by Steve PriceSeptember 2009

Simple: Good Design Thinking (GDT)

Introduction

SP: “Thanks for agreeing to meet and talk with me about

my MA. My initial topic was centered around the concept

of a visual identity crisis, looking closely at the levels of

information that are now smothered around our

environments. I realised that it wasn’t so much to do with

the commercial content within the architectural space....”

JW: What is commercial? Define commercial. Define

architecture. Isn't a billboard is a piece of architecture?

What about this table? This ashtray?1

In 1999 I interviewed John Warwicker of Tomato, this is an excerpt from that

interview. I was interviewing him as part of my research for my MA

Communication Design thesis. His manner was similar to thesis perception I

had of Tomato’s creative philosophy; bullish and challenging. I was always

taught never to answer a question with a question and yet every thing I said he

immediately questioned. Being a young, arrogant, Central Saint Martins post-

graduate my reaction was one of quiet annoyance and frustration; I wanted

answers not questions!

But Mr Warwicker was absolutely right. In the few minutes I had with him, he

had questioned everything that I’d simply taken for granted. It taught me a

valuable lesson: 1. Question everything; even that which you deem to be

defined, and, 2. Prepare better!

So when I set about applying for this role as Professor for interactive Design I

asked myself what is Interactive Design? What is the past, present and future

of Interactive design? What makes a good interactive designer?

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1 Interview with John Warwicker, 1999.

What makes a good interactive designer?

The answer to a question like this is speculative and varied. There is no

definitive answer, but there are certain qualities which, as a practicing creative

director, I look for when employing one.

In Norway fishing is big business, and a past-time for many Norwegians. I

went fishing for the first time recently with some Norwegians and most like to

go to the same lake, usually the one that sits near or next too their summer

cabin. But there are those who like to fish in different lakes like my friend

Bjørn. I asked him whether this was because the fish were better or more

plentiful? His response, ‘No, because variety is the spice of life.’

To study as an interactive designer means that you have a special interest in

the subject, but being a good one means you are someone that ‘fishes in

different lakes’. Someone who is a capable, curious and challenging person.

Someone that challenges themselves to look at the world around them, absorb

it, and question it.

I have interviewed and employed many designers, and having a strong

portfolio unquestionably helps, but even this is not always the best quality.

Nor is it necessarily about being the smartest, the most academically gifted or

even the designer with the best grades. It’s all about their aptitude, outlook

and motivation. It is about being inquisitive. It is about exploring their

interests within design and (arguably more importantly) outside of it so that

in order to create connections within their work. What does this all actually

mean?

It’s about reading; blogs, magazines, newspapers, attending talks and lectures

not necessarily about design. Persuing other avenues of interest, and different

ways of expressing and communicating yourself. Writing a blog of your own is

a great start; it enables a record of your thought process, it helps to evolve

your style of writing and language. As Iain Tait (from Poke) puts it:

‘Find some crazy MIT department that specialises in quantum

storage theory and subscribe to their RSS feed. Join a Russian

techno forum. See how oddballs are using technology. Then

start making connections. Interesting stuff happens when you

make connections.’ 2 .

I was recently walking down the street with my head down, on my iPhone. I

literally bumped in to a friend who was also head down in to his iPhone. We

joked, but it reminded me to do something very simple; take time out to look

up! To be a good designer, and I include myself, we must all find ways to

exercise our most important muscle; our brain.

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2 Interview with Iain Tait, September 01, 2009: http://creativeinlondon.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html

What is the past, present and future of Interactive

design?

As a consumer and a practicing graphic/communications/information (we’ll

come on to this subject of job title another time) designer I, like you, have

witnessed a massive evolution in communication capabilities, technology

advancements and interaction over the past ten years. The ‘digital’ realm is

still an infant in comparison to art, print or advertising, but it’s growing with

rapid ferocity, and maturing quickly. So too are the job titles, the industry

acronyms, specialists and academic study options.

The ‘interactive’ realm that graduates will join in years to come will be vastly

different to what it is now. In ten years we’ve witnessed the rapid expansion of

email, telecommunications, 3G technology, online commerce and networking,

low-cost airline travel; the list is endless. Soon to come is 4G, the strapline for

which is ‘By the time you’ve read this you’ll have downloaded an entire movie’.

Interesting times ahead!

After graduating in 1998 I joined ‘12:10’, a studio in Nottingham involved in

designing for print, web and CDROMs; or ‘interactive design’ work as we

referred to it then. The infancy of the work was matched only by that of the

software being released. The platform for CDROM’s or interactive screen-

based systems for information grew in popularity as everyone clambered to

get onboard. It meant learning new techniques and programming languages

and using Director to create information based pieces that the user ‘hopefully’

engaged with.

Clients were keen on having a CD-ROM for their direct-marketing - it was

seen to be ‘cutting-edge’. Most studios’s, including 12:10 published there own

CD-ROM’s as marketing tools to promote their work and their ‘expetise’. Of

course it was reliant on recipients putting the CDROM in to their computer,

which was met with widespread reservations; they were very often slow, and

clunky and if loaded on to a Mac you had to create a different version to boot

from the desktop. In most cases they were merely just brochures on-screen.

I designed a CDROM for Egg: the internet bank, back in 2001. I will never

forget the meeting to present the initial concept and ‘intro animation’. We

were describing a fly-through animations from outer-space to the high street.

In the meeting was a colleague from the agency I was hired by who was

perhaps a ‘little long in the tooth’. Much to out amazement he brought out a

model of the earth he’d made the night before out of Plasticine to show the

board of the Prudential his vision. He never accompanied us to another

meeting. But an example of how this new technology was being presented and

misunderstood by both clients and (most) people in the industry.

There were pioneers in the UK such as Digit, Anti-Rom and Tomato who were

always pushing the boundaries, and blurring the lines between design and

interaction by creating on-screen pieces, or physical interactions that

embraced both real world elements with technology and custom-built

software encouraging people to participate and interact.

However the commercial version fo interactive design also began to develop

online with clients needing a web presence. Web 1.0 was born and was largely

about software and technology. With the release of Macromedia Flash

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designers became as obsessed (as did their clients) with creating elaborate,

over-produced , pointless intro sequences, navigation systems and (in many

cases - my own included) entire sites that required a PhD to use and navigate

with them.

Around that time I joined Oven Digital in 1999 when there were thirty-four

people working in the London office, and around one hundred and ten a year

later. I was employed to work on creating a style guide for the Sky Sports web

site, I then created some stationary and packaging for the agency it self. My

memory of that time is a little sketchy; mainly due to the fact that every Friday

night, Oven would put a credit card behind the bar of a local drinking

establishment and we’d all help to ‘max it out’.

There was a mentality that you worked to live. We weren’t actual rock n’roll

stars, but it felt about as close as I would get to one. The east-end of London

rapidly changed, and became saturated with young, confident agencies like

Oven, Deepend and Oyster. In their own right producing some ground-

breaking work whilst spending the proceeds on holidays for the whole office.

It was a great time, a bullish time, a time where it felt very much about the

new taking over the old.

One client, for example, an eccentric millionaire from Silicone valley who

employed Oven to create a web site replica of the entire solar system online

called One Cosmos. He wanted an interactive experience allowing the user to

fly-through the entire galaxy system, and be able to click on every star/planet

and learn about it. His demands were blighted by a few small considerations -

Broadband was not yet available, and high-speed (T1 & T2) lines were only

available to businesses. Oven managed to produce his vision with the help of a

huge team of developers enlisted from all over the world resulting in a 76

Mega-Byte download - which on a 56k modem took around... well, forever!

Regardless of this, the project was an immense challenge that was as absurd

as it was brilliant, even if it was a decade before its time.

This new era boomed an new sector of the design service industry. A boom

that ultimately lead to it’s immanent bust in 2000. In my view the industry

made promises it couldn’t keep to it’s clients. Software, technology and (more

importantly) user engagement was simply not there; supply and demand.

However, out of the ashes came a new breed of agencies, designers, planners,

thinkers, producers developers, softwares, technologies and possibilities.

The UK recession that followed created a breathing space. Some time to re-

group, re-think and come back to ‘the table’ with a clearer vision, a new

model. It inspired a complete re-think on the industry; how we worked with

clients, how we approached the work and being realistic about the delivery of

work when paired with technical capabilities. In London lots of agencies like

Deepend and Oven combined forces and created new ventures like Poke and

DConstruct.

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What is the past, present and future of Interactive

design?

A few weeks ago I got a friend request on Facebook, from my dad! When I saw

him the following week he told me he had added me as his friend on

Facebook. ‘I know, I got the email.’ I said. ‘I think I might need some training,

I don’t really understand what it’s for; what is Facebook?’ he persisted.

The question gave me the opportunity to find out whether I could actually

explain it, because like similar platforms, I take Facebook for granted. Like

many my age (and much younger) we log-in, poke, accept (or decline) new

friends, update our status, upload videos and photos and review and comment

on our friends [Facebook] lives with great frequency. Indeed there are more

than 40 million status updates each day3.

‘Facebook is about connecting with people, friends or friends of friends; it’s

social networking.’ Ok, good start (I thought). ‘It’s a simple and effective way

to share your life with friends around the world, or the office. You have a

status which you update...’. ‘What for? Why do people want to know what I’ve

just eaten for breakfast?’ Came the interruption. ‘You don’t have to share that

information. It can be anything. A link to a site you like, an amusing YouTube

video, a link to your justgiving sponsorship page!’ and so went the

conversation.

I just hope he doesn’t join Twitter. Twitter to me doesn’t need to make sense,

but to explain it, and other platforms like it, is actually quite difficult without

suddenly thinking mid-sentence that you sound a little bit mental; it is what it

is – micro-blogging. There I said it! Twitter is just another example of how

Kevin Kelley describes our computers and mobile phones being ‘like windows

in to one giant ‘machine’, one global network’4. And sometimes the window I

use to interact with that ‘thing’ is Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc.

But let’s go back a bit. I first heard the term ‘Web two point zero’ around

2004. I asked that person who’d mentioned it what they meant, ‘Glossy

gradients and simpler navigation’ was their answer. That might be true from a

visual point-of-view, but Web 2.0 has been about much more than that. I

believe that people (probably in a marketing role) gave it this name because

the first version was such a failure; a starting point, but ultimately a four out

of ten ‘must do better’.

The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the fall of 2001 marked a

turning point for the web. Many people concluded that the web

was overhyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts

appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions.5

Commercially the industry was in recovering from a recession where clients

fingers and wallets had been burnt. Agencies had gone bankrupt, disbanded

and (some) re-grouped to form new ventures. Clients and the

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3 Sourced from http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics4 ‘Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web’ December 2007, http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html5 http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html

public were skeptical about the ‘Web’ and it’s value to their businesses and

lives. Calling it ‘Web 2.0’ was a way to start again. A new, more improved

version. A new page and beginning from which to build and gain trust. What

followed was a rapid rise in the development of technology and software

capability making it possible to empower users to engage with one another,

with brands, with networks; to have their say, to comment, to blog and make

connections.

Technically the term Web 2.0 was defined in the self-titled conference in 2004

by John Batelle and Tim O'Reilly who outlined that Web 2.0 was the "Web as

Platform”6. Where software applications are built upon the Web as opposed to

upon the desktop. Content Management Systems (CMS) were now not just for

the wealthy brands who could afford Sun Microsystems, or Mediasurface, you

could get an open source package to do it for you; albeit badly. With the

sophistication of data capturing the industry is also technically capable of

quantifying it’s value, particularly in advertising for the first time, ever.

You put an advert on TV it’s just there. I don’t know as a client

whose watching it. I know the viewing figures that estimated for

that ad break, but whose actually engaging with it? With digital

I can give all of that information to a client. We can tell them

exactly who, how, where, when, how many times and more.7

For clients web 2.0 has meant more control, more flexibility, more

opportunities and improved online communication, sales and tracking.

Affordable solutions to CMS means that clients can manage their content,

their images. But more importantly it has provided clients with the ability to

see the user buy-in, or rather, the return on their investment via the use of

more and more sophisticated tracking and profiling systems. Finally

marketing managers can go back to their bosses and/or investors and show

active user reports and customer purchases and spending behaviours. Never

has this been possible in any other form of advertising.

From an industry point-of-view, collaborations have been crucial. Traditional

advertising agencies have either created their own in-house digital teams or

brought in digital partners. The is, as with in the film industry, production

companies that provide a direct service facility for advertising agencies. These

production companies are also fueling the freelance sector, or in the case of

unit9, completely changing their business model.

‘You’ve seen your agency set up digital production in-house and,

like a virtual team of Premiership football players, who are

undoubtedly talented, they follow their own version of fantasy

digital, following Champions League work and ever higher

Champions League prices. All of which could leave you

creatively relegated. You’ve seen outsourcing to either pseudo

digital agencies that dress up as sheep but are ready to bite the

hand that feeds them, or freelancers who are “bloody good

value” but disappear like the Iraqi police force

when it’s time to walk down client RPG Alley.’

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6 http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html7 Tom Sacchi speaking at Click Singapore, Sept 2009.

If Web 1.0 was about retrieving information, then the Web 2.0 was about

creating the ability for users to create there own. This new era has created the

platform for users to actively participate and create content on blogs,

wikipedia, social networks and media sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo.

Google, Facebook, Bebo and Twitter are just a few examples of mainstream

online platforms that are enablers of connections beyond our physical ability.

Although, almost every form of communication tool we engage with now has

another form of connection. Playstation3, XBox, Wii all allow for online

gaming and messaging. Yahoo, Google, AIM, MSN and Facebook all have their

messaging platforms. Skype opened up the endless possibilities for

communicating with friends, relatives across the globe, for free via your ISP.

Concentration on user interface design (UI) has improved the engagement

between user and technology online. This is due largely to two discerning

factors. The first is that it is an industry fueled by youth. Not teenagers

(although not far off sometimes), but by young people who have the drive, the

passion and the energy to strive and push technology and its possibilities

further. No longer is the idea of setting up as a freelancer, or a collective a

daunting thought.

Secondly the availability of broadband, and (in some areas of the UK) fiber-

optic capabilities that reach download speeds of up to 50MB has aided this

process. The industry as a whole is maturing quickly, learning from it’s

mistakes of the late nineties and evolving in to the cloud(?), and beyond. But

what of interactive design it it’s purest sense – has the use and/or availability

of screen design improved, for example, with touch-screens?

I used a touch-screen the other night to buy a train ticket. London

underground now has touch-screens throughout most of it’s network, as do

many transport organisations the world over. Some galleries have them,

shopping centres, and even ATM’s. However, interactive design has perhaps

found its natural home within galleries and exhibition spaces. Places whereby

people are already prepared to spend time ‘interacting’.

For example, New York based interactive studio Potion’s Green Community

exhibit: ‘A large globe projected onto the wall spins slowly before the visitors.

Eight large icons appear at the bottom of the display, each representing a

different layer of human impact on the planet. On the left are nations,

population, agriculture and forestry. On the right are shipping paths, undersea

cables, energy usage and oil pipelines. Each of these impact layers may be

turned on and off simply by touching its icon. Visitors can select two overlays

at time to display on the globe in order to make comparisons and connections.

This interactive introduces visitors to the serious issues encountered in the

rest of exhibit of raises questions about the possible solutions.’8 – Information

and interactive design that bridges the gap between the user, challenging their

perceptions, experience and their expectations of how to interpret data and

information.

I began by commenting that interactive design was about making connections

between technology and users, and it is, but it can go far beyond the computer

screen, or gallery projection. It has evolved from the CDROM

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8 http://www.potiondesign.com/index.php?page=2&project=4&section=0&gallery=0&listPage=0&capPage=0

to embrace interactive television, to in-car systems and dashboards, to signage

systems that don't just point the way but help you find what you want and

promote other features whilst you’re there. It’s entire facades of buildings that

change colour and sound according to the data it is fed from the buildings

usage; creating an architecture organism. It’s intuitive exhibition design;

touch-screens, installations and more intuitive 3D environments. It’s

Greyworlds ‘The Source’ installation at the London Stock Exchange:

‘The Source is formed from a grid of cables arranged in a

square, 162 cables in all, reaching eight stories to the glass roof.

Nine spheres are mounted on each cable and are free to move

independently up and down its length. In essence the spheres act

like animated pixels, able to model any shape in three

dimensions a fluid, dynamic, three dimensional television.

Visitors to the atrium are greeted by this motion: its particles

rising and falling, generating an infinite range of figurative and

abstract shapes that rise, dissolve and reform at different

heights in the atrium. The shape of the sun rising on a new day

of trade, the names and positions of currently traded stocks, the

DNA helix at the center of life formed by the work, and floating

in the 32m void of the atrium.

This complex and sophisticated installation is a microcosm of

activity, a living reflection of market forces.’ 9

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9 http://www.greyworld.org/#the_source_/i1

What is the past, present and future of Interactive

design?

You need only look at other sectors such as TV, Newspapers, publishing and

music to realise how much design and technology is aiding cultural and social

change. Advertising revenues for online will usurp television as the biggest

advertising medium in Britain by the end of 200910, due to the rise in people

using the internet to watch TV shows (BBC iPlayer, Channel Fours 4oD, etc),

the availability of cheaper laptops and higher Broadband speeds. Again, users

empowered to control their own content, an even more bad news for

commercial stations:

A new global survey on broadcast viewing from consultant

Accenture shows that despite the recession, a growing number

of consumers would rather pay for content to avoid ads.11

Our interaction with new media and technology is now helping to shift our

behaviour patterns. We are watching television series through boxed DVD sets

and off sites like Hulu (for free) or iTunes (at a price), or through illegal

downloads. We are watching television on computer screens and through our

ipods. And those who own television sets may be watching it through their

game systems rather than subscribing to cable. In America popular shows are

having to utilise online platforms more and more to keep their cult following

interested between series:

Increasingly, these television programs come bundled with a

range of other media "extensions" as part of what people in the

industry are calling "transmedia" or "crossplatform" or "360

Degree" strategies. New series, such as Glee, Melrose Place or

The Vampire Diaries, have been building up their fan followings

all summer, rolling out advanced content via the web. In the

case of Melrose Place, fans could do a walkthrough of the

famous apartment complex by visiting a fake realtor site, while

fans of vampires could watch videos dramatizing the events

leading up to where the new CW teen drama begins.12

As advertising revenues continue to shift to online so too will the publishing

sector. Newspapers in particular are increasingly moving their operations

online, perhaps not out of choice, but availability: we spend more time at our

desks, in front of a screen than ever before so reading the news via RSS feeds,

or online has soared. The Guardian Unlimited claims to be 'the most popular

UK newspaper website, with 18.4 million unique users in October'13. Part of its

success is also due to the absence of blinking, flickering adverts in the side

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10 Reuters: UK online ad spend to overtake TV: report’ by Kate Holton, Apr 7, 2008: http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSL076236142008040711 AdWeek, ‘Viewers Will Pay to Go Adless’ by Steve McClellan April 20, 2009: http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/media/e3if26a27fe344b20e49c1d30cb1aea189212 ‘In a Social Networking World, What's the Future of TV?’ Henry Jenkins, September 24, 2009: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-jenkins/in-a-social-networking-wo_b_292014.html

13 ‘On-line publishing: An Overview’ by Adrian Shaughnessy, Feb 2008, Design Week Online: http://www.designweek.co.uk/features/on-line-publishing-an-overview/1137503.article

columns; a mistake so many others have made: if you want people to be able

to focus and read your articles don’t bombard them with animated adverts.

The Boston Globe14, as another example, exploded in to the radar of a global

audience when they made a significant, but hugely popular and successful

change last year. They just made the images they already had rights too a lot

bigger. That’s all, they made them much, BIGGER. They didn’t create an

AJAX player or fancy lightbox or gallery, they just made the images bigger.

Simple idea, and who says the that images don’t speak a thousand words?

Magazines are also having to adapt to their new life online. Some are failing

because their sites look like advertising hoardings Some run parallel lives

using the online version to share and promote snippets from the printed

version. Esquire magazine has successfully launched an online blog version of

their magazine; it is simple and elegant to read whilst also adorning a very

typical magazine feel to it without trying to be a magazine that simply exists

online.

Tyler Brûlé's Monocle15 website is smart, slick and full of multimedia content.

Using it is a pleasure, because it offers a rich mix of features that can't be

found in the printed publication, and that there is the difference. Not creating

an online version of what they have in print, but creating a online experience

that works in unison with it’s printed version whilst using technology and

simplicity, enhanced by a balance of function with form through rich media

thus improving the users experience and engagement.

The success of the iPhone was for many reasons, but largely because Steve

Jobs noticed (from the world around him) that people were taking their

mobile phone, camera and their mp3 player with them. He

decided to combine all of them in to one product. The iPhone has also

spawned another new chapter in software with its App Store; providing ‘an

application for everything’ – there are now over ten thousand applications to

choose from from games to sports to entertainment, books and lifestyle. Over

30million downloads have been recorded since 2007. All active platforms for

users to customise and engage with products, services or brands.

Similarly the way we read Books is going to change. Who will be bothered to

take their book with them in their bag when the alternative is lighter, smaller,

and easier to carry? Platforms like Google Books (http://books.google.com)

and even audiobooks (via iTunes) are increasingly popular with consumers.

Digital Readers are still in their infancy but on the verge of mass-popularity; it

is only a matter of time before our scuffed, dog-eared paper and hardbacks sit

alongside our once loved but never to be touched again Vinyl and CD

collections. (N.B. Google Books is now also available for iPhone users!). How

long before these platforms offer animations to accompany the story?

Holograms that act out the story, or interact directly with the reader? Well,

not as far fetched as you might think:

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14 Source: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture15 http://www.monocle.com/

Researchers in Japan are using science to bounce elephants in the palms of

their hands -- only these elephants are a new type of hologram you not only

see, but you can also feel.16

In 1999 Shawn Fanning launched a new software application that was to

change how many people used the internet: Napster. It sparked the biggest

shift in music since Elvis did that naughty dance and rocked the world,

literally. Whilst I agree that illegal downloading is wrong, this marked a new

era of consumers finding

and utilising new technology. For decades the record industry had it made,

charging their customers over-inflating prices for albums and singles and

making vast sums of money.

Along came Napster in 1999, and rather than trying to find a way to work with

them, the Record companies closed them down. It was there un-doing, why?

Not only are most independent record shops closing, but major high-street

chains are reporting massive cuts in sales. In June this year, Apple announced

that iTunes Store's customers purchased and downloaded more than 5 billion

songs. iTunes Store also has the largest music catalog online, with over 8

million tracks. The iTunes Store is now renting over 50,000 movies daily,

turning it into the most popular movie store, too, with a catalog of over

20,000 TV episodes, over 2,000 films, of which over 350 are available in HD

quality.17

Interactive design can significantly improve the survival rates of heart and

lung transplant patients. You don’t believe me? AllofUs is a new form of

design consultancy in London that was created in 2004 to ‘help organisations

exploit new and emerging opportunities with technology’18. I have followed

there development with great interest ever since I saw their project for the

NHS Harefield Hospital.

As part of an on-going art therapy initiative All of Us created the Harefield

Hospital Nature Window. A nature inspired installation for the UK's leading

heart and lung transplant centre - aiming to reduce patient anxiety before

major surgery:

Situated in the room where awaiting patients receive their pre-

med, the point in which patient anxiety levels are at their

highest, a very English landscape is projected into a hand-

crafted wooden relief. Patients interact and bring the scene to

life simply by pointing the custom air-mouse at key hotspots

within the landscape to trigger movement, sound and

animation, which combine to provide a calming distraction

from the nervous anticipation prior to surgery.19

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16 Reuters: ‘3D holograms go tactile’ by Julian Gordon: http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=112010&videoChannel=617 iTunes Statistics by Codrut Nistor: http://bindapple.com/itunes-statistics18 Source: http://www.allofus.com/?path=Home.AboutUs&xml=off19 Source: http://www.allofus.com/?path=Home.Work.Client&id=100

This, for me, defines what the potential of Interactive design can be. It

signifies the greater role that design can, and must play in the future

developments; not just for commerce and online, but to enhance peoples lives.

Or put better by the legend that is John Maeda:

Art humanizes technology and makes it understandable. Design

is needed to make sense of information overload. It is why art

and design will rise in importance during this century as

we try to make sense of all the possibilities that digital

technology now affords.20

The internet has only been around for about five thousand days21, and from

simple data retrieval we’re now engaging with sophisticated, integrated

applications; Blogging, microblogging, posting, poking, updating, tweeting,

forwarding, buying, downloading, etc. As technology advances, so too will the

need for interactive designers to understand the users interaction; our biggest

mistakes is thinking that what we think is ‘old-hat’ is the same as the public.

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20 ‘Technology + Design = Apple?’ John Maeda, September 21, 2009 www.huffingtonpost.com

21 ‘Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web‘ by Kevin Kelly: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html

What is Interactive design?

It is the pursuit, execution and delivery of endless possibility. The link

between human, technology and information. What do all these advancements

in technology mean for Interactive Design(ers)? Everything. Absolutely

EVERYTHING. Who is standing at the forefront of this technology armed with

the means, the capabilities and the creative sensibility to make the interaction

between user and technology? We are.

The role of interactive designers will become ever more important in the

design of all these information systems; The Guardian Unlimited web site is

not just popular because of its published articles, it is also a multiple-design-

award winning web site.

Regardless of the design discipline, the basics of good design do not change, it

is simple: Good Design Thinking (GDT)22. Whether you are designing a book,

a record album booklet, a corporate brochure, a web site or an interactive

signage system for an airport it is about how you apply your skills as a

designer, but moreover, as a human being whose conscious of the world

around them and how users interact with that world. An interactive designer

is committed to that relationship between technology, software, information

and people.

Inspiration is crucial. My own sources of inspiration come from many places;

my son Enzo, reading (currently, ‘The Element’ by Sir Ken Robinson),

Architecture (stand on 6th Avenue outside Mies Van Der Rohe’s Seagram

building and tell me you’re not be consumed by it’s presence), the new F1

iPhone App. Sometimes it is the simple, and smallest things in life that can

touch you. A current favourite, pictured on the cover of this paper, is Alfred

Sirleaf's 'Daily Talk' newspaper which reaches thousands of Liberians every

day but only ever produces one copy. How? By writing the day's biggest stories

on a large blackboard beside a busy road in the capital.

Simple.

Simple GDT™

22 Good Design Thinking (GDT) a term that I apply to emcompass what I deem to be the defined value of design.