Friday 31 August 2007

Honesty Room

Who said digital media is easy?

I started this post over a week ago and it has been delayed due to the keyboard on my brand new laptop and trackpad breaking on me just when I have a lot of work to prepare. On top of that my webspace server has deemed itself "full" and wont let me upload any assets despite the fact I know it isn't "full". So I am completing this post typing on a usb keyboard plugged into my laptop which is now acting as a desktop machine instead of being wireless and mobile, whilst preparing two presentations on digital media. Mmmm… I'm really biting my tongue tonight.

Those of you who are astute will realise I have been reading Bill Moggridge's excellent book Designing Interactions, nearly 800 pages of great information on designing interactions. As Helen Walter of Business Week describes the book it's "part history lesson, part computer science thesis, part design education, part personal design philosophy". More than that I found it really inspirational and the best £25 I've professionally spent. I have thoroughly enjoyed each contributors' stories tracing a variety of differing interactions from inspiration to final outcome, and each chapter is full of my highlighted paragraphs and annotations.


An annotated page from Designing Interactions will appear as soon as the server realises it isn't full!


This book is one of many I have recently read as part of my continual professional development and in a way this blog is partly to help me to formulate my own understanding of my own specialism that I teach. So some of my posts will be just that, online summations of existing theory and practice, observations, synthesis and a forum to test one's own hypotheses. I'll write more after next week as I have two presentations to make and a lesson on graphical interface design to give to a group of students from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, alongside getting my laptop repaired. It's only 3 months old… I couldn't have overworked it THAT quickly, honest!

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