Course Syllabus • Spring 2025
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Links to assigments will be live when they are handed out in class. Otherwise they will be broken links until we release the assignment.
22.Jan
Introduction
Lecture: Introducing Critical Making
Activity: Design Matrix
Handout: Field Activity 01: Hack This Assignment (due 27 Jan)
Fill out Student Background Form (due 21 Jan)
Signup for Maker Pass
27.Jan
DESIGNING ACTIVISM
Critique: Field Activity 01: Hack This Assignment
Handout/Groups: Provocation 01: Protest Design (due 19 Feb)
Readings:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, [Abridged], (1963).
Grindon, Gavin, and Catherine Flood. Disobedient Objects. V&A Publications, 2014, pp 9–17.
Fuad-Luke, Alastair. Design activism: beautiful strangeness for a sustainable world. Routledge, 2013, pp 1–27.
Berkeley in the Sixties is a 1990 documentary film by Mark Kitchell. Watch from time-stamp 14 min mark to 39 min (Free access to this full film for all UC Berkeley students via Kanopy.)
The First Gaming Easter Egg (2 min video) + Newstweak by Julian Oliver (Read text + 3 min video) + Google Maps Hack by Simon Wecker (Read Text + 2 min video) + Cones and Cars (2 min) + Billboard Liberation Front (1 min)
29.Jan
CARDBOARD AND FOAMCORE HACKING
Tutorial on working with cardboard, foamcore, and adhesives
Handout: Foamcore Basics
Critique: In Class Activity: Hyper Personal Stand
Handout: Field Activity 02: Sensory Cardboard (due 3 Feb)
03.Feb
DIGITAL FABRICATION
Critique: Field Activity 02: Sensory Cardboard
Lecture: Digital Fabrication
Lecture: 3D Modeling Introduction
Handout: Field Activity 03: By This RIng (due 10 Feb)
Related Material:
Autodesk 360 Fusion
05.Feb
ELECTRONICS INTRODUCTION
Lecture: Electronics, Microcontrollers, and Programming
Handout: Electronics Kit
Related Material:
Arduino • Sparkfun • Digikey • Jameco • Adafruit
Physical Computing by O’Sullivan and Igoe (chapters 1 & 2)
Make: Electronics: Learning by Discovery by Charles Platt
Making Things Talk by Tom Igoe (selections)
Arduino in a Nutshell by Jan Borchers
Sparkfun Inventors Kit Guidebook
Sound Card Hardware : Arduino Sound Library : More Sound Card Info : PC Sound Converter
Mogees Sound with Contact Microphones
10.Feb
Worksession
Worksession
12.FEB
Worksession
Critique: Field Activity 03: By This Ring
Worksession
17.FEB
HOLIDAY
19.Feb
Worksession
Worksession
24.FEB
PROVOCATION 01 CRITIQUE
7 groups @ 8 min presentation each (15 min crit)
26.feb
COMMUNICATING IDEAS
Lecture: Designing Your Presentation
Lecture: Video Sketches Lecture:
How to document your work using the Lightbox and Photography
Lecture: AI + Design Introduction
03.feb
DESIGN NOIR
Handout: Field Activity 04: Assignment Noir (due 10 Mar)
Handout/Groups: Provocation 02: TBA (due 19 Mar)
Readings:
Speculative Everything, Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming, By Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby Chp 1 and 2 pp. 1-31.
Saul Greenberg, Sebastian Boring, Jo Vermeulen, and Jakub Dostal. 2014. Dark patterns in proxemic interactions: a critical perspective. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 523-532.
Steve Benford, Chris Greenhalgh, Gabriella Giannachi, Brendan Walker, Joe Marshall, and Tom Rodden. 2012. Uncomfortable interactions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2005-2014.
David Eickhoff, Stefanie Mueller, and Patrick Baudisch. 2016. Destructive Games: Creating Value by Destroying Valuable Physical Objects. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3970-3974
James Pierce and Eric Paulos. 2014. Counterfunctional things: exploring possibilities in designing digital limitations. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS '14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 375–384.
Further optional References:
Dunne, A, & F Raby, Design Noir: The secret life of electronic objects, Birkhauser, 2001. (Sec 3 “Design Noir” pp. 45-56).
05.MAR
AMBIGUITY, PROBES, AND LUDIC DESIGN
Readings:
Phoebe Sengers and Bill Gaver. 2006. Staying open to interpretation: engaging multiple meanings in design and evaluation. In Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems (DIS ’06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 99-108.
Andy Boucher, Dean Brown, Liliana Ovalle, Andy Sheen, Mike Vanis, William Odom, Doenja Oogjes, and William Gaver. 2018. TaskCam: Designing and Testing an Open Tool for Cultural Probes Studies. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paper 71, 12 pages.
Hiroshi Ishii, Dávid Lakatos, Leonardo Bonanni, and Jean-Baptiste Labrune. 2012. Radical atoms: beyond tangible bits, toward transformable materials. interactions 19, 1 (January 2012), 38-51.
William W. Gaver, John Bowers, Kirsten Boehner, Andy Boucher, David W.T. Cameron, Mark Hauenstein, Nadine Jarvis, and Sarah Pennington. 2013. Indoor weather stations: investigating a ludic approach to environmental HCI through batch prototyping. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 3451–3460.
Further optional References:
Bill Gaver, Designing for Homo Ludens, i3 Magazine 2002, pp. 2-5.
Bill Gaver, Tony Dunne, & E Pacenti, Design: Cultural Probes, ACM Interactions vol. 6, no. 1, 1999, pp. 21-29.
Bill Gaver, Curious Things for Curious People, Goldsmiths Technical Report 2006
William Gaver. 2012. What should we expect from research through design?. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 937-946.
10.MAR
BANG!
Critique: Field Activity 04: Assignment Noir
Groups X-Critique session
12.MAR
Worksession
17.MAR
Worksession
19.mar
CRITIQUE: PROVOCATION 02
24.MAR
SPRING BREAK
26.MAR
SPRING BREAK
31.mar
WEAR ME
Introduction to Final Provocation
Handout/Groups: Final Provocation: TBA (Due 6 May)
Lecture: Fashioning Fashionables
FA05: 10 Ideas
02.APR
10 Ideas
Critique: FA 05: 10 Ideas
Lecture: AI + Design
07.apr
speculative design
Readings
Bill Gaver and Heather Martin. 2000. Alternatives: exploring information appliances through conceptual design proposals Actions . In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’00). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 209–216
Conference, RTD; Mackey, Angella; Wakkary, Ron; Wensveen, Stephan; Tomico, Oscar; Hengeveld, Bart (2019): Day-to-Day Speculation: Designing and Wearing Dynamic Fabric Actions
Apple Knowledge Navigator from 1987 (5 min)
Optional (For Fun)In March 2007, Microsoft Research organized the ‘HCI 2020’ meeting at the El Bulli Hacienda Hotel near Seville, Spain. The event’s title expressed its key question: what will Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) be like in the year 2020? This is the report they produced (see botom of linked page for report). Makes for an interesting read in the now very real 2020.
09.APR
worksession
14.APR
X-Critique
16.APR
design futures
Viirj Kan, Emma Vargo, Noa Machover, Hiroshi Ishii, Serena Pan, Weixuan Chen, and Yasuaki Kakehi. 2017. Organic Primitives: Synthesis and Design of pH-Reactive Materials using Molecular I/O for Sensing, Actuation, and Interaction. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 989-1000.
Alexandra Ion, Johannes Frohnhofen, Ludwig Wall, Robert Kovacs, Mirela Alistar, Jack Lindsay, Pedro Lopes, Hsiang-Ting Chen, and Patrick Baudisch. 2016. Metamaterial Mechanisms. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 529-539. video
Jasmine Lu and Pedro Lopes. 2022. Integrating Living Organisms in Devices to Implement Care-based Interactions. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 28, 1–13.
Daniela K. Rosner, Samantha Shorey, Brock R. Craft, and Helen Remick. 2018. Making Core Memory: Design Inquiry into Gendered Legacies of Engineering and Craftwork. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paper 531, 13 pages.
Johanna Okerlund, Madison Dunaway, Celine Latulipe, David Wilson, and Eric Paulos. 2018. Statement Making: A Maker Fashion Show Foregrounding Feminism, Gender, and Transdisciplinarity. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 187-199.
21.APR
Worksession
23.APR
Worksession
28.APR
Worksession
30.APR
Worksession
06.MAY
final provocation critique
1 – 4 PM in 310 Jacobs
9 groups @ 12 min presentation each (22 min crit)
08.MAY
Final public design showcase
1:30 – 3:30 PM
Final Materials Due: 11 May @ 11:59pm