Christian Klotz

In November I gave a three day workshop about design for touch devices at the School of Arts Kassel. I had a rather simple agenda in mind and was excited what was going to happen. The main reason for that were the students’ very different backgrounds – something I knew before I preparing the workshop. Some of them were graphics designers, illustrators, others film makers and only a few had any software development experience.

From previous workshops I knew it made little sense to talk a lot about programming. Sometimes it just scares the hell out of people. Hence I’ve started with a simple task – take existing applications or games on the App Store, try them and come up with a review for three apps. Shortly after that we had a great open discussion eventually turning into what people were interested in and why they came to the workshop in the first place.

At the end of the first day we had three groups working on completely different things. One group was thinking about how a mobile version of an existing desktop application could work and look like. Another one was exploring different input mechanisms and gestures for a game. The third group came up with a great piece of interactive storytelling. After three days we had a brilliant selection of mock-ups, storyboards and written concept.