Lost Histories

Back in February 2001, I attended a design history conference—specifically geared to graphic design history—but at the end, as I wrote up my thoughts on the lectures on my blog I asked the following questions: I find it quite interesting to read these questions now that I teach Interaction Design history some 20+ years later…

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Foreseeing the Future: The legacy of Vannevar Bush

– Previously published on Boxes and Arrows, 2002 In 1945 a seminal article appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. Titled, “As We May Think,” the article’s author, Vannevar Bush (1890–1974), proposed a new mechanical machine to help scholars and decision makers make sense of the growing mountains of information being published in to the world. This…

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Diagramming Systemic Racism

One of the projects I started at ADL and never finished, due to it not being core to the mission of ADL, was the visualization and modeling of systemic racism and technology that continues to support systemic racism. I spent a lot of time reading articles across different fields—healthcare, finance, education, law enforcement etc— and…

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Remembering My Father — through music

Rick Malone: 08/09/1940-01/18/22 I read this at my father’s memorial service, March 17, 2022. Most people in attendance were from his theater family and many of the shared stories were about theater and shows. I am not involved in the the theater so didn’t have that in common with him, but music was one of…

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IXD History Wrap Up

References and Videos plus my next project I hope you enjoyed the intro lectures I shared from my Interaction Design History class I taught this past fall (2020). The lectures barely scratch the surface of a deep, complex and intertwined history of our field. To read some history books, you might think Interaction Design comes…

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IXD Futures: AI & machine learning, AR & VR, speculative design & futures—intro lecture 15

Alternative ways of thinking about interactive experiences & speculating on the future We are finally into the future — and this week we read about Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, about Robots and thinking about how we design the future. Read through IBM’s Design for AI Framework. They do a great job of explaining the parts —…

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Information Age: The dot com boom and bust, rise of e-commerce & social platforms, accessible to universal—intro lecture 13

I share screenshots of my first website and we all laughed at how primitive it was This week we are going to ride the dot com boom and bust as the internet becomes a viable place for interaction designers. We’ve already talked about early communities moving from BBSs onto the web and AOL making the…

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Computer Age: The World Wide Web, The Browser, Early Communities (The Well, BBSes, Usenet) — intro lecture 10

Where Interaction Design History and my personal history as a designer begin to overlap Once folks start having computers in their homes, they want to do more than just create files. They want to connect with and talk with other people. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s software called Bulletin Board systems started appearing. There…

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Silicon Age: Visioning the future & the beginnings of Interaction Design as a practice — intro lecture 7

We finally start to hear about the origins of Interaction Design as a distinct practice. It still doesn’t have the official name yet but Bill Verplank, talks about the work of doing interaction design. Read about the concepts for the Personal Dynamic Media — Dynabook — concept put forward by Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg…

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Silicon Age: The Mother of All Demos — and my how the world changed — intro lecture 6 from my Interaction Design History course

This is a short intro as the content of the videos covers everything needed to think about in this section. So far in our journey we’ve seen the evolution of symbols and pictographs into our current alphabets, as well as the birth of printing, type design and graphic design. We’ve explored the rise of industrial…

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