Interaction Theory Blog Post #1

Blog Topic: What kind of interaction designer do you want to be? What kind of interaction designer are you now? If your answer to the two questions is different, what will you do to help yourself transform? 

It feels strange claiming that I'm an interaction designer currently. I'd say really, I'm not, but rather I'm more of a stagnant product designer. In Nicholas Carr's book, The Big Switch, which I currently have to read for my design history class, Carr devotes an entire chapter to Thomas Edison and his ambitious project of providing electricity for all of New York City. Of Edison, Carr writes "Unlike lesser inventors, Edison didn't just create individual products; he created entire systems." I feel as though I design individual products; I have yet to become a systems thinker. I am mostly focused on the product, and am not yet aware of the user, his/her needs and a larger system at hand.

Ideally, I would like to be an interaction designer who works with programmable materials and responsive objects, similar to what's being pursued by the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT Media Lab. I have a crazy love of things and can't get away from materials and industrial design, but I would like to combine that with technology, user experience and needs, and systems thinking. Just being back in school in a graduate program that offers time to foster my interests while nudging me into thinking about the larger picture is a great way to reconcile the kind of interaction designer I think that I am now with what I hope to be in the future.