.

The inaugural issues of two new journals, LOOP & Gain, launched last week. LOOP is described as a “Journal on Interaction Design Education” and Gain bills itself as a “Journal of Design for the Network Economy.” Both are good reads, stimulating and will prove to be valuable additions to your resource list.