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)

Live at Interaction’10

Added on 7 February 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The first day of Interaction 10 in the wonderful city of Savannah, Georgia, kicked off without a hitch. Though eventually everyone was plagued by spotty, windy rain storms, the general pulse of the conference was positive and uplifting. Attendees were still talking about some of the great workshops from the day before, and they carried that energy over into today’s sessions. If one thing had to describe the overall theme of the first day it would be the importance of providing meaning in the work that we do. Below are recaps of the opening and closing keynotes, as well as some of the sessions from the day. (…) After a night of some great parties, and even better conversation, the second day of Interaction 10 began with a preview of the new IxDA.org website redesign. The team doing the redesign covered all the great new features that are coming, and went into detail on how local groups will be able to leverage the new site for their own networks and events. The excitement from yesterday was easily carried over, and people were pumped to see what the presenters had in store for us today.” (Niklas Wolkert & Brad Nunnally – Johnny Holland Magazine)

Thoughts on Apple’s iPad

Added on 28 January 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The iPad is not a laptop nor is it a smart phone. It is a couch device, a bedroom device (don’t read that the wrong way), and a kitchen device (swivel it to cook from a recipe you find online). In all these places, a laptop always felt wrong. The iPad is optimized for surfing the Web, reading blogs/news/books, watching TV shows, playing casual games, listening to music, managing personal productivity (calendar, contacts) and looking at photos. Expecting it to do what a laptop does is the wrong frame of reference.” (Luke Wroblewski)

Apple’s Proposed Multi-touch User Interface System

Added on 19 January 2010 Peter Bogaards
“(…) these proposals outline an integrated interaction model of virtual “floating” controls that are specific to the mode or application the system is in. The controls are accessed and manipulated through touch-based gestures, combinations of mutli-touch inputs, and/or inputs detected through sensors. Users get haptic, audible, and visual feedback when using these input methods to interact with the system’s set of virtual controls.” (LukeW)

Interaction Design’s Early Formal Education & Beyond

Added on 13 January 2010 Peter Bogaards
“I believe that there has been a huge paradigm shift in the very nature of design practice and a growing shift in its education. And if we are not to acknowledge this shift at the core of education and career development we are doing a disservice to those who are interested in coming up the ranks as young interaction designers today. At the core of these issues is the believe in the separation between form and interaction. This myth can no longer be maintained – definitely not in education.” (David Malouf – Johnny Holland Magazine)

What is Interaction Design History?

Added on 5 January 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The interesting question is how you separate interaction design history from the broader scope of computing history in general. User experience people gravitate toward the history of hypertext and the graphical user interface, direct manipulation and the mouse, the work done at Xerox PARC and Apple. In many people’s minds, that era marks the dividing line between the ‘us’ of the design community and the ‘them’ of computer scientists, because it’s the point at which it became possible to draw a separation between the work that was done to serve the needs of the machine, and the work that was done solely to meet the needs of the user.” (Karen McGrane)

Controls are Choices

Added on 1 January 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Designing Devices is a series of articles on how and why to create devices, written by me, Dan Saffer, principal designer at Kicker Studio. This is a place for essays that I hope to eventually collect into a book in 2011. Like drafts, the articles will be constantly evolving, hopefully with your feedback.” (Dan Saffer – Designing Devices)

Dimensions of design / Against ahistoricity

Added on 14 December 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The ahistoricity of interaction design – the notion, implicitly held or otherwise, that rich interactivity is an entirely new topic in design for human experience, perhaps with the Doug Engelbart demo as Year Zero – has always driven me nuts. When even an old-school HCI stalwart like Don Norman fails to deliver useful insight, perhaps it’s time to start looking further afield for inspiration.” (Adam Greenfield – Speedbird)

A unified approach to visual and interaction design

Added on 17 November 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Unfortunately, my observation has been that even when all of the right people are involved, more often than not, the various design disciplines opt to compartmentalize the problem. In other words, they divide the project into an interaction design problem, a visual design problem, and an industrial design problem. Each of these problems is then tackled separately, and the resulting individual design solutions get bolted together at the end. It’s a Tower of Babel situation, where huge opportunities are lost because the team fails to work together to come up with an innovative product solution and to employ a single, unified design language.” (Nate Fortin – Cooper Journal)

Restoring Spring to iPhone/iPod Touch Springboard

Added on 11 October 2009 Peter Bogaards
“All of these changes work within the current Springboard metaphor and should not present any insurmountable programming challenges. Certainly vertical scroll is most critical and should be implemented within the next couple of months if sales are not to be further limited. The rest can follow. These changes are also designed so that the new user or disinterested user will enjoy the same Springboard experience as today, while the ‘power-buyer’ can regain control of their device. Because iPhone/iPod Touch apps, at least at this point, all work one-at-a-time, adding ten or even twenty times as many apps to an iPhone/iPod Touch should have no effect on its reliability, etc. The only effect of these changes will be that both Apple and its developers make a whole bunch more money and that users will be having a whole bunch more fun, making their personal Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that much more beloved and indispensable.” (Bruce Tognazinni – AskTog) – courtesy of nicotenhoor

Vinay Venkatraman on Interaction Design

Added on 18 September 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Vinay Venkatraman, an interaction designer, is one of a rapidly expanding group of scholars and professionals around the world working to define the way our stuff behaves. Although it’s natural for most people to understand the need for interaction with gadgets like software and mobile devices, the field is actually remarkably broad. In an increasingly interactive age, the success of systems, services and even whole corporations and organizations often comes down to an effective interface, created with human behavior in mind.” (WorldChanging) – courtesy of puttingpeoplefirst