Designing Interactions is a collection of interviews with people who have invented and designed things that we interact with on a daily basis, from the desktop metaphor and the computer mouse to Google and the iPod. The decades worth of experience that can be distilled from this book make it a must read for interaction designers, but anyone who design for others are bound to get something out of it.

I recently found some notes I made on the DVD and though it’s been a while since I read it, I figure that now would be as good time as any to blog it. Designing Interactions will stay topical for many years to come…

As my DVD-notes illustrate Designing Interactions is so full of usefulness that it’s easy to make it sound boring. But Designing Interactions is about the people behind innovations and their stories are inspiring and engaging throughout the book. To spice it up even more ground-breakingly useful innovations are mixed with less “serious” (but arguably equally important) projects like the Nipple Chair and Meat Eating Products. And it’s richly illustrated…

Besides from the interviews Designing Interaction also comes with an excellent introduction to interaction design and a lot of interaction design philosophy by and from Bill Moggridge (the author).

Notes on some of the DVD interviews:
Bill Atkinson - the importance of user testing, Paul Bradley - prototyping, Cordell Ratzlaf - putting concepts before technology, Stu Card - how researchers can provide constrains for designers, David Liddle - the three phases of adoption, Mat Hunter - user motivation, Paul Mercer - putting development times in perspective, Terry Winograd - three interaction metaphors.

Malcolm Wells is a prolific promoter of sustainable architecture and in particular earth-sheltered buildings. To identify environmental-friendly architecture and to determine in which direction he is heading with his work Wells uses a scaled called the “Wilderness Scale” which he developed in the late 60’s. If the score comes out plus, he is going forward; negative back…

The Wilderness Scale is niched toward architecture and rather subjective and unscientific (which Wells admits), but I like it, and when I read about it (in the Next Whole Earth Catalog) I felt that I would like to have a similar scale that I could apply to my work.

Since I do a bit of this and that I have tried to rework it into something that can be applied to any and all artifacts and services, be it buildings, electronic devices, transportation or art. I call the reworked scale the “Good Value Scale” and it’s even more unscientific, subjective and idealistic than Wells’s scale.

I’m sure the scale could be improved significantly if it was given some more thought, and I’m very open for suggestions… The scale I’m looking for should ideally without to much effort be able to give an approximation of how “good” an artifact or service is, and be usable both with and without extensive knowledge of what is being rated.

Anyway, the Good Value Scale could be applied from an individuals perspective, from a societies perspective or from a wildlife perspective etc. The more aspects that are taken into account the more accurate the score will be. But you can shoot from the hip and it will still give you some sort of approximation of how much “good” value it has, and in any case it forces you to think a bit about what you are about to produce or consume…

If you take an holistic view on a modern artifact or service when rating it, considering its entire lifetime and everything it affects, it will most likely come out with a negative score. Some might argue that it is next to impossible to achieve positive scores without great sacrifices and that we might as well carry on with business as usual. I prefer to think that whether or not it is possible to achieve positive scores at all times it it does make sense to strive to design for less negative scores, use artifacts and services with as high scores as possible and make the most of the low scoring artifacts that already have been produced.

While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear. - John Maeda (The Laws of Simplicity, 2006)

I like to imagine that one day there will be an artifact that is so perfect in form and function that there never will be a need to redesign it. However unlikely it is that that will happen it definitely will not unless we keep challenging and redefining the everyday objects that surrounds us.

This is precisely what Marc Ligos has done with Recipro-creacions, Objectes, subjectes i accions at the Escola Massana: Pulsions exhibition (La Capella / Institut de Cultura de Barcelona).

Copa (wine glass with hole)

Cadira (two legged chair)

Lampada (lamp with pillow switch)

Retail Desire - Design, Display and Visual Merchandising by John Tucker is a collection of case studies of fashion stores from all over the world. Most of the case studies are of non interactive interior designs, still after reading the book it is obvious that interactive technology and new media has a place in visual merchandising. The purpose of visual merchandising is to create retail desire through differentiation and by expressing individuality and identity. Interactive installations can provide a much needed wow factor, sense of theater and story for a store or product. Always changing they have the advantage of always being able to present something different to the viewers to capture and hold their interest. Placed in window displays, just inside the door or at the back of the store they can help to pull customers into the store, lure them all the way through it and make them stay…