Essays & Articles

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Design for a Better World: Excerpts and videos from the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF)

The Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF) is to my biased eye, on of the best repositories of instructional material on design in the world. They offer inexpensive courses on a wide variety of topics, carefully edited and curated by the IxDF staff. Each of the items below is taken from their courses.

In addition to the topic headings for each topic below, IxDF also provides a list of literature on the topic and where one can learn more.

I admit that I am biased.

Why am I biased? Well, I have known the founders of IxDF (Rikke Friis Dam and Mads Soegaard from the time they started. I have been an advisor to IxDF from when it started until now. So yes, I am biased. But not by money: I have never received any funds from IxDF. I am biased because of their enthusiasm and the high quality of the material they have curated, and the wonderful way that they edit my videos, adding wonderful illustrations where they are needed.

Sustainability

Topics covered in this short excerpt of material that I prepared for IxDF:
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/sustainable-design

What makes a product sustainable?

Along with a short 1 1/2-minute video introduction

Is sustainability enough?

What does this mean for digital products?

How can UX designers make a difference?

The Circular Economy

Topics covered in this short excerpt of material that I prepared for IxDF:
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/circular-economy

What are circular economies?

Along with a 3 1/2-minute video introduction.

The principles of circular design

How do we make a circular economy?

What can you do to design a circular economy?


Incremental Modular Design

Topics covered in this short excerpt of material that I prepared for IxDF:
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/incremental-modular-design. A new way of doing large projects ($billons and decades of time).

What is incremental modular design?

Along with a 2-minute 11-second video introduction.

Key features if incremental modular design

Advantages of incremental modular design

Why use incremental modular design?

Incremental modular design in technology production

What is participatory design?

Topics on participatory design at IxDF.
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/participatory-design

Perhaps you noticed that the picture is of Victor Udoew, not me. Well, that’s following my own advice about PD (Participatory Design). Why show his work? Because his video on “Radical Participatory Design” is much superior to anything I have done, or for that matter, could do.

What is participatory design?

The principles of interaction design

Participatory design and UX design

Here is where IxDF inserted Udoew’s 6-minute video: well worth watching multiple times.

The benefits of participatory design

Participatory design in the real world