Time Schedule:
Andrew H. Davidson
ART 383
Seattle Campus
Focus on human-to-product interaction and ways we perceive, understand, and experience the world regards to objects, environments, or on-screen controls/information. Prerequisite: ART 211; ART 212.
Class description
Designing Behaviors
An Exploration in Interaction Design Systems with Robots, Sensors, and Programs
This studio course, an exploration in the practice of interaction design, aims to induce students to think beyond interfaces as 2-dimensional artifacts, constrained in the frame of a display and operated by buttons and alternative input means. Instead, we will create interactive behaviors and experiences that play out in time and space.
The course will be made up of students from different fields (design, computer science, digital arts, and technical communication) and with widely varied expertise. The design process is intended to be highly collaborative. Working in teams, students will learn from each other and gain an appreciation for very different forms of problem-solving.
We will explore complex issues in technology-driven design, using the simple programmable robots of the LEGO Mindstorms NXT system. Using Mindstorms as a sketching platform for prototyping interaction designs, students will craft experiences in space and time.
Mindstorms combines the familiar LEGO construction kits with a small microprocessor “brick” and various motors and sensors, plus a visual programming language. Using this system, students will build robots and develop programs that determine the robots’ actions as they react to their environment and various unanticipated external events. Students are thus designing interactive behaviors for their robotic creations.
In the technologically sophisticated design arena of today, designers need to be well-versed in the practice of interaction design and comfortable collaborating with many different types of practitioners. While designers need not master robotics software engineering, by learning the vocabulary and capabilities of technology systems and by experiencing a different approach to problem solving, they can expand their palette of tools.
Student learning goals
Have a basic understanding of software and hardware design for programmable robots
Undertake effective multi-disciplinary collaborations in design and technology
General method of instruction
some lectures and demonstrations, complemented by practical applications/exercises
majority of the term will be spent on an open-ended collaborative team design project
Recommended preparation
no prerequisite knowledge - looking for all kinds of designers, computer scientists, artists, communicators, and creative thinkers
Class assignments and grading
one short individual assignment and one large team project
assignments, project, participation
