Interaction Design for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)

An eight-class seminar and studio course

Are you currently building web-based applications? Are you tasked with adding more interactivity to your web applications? Do you want to learn interaction design skills geared towards adding interactivity and richness to your web-based solutions?

As we manage more information, there is greater need for us to use more complex interactions to guide us through finding, selecting, creating, acting upon, sharing, and finally consuming the information around us. Whether through a web browser, an Adobe AIR application, or your cell phone, rich interactions can aid your users and provide differentiated value to the businesses that engage you.

The intent of this class is two-fold. First and foremost it is a course in interaction design methods and practices that will guide you regardless of what mediums you work with in your future. Second, we will look at how you can apply these skills to the particular technical and behavioral issues surrounding the design and development of RIAs.

Some problems you will be able to solve when done with this class:

1. You will work on the redesign of a mission-critical financial services application to be rolled out to 6,000+ financial consultants. The previous system was deployed as a desktop installed application using .NET services. You are tasked with redesigning it to work within a web browser. What is the right set of technologies to consider? What are the differences? How do I and should I replicate the behaviors of the desktop application in this new medium? What pitfalls should I be aware of when working on my design?
2. You are hired to design a hotel reservation system for the latest brand hotel to come from a major hospitality organization famous for top tier service. What advantages are there in using RIA behaviors and technologies to help enhance this new brand? What can go wrong to cause a backlash effect?

To help designers with these types of problems, expert interaction designer David Malouf has created a seminar and studio course exploring some of the most important issues surrounding the web’s most sophisticated applications. You will not only get a solid understanding of the intricacies and insights into RIAs, but you will also learn how to become a top-notch technology agnostic interaction designer, so when you are tasked with mobile, ubiquitous, or desktop application design issues you’ll be ready for those tasks as well.

This course will teach you:

1. What defines an RIA, its building blocks, the environment and the differing and complementary technologies.
2. How to deconstruct existing applications to learn important lessons from those that came before you.
3. How to guide in the selection of technologies, and to make your designs more technologically agnostic.
4. Learn the core principles of interaction design practice: sketching, prototyping, and refinement.
5. What is “studio” work and why it leads to better designs.
6. What are design patterns and how they can help you over time increase design quality and consistency when used properly.

The course will take place across eight weeks of classes. Each week, the class time will be split between seminar lectures and studio/discussion time. Between each week students will be expected to do homework which will consist of design work as well as reading material. This is a treated as a post-graduate college level course for motivated and passionate students who want to learn through participation.