Final Reflection Papaer
INFO 608
Final Reflection Paper
Ben Meltzer
June 5, 2007
Class Experience
One of the major ways that the class provided a valuable learning experience in interaction design is that we, as students, actually went through many of the steps of the interaction design process. Some of these steps included prototyping, heuristic evaluation, and brainstorming about potential real-life sources for evaluation (in our individual midterm design project). The potential to actually experience first hand many of the things we were reading about in the text and in the separate articles that were assigned was very beneficial, both for aiding in remembering what we were learning, and so that we could see the way in which these theories had been applied in a real-world scenario. Many of the concerns which were discussed in the text involving designing for collaborative functions were also explored as well, although in this case we were the users of the design result (although we did have a chance to reflect on and gain an understanding of why many of the features were present). Many of the class members lived in distant areas from each other, and yet through the whiteboard, chat, and email functions we were able to communicate. This was particularly valuable, because long-distance collaboration is something which will become more prominent as time continues, and the chance to explore the psychological and technical aspects of the field created a strong awareness of the issues involved. Another positive benefit of the class was that we were exposed to many of the theoretical underpinnings of interaction design, especially interaction design as applied to collaborative knowledge building technologies, particularly in the assigned weekly articles. I had never been exposed to work involving collaborative knowledge building and the tools which support it; gaining such an understanding helped me to see that the tools present in VMT were not
Final Reflection Paper
Ben Meltzer
June 5, 2007
Class Experience
One of the major ways that the class provided a valuable learning experience in interaction design is that we, as students, actually went through many of the steps of the interaction design process. Some of these steps included prototyping, heuristic evaluation, and brainstorming about potential real-life sources for evaluation (in our individual midterm design project). The potential to actually experience first hand many of the things we were reading about in the text and in the separate articles that were assigned was very beneficial, both for aiding in remembering what we were learning, and so that we could see the way in which these theories had been applied in a real-world scenario. Many of the concerns which were discussed in the text involving designing for collaborative functions were also explored as well, although in this case we were the users of the design result (although we did have a chance to reflect on and gain an understanding of why many of the features were present). Many of the class members lived in distant areas from each other, and yet through the whiteboard, chat, and email functions we were able to communicate. This was particularly valuable, because long-distance collaboration is something which will become more prominent as time continues, and the chance to explore the psychological and technical aspects of the field created a strong awareness of the issues involved. Another positive benefit of the class was that we were exposed to many of the theoretical underpinnings of interaction design, especially interaction design as applied to collaborative knowledge building technologies, particularly in the assigned weekly articles. I had never been exposed to work involving collaborative knowledge building and the tools which support it; gaining such an understanding helped me to see that the tools present in VMT were not