Tag Archives: Interaction Design

Check out these new student videos from our stellar Myspace occupiers

Roman Vargas, Photography and Imaging – second round from Art Center College of Design on Myspace.

Shortly after the Spring 2014 term passed its halfway point, our participating students (Myspacers?) produced a new set of videos tracking their progress on the path toward creative completion.

Starting a project is never easy. And finishing it is, arguably, even harder. But let’s not underestimate the challenges involved in persisting through the obstacle course of roadblocks artists often face once they’re deep enough into a project that starting over isn’t an option, and the finish line isn’t yet in sight.

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Check out the latest videos from Art Center’s Myspace occupants

Update: Shortly after the Spring 2014 term passed its half-way point, our participating students (Myspacers?) produced a new set of videos tracking their progress on the path toward creative completion.

Starting a project is never easy. And finishing it is, arguably, even harder. But let’s not underestimate the challenges involved in persisting through the obstacle course of road-blocks artists often face once they’re deep enough into a project that starting over isn’t an option and the finish line isn’t yet in sight.

This extraordinary set of videos (featured on our Myspace page) offers a snapshot of the breathtaking range of creative activity happening at Art Center on any given day.

Photography student Roman Alexander Vargas takes us deeper into his sources of inspiration (Nan Goldin, primarily) for the very personal photo essay he’s creating as he chronicles his initiation into drag queen culture.

Interaction Design student, Inae Song, delivers a dynamic illustration of the iterative process involved in redesigning an interactive digital destination for AIGA, the American professional association for design professionals. For a young designer proving her mettle, it’s hard to think of tougher crowd to please than the members of AIGA. But Song remained undaunted and produced some incredibly compelling work that plays like a tutorial in website design.

Graduate Transportation Design Student, Nish Kamath, bowed out of this step in the process and will rejoin us with a final video revealing the finished product he creates based on his research into traffic patterns in the developing world.

Each of these students defies and exceeds any and all expectations they set forth in their initial videos, leaving us rapt in anticipation of their final installations. Stay tuned.

Last October, Art Center formed an alliance with the newly relaunched Myspace platform, which had reinvented itself as a social network for creative types. Myspace’s elegant interface seemed custom designed for the Art Center community, with each user profile centered around a portfolio of images and videos that comprise the user’s identity by showcasing the evolution of imagination and innovation. In other words, if Mark Zuckerberg had been a student at Art Center, not Harvard, Facebook might have looked a lot like the current iteration of Myspace.

Because Art Center is known for its students’ enterprise and productivity, that creative rigor became the focal point for this partnership. To illustrate this dedication, we recruited four students from four different disciplines (Product Design, Graphic Design, Illustration and Film) and asked them to document their creative process over the course of the term as they complete a project. The results were as inspiring as they were fascinating, providing a panoramic view of the geyser of creativity that is Art Center.

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Alumni Q&A with Microsoft design pioneer, Bill Flora

Bill Flora photo by Alex Aristei.

Bill Flora on his recent visit to Art Center. Photo by Alex Aristei.

When Bill Flora arrived to his first day of work at Microsoft just over 20 years ago, as the ink was still drying on his Art Center degree, there were only seven designers working on staff at the company. At the time, Bill Gates’ thriving empire was the Goliath of the software industry. Products like Microsoft Word had become a brand synonymous with the service it provided, like Kleenex or Q-Tips. In essence, Microsoft sold itself — so design took a backseat to innovations in engineering.

Things have changed considerably since then. It’s no coincidence that design has become a prime mover at Microsoft, driving the development of its most high-profile software and hardware releases.  This shift occurred thanks in no small part to the contributions Flora made during his two-decade tenure at the company, which included work on a wide variety of products, from the Encarta Encyclopedia to the Windows Phone. His most lasting legacy at Microsoft, however, may lie within the set of design principles (now known as Microsoft Design Language), which he devised prior to leaving his post as design director in 2011 to launch his own interactive design firm, Tectonic.

During a recent trip to reconnect with his Art Center roots, Flora (BFA, 1991) took time out to chat with the Dotted Line about his career trajectory as a high-flying design evangelist in the tech world.

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How embracing failure has helped John Ryan design solutions to life’s most puzzling questions

John Ryan (second from left) works with UNICEF and frog design staff on mHealth solutions

John Ryan (second from left) works with UNICEF and frog design staff on mHealth solutions

What was your background prior to Art Center?
I was born in Dublin, Ireland and studied multimedia as an undergraduate. I began my career working as a digital and web designer, and early on I knew that I really wanted to start my own studio. After working for a couple of in-house design teams, I couldn’t quite find the right fit: designers weren’t supposed to have the desire to move so broadly throughout the design process. So I started my own business and worked directly with clients throughout Ireland and UK. It was a fun couple of years and I learned a lot from the experience.

But I had always had a desire to go to grad school, and with my weird mix of interests across disciplines — design and art, technology and code, politics and culture — I became hungry for a new challenge that would integrate more of my own passions and curiosities into my design practice.

Art Center’s Media Design Practices program was exactly the kind of interdisciplinary environment I was looking for—innovative, experimental design work that would give me a platform to engage with the bigger ideas, concepts and questions that lay beyond the previous client work I had been doing.

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Limitless Vision: Maggie Hendrie leads Interaction Design

Maggie Hendrie, Art Center's new Chair of Interaction Design. photo by Chuck Spangler

Maggie Hendrie, Art Center's new chair of Interaction Design.

Looking for that “Imagine If” Question: An Interview with Interaction Design Department Chair Maggie Hendrie

This coming Fall Term, as part of the College’s Create Change initiative, Art Center launches a new undergraduate Interaction Design degree program, in which students will learn to think deeply about user experience, apply technology creatively and invent new approaches to interaction and design.

We recently sat down with Interaction Design Department chair Maggie Hendrie and asked her what prospective students should know about the new program.

Dotted Line:  What is Interaction Design?

Maggie Hendrie: People interact with every object or system in their world, whether it’s human-made or natural. Interaction design is the process and craft of how people interact with artifacts, systems and services. We see this everywhere today in mobile apps, electronics, web sites, games, social networks and public spaces. Interaction design focuses on the user experience; how real people think, feel and behave when they use a product, environment or system.

Does Interaction Design go beyond working with technology?

Absolutely. What’s important is that you care about people and their experiences. You need to be able to ask, “What’s valuable and meaningful for people?” And then you need to be able to blueprint, wireframe, sketch or model what a solution to a problem might look like. Continue reading →