STUDY PROGRAMME
Design

AFAM CODE
ABTEC42

DISCIPLINARY AREA
Interactive systems

DISCIPLINARY FIELD
Interaction design

CREDITS
4

APPROACH
Theoretical/project based

This course explores the design-relevant implications of the idea of “information”. This includes the production and diffusion of data, their transformation, the interfaces that make them intelligible, navigable, manageable and editable, the new scenarios, the reprogramming of existing models. The emerging of the information society and of the Web has brought along crucial ideas and dynamics, that today permeate culture and design: system, network, exchange between systems, ecosystem, sampling, hacking, post-production, hertzian space, digital, real time, virtual and augmented reality. During the classroom activity, the course will analyse and offer first-hand experience of the ways this paradigm works, providing tools and methods to read these models and reprogram them, in order to design new futures and reconsider interaction in space as to subdue it to newly emerged needs or wishes and to answer diverse project issues (or, even better, to identify new issues).

The programme consists of one single module, which grants 4 CFA credits.

Successful students will be able to:

• Understand interface design

• Develop an Interaction design project

• Develop familiarity with “tech approach”, definition of scenarios, insights and touch points

• Identify user-related needs, issues and opportunities

• Design a relation platform/app for contents gathering, use and exchange

• Conditional design: how algorithms work - Input/processing/output

• Interfaces (ex. Robots with feelings) - emotional design/feedback/mapping

• Analysis of a system (urban or private) with its data flow - A city is not a tree

• Hypothesis of disturbance models related to artefacts and space hacking - Social City Toolkit

• Technological scenery

• Urban and social context

• Platforms/apps

• Classification/clustering/visualization systems

• Contemporary and future scenarios

This is a theoretical/project based course.

Students will take part in the following activities, which may vary depending on the development of different projects:

• Classroom lectures

• Use of tutorials, videos or other media tools

• Exercises and revisions

• Workshops

• Individual or group projects

• Individual or group study and research

Assessment tools may include:

• Oral exam

• Graded exercises/revisions

• Exercises or projects

• Completion of comprehensive projects

• Submission of exercises, projects or research work

Further details about the exams will be provided by the professors.

RECOMMENDED:

• Anderson, C., The long tail, Ed. Business Book.

• Aprile, W., Boland, B., Mirti, S., Interaction Design Primer (Vol.1), Ed. Postmedia.

• Di Nardo, F., Lonrensatto, D., Sutti, S. F., In the Bubble: Designing in a complex world. John Thakara, Ed. The MIT Press.

• Dunne, A. (2006) Hertzian Tales, The MIT Press.

• Ford, R., Wiedermann, J. (2011) The App & Mobile Case Study Book, Taschen.

• Kelley, T., The Art of Innovation, Ed. Currency and Doubleday.

• Maeda, J., Maeda @ Media, Ed. Thames & Hudson Ltd.

• Maeda, J. (2006) The Laws Of Simplicity, The MIT Press.

• Moggridge, B., Designing Interactions, Ed. The MIT Press.

• Sterling, B. (2005) Shaping Things, The MIT Press.

• Thackara, J. (2005) In The Bubble, The MIT Press.

• Wired USA.

Many of the recommended sources, together with additional material, are also available online on MyNaba, in the Library section.

Books and resources might be requested or suggested by the professors.