MSc in Communication Design, School of Design, Politecnico di Milano. 12 credits, taught as a laboratory. Officially 089573 — Interaction System Design Studio, in Italian Laboratorio di Sistemi per l’Interazione. I have taught the computer science part since 2020.
I run this laboratory with Marco Quaggiotto, who coordinates the DataInterfaces lab, with the help of Maria Tasca and Matteo Valoriani, founder of Fifth Ingenium.
What the laboratory is about
The course introduces communication design students to interactive media, digital technologies and intelligent systems as design materials — not as tools bolted onto a project, but as languages that structure experience, give messages their character and redefine how a dialogue between people and machines can happen.
Two modules run as a single integrated path. The interaction design module covers the theory and method of the discipline, interface design as a form of communication design, and the landscape of digital technologies and what they can express. The computer science module, which is mine, takes students from the architecture of a digital system to a working prototype — something they can put in front of someone and test, rather than describe. Lectures and tutoring are calibrated on the skills each student arrives with, and make deliberate use of AI assistants and a vibe-coding approach to shorten the distance between an idea and running code. Both modules converge on one shared applied project.
Topics
- Interaction design, user experience, interface design — the disciplinary system and the skills behind interactive systems, digital and hybrid experiences, communicative artefacts and digital services.
- Cognitive and behavioural models — the cognitive, social and behavioural models underlying interaction with technological systems, applied to the design of interactive systems and user interfaces.
- Input and output devices — devices as the building blocks of digital interaction, with attention to what technologies beyond the screen-and-keyboard paradigm can express.
- AI and interaction — artificial intelligence and machine learning applied to interaction, and their potential to generate new forms of dialogue and expression.
- Interaction as communication — human-machine experience designed as a dialogue: the communicative context, the interlocutors, the interactive path, and from there the languages and styles of interaction.
- Interface design principles — perceptual, communicative and organisational principles, mental models, micro-interactions and feedback mechanisms.
- Representation and prototyping — sketches, wireframes and prototypes at different levels of fidelity, used to test hypotheses, find what needs improving and communicate ideas.
- Architectures of interactive systems — ICT architectures, client-server communication models, input and output devices, with particular attention to web technologies in prototyping contexts.
How it works
The laboratory is experimental by design: lectures, seminars and tutoring sessions feed into one shared project that students develop through iterative prototyping. Prototyping here is a research method rather than a final step — a way to explore a concept, refine an interaction and discard what does not work while there is still time to change it.
Official course sheet
The full syllabus, assessment rules and bibliography are on the Politecnico di Milano course sheet for 089573 — Interaction System Design Studio.