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Interaction
Innovation
Understanding Interaction-Ivrea
Andrew Davidson
Chair of the Education Program
Interaction Design Institute Ivrea
GK. VanPatter
Co-Founder, NextDesign Leadership Institute
Partner & Co-Founder, UnderstandingLab
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this conversation as PDF file
1
GK VanPatter: Welcome, Andrew. We are very interested in your perspective on the challenges facing graduate design education today. Our very knowledgeable readers will already know that Interaction-Ivrea launched in 2001 and positioned itself as a new breed of design school, created without being encumbered by traditional notions of design education, vertical disciplines, etc. Not so well known are the specifics behind that positioning. It would be great if you could take us inside, behind the projected persona, and help us better understand Interaction-Ivrea today. Was Interaction-Ivrea’s creation intended to be a solution to a particular set of issues? If so, help us understand what those challenges were/are perceived to be. What is the vision there?
Andrew Davidson:
The vision for Interaction-Ivrea, like the field of interaction design
itself, is multi-faceted. We are primarily an educational institution
that aims to develop innovators and leaders in the practice through our
two-year masters program in interaction design. Our focus is on project-based
education that is supported by a strong research and conceptual framework.
Being located in Ivrea (in northern Italy, between Turin and Milan), the
home city of Olivetti, and founded by them and Telecom Italia, we are
part of a long tradition of innovation and excellence at the nexus of
design and technology and social values.
Interaction-Ivrea has made a clear decision to be a truly international
organization, while still being Italian. We have students, faculty, and
staff from 24 different countries around the world and this makes for
an incredibly rich mixture of cultures, ideas and approaches to design
and problem solving. Our goal is to fuse the current international basis
of interaction design with the wonderful tradition of Italian design.
We recognize that a strong future and growth potential exists with the
fusion.
2
GK VanPatter: Was the perception that such leaders were
not being developed elsewhere among the numerous schools already offering
interaction design at the graduate level?
Andrew Davidson:
We felt that we could bring a unique approach to the field. While some
other programs concentrate primarily on technology, and others on the
systems approach, we would like to focus primarily on the needs of the
users in crafting interaction designs. Our feeling is that this approach
is valuable and under-represented in the marketplace and in the field.
3
GK VanPatter: What is the average age of Interaction-Ivrea
students and how many years of professional industry experience would
they typically have?
Andrew Davidson:
Along with our multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural goals for our student
population, we also look for a mixture of professional and educational
experience in students. Most of them come to Interaction-Ivrea with 3
to 5 years of work experience, although some have just finished an undergraduate
degree and others have quite a bit more experience. The average age is
about 29, so this is probably not a typical graduate design program.
In our recruiting, we are highly selective — not only in the sense
that we seek the most talented and creative people, of course, but also
in trying to create great diversity within each group. We look to balance
background, experience, culture, gender, outlook, approach, etc. It is
a complex process and we put a lot of energy and time into it. After an
initial screening of a potential student’s portfolio, CV, and application,
we interview selected candidates by telephone before making our final
admissions offers. Our decisions are based as much on what we think a
student can contribute to our community as what we think they can gain
from it.
The richness of our collective culture is one of the strongest aspects
of our community, I would say. Personally, I have certainly learned a
tremendous amount about the interactions of people from different cultures
in my time here in Interaction-Ivrea. This level of understanding, that
comes from working, collaborating, talking, and socializing together,
is something that you can never achieve as a visitor or traveler. It can
only come from an extended time together. I am sure that that this kind
of knowledge and depth of connection is a fantastically attractive overlay
to the design education that we provide.
4
GK VanPatter: Our research across numerous graduate design
schools indicates that the average age of students is 28-29 years old
with 3-5 years of “industry” experience. There is a lot to
think about there as we look out into the marketplace and see the huge
and complex challenges facing the design community.
I recall that in Interaction-Ivrea’s considerable pre-launch publicity
there was reference made to your advisory committee and their feelings
that your school should concentrate on teaching HOW rather than WHAT.
Can you help us understand what exactly that means in the context of interaction
design? How does that notion manifest itself in actuality at Interaction-Ivrea?
Andrew Davidson:
It is true that we are heavily process-oriented, but we also strongly
emphasize prototyping of designs in order to evaluate their effectiveness.
Our design methodology, which we apply to a variety of educational activities,
encourages explorations that begin with understanding the users’
experience to imagine new opportunities, continue with “just-enough”
prototyping to evaluate a design solution, and then crafting and testing
the experience. Finally, we emphasize developing a clear communication
of the idea.
In order to support the HOW with WHAT, we do a lot of work in prototyping.
This can take two forms depending on the design area. For objects and
spaces, the designs tend to be physical manifestations and the prototyping
involves electronics, programming, and model-making. For systems and services,
the designs are more in the area of service design and then experience
prototypes are generated, often using video scenarios to demonstrate the
concepts.
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GK VanPatter: OK, I am trying to understand what it means
to be process-oriented at Interaction-Ivrea. Are you teaching process?
What process would that be? Are you teaching cross-disciplinary innovation/problem
solving process skills, cross-disciplinary collaboration dynamics or anything
related?
Andrew Davidson:
Yes, we emphasize a design process that we believe leads to innovative
ideas for interaction design solutions — ones that are culturally
desirable, technologically feasible, and economically sustainable. Generally
speaking, the process involves six phases:
1. Understand the users’ experience
2. Imagine new opportunities
3. “Just-enough” prototyping
4. Design solutions
5. Craft the interactive experience
6. Present and test the outcome
In applying this process to various domains, we ask students to engage
with many aspects of the field. They (as do our faculty, of course) come
from many different backgrounds (interaction design, graphic design, industrial
design, architecture, computer science, psychology, cognitive science,
etc.). And we think that having a mixture of disciplines in a project
team in our educational activities echoes the process of collaboration
in the professional world.
So we construct faculty and student teams that allow and encourage people
of different disciplines (and cultures, of course) to work together. As
you can imagine, collaborating with people from different continents and
educational and professional training is both an incredible challenge
and an incredible opportunity.
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GK VanPatter: Since our practice is based on helping
cross-disciplinary teams accelerate innovation, this is not a realm that
we have to imagine. I do think it would be helpful to readers if we tried
to do a little more unpacking around the art and science of the Interaction-Ivrea
process for a few moments if we can. In the minds of the Interaction-Ivrea
leaders, is what you teach a process specific to interaction design?
Andrew Davidson:
Perhaps it is a matter of emphasis. I suppose you could say that our process
could be, and is, applied in its basic shape to many other design disciplines.
I would not argue that. I believe our emphasis on “just-enough”
prototyping, and how we apply it, is specific to interaction design. Our
students get hands-on experience with the tools of prototyping (as I mentioned
earlier), while still retaining a strong user-centered approach.
7
GK VanPatter: It sounds like Interaction-Ivrea teaches
a process specifically created for interaction interventions not for innovation
interventions in general. In other words, you can engage once the challenge
has been defined/framed as an interaction problem. You offer interaction
solutions. The HOW of Interaction-Ivrea is the HOW of interaction, not
the HOW of innovation. Is that correct?
Andrew Davidson:
Are we trying to come to the ancient question of “what is interaction
design?”?!?!
Perhaps I could say that interaction design is the development of products
and services that bridge the gap between people and technology. And we
try to do that in innovative ways in order to create effective solutions
to the problems that surface in that gap.
8
GK VanPatter: Well that is not exactly where I was going
with the question, but your view of what interaction is will be useful
momentarily. I was actually trying to reach a different shore. The early
publicity around the creation of Interaction-Ivrea, your advisory council,
references to HOW rather than WHAT, references to innovation, etc. made
it appear that Interaction-Ivrea was going to be involved in educating/training
innovation-enabling leaders, that you were going to be teaching adaptable
innovation process skills, organizational-enabling skills. This conversation
suggests something quite different. A focus specifically on interaction
design/innovation is very different. I am not suggesting one or the other
is better but they are very different focuses.
OK, with that understood, let me ask you about the nature and role of
interaction from the Interaction-Ivrea perspective. I noticed that in
your definition of what interaction is, there was no reference to human-to-human
interaction, the kind that we would see on cross-disciplinary teams for
example. Is this part of interaction outside the focus of your program
there?
Andrew Davidson:
l would say that the things which we produce, the end results of our work,
the goals of our creativity — the products and services we design
— are aimed at improving the quality of people's lives in a world
in which we are increasingly dependent on technology. Our solutions focus
on using interaction design to achieve that improvement. That is the WHAT.
In order to accomplish that, we are developing methodologies and practices
in interaction design, and in our pedagogical model, to enable the creation
of innovative solutions. Our premise for these methodologies is that you
need multi-disciplinary teams to creative effective solutions that are
user-centered. And that these teams should be cross-cultural as well as
cross-disciplinary. This is the HOW. And of course these teams involve
human-to-human interactions. This takes a lot of work, as you well know!
It is definitely a fundamental part of our mission.
Now, in our teaching and our practice, as our field is young and our institution
is new, I cannot claim that we have all the answers to either the WHAT
or the HOW. But I can say that we are definitely experimenting vigorously
and learning a lot as we go about the human side of the design equation
— both in WHAT we produce and HOW we produce it. There are many
challenges.
I would say that, next to our concentrated focus on innovation in interaction
design (and our location, of course), the richness and diversity of our
international culture is probably the most-cited feature and attraction
of our program.
9
GK VanPatter: While the idea of working in cross-disciplinary
teams is finally taking hold in design education, we are actually interested
in the territory that lies beyond the simple adoptions of teams. We seek
to better understand how or if advanced process skills and interaction
dynamics are being taught at the table-top level. Here we are trying to
surface some visibility into, not the philosophical abstractions around
such issues, but rather the actual skill-building.
I am sure you are aware that in many design schools, cross-disciplinary
problem solving and teamwork skills are still being “taught”
simply by placing students in an environment and handing out a team assignment.
That is often the extent of the knowledge transfer. It’s the old
“let the students work it out” model of human-to-human interaction
education. Is anything different going on at Interaction-Ivrea? It would
seem like you folks have an opportunity to be doing much more, to become
a leader in this area that is critical to the future of design leadership.
Andrew Davidson:
Well, I cannot claim that we have an advanced methodology for the problem
you describe. However, we are acutely aware of this issue because of the
added dimension at Interaction-Ivrea of multi-cultural (besides multi-disciplinary)
collaboration.
One of the problems I have seen with collaboration in design education
is that it can be quite artificial. If you assemble a team of people all
from the same background (say a group of graphic designers) and ask them
to work together on a project, the results can be disastrous! Each designer
is attempting to express his or her individual vision and, especially
in an educational setting, is expected to do just that. So wanting this
kind of group to come to a collaborative agreement on a design solution
is exceptionally unreasonable. (Although in certain magical occurrences,
I have seen it work.)
It is more feasible, and more realistic, to achieve a successful meeting
of the minds when you put, for instance, a software engineer, graphic
designer, and cognitive psychologist together in a group and ask them
to find a common direction. They actually complement each other's expertise
and, in theory, should be able to look at a problem from different points
of view. Still, in our case, all of them are learning to become interaction
designers and probably all have equally strong ideas about the problem
and solution direction.
In our case again, the fact that almost everyone on a team is from a different
country, has a different mother tongue, different political beliefs, different
working process, and simply looks at the world differently, is a further
complication. Sometimes it works beautifully and other times things fall
apart dramatically.
Finally and obviously, there is also simply a matter of personal chemistry
that affects collaboration.
I would like to say that we have found and developed a magical recipe
to this problem, but I cannot honestly claim such a thing. I can only
cite a few aspects of our pedagogical model that are attempts to do more
than just put people together and see what happens.
In our courses and projects, the faculty are working together collaboratively.
Our intention is to model the practices we seek to develop in our students
in our own activities. Since we have a diverse group of practitioners
in our faculty, we can teach courses and develop projects in internal
collaborations and with our students. For instance, in a course this autumn,
we had a computer scientist, electronics engineer, architect, and interaction
designer teaching together.
Our community (students, faculty, and staff) is quite small and exceptionally
close. There are a total of about 70 people who work together in one building
and most live together in a common residence facility. And since the great
majority of us have come to a small town in northern Italy from other
countries, we all share a lot more than the average member of a graduate
school and research program, I suspect.
We have all had the incredibly difficult challenge of overcoming extreme
culture shock — moving to a place where you do not speak the language,
where the environment is welcoming but decidedly foreign, and into a situation
where a certain amount of self-discovery is part of the experience. I
believe this has contributed to a very strong sense of community and has
given us a shared experience in our differences. And knowing that we are
in a tight, close-knit situation has made us all more sensitive to the
viewpoints of others and accepting of our differences.
It is by no means easy. I suspect I speak for many of us when I say that
it is probably the most difficult thing I have done in my career. But
it is supremely enlightening and broadening, and perhaps that is something
unique that we bring to the teaching of collaboration.
10
GK VanPatter: You may be interested to know that the
human-to-human interaction conditions which you describe, are not so much
different than those found in multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural global
companies today. Although you make reference to what appear to be very
special Interaction-Ivrea circumstances — individuals from 24 different
countries, several disciplines working in a small community within a “foreign”
external environment — there are many recognizable similarities.
It is a model that we are familiar with. We can share a few lessons learned
from the front lines of practice if you are interested?
Andrew Davidson:
Sure, but remember that the goals of design education and the pedagogical
techniques one employs are not the same as the methods one uses in professional
practice, even though the aim is to educate future practitioners. I have
been involved in both, and I can say from experience that, despite the
shared discipline, the methodologies used are quite different. Our approach
to this kind of education means stimulating creativity and engendering
new ways of thinking about design. We can be a little more speculative
and provocative sometimes, while still exploring the medium.
11
GK VanPatter: You seem to be throwing me a bit of a curve
ball here Andrew. I would have no argument with the notion that we are
approaching this conversation from different directions but I have no
problem seeing numerous things to connect with here. I am guessing that
common to both of us is a desire to help our community move itself into
a leadership position in the 21st century. We can build a lot on that
commonality.
It might help if we clarify what we mean by the word “practice”
as traditional visions seem to come to mind for some when that term is
used. We are finding that it is not particularly well understood among
many design education leaders today that there is an entire industry growing
in the marketplace dedicated to teaching skills to highly educated, adult
professionals in organizational settings. This certainly applies to cross-disciplinary
innovation skills. With that in mind, it would be a mistake to assume
that all “learning by doing” pedagogical knowledge resides
in our traditional educational institutions today.
For us, “practice” includes not only designing and executing
“learning by doing” innovation skill-building programs but
helping organizations build their own capacity to do this kind of skill-building.
We think about such activity as part of designing and creating the conditions
for cross-disciplinary innovation. This is obviously not the realm of
traditional “design practice”, but it is certainly not unique
to us. Part of the revolution that is underway in the marketplace involves
many client organizations building a teaching or “university”
component to their businesses. In this age of learning organizations,
this makes perfect sense.
In the case of cross-disciplinary innovation skill-building, the reality
is that the need for such programs in the marketplace is there, in large
part due to lack of “coverage” by our traditional, vertically-organized
educational institutions. This applies to our graduate business and technology
schools as well as our design schools. There is a lot to think about there.
At this point in time, a case can certainly be made to suggest that the
newest, most advanced knowledge around the subject of how to build cross-disciplinary
innovation skills does not reside in our traditional educational institutions.
How could it, when many of those institutions have been focused vertically
for decades?
It is the new developments around innovation skill-building occurring
in the marketplace that have already fundamentally changed expectations
in all kinds of cross-disciplinary organizational settings. That is part
of the revolution now underway at the leading edge of the market. Part
of our mission here at NextD, is to raise awareness in our own community
regarding how those expectations have changed.
Today, expectations are already high. Knowledge held by others outside
of design regarding complex, cross-disciplinary problem solving is significant
and growing rapidly. What is emerging is the realization that the realm
of working across disciplines involves much more than simply extending
or reshuffling the old vertically-organized disciplines.
NextD is particularly interested in these issues, as underneath all of
that change there is a lot at stake around the question of leadership.
The harsh reality of the marketplace is that old ways of team working
are now subject to intervention by those who have more advanced and precise
knowledge. Part of the humble mission of NextD is to help design move
itself to a position where designers are capable of being the interveners
around such issues rather than being among the intervened. Suffice it
to say, however, that design will not be able to reach that leadership
ground if designers remain wrapped in person-to-person team interaction
models that are already subject to intervention by others in the marketplace.
It is a new cross-disciplinary world and there are many new players in
addition to designers in the mix. Designers now have to compete for leadership
roles that have, for a long time, been taken for granted in the design
industries and in design education circles. There are huge implications
here for graduate design education in that changed landscape.
For example there are new, more precise ways to think about diversity
rather than the traditional model of disciplines, roles, titles and countries.
Those with the expertise are now navigating by thinking/problem solving
preferences, as that dimension of diversity cuts across all boundaries
and is more precisely connected to what the project teams are doing. There
are also new ways to think about where skills should be embedded. Organizations
today no longer want to be dependent on their employees being in specialized
settings, in India, Italy, America, etc., in order to be innovative. They
want the explicit skill of innovation to be embedded in their people,
rather than the environmental attributes of special circumstances. Those
two dimensions of change alone have significant implications for designers
and design educators.
There are likely hundreds of lessons and practices emerging from the
revolution in the marketplace around cross-disciplinary innovation leadership
that could be transferred into our graduate design educational institutions.
Unfortunately, there seem to be several bridge mechanisms missing between
the two worlds. At NextD, we remain optimistic that a few of those bridges
can be constructed through the kind of real conversation that we are having
here. Let’s you and I talk more about this offline.
In the limited time that we have left, let’s switch gears and talk
a little about the role of the future at Interaction-Ivrea. I understand
that you have several future-related projects in the works there. Can
you tell us something about what that means exactly?
Andrew
Davidson: There
are two different types of “future-related” projects led by
our faculty and researchers besides those done in our education program
(within courses, theses, workshops).
The first type are short innovation workshops we call “Applied Dreams,”
where we collaborate closely with a corporate partner. Typically two weeks
long, they often use existing or near-future technology, but in new ways,
to suggest innovative products and services. So far we’ve worked
with companies like Sony, Hitachi, Orange, and Telecom Italia. One of
the stipulations of these projects is that the corporate partner send
members of their teams to participate, so this is also a way of checking
our modes of doing things with those of our various partners. The feedback
we are getting is very positive, which we feel is a good indication that
we’re on the right track.
The second type are longer investigations, lasting from a few months to
multiple years. They are driven by the research interests of the faculty
and, in some cases, done in collaboration with external partners from
industry or academia. The goal of these innovation projects is to investigate
the discipline of interaction design and demonstrate how it works and
how it can improve everyday life. (Details about these projects can be
found on our web site www.interaction-ivrea.it,
in the “Projects” section.) Some of them examine the materials
and tools of interaction design, such as networks, electronics, software,
etc. Others delve into applications of design and technology such as ambient
intelligence and service ecologies.
All of them are an attempt to advance the field by contributing knowledge
and practices and to develop an on-going discourse in it.
12
GK VanPatter: Since we are most interested in design
leadership-related issues I guess what I am still having trouble understanding
is how what appears to be Interaction-Ivrea’s very specialized view
of interaction design fits with the often referred to tradition of Italian
design. As far as I know that tradition is most often cited as a rationale
for not being specialized. Am I missing something here? How do you rationalize
those two seemingly contradictory models?
Andrew Davidson:
You have hit
on one of the most important issues for us as a design institution, really.
Interaction design is a hybrid discipline that sits somewhere between
industrial design (especially product design, as practiced in companies
like IDEO) and computer science and software design. The older engineering-based
model of Human Computer Interface design was concerned with the computer
as a box, the human in front of a screen. Now that the behaviors and “intelligence”
of computer processing can be embedded in anything, anywhere, anytime,
this opens up a world of possibilities for design. Obviously, the Italian
design tradition is very rich in product design, furniture design, lighting
design, and fashion; Italy also is doing a lot of work in creating new
kinds of fabrics. One example of where interaction design and the Italian
design world come together is in the area of physical computing, which
is extremely popular with our students. As soon as you start to design
“wearable” computing, you realize you have bumped up against
fashion, or at least against design worn on the body; you start to use
different kinds of materials, fabrics instead of metals, etc.
If we are to succeed, it will be due to a successful blending of these
traditions and approaches, just as we must blend disciplines and cultures
in our teams.
13
GK VanPatter: I can think of ten follow up questions
but unfortunately our time is running out. As we begin landing this plane
let me squeeze one last question in here. In the six-part process logic
that you described earlier, I noticed a couple of things that I wanted
to ask you about. The logic that I see there seems to map closely to what
is often referred to as innovation process logic or strategic problem
solving process logic. The words are somewhat different but underneath
much the same logic and activities seem to be occurring.
In our research we see this often when looking at the process logic found
in various design schools and design practices. One notable difference
is that in design processes the initial fuzzy situation or “brief”
is often not reframed after discovery/fact-finding/understanding. In design
educational settings, that model often translates into students being
“encouraged” to carry out the brief as given rather than engage
in a process to reframe challenges and opportunities. The Interaction-Ivrea
process logic seems to have no reframing of the initial fuzzy situation.
Am I missing something there?
In the case of Interaction-Ivrea, we seem to be looking at a process customized
for the creation of interactive solution outcomes. I wonder if you would
comment of what appear to be many similarities between the Interaction-Ivrea
process logic and the Innovation process logic as described in brief below:
Interaction-Ivrea Process Logic
1. Understand the users’ experience
2. Imagine new opportunities
3. “Just-enough” prototyping
4. Design solutions
5. Craft the interactive experience
6. Present and test the outcome
Innovation Process Logic
1. Finding/Understanding/Formulating Challenges & Opportunities:
problem/opportunity finding, gathering/understanding facts (context, users,
technology, business, organization, strategy, etc.) reframing challenge/opportunity
definitions, mapping challenge patterns
2. Formulating New Solutions:
generating innovative solution ideas, mapping & modeling those ideas,
connecting dots across diverse ideas, creating criteria for evaluation,
evaluating and selecting best options
3. Implementing New Solutions:
action planning, communicating/selling solution ideas, action/producing
solutions
Andrew
Davidson: I think
that to go “beyond the brief” is always the challenge for
a good designer, don’t you? Innovation comes from creative people
being able to make the leap between the user or client saying one thing
(“my problem is that X is to hard to use — please make it
clearer”) and realizing that he really should be asking for something
completely different (“perhaps you need a Y instead of a repaired
X”). Example: Getting digital music onto a portable player is too
complicated. Instead of a faster or bigger or streamlined MP3 player,
we should design a complete digital music system that includes software
as well as hardware. (iTunes, iPod, iTunes Music Store)
In design education, we always hope to encourage these kinds of solutions
by students challenging, and possibly ignoring, the brief. (“Imagine
new opportunities.”) Our real goal is to encourage and stimulate
creative thinking in design, not just problem solving. Of course one needs
the tools and skills of the latter in order to accomplish the former.
It is not surprising that the two processes are very similar. Nor do we
claim that our process is revolutionary; only that it codifies a way of
working that we embrace and hope is valuable for our students.
14
GK VanPatter: I wish we had more time to dialogue, as
there are so many interesting issues that connect into interaction design.
In closing let me ask you one last difficult question. From your perspective
as a design education leader, what is the single most pressing issue facing
graduate design education today?
Andrew
Davidson: Well,
I would say that the big challenge is to figure out how to provide a meaningful
education for people who want to excel at the practice of design and still
be able to assume leadership roles in the field. In a world that increasingly
requires broad knowledge and multi-disciplinary abilities as well as the
creative skills and expertise of the field, it is difficult to do everything
well in a single two-year program. One has to make choices — have
a strong point of view and a clear pedagogical philosophy.
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