inspiration

Interaction design that saves lives

Recently, Scientific American pointed out the power of interaction design to save lives, specifically, by increasing organ donations. (Boldface added.)

Teaching Interaction Design

I will be teaching an Interaction Design course this summer. I want to make sure my students will get practical, up to date and actionable skills they can take out to the world after they graduate so, my intention is to have them work on as many portfolio projects as time allows and work together on small teams.
So I can give them the broadest view I wanted to get some feedback from the community on:

1. ideas or themes for projects

Wizard/Form Design Inspiration

Hi all,

Can anyone think of any online or offline apps or websites that have
a well-designed "wizard" or customization widget/feature that helps
you customize and produce big blocks of text? Like write a letter, or
customize a product, or create a product...What I'm working on is
text-based, but I'd love to see any examples, text or photo or
whatever, anyone's got!

Basically, I'm looking for examples that take in *many*
inputs/fields and display *many* options/returns in a fun, clear, and
easy-to-understand way.

Inspirations from art

When it comes to designing, is anyone here greatly influenced by
things outside of what we normally design? By this, I mean primarily
any particular artists or movements (eg, minimalism, abstract,
Picasso etc) If so, how did your design change? Or does music play a
role? We've discussed what music we listen to when working but I
sometimes find that listening to particular types of music influences
the mood of my designs.

Design Books

I get a lot of questions about design education material, books and
recommendations via private email. I've been meaning to put together a
reference post on Design by Fire, but constantly find little time to
do it the way that want to. So I figure I'd at least post my book
recommendation to the list and let folks see it and comment on it.
Online material will have to come later.

This list represents what I consider the most useful and inspirational
books on all manner of things Design.