Commentary

The biggest draw of SIAT for me is the interdisciplinary program. Many universities with programs addressing interaction design approach IxD by expanding on an existing discipline: Growing a design program or information school to include interactive technology. SIAT feels more inclusive – there is a home for people from various disciplines, and the program doesn’t feel like it’s geared towards just one discipline.

There are many fields of research at SIAT, and I’m still learning about them all. They fall into the general categories of knowledge computation, social and human experience, media and culture, scientific methods, and media art. My interests fall mostly in the social and human experience area: Interaction design, design ethnography, computer-supported cooperative work. And knowledge computation has some interesting aspects, such as visual analytics and visualization.

SIAT is a research-based program. (From what I hear, Canadian grad schools tend to place more emphasis on research than American grad schools.) The idea is that I’ll take coursework during my first year, then spend the bulk of my time in my second year doing a research project. I like the emphasis on putting my skills to use, and actually making something.

So that’s the long-term plan & possibilities, but what am I doing right now? I’m in two classes, information visualization and new media. I’m also the teaching assistant for an undergrad senior design studio, where the students apply their skills on a year-long project.

In the information visualization class, we are starting out by exploring human perception and using that as a foundation to explain why some visualizations do and don’t work. For example, when learning about color perception, we learned that people tend not to be able to separate the dimensions of color. It is difficult to splice a color apart and perceive red separately from green and blue. It is somewhat less difficult to separate hue, lightness, and saturation, but still not optimal. The graphic below indicates population density with hue, and change in population with saturation and lightness. You can sort it out, with some effort. The textbook author recommends using color for one variable and another attribute, such as texture or shading, for the other variable. (Ware, 135-137.)

(Map: U.S. Census Bureau.)

The new media class is about analyzing the design principles that go into new media works; things like narrative, representation of space and time, analyzing strengths and weaknesses of a particular medium, and the ways in which a work is immersive. This is is the most culture-centric class I’ll take – designed to give me some breadth. It’s been a healthy change for me. I’m used to analyzing designs only in terms of how well they support the user’s effectiveness in the workplace, and now I’m learning to use criteria that are less narrowly focused.

I’m the teaching assistant for a capstone project for the undergrads in SIAT. The students form interdisciplinary teams and work on a project of their choosing. They go through the whole project life cycle: inquiry, design, development, testing, and launching. Right now, their projects are still in the early stages. Even so, they are already planning cool things. We have teams who want to build rich media experiences, tangible devices, games, projects to encourage sustainability, and much more. I’m excited to see what the students come up with as the year goes on.

So that’s how my graduate program is starting out. I’ll have more to say as my education continues. I welcome questions – the point of these articles is to share what’s interesting, and your questions will guide what I write about.

References

Brewer, Cynthia A., and Trudy A. Suchan, U.S. Census Bureau, Census Special Reports, Series CENSR/01-1, Mapping Census 2000: The Geography of U.S. Diversity, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2001.

Ware, Colin. Information Visualization: Perception for Design. San Francisco: Morgan Kauffman, 2004.