19/08/2008
I would say that Agustin Jiménez’s was the best talk we had at our recent “Desconferencia” (a gathering of professionals where everybody gives a small presentation).
He enlightened us on the convergence point between interaction design and biotechnology. The main point was that biological systems are being created with more and more levels of abstraction and that one day in the near future designers will be needed to determine how these systems will be used by people. The fact that DNA sequences and machine code have a very similar structure (I am simplifying here, I know) leads to the building of new levels of abstraction just as we did on machine code, making it possible to design biosystems that have sensory interfaces a person could interact with:
Have you ever think about a cell as a machine?. They really behave like it whether they are yeast or pluripotent cells in your bone marrow. In fact, as Drew Endy define them, they act as computational systems. They receive inputs, and behave accordingly as outputs. Cells have measurements tools, priorities to satisfy and self awareness of different kinds.
As interaction designers we can apply all the inherited knowledge in our discipline to new horizons like biotech. It’s just a new framework with new variables.
Agustín Jiménez is an interaction designer who always has one foot at the side of technology and another one on the biomedical edge. His post on the talk: Biotechnology and Interaction Design is worth a relaxed reading.
14/07/2008
This friday we had the last class of Programa Vostok’s second course on interaction design (esp) (Madrid). The six “cosmonauts” and I did some rapid prototyping for a nice project we have, we also discussed on professional expectations, had a great dinner and some soft partying at the most amazing terrace in town. Here is a picture of the Madrid crew;)
As some of you know, the course took place during these last six months both in Madrid and Barcelona. Ariel Guersenzvaig, professor in Barcelona, wrote a post summarizing the experience. It’s worth a look if you are interested in the course and live around that city or plan to be there next year.
I have to say that I am very happy with the results for the Madrid crew too. We now have a group of six cosmonauts who have been trained in many issues, almost all of them on the list of subjects (esp-pdf) anounced and on many more.
This year we had some talks by invited people:
Pretty intense, yeah!
This is my second year teaching the course. Now I see that each course gets to be unique in its own way. Students are different (this year there was less homogeneity), I am motivated with different subjects and of course I get better at explaining some things compared to last year but some others get worse. I’d prefer some variability over making something scriptized and completely predictable. It’s more fun this way.
All 12 students (6 in Madrid and 6 in Barcelona) are now professionals who can face most of the usual tasks an interaction designer does on his professional life. They’ve seen many examples (good and bad) and they’ve done a lot of work by themselves. Even some of the projects they started may become reality soon (stay tuned to Projekt Bahnhof).
That makes a total of 17 great professionals who will always be part of Vostok. I feel very proud of them.
Congratulations, especially to the new ones!
