Interaction Design :// Creating a dialogue between person, product, system, or service

Originally Posted on August 12, 2011 at http://isuhciuxlab.com/UX/?page_id=68

Visualize sitting at your desk, whether at home or an external office, and count the digital artifacts laying around. I have no less than 10 at any one time on my desk, and more like 15 when I empty the pockets of my cargo pants. These artifacts, commonly referred to as devices or gadgets, are comprised of my laptop and touch devices (whose names rhyme with the word “grapple”) cell phone, monitor, printers, backup devices and the graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that each of these uses.

GUIs create an important distinction between the industrial design of the physical artifact and interaction design. Interaction design takes into consideration a designed artifact and the behavior of the person using the artifact (Fallman 2008). “Interaction design begins with the needs and desires from the people that will use a product, and depends on both subjective and qualitative values” (Moggridge 2006). Going further, design research needs to be conducted with users within their real environments to measure the entire user experience. This experience includes the social, cultural, and emotional qualities of using the artifact. While no one definition of interaction design is commonly accepted, nor one theoretical framework, “… its ultimate objective is to create new and change existing interactive systems for the better” (Fallman 2008).

Interactive systems are comprised of both the physicality of the object and its visual language spoken through the GUI. Language gives us knowledge (Winsor 2004). Winsor (2004) states, “Knowledge is not found ready-made in nature. Instead, knowledge is constructed in the interplay between nature and the symbol systems we use to structure and interpret it.” In other words, symbol systems compose language, and knowledge is created from our interpretation of language. Uniquely, visual language contains both text and images that mediate knowledge to the audience from the designer. The designer then constructs the visual language used within an interactive system, subsequently referred to as interaction design.

There is some confusion, however, as to whether GUIs are categorized as interaction design or interactive design. Jon Kolko (2011) says, “Interaction Design isn’t necessarily the creation of websites or applications. It isn’t necessarily multimedia design or graphical user interface (GUI) design, and it doesn’t even have to have a primary focus on advanced technology, although technology of some kind usually plays a significant role…Interaction Design is the creation of a dialogue between a person and a product, system, or service.”

References:
Fallman, D. (2008). “The interaction design research triangle of design practice, design studies, and design exploration.” Design Issues 24(3): 4-18.

Kolko, J. (2011). Thoughts on Interaction Design: A Collection of Reflections Written by Jon Kolko. Burlington, Morgan Kaufmann.

Moggridge, B. (2006). Designing interactions. Cambridge, MIT Press.

Winsor, D. A. (2004). Engineering Writing/Writing Engineering. Central Works in Technical Communication. J. Johnson-Eilola and S. A. Selber. New York, Oxford University Press: 341-350.