Konrad Baumann Biographical Summary
Since 2000 I am full-time teaching User-Centred Design and Interaction Design at FH Joanneum University of Applied Science’s Department of Information Design in Graz, Austria. Also I am lecturing in User Interface Design at Danube University Krems’ Centre of Telematics and Media in Krems, Austria, and at the Centre for Accessible Studies (IIS, BFWD) at Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, within their study programme in web design for accessibility.
I have been leading research projects like the perception lab "VisionSpace" (www.vision-space.at) during the last years. I am co-author of two books:
- K. Baumann & B. Thomas "User Interface Design for Electronic Appliances", Taylor & Francis 2001
- K. Baumann & H. Lanz "Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstellen elektronischer Geräte", Springer 1998
I am holding a PhD, from Vienna Technical University. My dissertation about methods of design education has been supervised by Peter Purgathofer. My master’s degree is in Telematics Engineering from Graz Technical University.
Before starting to teach in 2000 I have been working in industry with Mikron Identification Gratkorn, Philips Semiconductors, and Philips Consumer Communications as a product manager for user interface design and usability engineering.
How Designers Teach
My position paper gives an introduction to and overview on the project "How Designers Teach - a Qualitative Research on Design Didactics". It is a follow-up of my doctoral thesis and related workshops.
In his "Software Design Manifesto" (1990) Mitch Kapor stated that "We need to create a professional discipline of software design. [...] Software designers should be trained more like architects than like computer scientists".
Thus, the didactics of "software design" or "interaction design" should be oriented towards the didactics of the classical design disciplines, like architectural design.
Education consists of curricula and teaching methods. Current interaction design programs, however, often re-use methodology from science and engineering education.
The starting point of my research was the belief that in order to train "software designers" (in Mitch Kapor's sense) or "system designers" the educators in related disciplines should learn from teaching methods of design education.
The goal of my research was to create an overview on design didactics by the means of in-depth interviews, to compare it with the current status of design research, and to reflect whether it is applicable for education in interaction design.
The fields of technology and science have fundamental differences from the field of design with respect to their approach to problem solving. Hence also the didactics of design are very different from other disciplines. Rittel and Webber (1973) described these differences as the categories of "tame and wicked problems".
I will illustrate tame and wicked problems with a few examples or metaphors like a Vermeer picture compared to painting with numbers or a pot of dirty water as a metaphor for software design.
My research method was based on qualitative (in-depth) interviews like:
- Peters and Waterman (1993) "In Search of Excellence",
- Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi (1994, 1997) "Flow", "Creativity",
- Bryan Lawson (1994, 1997) "Design in Mind", "How Designers Think".
The interview guideline consisted of 75 questions in 16 groups. I carried out 11 interviews in the first phase of the project.
Then, an extensive content analysis was performed using tape recording, transcription, translation, topicwise sorting of full text, extraction of statements, comparison with literature, clustering, graphical representation and discussion of the results.
The interview guideline covered 75 questions regarding design education methods, group work, practical examples vs. theoretical foundations, interdisciplinarity, international exchange, importance of and education to creativity, design process, preferred school type, access limits, evaluation and grading, and future trends and challenges.
The results showed that a wide variety of different design education methods are used in parallel, like the following:
- one-to-one tutoring
- "scholae", walk and talk
- individual email threads
- teacher personality
- group teaching
- coaching of teams
- problem-based learning
- studio-based teaching
- workshops, group work
- practical exercises with feedback
- project work
- interdisciplinary projects
- bidirectional exchange
- exchange between students
- "final crits", critique sessions
- hearings
- competition or pitch
- readings and discussion
- action-production-reflection
- project hand-over
- presentation hand-over
- excursions
- guest speakers
- lectures (only in combination with other methods)
These methods have a certain overlap, e.g. workshops and PBL, hearings and crits. Some methods are elements of others. There is apparently no big influence of "trends" or "schools" in design education. Instead, every design teacher picks his or her favourite methods, modifies some or invents new ones, creating an individual portfolio of methods, modified constantly.
Conclusions
Tables 1-2 present the results of the interview-based study on design education described in the first part of this paper. The detailed answers of 11 interviewees have been sorted with a number-based approach according to the topic. In a next step I made a visual representation of the results of every chapter. These visual summaries were then again combined to the two tables. The answers were colour-coded to create a better overview:
- Green .... Yes, positive answer, high value, etc.
- Red / Orange .... Now, negative answer, low value, etc.
- Blue .... Undecided, intermediate, medium value, etc.
- Yellow .... Not applicable, different question, etc.
The visual representation of the results had two goals: First, to make the results readable more quickly. Second, to check whether there are any patterns that could correspond to distinct schools or different ways of design education.
As can be seen easily, it is not possible to detect any patterns in the tables. Therefore the main outcome of the study is that design education is highly individual. Every educator uses his or her favourite methods, combines existing ones or creates new ones.
There are only a few questions that had unanimous answers from all design educators: All of the 11 design educators...
- are at least partly teaching in small groups,
- consider design education as highly interdisciplinary,
- consider today’s design education better than it used to be,
- consider student exchange as very valuable,
- mention that the traditional job description disappears, and that technology dominates the job today.
I used them as an input for workshops and discussion with interaction design educators. In my talk I will present the reflections and results of these workshops as well and try to find out more about the applicability of these findings for HCI education.
In the following two sections I present two design education methods from my own teaching experience.
Example #1: Cultural Probes CONTEXT
Cultural Probes is a method which belongs to the analysis and research phase of an extended design process. It is situated somewhere at the intersection of the fields of art, design and research. I learned abouth the method in 2001 and used it since then in a shortened form in my seminars in Austria.
Randomly selected people receive an invitation to participate in the Cultural Probes project. If they agree, they will receive a few questions and some material like: a small paper notebook, a pencil, and a one-way disposable camera. They will be asked to collect or provide some information and send them back.
In my seminars on user-centred design I usually have the students perform Cultural Probes in a light version. They either answer the questions and take the pictures from their own room or flat. Alternatively they would ask somebody else to give them this information. In 2006 I used the method for the first time in a course carried out via e-learning.
AIM
The method generates awareness for cultural and social differences between geographically remote societies or different user groups within a society.
BACKGROUND
The method of Cultural Probes has been developed at the Art by Bill Gaver, Tony Dunne, and Elena Pacenti and published in 1999 (Cultural Probes, Interactions. ACM, Danvers, 21-29). Later it was presented by the same authors at the IDII summer school in Ivrea, Italy, in 2001.
THE EXERCISE
Take pictures and write short descriptions of:
- your personal desk at home, i.e. the place where you would write letters
- how you behave when you have a longer phone call at home (do you walk around, lie on the bed, place your legs on the coffee table etc.)
- the place where you store newspaper and magazines at home
- your favourite object, when and where you received it and why you like it
When you have collected this information, send back the camera with the pictures and the text to the person or team carrying out this project. Alternatively, upload or e-mail the information to a specified destination.
MATERIALS Original version: pencil, paper, disposable photo camera
Adapted version: digital camera, computer
COMMENTS
In my seminars I usually have the students perform Cultural Probes in a light version. They either answer the questions and take the pictures from their own room or flat. Alternatively they would ask somebody else to give them this information.
The strength of the method of Cultural Probes is based on the fact that you get people to participate in your project who would usually never participate in any art or design project. Also it is quite easy to get information from remote participants, so you can learn about cultural differences. Both these aspects are lost when the exercise is carried out by the student group itself like I do it regularly in my seminars. However, it was interesting to see that the students still appreciated the exercise a lot. From the student feedback I got convinced that even my "quick and dirty" version provided to the students the essence of the method, which is to create insight into and understanding for a part of society which you would not easliy get hold of in any other way.
Example #2: Circular Handover CONTEXT
The method has been reported by Andreas Gruber from Graz Technical University. The method is used in the course on 3D modelling and rendering by Andreas Gruber. The participants are students of architecture at Graz Technical University.
AIM
The students learn several essential challenges in design: First, that design is a process that can be subdivided into several steps. These steps are independent and can be carried out by different people. Defining and maintaining proper interfaces (handover) between the phases can be the origin of several difficulties. The importance of a creative idea should not be over-estimated for the final result. Furthermore, they train their ability to communicate their intentions properly to others, give away their ideas and learn to integrate the ideas of others into their own thinking.
BACKGROUND
The exercise is divided in several steps. Students are working on artifacts that are handed over to the next student after every step. This basic idea can be developed with different assignments and using various materials.
THE EXERCISE
The exercise is subdivided in several phases which are carried out in parallel by several students individually. After every phase, present your result. Then, hand over your artifact to another student and get a new artifact which you will use for the next phase.
- Create an artifact: e.g. creatively fold or crumple up a piece of paper.
- Take pictures of the artifact.
- Make sketches that use the pictures as a starting point.
- Identify spaces inside the artifact.
- Make a 3D simulation of the artifact.
MATERIALS
Pencil, paper, digital photo camera, computer, printer, software for 3D rendering.
COMMENTS
The handover method has to be defined as well. This can be done in a random way i.e. by using the order from a randomly ordered list of students. Alternatively, every student has to choose a different artifact to continue with after every step. The selections have to be done in a certain order. This gives feedback to the students about which artifacts are most interesting to the other students. More than this, the selection or grading of a design will initiate discussion and reflection on this phenomenon which is common in the daily practice of a designer.
A derivate of this method is the "presentation handover" which has some similar benefits. Students carry out a design project, e.g. design a house or a website. The result has to be presented to a jury, or to the supervisor and the other students. This presentation has to be handed over to another student. So every student presents a piece of work done by somebody else. As communication is usually bad, this is a funny experience which leads students to an understanding of how important it is to commmunicate the own design approach properly to colleagues, management or customers.
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