Andrew Davidson

illustration courtesy of Seattle Rep

Last week, I saw a wonderfully luminous play at the Seattle Rep Theater: Photograph 51. The play is:

“An intriguing portrait of British scientist Rosalind Franklin and her—often overlooked—role in the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure. This complex tale explores how Franklin, a smart, stubborn, and courageous woman, operated in a field dominated by men. A balance of the historical, romantic, and scientific, Photograph 51 is a touching human play of ideas.”

Going far beyond a simple docudrama, it explores themes of truth, life, work, and discovery in a complex, shifting, multi-layered performance.

I see it’s been extended until March 10. Highly recommended!

This summer, I’ll be teaching a new HCDE course called “Physical Computing.” (HCDE 498/598)

This will cover the fundamentals of designing, prototyping, and building human-centered interactive systems and environments with micro-controllers, software, sensors and electronic devices. We’ll use the open-source platforms Arduino and Processing. It is a hands-on experience in a project-based, studio environment. It will be open to non-HCDE students also at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

In the spring, I am offering an HCDE Directed Research Group (DRG) in support of that course. In this DRG, I would like to gather a group of students to help prepare a set of projects to be used as demonstrators in that course — hardware, software, and tutorials.

If you are interested in participating in the “Physical Computing: Pedagogy and Practice” DRG, you can find more information about it here: hcde.uw.edu/research/davidson.

image from the NY Times, by Baptiste Alchourroun

In an article entitled “Why We Love Beautiful Things” (NY Times, February 17, 2013), Lance Hosey reports that researchers in the science of design are starting to understand exactly why certain visual stimuli are pleasing.

From the article:

“It should come as no surprise that good design, often in very subtle ways, can have such dramatic effects. After all, bad design works the other way: poorly designed computers can injure your wrists, awkward chairs can strain your back and over-bright lighting and computer screens can fatigue your eyes.

We think of great design as art, not science, a mysterious gift from the gods, not something that results just from diligent and informed study. But if every designer understood more about the mathematics of attraction, the mechanics of affection, all design — from houses to cellphones to offices and cars — could both look good and be good for you.”