FDA090 Play & Designing Media for Participation - HMI723 (HMI)

Lectures:

16 h

Recommended for

Graduate students.

The course was last given:

New course.

Goals

To develop the ability to describe, use, and invent design solutions in the area of media technology - with particular emphasis on co-adaptive designs that facilitate both good experience and good praxis.

Prerequisites

None.

Organization

The course is organized as a series of design sessions, discussions, and small, weekly "deliverables." (Note: The weekly deliverables are a mechanism for students to make regular progress towards their final projects; students can expect weekly feedback on their deliverables.) The course will meet weekly for 8 weeks, and then, again, twice at the end of the Fall term for review and rejoicing.

Contents

This course is a studio for designer-developers of computational media. The focus is on developing media that allow people to instantly (or quickly) do the self-fulfilling activities they find important.

The course will explore aspects of media technology, cognitive science, and aesthetics that are relevant when designing to support engaging participation. We will draw insights from example technologies that are practical (programming environments), engaging (games), or both. We will also examine different models of human-computer interaction and of cognition - including both models of the third-person and experiences of the first-person ("how do we improve the experience of particular activity?"). Finally, we will look at different approaches to "non-utilitarian" media and experiences, such as games, play, art, and performances.

Literature

Readings will be adapted to the needs and interests of course participants, but will most likely include pieces by Christopher Alexander, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jean Lave, Scott McCloud, Marvin Minsky, Seymour Papert, Edward Tufte, and Francisco Varela. These readings will be short and distributed as needed.

Teachers

Kevin McGee.

Examiner

Kevin McGee.

Schedule

Fall 2002.

Examination

Active participation, weekly deliverables, and a final project.

Credit

3 (+ 2) credits.

Comments

Course size is limited to 15 participants. All students are expected to define and complete a small project that contributes in some definite way to their thesis work; examples of projects include a publishable article, a thesis chapter, a prototype, a small hardware/software implementation, or even a formal thesis proposal. The difference between the 3-point and 5-point version of the course is the scale of the final project. Course language will be a mix of English and Swedish.|