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What is Interaction Design?Md. Saifuddin Khalid

Assistant ProfessorKANDIDATUDDANNELSEN I INFORMATIONSTEKNOLOGI, IT OG LÆRING, MED SPECIALISERING I ORGANISATORISK OMSTILLINGModulets placering: 8. semester Modulets omfang: 5 ECTSForår 2017

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What is Interaction Design ”Interaction design as a discipline is tricky to define”

(Saffer, 2010, p.3). It is ”a stew of disciplines. Interaction design as a formal discipline has been around for less than two decades.

It’s a young field, still defining itself and figuring out its place among sister disciplines such as information architecture (IA), industrial design (ID), visual (or graphic) design, user experience (UX) design, human factors.

In addition, some of these other disciplines are also new and still discovering their boundaries as well, or are radically changing to accomodate changing design landscape.” (Saffer, 2010, p. 20)

Interaction design means ”designing interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives” (Rogers, Sharp and Preece, 2011)

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Figure 1. Relationships among contributing academic disciplines, design practices, and interdisciplinary fields in relation to interaction design (double-headed arrows mean overlapping) Rogers, Sharp and Preece, 2011, p. 10)

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The disciplines surrounding interaction design (Saffer, 2010, p.21)

“Most of the disciplines fall at least partially under the umbrella of user-experience design”

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Umbrella of user-experience design Information architecture (structure of content).

E.g. Visual design is about creating visual language to

communicate content. E.g. Layout of interfaces, fonts and color in printed, digital and other media.

Industrial design shapes objects to increase communication and use of the functional features. E.g. kitchenware, furniture and transports.

Human factors ensure that products conform to the limitations of the human body, both physically and psychologically. E.g. Operating with tools or in an organization/culture.

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Umbrella of UXD (Continued) Human computer interaction is closely

related with interaction design, but its methods are more quantitative, and its methods more rooted to engineering and computer science than of design. E.g. Project glass/Google glasses.

Architecture deals with physical spaces: their forms and use.

Sound design defines a set of noises, spoken word, or music to create and aural landscape.

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Information Architecture

Source: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-information-architecture

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XD products: Three overlapping concerns

BehaviorInteraction designers

FormIndustrial designersGraphic

designers

ContentInformation architects,

Copywriters,Animators,

Sound designers

Cooper, Robert and Cronin (2007, p.xxxi): user experience design (UXD) of digital products consist of three overlapping concerns: form, behavior and content. “Interaction design is focused on the design of behavior, but is also concerned with how the behavior relates to form and content”.Saffer (2010), Cooper et al. (2007)

and others agree on “behaviorist view” and “behavior concern” in defining interaction design discipline.

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Three major perspectives or schools of Interaction Design

The Technology-Centered View

The Behaviorist View

The Social Interaction Design View

(Saffer, 2010, p.5)

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ID School of thought 1 of 3: The Technology-Centered View

Interaction designers make technology, particularly digital technology, useful, usable, and pleasurable to use. This is why the rise of software and the Internet was also the rise of the field of interaction design. Interaction designers take the raw stuff produced by engineers and programmers and mold it into

products that people enjoy using.(Saffer, 2010, p.5)

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ID School of thought 2 of 3: The Behaviorist View

“Interaction Designers: What we are, what we do, & what we need to know,” (Forlizzi & Reimann, 1999).Interaction design is about “defining the behavior of artifacts, environments, and systems (for example, products).” This view focuses on functionality and feedback: how products behave and provide feedback based on what the people engaged with them are doing.

(Saffer, 2010, p.5)

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ID School of thought 3 of 3: The Social Interaction Design View

Broadest view/perspective. Inherently social: Revolving around facilitating

communication between humans through products. This perspective is sometimes called Social Interaction

Design. Technology is nearly irrelevant in this view; any kind of object or device can make a connection between people. These communications can take many forms; they can be one-to-one as with a telephone call, one-to-many as with a blog, or many-to-many as with the stock market.(Saffer, 2010, p.5)

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Working with the Product TeamDefining how interaction design should fit within an

organization: “We believe that establishing a rigorous product

development process that incorporates design as equal partner with engineering, marketing, and business management, and that includes well-defined responsibilities and authority for each group, greatly increases the value of a business can reap from design.”

Product development cycle and organizational transformation includes: design team, engineering team, marketing team, and management.

Cooper, Reimann and Cronin (2007, p. xxxii)

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The design team The design team has responsibility for users’ satisfaction

with the product. Many organizations do not currently hold anyone

responsible for this. To carry out this responsibility, designers must have the

authority to decide how the product will look, feel, and behave.

They also need to access information: They must observe and speak to potential users about their needs, to engineers about technological opportunities and constraints, to marketing about opportunities and requirements, and to management about the kind the product to which the organization will commit.

(Cooper, Reimann and Cronin, 2007, p. xxxii)

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New roles influencing Interaction Design : Denmark and elsewhere User Experience (UX)

Designer/Expert/Researcher User Researcher Usability Engineer SCRUM Master SCRUM Product Owner

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HCI changed the core concern from Usability goals to user experience goals (Rogers, Sharp, Preece, 2013, Chapter 1).

User experience goals: Usefulness Desirability Credibility, and Accessibility (ISO

13407, 2010)

Usability goals:* Effective to use (effectiveness)* Efficient to use (efficiency)* Safe to use (safety)* Having good utility, e.g. able to perform several functions (utility)* Easy to learn (learnability) * Easy to remember how to use (memorability)

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Interaction Design and the User Experience (ISO 13407, 2010)

User Experience Goals Desirable aspects: Satisfying, enjoyable,

engaging, pleasurable, exciting, entertaining, helpful, motivating, challenging, enhancing sociability, supporting creativity, cognitively stimulating, fun, provocative, surprising, rewarding, emotionally fulfilling.

Undesirable aspects: boring, frustrating, making one feel guilty, annoying, childish, unpleasant, patronizing, making one feel stupid, cutesy/mawkish/sentimental, gimmicky/cheat.

(Rogers, Sharp, and Preece, 2011, Chapter 1)

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5 Essential Principles of Interaction Design Design Principles

Visibility, feedback (i.e. response to accomplished

activity), constraints (e.g. form restricting incorrect

options), consistency (e.g. using similar elements and

operations for similar tasks), affordances (i.e. real affordances for physical

objects and perceived affordances for screen-based interfaces).

(Rogers, Sharp, and Preece, 2011, Chapter 1)

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User Interface is not Interaction Design

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Interaction Types Interaction types that underlie the user experience belong

to four main types: Instructing, where user issue instructions to a system. Eg.

Typing in commands, selecting options from menus in a windows environment or on a multitouch screen, speaking aloud commands, gesturing, pressing buttons, or using a combination of function keys.

Conversing, where users have a dialog with a system. Eg. Speaking via an interface or typing in questions to which the system replies via text or speech output.

Manipulating, where users interact with objects in a virtual or physical space by manipulating them. Eg. Opening, holding, closing, placing.

Exploring, where users move through a virtual environment or physical space. Eg. 3D worlds, augmented and virtual reality systems.

(Rogers, Sharp and Preece, 2011, Section 2.5 & Chapter 6)

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Interface Types (note: UI is not ID) Interaction designers develop efficient and

effective user interfaces for different environments, people, places and activities.

Interface types are primarily concerned with Functions. E.g. to be intelligent, to be

adaptive, to be ambient Interaction style used. E.g. command,

graphical, multimedia Input/output devices used. E.g. pen-based,

speech-based Platform being designed for. E.g. PC, mobile,

tabletopRogers, Sharp and Preece, 2011, Chapter 6

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Interface types (cont.) Command-based Windows, icons, mice,

pointing (WIMP) and graphical user interface (GUI)

Multimedia (WIMP & web) Virtual reality (augmented

and mixed reality) Information visualization

(multimedia) Web (mobile and

multimedia); Consumer electronics and

appliances Mobile

Speech Pen Touch Gesture , voice and face reco

gnition Haptic, i.e. sense of touch Multimodal Shareable Tangible Augmented and mixed

reality Wearable Robotic Brain-computer

Rogers, Sharp and Preece, 2011, Chapter 6

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Shareable Interface

Figure. Four collocated users interacting simultaneously using Smart Board 8070i Source: http://edcompassblog.smarttech.com/archives/4868

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ID, HCI, and ILOO Interaction Design (ID) has cast its net much

wider, being concerned with the theory, research, and practice of designing user experiences for all manner of technologies, systems, and products, whereas HCI has traditionally had a narrower focus, being “concerned with the design, evaluation, and implementation of interactive computer systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them” (ACM SIGCHI, 1992, p.6)

This 5-ECTS Interaction Design course takes the narrower focus — along the trend of HCI.

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DISCUSSION