An introduction to interaction design - Part 1
– posted April 13th, 2007 by Clodagh Kelly No comments
The book provides an excellent introduction to the field of Interaction Design (IxD) and as I progress through it I will post my impressions of it on the blog here along with some other thoughts, in the hope of aiding my understanding and spreading the word of interaction design!
Defining IxD
In Chapter 1, Saffer bring us on a whistlestop tour of the What, Why and history of interaction design. In case you are interested, the term “Interaction design” was first used by principal of design firm IDEO, Bill Moggridge back in 1990, and while it started out as a small industry with a handful of practicioners, with the massive growth in the Internet and digital devices in the following years, the need for interaction design has increased year on year and these days interaction designers number in the tens of thousands.
Interaction design (IxD) pulls from a number of different but closely related disciplines, particularly user-experience design (UxD) but also Industrial design (ID) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).
So what exactly is interaction design? Saffer sums defines it on page 4 as follows:
“Interaction Design is the art of facilitating interactions between humans through products and services”.
While this is certainly a helpful definition, perhaps by keeping it too simple, Saffer is omitting what it is that is really driving the need for interaction design..
Considering the following objects; are they interactive?
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
But what about complexity?
While some level of interactivity can be attributed to each one, the level of interactivity is greater in example 3 than the example 2, and in the example 2 than example 1. The level of interactivity is determined by the complexity of the object, i.e., the more complex the object (product or service), the greater the need for interactions with the object to be designed.
Our own John Wood (Senior Analyst here at iQ Content) has come up with what I think is a more accurate definition:
“Interaction Design is the art of designing means of interacting with products and services that are sufficiently complex that their purpose and means of operation are not self evident.”
Providing a more precise definition allows us to understand exactly what it is that is driving the need for interaction design .
What do you think?
Do you agree, does the definition work?
Any other ideas?
Tune in soon for the next installment!
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