Design Listserv Portal

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Design Listserv Portal

Your source for design-related discussion lists, newsletters, and other electronic resources.

This list of lists (and comments on each) was originally compiled by ID alum Larry Clarkberg as a "brief survey for those inclined to fill their email 'in' boxes with the musings of the international design community." Visit Larry. Many of these mailing lists and quite a few additional sites can be accessed from the User Interaction Design Web. Larry recommends this small and succinct web site as a good starting point for discovering design resources on the Internet.

IDFORUM
A very active list on product design issues. Expect 5-20 posts/day. The quality of the discussion varies, but it's potentially a useful resource. A student who submitted a question about air purifiers received a detailed technical summary from an expert. Threads include: the observation that most designers like science fiction in general and the movie Blade Runner in particular; ways to add a time dimension to products like surfaces that corrode aesthetically or business cards that move; and a more recent thread speculates on the future of toaster design.

To join send email to: listserv@yorku.ca with the message: subscribe IDFORUM

I would recommend subscribing to the digested version; otherwise your mailbox will be flooded by those darn chatty industrial designers. the command "set digests IDFORUM" to LISTSERV@YORKU.CA

DRS -- Discussion List of the Design Research Society
An fairly active list. Expect 2-5 posts weeky. The DRS list is "open for unmoderated discussion on all matters related to design research." The discussions on DRS tend to be some of the better ones. They recently sparked a very active thread on the issue of what a PhD in design should entail.

To join send email to: mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk ; leave the "subject" line blank; type the message: JOIN DRS yourFirstName yourLastName

Also publishes DRS_NEWS, a monthly, electronic newsletter that covers: research methods, conferences, publications, current research, course descriptions, research training and resource issues.

To subscribe send email to: mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk ; leave the "subject" line blank; type the message: JOIN DESIGN-RESEARCH yourFirstName yourLastName

Past copies of DRS_NEWS can also be found at http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/design-research.

Archived copies of these discussions can also be found at http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/drs.

Discovery
An active list sponsored by design firm GVO. Expect 2-5 posts daily. A somewhat rambling discussion recently wandering onto such topics as "what is learning," chaos theory, and recently a question about video logging software.

To subscribe send mail to: Majordomo@Bolis.com with the message: subscribe discovery-digest

Visual-L A slow list. Expect 2-3 posts a week. "A special interest group of user interface design professionals. It is an initiative of ACM SIGCHI Special Interest Area on Visual Interface Design and consists of about 300 odd professionals and academics, most of them from US." Recent threads include a report purporting to show that web sites with graphics are as effective or less effective than web sites without graphics, and a recent thread about using animated icons in software interfaces.

To subscribe send mail to: listserv@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu with the message: subscribe VISUAL-L

Info-Design
No recent posts. "A forum for announcements and discussions concerning general issues of information design. The scope of the list includes cognitive aspects, graphic design aspects, and theoretical aspects of information design." Sounds interesting but so far no posts in the two weeks I've subscribed.

To join the group, send e-mail to majordomo@fwi.uva.nl with the message: subscribe InfoDesign

Info-Graphics
No recent posts. A forum for exchange and discussions on the design of maps, charts, graphs, and diagrams." Again, sounds interesting but so far no posts in the two weeks I've subscribed.

To join the group, send e-mail to majordomo@fwi.uva.nl with the message: subscribe InfoGraphics

UIE Tips
No recent posts. "This discussion list is about designing user interfaces -- what works and what doesn't. We will also discuss techniques to collect data from your application's users. Usability testing, contextual inquiry, focus groups, and user myth realization are amongst the many topics."

To subscribe to UIETips, just send a message to UIETips-Request@uie.com. The only word in the body of the message should be SUBSCRIBE.