All posts about
Interaction design

Interaction design defines the structure and content of communication between two or more interactive “beings” to understand each other. (source: Wikipedia)

Does Culture Matter for Product Design?

Added on 10 January 2012 Peter Bogaards
This is not a variant of Catholic math, Buddhist chemistry or Protestant engineering.

“Note that the arguments of this essay are specifically relevant to industrial and interaction designers. So even were one to accept that the impact of culture upon mass-produced products is minimal, other areas of design are apt to be far more sensitive to culture. Because social interaction is still the major source of cultural variation, I would expect service design to vary considerably from culture to culture. As social networks pervade the communication and internet space, they too will vary with culture. Other areas of design will have their own special sensitivities to culture.”

(Donald A. Norman a.k.a. @jnd1er ~ Core 77)

Philosophy of Interaction and the Interactive User Experience

Added on 13 December 2011 Peter Bogaards
Finally, a piece on interaction design with more deep thoughts than normal.

“I will approach the question of interactivity from a number of angles, in the belief that a multi-paradigmatic analysis is necessary to give justice to the complexity of the phenomenon. I will start by defining the scope through some examples of interactive products and services. Next, I will analyse interactivity and the interactive user experience from a number of perspectives, including formal logic, cognitive science, phenomenology, and media and art studies. A number of other perspectives, e.g. ethnomethodology, semiotics, and activity theory, are highly relevant, but are not included here.”

(Dag Svanaes ~ Interaction-Design.org)

The upper bounds to quality

Added on 25 November 2011 Peter Bogaards
AAPL seems to falsify this. People willing to pay high prices for superb quality.

“The digital age changes our notions of quality, and in particular, our notions of the limits to quality. Generally, there are two limits to quality: The first limit is your imagination. If you are innovative, you can increase quality in many creative ways. The second limit to quality is what the customer will pay for. If your product is priced too high, even if it is of super high quality, you won’t be able to sell many.”

(Alan Cooper a.k.a. @MrAlanCooper ~ Cooper Journal)

The Design and Display of Simple Interactions on Mobile Devices

Added on 21 November 2011 Peter Bogaards
Are we re-inventing everything now it’s mobile?

“Users visit mobile sites not only to consume content, but to get things done. Let’s take air travel as an example: tasks that users often find themselves performing on an airline company’s mobile site include checking flight status, checking in for a particular flight, and searching for and booking a flight. How does mobile user interface design support task completion? What are the optimal ways of communicating and displaying interactions on mobile sites? With the aim of discovering optimal ways of designing simple interactions on mobile devices, I examined the task of checking flight status. I’m hoping that my analysis sheds some light on this topic.”

(Shanshan Ma a.k.a. @shanshanma ~ UXmatters)

Goal Driven Design Decisions

Added on 17 November 2011 Peter Bogaards
Goals are achieved when certain events occur. But what are the events? In all other cases, it’s not a goal but an intention, motivation or just a task.

“There are a lot of theories about what drives people and how they move through life. It’s my belief that on a subconscious level we are goal driven creatures. There is nothing people do that can not be defined as a goal. From this starting point I designed a simple model that can help us as designers make the decisions where to focus on in the design process.”

(Jeroen van Geel a.k.a. @jeroenvangeel ~ Johnny Holland Magazine)

A Brief Rant on The Future of Interaction Design

Added on 14 November 2011 Peter Bogaards
Couldn’t deny the proper framing of ‘Pictures Under Glass’.

“As it happens, designing Future Interfaces For The Future used to be my line of work. I had the opportunity to design with real working prototypes, not green screens and After Effects, so there certainly are some interactions in the video which I’m a little skeptical of, given that I’ve actually tried them and the animators presumably haven’t. But that’s not my problem with the video. My problem is the opposite, really — this vision, from an interaction perspective, is not visionary. It’s a timid increment from the status quo, and the status quo, from an interaction perspective, is actually rather terrible. This matters, because visions matter. Visions give people a direction and inspire people to act, and a group of inspired people is the most powerful force in the world. If you’re a young person setting off to realize a vision, or an old person setting off to fund one, I really want it to be something worthwhile. Something that genuinely improves how we interact. This little rant isn’t going to lay out any grand vision or anything. I just hope to suggest some places to look.”

(Bret Victor a.k.a. @worrydream ~ WorryDream)

Craftsmanship

Added on 10 November 2011 Peter Bogaards
Know your computer design materials in and out: content, code, connectivity, and computation.

“(…) craftsmanship comes through intimate understanding of medium and material. The medium of painting is fairly obvious, as is the material of clay. But both the medium and materiality of service design, interaction design, and public policy are vague, abstract, and seemingly invisible. They are, however, not without definition. (…) one of the most fundamental failings of design thinking education is the lack of craftsmanship.”

(Jon Kolko)

The Ten Principles of Interaction Design

Added on 20 October 2011 Peter Bogaards
Devs get their principles on (interaction) design.

“I got my start as an interaction designer during the first internet bubble. Since then I’ve worked on interactive marketing and products for everything including finance, automotive, electronics, packaged consumer goods, pharmaceuticals and healthcare. In that time and experience I have come to know that there are a few key things that make good interaction designs and designers. Here are 10 of them.”

(Chad Vavra a.k.a. @chadvavra ~ .net magazine)

Designing to overcome behaviour barriers

Added on 5 October 2011 Peter Bogaards
Always doubt if behaviour is the real thing, except buying something. Thoughts are more important.

“People are creatures of habit and this can introduce challenges should you want them to adopt a new behaviour. We all start forming and evolving our behaviours from the time we are born, and each of us will respond to different stimuli in our own unique way. Some of us can’t start their day without our morning coffee whereas others will reach for a cigarette as a first port of call. Some can’t fall asleep without a book in their hands and others like to leave their T.V. switched on. These behavioural differences are a big part of what makes us human.”

(Caroline Jones a.k.a. @caroline_maree ~ Optimal Usability)

What I Bring to UX From… Architecture

Added on 30 September 2011 Peter Bogaards
Sounds more like information architecture, projects and clients to me.

“To do well in either architecture or user experience design, the ability to communicate well is key, and the most important part of communicating is listening. As designers, we need to listen to our clients and their customers to understand their needs and requirements. We need to communicate our designs to both our clients and our development teams in a way that they will understand. Our ideas need to be translated into designs and made concrete, through user scenarios, workflow diagrams, mock-ups or wireframes so that they can be discussed, understood, tested and improved upon. Communication becomes even more important once those designs start being built. As I already stated, nothing ever gets built as planned. Therefore, communication is key in working with the development team to evolve and refine the design as it gets built, and to manage the expectations of the client throughout the development process as those changes are occurring. And, a lot of that communicating is listening.”

(Jennifer Fraser a.k.a. @jlfraser ~ Johnny Holland Magazine)

Videos from Device Design Day 2011

Added on 15 September 2011 Peter Bogaards
After two instantiations, it looks like it’s going to be a tradition.

“Kicker Studio marked our 3rd Anniversary on August 8, 2011. To celebrate, we hosted the Second Annual Device Design Day at the San Francisco Art Institute, Jody’s alma matter. It was a great success thanks to inspiring speakers and involved attendees. Couldn’t make it? Don’t worry, we’ve posted videos of the talks for you to share and enjoy. And be sure to join us next year for our 3rd Device Design Day.”

(Kicker Studio)

Interaction Design Tactics For Visual Designers

Added on 12 September 2011 Peter Bogaards
It keeps coming back to the idea of ‘know the material you work with’.

“Interaction design is a multi-faceted discipline that links static communications together to form an experience. Understanding the basic principles of this discipline is core to designing websites that are not only aesthetically pleasing but that actually solve business problems and bring delight to their users. This article just scratches the surface of interaction design. For Web designers of any kind, considering these fundamentals when designing any transaction or interaction is imperative.”

(Jeff Gothelf a.k.a. @jboogie ~ Smashing Magazine)

The Interaction Design of APIs

Added on 5 September 2011 Peter Bogaards
Great to see UX disciplines applied to geek technology.

“Alex Payne explores the interaction design of APIs, particularly through the lens of the speaker’s experience evolving the popular Twitter API. The speaker argues for the notion of a “humane” API”, one derived from simplicity, “explorability” and consistency. Alex Payne is API Lead at Twitter, Inc., a communications service used by millions to share short messages.”

(Stanford University)

Lost in translation: Bridging the gap between interaction and visual design

Added on 25 August 2011 Peter Bogaards
Interaction design deals with the behavorial dimension; visual design with the perceptual dimension of the user.

“Interaction designers and visual designers bring something different yet complementary to the table. If you can combine these in a pragmatic way it will enhance the final result and perhaps drive better innovation.”

(Adeline Salkeld-Blears a.k.a. @webdesigngirl ~ OptimalUsability)
courtesy of fredbeecher

Five Essential Principles of Interaction Design

Added on 18 July 2011 Peter Bogaards
Adobe now moves into interaction design. Can’t wait for their classes on UX, IA or CS.

“Understand what interaction design is and how the five essential principals of interaction design could help you make better interaction design decisions. This quick introduction will help you get started thinking about how to design your interfaces in the most effective way with the behavior of the user in mind.”

(Adobe TV)

Motors and Music: Explorations of tangible interaction

Added on 18 July 2011 Peter Bogaards
Nice keynote presentation by Mister Sketch with some remarkable projects from CIID.

“Human-computer interaction is spreading into everyday objects like phones, cars, toys, books and instruments. Many interactions are implicit (the door ‘does the right thing’ when I approach); others are more ‘explicit’ (I push it). How do you know what the door is doing (e.g. ‘not allowed’)? Can you control it more expressively (e.g. ‘fling’). If the door has a motor in it; can we ‘feel’ the force/motion/inertia/reluctance? Music and musical performance are a challenge to HCI. Some of the best performances require precise expressive motions. I will describe experiments which use active force feedback (haptics) in the design of musical controllers. There are lessons for a broad range of interaction designers.”

(Bill Verplank ~ Chi Sparks 2011 videos)

How Print Design is the Future of Interaction

Added on 1 July 2011 Peter Bogaards
“There are three areas that I covered in the talk. First, how the visual language of UI has evolved and been shaped in to what we find in the interfaces we are familiar with today. Second, I’ll discuss why I think a new approach to the visual design of interfaces, influenced by Print Design, is emerging and necessary. And finally, why I think Print Design is an important influence to the next evolution of UI, and what we (as UI and Interaction Designers) can learn from the discipline of Print.”

(Mike Kruzeniski a.k.a. @mkruzeniski)

Understanding Our Interaction Design History

Added on 1 June 2011 Peter Bogaards
“It’s great that we’re starting to make the history of digital technology available, but I believe we should also be doing the same for interaction design. We need to understand the history of digital design on screens and how it has changed. It’s not because the basic interaction design principles change over time, because they haven’t. The principles we introduced in the CHI course – prominence, relationship, flow, clarity, simplicity and consistency – were just as relevant 25 years ago, they probably just had different names. No, the history matters because how we apply those principles has changed as our technology changed.”

(David Rondeau a.k.a. @dbrondeau ~ InContext)

The Buxton Collection

Added on 10 May 2011 Peter Bogaards
“Over the past 30 years, designer, writer, and researcher Bill Buxton has been collecting input and interactive devices whose design struck him as interesting, useful, or important. In the process, he has assembled a good collection of the history of pen computing, pointing devices, touch technologies, as well as an illustration of the nature of how new technologies emerge.” (About TBC)