Interaction design lies at the intersection of many different disciplines and methodologies. Therefore, it is only natural that designers learn principles that are extracted from disciplines like Industrial Design, Engineering and Communication Design. Historically, especially in Pakistan design in general has had the reputation of offering ‘cosmetic’ value to works of engineers, writers and now technologists. Design traditionally only comes up towards the end of the project. Although this thinking has been changing, the shift is painfully slow. Besides a shift in thinking of the business and corporate world this shift will come from designers themselves. Only designers who see design as an integral part of everyday life, innovation, systems, technology and resulting solutions will be able to create that shift.
This course will be a glimpse of this journey for students where they see, understand and practice design that has its effects from individuals to larger groups. This understanding will come through developing an understanding of how humans interact with the world around them, their physical and mental processes and limitations.
The principles of interaction (Affordances, Mental Models, Metaphors, Visibility, Constraints, Mapping, etc.), psychology and human factors will serve as the theoretical framework with practical work built on top of it. The first half of the course focuses on non-digital interactions while the second half will explore digital products and interactions and Affordances through non-digital and digital products and artefacts.
This course will be complimented by the lab course offered in parallel to this studio course.
