!Disclaimer!
I just wrote the whole blog entry for at least one hour and forgot to update it before saving. Now everything is lost and I’ll have to write it again. I’m very frustrated (already learnt my first lesson).

What is Interaction Design?
In the past I have thought a lot about what my position as an Interaction Designer will be or what is included in the design of interactions. I am still at no point with answers but I am gaining more and more point of views from lecturers, designers or my fellow class mates that inspire me to find the root to my understanding to interaction design.

I believe that each Interaction Designer – or a designer in general – has to find her own definition of what «her» craft is. To me Interaction Design is an invisible medium that has the function of a bridge which connects an object with a user and transfers information. Neither the scale of the object nor the one of the user is limited. This way the object could be an environment – let’s take Zürich HB as an example – where as the user is the almost half a million people that pass the station every day.
Furthermore the interactions can take place in an analogue space such as the real world or in a virtual space such as our mobile phone.

What is art? What is design?
There are many discussions about what the differences between design and art are. Just as the American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth said «Anything can be art(…)» I truly believe the same. Isn’t it art when a surgeon removes a tumor from the thalamus with a small scalpel? Isn’t it art if a pilot lands her plane with only one jet engine? I think it is.
So if art is anything then what exactly is design? Art is the static outcome or result of a practice. In that case design is the formation process that is always in dynamic motion and that offers solutions for the problems, so to speak it is the practice that is needed to create art. In our example the surgeon does use the knowledge she gained in the past and designs a way to use the scalpel the best way to achive the best possible outcome.

Art can inspire everyone to create a more effective, productive and useful design process and break out from the given boundaries. Art is the method that we can use.

Our «Digital Fabrication» process
At the end of the 1st semester we had the «Digital Fabrication» module where we learned about 3D printing and laser cutting. The goal of the course was to show an organic/biological process on a zoetrope.

In the past week I started to think about the design process and realised it’s importance. Today each group had to recap and show their process. It was really interesting to think about our process out of a third perspective from the future. I realised that we didn’t mention the documentation at all even though it is a really important component of a design work.

New Vocabulary
AGENCY: Capacity or situation a designer puts herself into so they are capable to achieve something
ETYMOLOGY: Study of the history of words
DESK-BASED RESEARCH: To review previous research findings to gain a broad understanding of the field

Conclusion
Once more I realised how cool it is to have inspiring class mates and lecturers to broaden my point of view that I have on design. So in the future I want to learn more and inspire others as well. Because we are part of a community now where we have a voice.