Dan Saffer

From reading the interview by Dan Saffer concerning the question, self teaching vs design education, Dans views are that design eduction has been intrusmental in his design learning. He stated that Interaction design and typography education changed the way he thought about design and influenced the work he did.

Dan praises the education he gained but also praise's self teaching,
'All that being said, there is certainly value in learning things on your own. There are lots of good books out there now that, when combined with trying out what they suggest with hands-on work, can give you a foundation you can use for design'

which is true, if you want a board knowledge of design and be up to date on design, you need self teaching along side education.

He goes on to state that having a board knowledge of other design principles goes a long way, such as film making , art and biology. When asked what are the core elements of an interaction that web designers measure during the creative process, Saffer goes on to say,

'Usefulness, usability, and desirability. If your design fills a need in people's lives, works well, and looks beautiful, you've got design gold. There are lots of secondary characteristics that fall under these headings, like efficiency and balance and trustworthiness and a whole host of other traits, most of which can only be fuzzily measured but are important nonetheless'.
quote taken from Dan Saffer/ Design interviews.

This quote says it all really about about what web design should be about. usability and the style of the web page are the main things to consider when designing a web page.

He later talk abouts touchscreen devices and how designers need to learn about these new devices if they want to succeed in interaction design. One thing i want to look into this year is implementing touchscreen and sensors into my design work.