Note: This is a working draft of my thoughts on the subject.

When I made plans for my first semester teaching interaction I designed a curriculum around what I thought the students would need and want to learn. My curriculum was successful for many reasons, and there are plenty of areas where I believe it can be improved. I’ve spent an entire semester essentially doing design research on my students. Now that I have a more complete understanding of my user and her needs, I’m able to redesign my curriculum to better complement a student’s interests and educational path.

A few successful outcomes from this semester –

• Students had a clear understanding of the project work and what to expect in class.
• Students were engaged in the subject matter.
• Students created a final project that is worthy of display in a portfolio.

A few areas where I think the class could be improved –

• Not enough time for projects. We were rushing through many of them without proper time for reflection and absorption.
• I tried to fit web design and interaction into one class. The two are not the same.
• Students were able to understand a process but did not learn a good working methodology.
• I ran out of time! I didn’t have enough time to assemble meaningful lectures and examples each week.

What Students Need to Learn

Next semester I’m interested in focusing on nurturing a deeper understanding of people and interactions rather than sharpening my students’ web design skills. Students don’t need to learn as much about hard skills as I’d assumed. Many students asked for instruction in software and code –practical skills that can be learned from the internet. It’s far more important for sophomores and juniors to begin developing a point of view about design and people. They also need to understand their own working methodology, their strengths and weaknesses, and how those can be employed effectively in a team setting. An interaction class should be a platform for all design students to learn about themselves and the people around them, and I believe those abilities will serve them better in their current and future lives.

Guiding Principles for a New Interaction Core

Emphasis on Doing the Work
A significant piece of the design process lies in iteration. It’s unlikely that your first solution will be the right one, and it’s important to evaluate and revise throughout the process. I noticed my students would create a single sketch and then move forward. They have little desire (or not enough time?) to fully explore concepts through sketching and making.

Evidence of Thinking
I’d like to see more evidence of students’ thinking about projects. It’s okay to turn in one shining, amazing bit of work at the end, but it’s the story of the project before the golden moment of inspiration that is most interesting.

Getting Messy
Students need to understand the materials of our craft before they can create delightful experiences. This understanding only comes from experimentation and failing a whole lot of times until something wonderful emerges from the mess. More Post-Its, more digital and physical sketching. More messing up.

Investigate the Real World
After teaching in many different classrooms I’m convinced that the classroom environment itself is toxic to real learning. We will get out of the classroom as much as possible; it’s essential to understand the real world if we’re going to be designing interactions for real people.

Emphasis on Conceptual Thinking
Many of my students are able to master the tools of web and interaction design. The students who are also able to think conceptually about their projects excelled in my class. Their work is coherent, concise and portable. This is a difficult thing to teach to a classroom full of makers, who instinctively jump into the making before the concept is fully developed.

Systems Thinking
Feedback loops are an essential concept in interaction design. They are the reasons why people want to use the digital products we design. We will focus on systems as both a tool and a principle in interaction design.

The Narrative of Interaction Education

My plan for this semester was to create a narrative based on a real-world project. Our semester began with research, then we constructed a website and an app. The semester finished with an open-ended assignment that employed all of the students’ knowledge from previous projects.

The new arc should reflect the way that learning happens, not the way a project happens. In response to Tequila Chan’s outlined methodologies, I’ll be focusing on little loops of Research -> Making -> Reflection/Analysis within projects in the curriculum. His work is based off Kolb’s learning style inventory and McCarthy’s 4MAT learning system. (More to come about this.)

I also want to emphasize the importance of creating incentives (and maybe a little fear) in the classroom. I’ll be reshaping my curriculum with a significant project up front. This will give students a chance to make something right away, and will give me a chance to offer up their first grade early on. It’s a good way to set my expectations for their work. (An aside: I am really not concerned with grades, but the students seem to be. I’d give everyone an A if I could, but I fear they would not be well motivated to continue my class if that were the case.)

Why is this approach better?

Students will be invested in the class from the beginning because there will be an incentive outlined up front. They will not have to wait months to realize the outcome of their hard work. Their first bit of feedback will provide motivation to continue learning, and for the remainder of the semester they will conduct self-initiated investigations into the topics where they’ve personally struggled. These investigations will lead them to an intrinsic awareness of topics in interaction. Finally, they will employ these new skills to create a holistic, well thought out final project that demonstrates their understanding of interaction concepts.

What will this look like?

• Rapid prototyping of concepts
• Offline creation of online artifacts
• Formal presentations of work
• Frequent testing and interaction with users

Feedback?

I’d love to hear it. Get me at @pixelkated.