Corinna Sherman

I turned in a first draft of my paper entitled “What is interaction design?” this morning for seminar, churned through the weekend’s trend analysis findings with my studio classmates this afternoon, went home, took a nap, and arose groggily an hour later feeling like I just came out of a weekend-long design bender that I can’t quite remember. Scraps of paper litter my desk, covered with the fragmented ramblings of a deranged design philosopher in my own handwriting. An avalanche of articles in varying states of annotation clutter my virtual desk. I sweep them clear with a single Command-Q and begin reading the assignments for this week. Highlight, summarize, synthesize, repeat. I shall be insane by spring.

The second semester of my Master of Design in Interaction Design program began this Monday, and I can already tell it will be a cold, hard marathon to the end. I’ve been training by walking to and from school each day in the snow, uphill both ways, with a fully loaded backpack. Today was a relatively balmy 34°F day. Sunny. Atypically devoid of precipitation. But I am not letting that lull me into a false sense of security. Oh, no. I am taking vitamin D supplements to get me through the Pittsburgh winter, and I’m keeping a regular sleep schedule to keep the germs at bay. My challenge this time around:

Graduate Design Studio II featuring a semester-long team project to design a social service, sponsored by either Microsoft or Motorola (to be determined by a brief yet brutal death match on pay-per-view)

Research Methods in Human Centered Design covering a series of methods for explorative, generative, and evaluative research (my favorite to imagine: “velcro modeling”) to support the project work in Studio II

Graduate Design Seminar II reading and writing about interaction design (Will anyone top Henri Bergson for most baffling argument? Stay tuned…)

Adaptive Service Design exploring service design that leverages context-aware technology such as mobile phones, intelligent environments, and robotic products (super excited about this one!)

Information Design and Rhetoric exploring how rhetoric can provide systematic frameworks for designing information products in complex situations (more reading and writing guaranteed to blow my mind, plus two projects)

And just to prove it’s on, I’m going to stop this post now and go do some reading. Stay warm, people.

The backup fourth rail got promoted to emergency third rail and, like, all of a sudden, he’s too important to talk to the regular ties in the track. We only hope this public callout shakes him to his senses.

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I don’t know which is stranger – that bacon bars exist or that someone clearly wants to divert attention to them from the more pedestrian chocolate bar section of the store.

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Yes, it was served in the restaurant with a hamburger bun, lightly grilled. I feel so proud of my country right now…

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