I took a lot of very good classes there, so it is hard to pick my favorites. Since this question is also about self-teaching vs. design education, I'll mention the ones that I never could have done on my own: Interaction Design Theory (taught by Richard Buchanan) and Typography (taught by Kristen Hughes). (I also learned a lot about typography from Dan Boyarski.) The theory class pieced together a pastiche of readings that I never would have put together myself to create a vision of Design with a capital D that really changed in a profound way how I think about design and the work I do. Typography was all about sharpening the eye and thinking broader and trying variation after variation—hundreds of variations in some cases, moving single letters pixel by pixel. It was great training, and the type of studio training that you cannot learn on your own. You need a (for lack of a better word) Master standing over you while you do your apprentice work.

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. But the doing is important; you can read every book in the field and be a terrible designer. You have to practice it, live, preferably with a client and (eventually) with users. As Theodore Roethke noted, 'I learn by going where I have to go.'

What other disciplines is interaction design interrelated with that a designer should consider?

Other design disciplines such as visual and industrial design are essential siblings. Knowing some programming/scripting is also important; it's like a sculptor knowing clay and stone. You have to understand the properties of the medium you work in.

Tons of other fields like filmmaking, art, psychology, anthropology, library science, physiology, and biology touch on the work we do and knowing even a little of them goes a long way. An ideal interaction designer has some grounding in the humanities and isn't just a wireframe monkey.

Writing, especially technical writing, is another essential skill. You need to be able to write in order to convey clearly how a design works and why, and more often than not, that means writing about it.

Would you explain the difference between interface and user-centered design? What's the user's role in interactive design?

Interface design is often the product of user-centered design. User-centered design is a philosophy—an approach—to interaction design where the needs and goals of the user, derived from research, are used to make design decisions.

Interface design is the physical expression of the interaction design: the skin over the muscles and bone. Interaction design says, 'We need a button to turn on the siren.' Interface design says, 'The button should be here and it should be red.' They are deeply intertwined, since you cannot have one without the other.

Users can play many roles in the design process: from helping generate ideas to expressing their wants, desires, and needs to testing concepts and solutions. The trend has been to involve users in the process early and often—like crooked voting.

What other type of art outside the industry would you compare interactive design to?

Interaction design is an applied art like, say, furniture making. It always has a purpose, and the craftspeople strive to make the furniture both aesthetically and functionally- beautiful. And it always, always has constraints: resources, time, needs.

What are the core elements of an interaction that web designers measure during the creating process?

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.

So, would you briefly describe your daily responsibilities to us, so that beginning interactive designers could have an idea of their potential day-to-day work?

One of the great things about my job is that only a percentage of my days are alike. But an atypical, typical day would find me in a project room, working on a design problem with other designers. On a good day, we'll have a set of problems in front of us and work our way through them, filling up whiteboards with sketches, ideas, things that come up until we're happy with them. We might have a handful of solutions, we might have dozens. We might then document them and clean them up, putting them into a document or presentation to show them to client.

Other days, I'm on-site at a client's office, doing design research, building prototypes, and the typical meetings, email, writing blog posts, and the other stuff that makes up an office environment these days.

What are the typical mistakes that interface design newbies encounter and how to avoid them?

I'd say there are two mistakes that new designers make: one is not coming up with enough variations—or, more accurately, not being able to come up with more alternatives. Which is to say, falling in love with one direction and not being able to see others. Often, this is direction is something familiar, that the designer is comfortable with. It is hard to kill your babies, but sometimes you have to.

The second mistake is one of details and completeness. What separates a great designer from a good one is the ability to not only come up with great concepts but to also see those through down to small details. The details are hard; making sure every part of the products works well and works together into a pleasing whole is hard to do. Playing out what a concept means down to the details is an important skill to learn.

What inspires you the most? Is there anybody among interactive designers whose work you find particularly inspiring?