Every interface is built from actions. We boot, click, swipe, friend, and cancel; each verb carries a history and a worldview about who and what computing is for. With large language models (LLMs) and text-to-form tools, a word can call a world into being in seconds, so choosing how to order a few letters is also a way of building one. Shouting in ALL CAPS breaks into more tokens, so it costs more to compute. The words a designer reaches for carry real weight, now measured in energy and dollars.

Action is also a way of making space. Architecture has long issued its own verbs: a handle says push or pull, a threshold says enter, and a corridor says keep going. Interfaces do the same work in another material, teaching the hand what to perform and the body where to be. This seminar takes verbs as its subject, studying how form and time direct a person to act.

Through lectures, discussions, and hands-on experimentation, the first half of the seminar will focus on the current verbs of computing and the field’s role in inventing, standardizing, and teaching them. Each week will examine one verb, in the manner of Raymond Williams’s Keywords and Vilém Flusser’s Gestures. Sessions pair each verb with key texts from design and architectural theory, tracing the word’s etymology, the metaphors that shape how a user perceives it, and the way it changes across scale and context.

In the second half of the term, students will interrogate the worlds those actions build, who built them, and what was left out, establishing their own critical perspective. Each student will propose a new verb, drawn from their own research interests, and treat it as a score to be enacted, after Richard Serra’s Verb List. They will then reimagine computing through it, following the word across scales, from the screen to the object to the building to the city, the landscape, and the planet. Final review comprises an interactive demo built in Figma or Unity, a visual research catalog of the verb, and a one-page proposal that situates it within the seminar’s history and critique.

The seminar pairs interaction design theory with practical workshops in Figma, Unity, and generative LLMs. Students will be introduced to UI/UX practice, representational strategies, and the fundamentals of visual communication, including typography, color, and principles of time and motion design, built through exercises translating verbs into compositional, interactive studies. No prior UI/UX or programming experience is required. The seminar welcomes students from every background interested in what verbs can teach us about how we understand, represent, and design digital and physical space.

Students will be evaluated on their weekly verb studies and participation in discussion, the depth of their visual research, the craft of the final demo and catalog, and their ability to argue for their verb in writing and in critique.