What Are Interactions and Interaction Design?


Although we experience examples of good and bad interaction design every day, interaction design as a discipline is tricky to define. In part, this is the result of its interdisciplinary roots: in industrial design, human factors, and human-computer interaction. It's also because a lot of interaction design is invisible, functioning behind the scenes. Why do Windows and Mac OS X, which basically do the same thing and can, with some tinkering, even look identical, feel so different? It's because interaction design is about behavior, and behavior is much harder to observe and understand than appearance. It's much easier to notice and discuss a garish color than a subtle transaction that may, over time, drive you crazy.

Interaction design is the art of facilitating interactions between humans through products and services. It is also, to a lesser extent, about the interactions between humans and those products that have some sort of "awareness"that is, products with a microprocessor that are able to sense and respond to humans. Let's break this definition down.

Interaction design is an artan applied art, like furniture making; it's not a science. Although best practices have emerged over the past three decades, the discipline has yet to arrive at hard and fast rules that can be proven via scientific methods and that are true in all instances. Interaction design is by its nature contextual: it solves specific problems under a particular set of circumstances. For example, even though a 1994 Mosaic browser (Figure 1.2) is an excellent piece of interaction design, you wouldn't install it on your computer now. It served its purpose for its time and context.

Figure 1.2. The Mosaic browser was a fantastic piece of interaction design...for 1994. You wouldn't use it now.


Like other arts such as painting, interaction design involves many methods and methodologies in its tasks, and ways of working go in and out of vogue and often compete for dominance. Currently, a very user-centered design methodology in which products are researched and tested with users (see Chapter 4) is in style, but this hasn't always been the case, and recently these methods have been challenged (see Chapter 2)Microsoft performs extensive user testing and research; Apple, known for its innovative interaction design, does none.

Interaction design is an applied art; its usefulness comes in its application to real problems, such as figuring out the best way to send e-mail. Its purpose is to foster communicationan interactionbetween two or more human beings or, to a lesser degree, between a human and an artificial entity capable of responding in some manner, such as a computer, mobile phone, or digital appliance. These communications can take many forms; they can be one-on-one as with a telephone call, one-to-many as with a blog, or many-to-many as with the stock market.

When people communicate through or with somethinga phone, a blog, the stock marketthey need those products and services designed to provide an optimal experience that facilitates interaction. Those products are the rich soil in which interaction design grows, and thanks to the Internet, wireless devices, mobile phones, and a host of other technologies, the soil is richer than ever.

Note that these products do not necessarily involve a computer screen. They can be digital (software) or analog (robots), physical (PDAs) or incorporeal (workflows), or some combination thereof. There are interaction designers (called imagineers) working at Disney theme parks, for instance, who work in all these realms when creating a single attraction. Interaction design talents are also employed to create systems such as the Netflix movie rental service or City CarShare, a service for sharing cars, which involve nondigital components, as we'll discuss in Chapter 8.

Since technology frequently changes, good interaction design doesn't align itself to any one technology or medium in particular. Interaction design should be technologically agnostic, concerned only with the right technologies for the task at hand, be it a complex software application or a simple sign.

Interaction design is concerned with the behavior of products and services, with how products and services work. Interaction designers should spend a great deal of time defining these behaviors (see Chapter 5), but they should never forget that the goal is to facilitate interactions between humans. Certainly, many interaction designers work with products that have "awareness"the ability to sense and respond to human inputsuch as computers, mobile phones, and many so-called smart environments. But interaction design isn't about interaction with computers (that's the discipline of human-computer interaction) or interaction with machines (that's industrial design). It's about making connections between people through these products, not connecting to the product itself.




Designing for Interaction(c) Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices
Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices
ISBN: 0321432061
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 110
Authors: Dan Saffer

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