--Engage! - Interaction Design

My new blog (and blog address)

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:24:23 GMT

So check out my new blog (now on Wordpress). But more importantly be sure to change your feed as this blog is going the way of the do-do. Don't worry though b/c all the content here is on the old site. I can't believe after 3 years of waiting I got http://davemalouf.com/ .

Where is IxD in 2008? Where is it going

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:38:13 GMT

Last night I had the honor of facilitating a panel with the brilliant duo of Ted Booth (Dir. of IxD @ Smart Design) and Jennifer Bove (VP of IxD @ HUGE). The panel was more of a town hall with the overwhelming crowd of 200 peeps who filled the wonderful Bloomberg facilities (Wow! what a red carpet treatment!). The audience more than filled the requirement of active participation leading to an amazing conversation about issues facing interaction design and interaction designers...

Transition

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:51:02 GMT

Moving from industry to education; from deep/big urban to small town; and I'm sure many more. My life is now filled with some pretty big transitions. It seems I am a soul in transition. I don't think i have gone more than 3 years without some major transition going on in my life and even then I'm always keeping busy with something that is gestating or gyrating or otherwise keeping me on my edge. Every so often these events collide and bring about HUGE change in very short...

Sketching for Interaction Design - Still happening - 10/29

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:13:56 GMT

Though the first attempt didn't take, there has been strong support for a take 2. I really want to teach this special workshop on Sketching for IxD and I hope you can make it -- now on Oct 29th. Victor of SmartExperience.org and I had a hard time canceling the class, but there just wasn't enough juice in it given our overheads at that time. Since canceling though, 1 or 2 organizations have stepped up and said, we'll host for free if you make it happen. So one or both are going to try...

The Biggest Announcement EVER on tihs blog -- From industry to academia

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:45:44 GMT

Yup, I'm leaving Motorola as of the middle of December and starting off the new year as a Professor of Interaction Design at the Savannah College of Art & Design in historic Savannah, GA, USA. There are so many reasons for this move. The biggest of which is that it is time to focus on family and I'm hoping that the combined slower life of teaching and Southern US living will help me focus on what is most important right now....

2 core attributes of RIAs

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:27:39 GMT

In looking at my upcoming workshop on RIAs and IxD I thought I'd write a bit about defining an RIA in terms of user experience but also technology (sometimes they are inseparable). The Page

"There is no [page]." -- Neo

What Neo had to figure out in "The Matrix" (I can't believe you haven't seen it so I have no sympathy if you haven't) is that when living in a virtual environment it is all metaphor, or...

Sarah Silverman & www.thegreatschlep.com

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:38:39 GMT

The importance of "roughness" in sketching

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:45:23 GMT

When thinking about sketching, there are several pieces that make a sketch a sketch, but to really make it a useful tool the quality of appropriate fidelity is one of the most important. In Bill Buxton's "Sketching User Experience" (2007) he talks about the various qualities of an artifact that allow it to be a sketch. He talks about it being quick and he also talks about the importance of it being in multiples. Another quality he addresses is fidelity. He said in his Interaction08...

Classes for Smart Experience in October

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 05:23:20 GMT

I'll be teaching two 1-day workshops for SmartExperience.org in October. One about the interaction design of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and the other about Sketching in Interaction Design. First the logistics: Dates: RIAs is on Oct 16 & SKetching is on Oct 17 -- from 9-5 each. To sign up for either class you can go to http://smartexperience.org/ Use my discount code to get an additional...

It just feels like it should have always existed

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:25:53 GMT

I listen to music all the time. (It stops the voices.) But I have had this recurring them in my head. The songs I truly love just feel like air. Like they are part of the landscape, like a natural emergence. And while technologically based interaction design is relatively new compared to say music or sculpture, the idea that Michaelangelo described of him liberating the statue from the marble really rings true for almost any practice of applied creativity. It is why in the end that...