Ghost in the Pixel

So what is this “CMU way of thinking” really about? Here is my unabashedly biased perspective on the matter ;-)

CMU, or Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is globally recognized as a leader in design education, from establishing the world’s first degree program in industrial design in 1934 to recently expanding their graduate design offerings, and developing joint programs with the schools of business and computer science.

But hold on, what is meant by design at CMU?

There is the semi-autonomous School of Design housed within the College of Fine Arts, but it has its own head, faculty, and curriculum, directed towards various types of design education: communication design, industrial design, interaction design, and new product development (joint program with business and engineering), as well as a pivotal program with the rhetoric department. Students subsequently receive a degree in design. They get hired as designers. Period.

However, what confuses many folks (at least other CMU alumni I meet in the Bay Area) is that there is the HCII (Human-Computer Interaction Institute) within the School of Computer Science, which offers a 1 yr master’s degree in HCI. When I tell folks I studied Interaction Design at CMU, immediately people assume it’s from the HCI program. Not quite!

I know I’ll get in trouble for saying this but I’ll just say it. The HCI degree is NOT a design degree. It’s a hybrid degree blending social science, cognitive psychology, and computer science. The HCI degree is a necessary and valuable education focused on computational perspectives, specific methods of user-centered design (UCD) process, including (but not limited to) usability evaluation and user-oriented problem discovery, with heavy emphasis on cognitive psychology and computer science with statistical and usability techniques, plus capturing data (user feedback) towards making design recommendations. This is all extremely useful complementary information and approaches that support designers. I’m all for it! Graduates often go on to become user researchers, usability engineers, and yes even designers too :-)

SO what then is the difference? It’s a bit subtle and loaded with some intellectual speak, but essentially the CMU School of Design mode of thought and practice is centered on design as a “humanistic, liberal art of technological culture” focused on the “conception, planning, and shaping of the artificial” directed towards “individual and collective purposes”. Whoa! Let’s unpack all that…

1. Humanistic: It may seem like splitting hairs to some folks but this term considers the totality of being human, not just objectified “users” to be statistically analyzed to the nth degree. This includes the emotional, aesthetic, and expressive qualities of people and humanizing technology to support that full range of dimensionality. Beauty, trust, freedom, emotion, and control are all human values that take center stage when designing new products and services.
2. Liberal Art: Just like in a typical college education, referring to a liberal arts degree that is well-rounded, thus provides a total perspective on human issues and problem-solving. It is expansive, exploring new territories of thought and meaning, and inventive possibilities drawing from various disciplines. Plus it is an “art” (as opposed to method-driven); per Dick Buchanan, an art is a long-term, strategically oriented set of concepts, connected in some systematic, disciplined manner with a holistic, total view in mind of a situation or problem. A method is tactical and diverse in nature (there are hundreds of methods to choose from, but only a select few arts that guide one’s thinking) targeting immediate issues in a tightly constrained manner. I agree it’s a subtle distinction, but worth pondering the slight but powerful differences…
3. Conception, planning, and creation: Sounds like core phases of the design process! This refers to the human-driven ability to conceive, plan, and create something that solves human problems and improves conditions.
4. Individual and collective purposes: Refers to creating solutions that solve problems for single person’s goals OR for groups, teams, organizations, even entire societies, to help them achieve their cumulative goals and fulfill their purposes (think of goal-directed design).

And technological culture…This refers to the modern day of course, but this label can be applied to any time period or culture/society/community where technologies (whether mechanical or digital or beyond) influence and shape people’s behaviors and attitudes about living, working, playing, etc. Designers equipped with this humanistic perspective can help invent valuable solutions where the technologies better fit human needs and concerns.

So there you have it, a quick sketch of the main ideas that define the distinctly CMU approach to design. Much of this comes from Buchanan’s work on the “rhetorical dimensions of design”, which I will evolve further in later postings.

For now, these posts should help shape a better understanding of what all that entails:

Core ideas of design

Core design abilities

Purposes of design

Oh boy, here we go with design definitions :-) We hate ’em and we love ’em, just admit it! Whenever I see a design definition thread online, I often roll my eyes and rapidly scroll through the commotion, “smiling through the tears”.

Two things about definitions I want to point out:

• 1. There’s a profound essay by CMU’s Dick Buchanan which I will try to type up verbatim one day in which he masterfully articulates the difference between two types of definitions serving either tactical or strategic purposes. I’ll dig it up and post online soon–it’s well worth the effort, I promise! Everyone should read it and reflect upon their own quest for “the right definition” of design and why it’s such a lively yet frustrating effort. I think you’ll soon discover that almost everyone is at cross-purposes in “defining design” without knowing why.
• 2. Continuing this stream about tactical vs. strategic, I want to point out the difference between “categories” and “topics” as Buchanan elucidates. It relates to the different types of definitions…

From the rhetorical POV that Buchanan argues, a category is a tightly constrained, narrowly worded definition that is set once and for all, with no room for expansion. It’s “locked down” in a sense for specific purposes. I suspect for immediate application.

In constrast, a topic (from topos, or place, just like topology, the study of spatial structure) is more open to interpretation, used as a tool for conceptual re-thinking of issues, flipping people’s perspectives on something, forcing a new way of looking. It promotes invention of ideas, meanings, and applications. It’s basically a place for exploration and understanding, fostering debate and expansion to new domains or areas of thought. Should facilitate what Peter Senge called a “shift of mind” or metanoia in his popular book The Fifth Discipline (which, if you’re wondering, is “systems thinking”).

(A quick film reference: remember in Dead Poets Society when Robin Williams’ character urged the dutiful timid schoolboys to stand up in class and stand on top of their desks? He wanted them to break their conditioned routine way of thinking and seeing, to experience metanoia, a new field of view and thus hopefully discovery of new possibilities.)

So with that as background, here’s my “definition” of interaction design:

A humanistic activity centered on the conception, planning, and creation of behaviors (ie, the interactions) that shape an engagement between a person and some “other”, an artificial form (ie, web, mobile, physical, hybrid) that connects to the overall experience.

There is nothing inherent to interaction that says it is only digital; indeed designing interaction has been going on for centuries, it’s just no one called it that! For example, when people used things to execute a task or fulfill a goal (ie, hold a hammer to drive a nail), they were interacting with tools or information to act somehow. But given the recent hype over “interactive media”, the popular perception is that this concept of interactivity arose only recently. More commonly, interaction design is often perceived to be just “designing websites”, which is woefully limiting on so many levels. (see my piece on Digital Product Design) The concept of “interaction” has been around, just not consciously, rigorously investigated as such till recently. Also, new insights from “interaction” have started to inform traditional fields like industrial and graphic design. (see job postings by hardware OEMs, identifying interaction designers as part of the team or designers of wayfinding signage asking questions of flow, context, utility)

But to continue further, for me interaction design is a topic (I use that word very deliberately) for rich conceptual exploration of issues central to current and future humanity: choice, control, freedom, beauty, trust, emotion, expression, experience, and so on that lie at the heart of the relationship (engagement or situation–a very powerful concept here as will be described shortly in this blog) between a person and an “other” be it digital, physical, or environmental, etc. It’s an area of rich, liberal possibilities.

So, in sum interaction design (in my view) is a) tactically the articulation of sequence, flow, pacing of behaviors and their consequence (e.g., what happens when I click, twist, turn, move, tap this?) for product execution and b) strategically a force for exploring the possibilities (topics) of shaping technologies to respond to human values. It is also c) pragmatically a set of concepts and methods for thinking through problems concerning the relationship (ie, engagement) between people, technology, and contexts. Interaction design is not limited to only making websites or software or gadgets. For me the key word here is “possibilities”…leading to invention, creativity, and so on for situations beyond a specific medium or technology, such as business processes, social services, organizations, cultures, policies, systems…in short, an evolved set of “orders of design”, as Dick Buchanan explains.

Getting back to this issue of definitions, I just want to quickly quote something he recently said at the Emergence 2007 conference on service design (applicable to interaction, industrial, whatever design):

“Did anyone find a definition of service design? I didn’t find one, and I am not bothered by that. Defining disciplines lacks value. Instead, we should ask ourselves, ‘What is the RESULT of service design? What industries does it touch? What is its deeper purpose?”

from Alexa Andrzejewski on Adaptive Path’s Blog