It’s been more than two months since I turned in the fateful thesis paper to Anita in the basement of Margaret Morrison. It was a bittersweet feeling to finally finish the paper, since I wrestled it for so long. During and after the work, I sometimes have a hard time describing my paper, especially since I found it more of a personal exploration into topics that I wanted to resolve. I was exploring ideas of perception and the self that lingered from undergrad with the design of interactive products and the increasing context we consider as interaction designers.

Having nearly a year to craft a paper means that there is a lot of time where you are secluded in rooms full of books wondering if you still have an ounce of sanity left. With Dick Buchanan as my advisor, our meetings usually consisted of nudges and strategic questioning about the ideas involved. He helped me to look at things differently and explore sources I never would have, and generally gave a broader perspective of whatever we were talking about.

Anyway, I was inspired to write something about my paper because of a recent Adaptive Path post that had some web tools that analyze writing. I thought I’d throw my paper in and see what came out:

One of the things that happened to me, and I’m sure happened to a lot of people, is the discovery of so many more ideas and topics than you first start out with–via readings, discussions, classes, etc… So it almost turned out to be too much time as I had to fight to scope things down. Overall, it was a good experience, and made me a lot more confident in my writing and research process.

While digging through some literature and immersing myself in my thesis project topic, I started questioning why I am approaching this particular topic, and more generally, what are most people’s motivations for designing. I was remembering back to the one the first days of Dick Buchanan’s seminar course and how we went around the large table asking us “why are you here?” What is the deep motivation for even choosing to spend time learning about and practicing design. Is it to make the world a better place? Browsing through some of these books at the library, it seems like that’s what a lot of people want to do. From politics to urban planning to philosophy, people are pushing themselves in an area for some reason or another.

These reasons are the principles that guide the types of design projects and the decisions we make within them. Am I here because I want to make “cool stuff” or is it because there are better job prospects with a master’s degree or is it because I truly want to make the world a better place. I’m aiming towards the last one and I’m trying my best, but it’s not always easy.

This brings me to the question of when not to design. If we are truly trying to make the world a better place, there might be times that we tackle a project that ends up a dead end. Maybe there is nothing to invent and people will go about their natural way of doing things and there is nothing you can do to change it. A bit cynical perhaps and it’s probably not the best attitude have. It might come down to the initial approach to the design problem itself. There’s tons of writing and discussion about how problem framing is critical, which might be one way the dead-ends are avoided.

But I wonder, especially when the starting point is a new technology or ability, how many times have there been situations where designers should have just admitted that there is nothing they can do and move on. Or is there always something that can be done, even if it is small. Is there a mobile application hiding in every human issue? A service that people can always attach to and use on a regular basis? With pressure from clients and even within academia to produce results, it’s probably rare. If there is a paper on a project like that, I’d love to read it.

Being three weeks into school, things are a little hectic, but I ended up choosing the two classes I wanted to stick with for the semester:

Making Furniture Interactive
Although it wasn’t a class I even knew about until classes started, this class is essentially about physical computing and embedding electronics into physical objects. This is pretty closely related to things I’m interested in, with regards to the boundaries of physical and digital contexts. It’s nice to actually work on making something that has multiple facets of production (physical, electronic, and computational), but that also makes it difficult. Most of the time success means getting something simply to function rather than making something meaningful. We have been posting the work we do on this blog.

Graduate Typography
After getting a bunch of mixed reviews from people who took the class, I figured I should take it anyway since I want to have a good foundation for visually communication ideas. I’m surprised at how useful it has been so far. I’ve always thought of my problem with typography being a matter of choosing the right font, and the approach that Kristen Hughes takes already has helped me in understanding how to start using type. I’m slowly getting used to the subjective aspects and freedom that is created through constraints.

Thesis Project
I’m glad to say that I feel somewhat confident about what I’m doing with the project. I’ve started with a somewhat formed vision of what is important with my topic and why I want to do it. I’m working on Ad-Hoc assistance and how people can share resources between each other, possibly using mobile devices. I’m going to interview people who are involved in volunteer groups to get a sense of their attitudes and thoughts, and also approach the east end food co-op as a user group that collaborates through helping. I’m hoping the research will help in creating a system to make it easy for regular people to participate in everyday assistance. I think it’s great for me because it puts me outside of my comfort zone and is something I don’t know very much about. The only worry is time.

Thesis Paper
This one’s a little tough. Every week I feel like I’m formulating something worthwhile just to be thrown into doubt and anxiety following our thesis meetings. I feel lost a lot of the time and unsure if what I am writing about and why it’s worth my time and energy. Somewhat like our Seminar II papers last year. Right now I’m looking at how people assign meaning to space resulting in places. It all relates to pervasive technology and something about perception and flow. I’m hoping I can clarify this for myself as soon as possible.

If anything, I’m coming across tons of questions that be thesis topics in themselves. Here’s to hoping that things start coming together, and quickly.