Abstract:

We present the Interactive Technology Design course as a possible model of interaction design education in design schools. Interactive Technology Design is a mandatory course for the master students of the Design For Interaction programme at the Delft University of Technology. The course emphasizes a hands-on approach to interaction design and teaches the required technological skills in an applied manner. The course runs through five iteration steps of progressively longer duration, each one concluded by a prototype. The iterations produce progressively more refined prototypes, and each one is characterized by its focus on a specific aspect of the design, following the rationale that beginning designers are aided by separation of concerns and solving one set of problems at a time. The course acquires its briefs from companies or from researchers in the university. We show examples of course output, both final and intermediate, and we describe the lessons we have learned in running multiple iterations of this course.

Keywords:

Interaction design, industrial design, prototyping, sketching, Arduino, Max, tinkering, design.