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‘Reckoning with Torture’
On October 13, 2009, at the Great Hall at Cooper Union, was hosted a conference entitled: ‘Reckoning with Torture: Memos and Testimonies from the "War on Terror." ’ Guest speakers included Matthew Alexander, Jonathan Ames, K. Anthony Appiah, Paul Auster, Ishmael Beah, David Cole, Don DeLillo, Eve Ensler, Nell Freudenberger, Jenny Holzer, A.M. Homes, Jameel Jaffer, Susanna Moore, Jack Rice, George Saunders, Amrit Singh, and Art Spiegelman.
Sci/Art: Sachiko Kodama
On March 12, 2010, Sachiko Kodama, a Japanese media artist and professor in electro-communications in Tokyo, presented her work, and what led to her most recent and on-going exploration of Ferrofluid, which she names Protrude Flow.
Sketching User Experiences (1)- Bill Buxton
In "Interacting with Paper," Bill Buxton proposes paper prototyping which he calls 'paper interfaces' as an alternative and a better solution to testing user experiences before starting the design process. The author suggests that paper holds powerful affordances that represent systems of control that users respond to and experience, both in terms of a sketch's control over users' actions (control commands) as well as its faculty to lead users to focus on the 'experience' and 'usability' of an interface rather than on its aesthetic feel or design.
defining: Ubiquitous Computing
In 1991, Mark Weiser defined ubiquitous computing (which he also calls "embodied virtuality", as opposed to virtual reality) as invisible and indistinguishable from the "fabric of everyday life"; that is, from human behavior. Which is to say that ubiquitous computing aims at providing humane tools with which beings can continue dealing with their world in very much the same behavioral ways.
An Introduction to Usability (continued…) – Patrick Jordan
Designing for usability is a user-centered approach to design. Jordan lays out the different considerations to keep in mind during the design process and proposes a set of methods (some empirical, others non-empirical) that can be used as testing tools and discusses the advantages and disadvantages that come with each method. His writing allows designers to understand better that there are different ways of testing users and that some styles are more appropriate depending on the content of tasks involved in using a given product or interface and its relation to a demographic/technographic target audience.
The Backtalk of Self-Generated Sketches – Gabriela Goldschmidt
"The inventive process" is an iterative process of jotting down ideas in the form of language or graphic drawings and of modifying them, reevaluating them, editing them, and so on, to transform or perfect an initial concept or solution.

