Interaction Design

A first attempt at explaining design

What Is Design?

This is the burning question that even seasoned designers have a tough time answering.

I know this because I spoke to dozens of them while researching graduate schools. When I asked designers how they explained their profession to their mom or brother, they usually laughed and admitted it was tough. "Design is a lot of different things", they'd assert, before concluding, “it has to do with the process."

Ever since I started telling people about my plan to attend graduate school, I've taken a stab at answering the question myself. Over the past six months, I have found that regardless of whether I am speaking with friends, family or colleagues, the initial dialogue around design usually goes something like this:

Me: Yeah, so I'm going back to school for design.
Other Person: Oh cool! What kind of design?
Me: Interaction design.
Other Person: Cool! So...what exactly is interaction design?
Me: Well, it's focused on designing human-centered services and products.
Other Person: Hmm…what exactly does that mean?
Me: Great question. Rather than focusing solely on graphic or visual design, we’ll be designing things that people can interact with – and we’ll also be doing a lot of systems problem solving using the design process.

I've had this conversation more than two dozen times and I get a lot of squinted eyes and slow nods. It didn’t take me long to realize that Design is not an easy field to make sense of over a casual conversation.

Why?

Design is everything! It’s the phone you use, the steering wheel in your car, the organizational structure of your workplace and the service you receive at the bank. Design is not just aesthetics. It’s a method for solving problems.

This simple, yet significant realization, has led me to constantly question what design means today and how I can best talk about it. Luckily, Carnegie Mellon’s Design School is a perfect place to get started on such a quest.

Slap a Definition On It

Carnegie Mellon’s curriculum prepares students to enter a variety of design-related disciplines. That said, the graduate school focuses on Interaction Design, giving students “reliable methods to cultivate insights into interactions among people, the built world, and the environment.”

Source: Carnegie Mellon School of Design

Source: Carnegie Mellon School of Design

Interaction Design sits under the larger umbrella of Experience Design, which addresses the associations and behaviors people develop in response to a product or physical service. This involves studying the psychology of people and considering their broader needs, wants and emotions.

Interaction Design, according to designer and writer Ellen Lupton, “looks beyond the controls for operating a device to broader actions and relationships. It includes the design of screen-based experiences, including websites and mobile apps, interactive products, including physical objects with integrated software, and services, which might include engagements between a company and customers.”

Design in Context

When do you really comprehend something? When someone explains it to you in your own language – as it relates to your own experience. The same is true when talking about design. Concrete examples are key.  

For policy nerds, I've talked about how service designers are changing the way rural veterans experience the Veterans Affairs (VA) department and the outpatient experience. I’ve also explained how communication designers helped build recognizable brands and simplify complex policy topics on campaigns, such as Hillary for President.

With techies, I often mention the growing "experience economy" and how user-experience (UX) designers at companies like Lyft are reshaping urban transportation through brand differentition and the development of completely new user experiences via autonomous vehicles.

Most people are familiar with the ultimate experience-driven company, Airbnb. Founded by industrial designers, Airbnb has thrived by making people from all over the world feel like locals. In late 2016, the company launched a new service called Experiences, further enhancing local connections for travelers in their chosen destination.

At Face Value

The way I think and talk about Interaction Design is constantly changing. That’s okay because my experiences and environment is changing too. Let us consider this blog my first formal attempt to deconstruct design and explain it at face value.

At twenty-eight, I am lucky to have found the type of work that gets me really excited. Design is powerful – and it’s rapidly changing, adapting and spreading across disciplines. I hope this blog will help me reflect on my own journey at CMU, while also sparking a broader conversation about design with friends, family and anyone curious about the field. 

I'm doing it, ya'll

This past year has been huge for me. 

I have made a number of changes in my work and personal life. As the title of this post alludes, I accomplished a few things, too! I am excited to ice the cake with the launch of this blog, a place where I can share more personal stories, life tidbits and creative updates with you.

Why start a blog at 28? Well, I am embarking on a new chapter. This August, I am ecstatic to be attending Carnegie Mellon's Graduate School of Design!  

It has been over a year since I left my job at Antenna to explore the possibility of going back to school. At the time, I was almost certain I wanted to get an MBA. I already had a foot in the door. I was working in marketing, understood the needs of B2B companies and had experience generating new business. That said, as I explored business schools and began preparing application essays, listing out my greatest strengths and biggest drivers, I realized my life-long passion was elsewhere - in design. As a high school senior, I had chosen Virginia Tech because they had the best interior design & architecture program. I didn't end up pursuing that path, but reflecting on some of the decisions I made a decade ago helped make it clear that design school was my perfect fit.

My heart is in the work.
— Andrew Carnegie

Getting here wasn't easy though. In the last year, I quit my job, spent months studying for the GRE, took the test twice, created a design portfolio from scratch (you're looking at it!), started working as a communications consultant, applied to four grad schools and trained as an Organizing for Action Digital Fellow. I turned my unpaid gigs into opportunities to learn new skills, eventually helping me land a role leading digital strategy for a San Francisco Board of Education race at the end of 2016. In lieu of a full-time job, I worked on a passion project in my home town and eventually jumped back into PR & marketing, where I became a manager of three people. After all that, I got the news that I'd been accepted into grad school.

Not easy. I felt a lot of instability, self-doubt and loneliness at times – but there were a surprising number of things that fell into place when I put myself out there. It's been a real reminder that I am my best self when I take big risks.  

I will write more about my experience, both discovering the design world and applying to design schools, for those interested in learning more. Carnegie Mellon's program focuses on interaction design and the curriculum dives into design strategy, experience design (for interfaces/products), service design and designing for social innovation. My hope is that I can leverage my knowledge of the clean tech industry and experience in digital organizing & communication to design services that matter and, ultimately, bring communities together. 

I'll be road-tripping from San Francisco to Pittsburgh next month and school starts on the 25th. I'm doing it ya'll!

 - carliekarma