Prototyping Interactions – Mentoring the ITD Course

Goal:

The goal of this activity was to learn prototyping knowledge, to guide students to explore new user interactions, and to gain teaching experience through mentoring the Interactive Technology Design (ITD) course. The development of new design methods, input devices, rapid prototyping tools, and multimodal interaction styles opened up a new world of interaction design possibilities. The course aims at equipping graduate students with design theory and practical skills in the development of embedded technology in products in terms of enriching the user experience.

Set-Up:

Interactive Technology Design (ID4220, 6 ECTS) is a course in the Design for Interactions (DFI) master program at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology. I was involved as a mentor in Spring, 2010. I mentored 15 students who worked on a design brief from Exact, which aimed at communicating Exact’s corporate identity by a number of interactive installations/prototypes. During this course, I learnt programmable toolkit for building interactive prototypes and practiced rapid prototyping skills with students. I actively provided feedbacks and suggestions for students’ work along the way. To have their work relevant to my research, I provided them with my research results so far and steered them to explore the future ways of interacting. I expect to acquire a design brief directly relevant to my research and help mentor the ITD course again next year, in order to further explore ‘Generation Y’ interactions by prototyping.

Results:

• Prototype 1 - Inspired by the Exact’s philosophy of “being part of a family”, students designed an interactive video installation that aims at introducing the corporate identity of the company in a natural, collaborative, and innovative way by the people who work at Exact. (direct feedback, visual communication,guestual interaction)

• Prototype 2 - Students designed the ‘Spyglass’ as a mediator between Exact and their visitors and employees, who can experience the Exact building with augmented reality. It breaks the reality into a second layer of information, which people can interact with. (multi-tasking, Internet usage, content creation)

• Prototype 3 - Students designed the ‘Message in A Bottle’, a long table for the lunch area in the Exact building that brings people together and encourages them to communicate with each other. (instant communication, social connection)