Summary Journal

The last assignment of this class is to summarize what I have learned through this course from the readings, the class assignments, and the class observations. Through the well-organized course schedule, I have learned how to develop the interactive design as a process, which has 3 steps including knowing the background, understanding the process, and practice. As a non-experience interactive design person at the beginning of the quarter, I could say that I gained sufficiency knowledge of basically interactive design to start work on it. The 3 steps learning process is detailed below.

Step 1: Knowing the background

The early few classes, plus the readings provided the general basic background of the interactive design. Bill Moggride’s book “Designing Interactions” is the good source for the people who are new for this interactive design realm to study the evolution of the interactive design. Learning from the past helped me to understand the present and predict the future of the interactive design. Moreover, the first class assignment, picked up sample of good and bad design to discuss in the class, let the students sharing their perspectives of design and prepared students for the next classes. The few following classes provided the basic knowledge of the interactive design including design elements (typography, color, hierarchy, composition), design process (site map, wireframe, use case, and task-flow diagram), and usability test.

Step 2: Understanding the process

The class assignments such as create the wireframe, re-design the classroom, and bad usability sample along with in class activities (design workshop and game experience) generated better understanding of the reading through real practices. Moreover, the video of IDEO designing team showed how the interactive design process runs in the real world. Beside, the guess speaker from Xbox well explained more about the user interface beyond the reading from “Measuring The User Experience” book by Tom Tullis and Bill Albert. Also, having Riverbed representative talked about design and branding in class was very exciting and interesting topic. The guess speaker explained about how the well design could support the successfulness of the brand. Interactive design is not limited only on the screen but also include the user feeling. Therefore, creating the service envy, engaging the users with the service until they feel appreciate enough to share/express their passion about it to the others, was included into course study.

Step 3: Practice

A term project is the great exercise for taking what I have read from the books and studied from the class into the tangible project. The suggestions from all classmates and instructors are not only help me correct my understanding, but also bring a lot of creativities into the project at the end.

In conclusion, this class provided the sufficient basic background of interactive design from the readings, instructors teaching, and guess speakers sharing. Beside, it is also provided the appropriate hand-on exercise from both take-home assignments and in-class activities.