How To: Novel Interactions
Pedagogy: learning from the least to most conventional methods for making
In my 3rd semester at the CMU School of Design, I took Dylan Vitone’s course “Digital Imaging” — one of(/possibly still) my most enjoyed courses at CMU. I really, really appreciate Dylan because he unquestionably supports his students’ goals and visions, and that lets really, really wonderful work be made. He always tells us that he just wants us to “do what we need to” in his classes.
Doing what I needed to, I made it a goal in “Digital Imaging” to never actually make a digital image as my final deliverables — not as an act of angst or rebellion, but out of a curiosity for how far I can push the definitions of both “digital” and “image”. The fine artist / “I chose to be a painter in a parallel universe” in me always had a love for deeply intentional medium choice, and therefore a natural inclination towards novel print design. So through my projects, I was always questioning how to challenge the affordances of print media for the sake of creating really interesting and multi-dimensional interactions. I used paper as if it were a technology (it is, btw, I’m using it in this context as something that is often forgotten to be one), and the projects ended up with a hint of “magic”.
One way you could see it was that in the spirit of challenging affordances, I got so far as to that it seemed like I was fighting the affordances — something we learn not to do with the materials we design with, to instead be taking advantage of what was provided. So, you could argue that rather than challenging affordances, I was just challenging myself, to figure out the least conventional method of achieving a certain result.
But another way of looking at it, was that I knew it was this “un-conventional” nature that achieved novelty or beauty. I love being intentional with my medium choice, and I very intentionally chose to use my materials in the un-obvious ways. This ended up being the greatest lesson I learned from this set of projects: How to make an interaction seem magical. How do you get a room of people asking “how did that even work?” Answer pt1: through making things that shouldn’t work, but somehow do. How? Answer pt2: through a deep, and creative, understanding of your technologies at hand.
The pedagogical takeaway:
It’s important to learn the least conventional way of making something, to fully understand what you are working with. Only when you completely, deeply, truly, understand your tools, can you hijack them to make somethings “novel” (and more importantly, your own)
