Interaction design (IxD) is one of the design disciplines that are hard to explain what it is and what does interaction designers do. To clarify my grandmother what I am studying and to prepare my assignment for school I started to read about it. As in many contemporary disciplines there are thousands of different definitions and perspectives. In this article I’m trying to define interaction design by going through the questions, process, foundations, elements and patterns of it. Before explaining it, I have to clear the ground of the prejudice about IxD, as Dave Malouf says IxD is not only limited on software, web or interface design; behaviors of devices with no screen at all needs to be designed too, just like someone designed the behaviors of iPod Shuffle (1). So here is what interaction design is for me.
First, according to Bill Verplank, IxD is design for human use and has to answer three questions; “How do you do?”, “How do you feel?” and “How do you know?” He explains the details of the questions as below:(2).
“How do you do?” this question is about what the user needs to do for interaction? Verplank explains it with the choice between handles and buttons. While handles leave the control and are better for continuous operation, on the other hand buttons are used for activating programs or objects and are better for discrete control. For example, we use a wheel to steer cars, but for the air-condition of it we use buttons.
“How do you feel?” is the question about in what way the product or service communicate with the user. Verplank’s explanation is the choice between the use of hot or cool media. McLuhan defined the difference as any hot media allows of less involvement than a cool one. For instance a lecture is made for less participation than a seminar, and a book enables less participation than a dialogue (3). Bill Verplank explains this thought in an interview for the book Designing Interactions as: “We design the way that the machine, or the system, gives feedback to the user, or the book looks to the user, or the sign communicates. That’s where a lot of feelings come from; a lot of our emotions about the world come from the sensory qualities of those media that we present things with.” (4).
At last the choice of the “How do you know?”-question is how the product or service inform users. In Verplank’s explanation the choince between using map or path interfaces to explain users what they are going to do. Verplanks points out that a map gives the information that you may require in complex systems and a path proposes sort of interpretation which is more about ability and action with right timing (5).
Bill Moggridge explains Bill Verplank’s IxD process as a four-step process: “First, the designers are motivated by an error or inspired by an idea and decide what the ideal goal for the design should be (Motivation). Next they find a metaphor that connects the motivation to the end goal and develop scenarios to help them create meaning (Meaning). Then they work out step-by-step what the tasks are and find a conceptual model that ties them all together and clarifies the modes (Models). Finally they decide what kind of display is needed, what the controls are, and how to arrange them (Mapping).” (6)
The Motivation to start a project either comes from the commitment to solve an existing problem (error) or with a brilliant idea to develop. In both case, designers start with design research which can be described in two distinct ways, Simon Bolton explains it as: “First undertaking research into the design process with the intention of improving its effectiveness and performance and second undertaking research within the process of design with the aim of enhancing creativity, problem solving and or design-decision making” (7).
Meaning connects the idea to life just like it connects the humans. As Claudio Moderini says “Interactivity is a medium, which needs a strong meaning”. In this phase David Malouf’s foundations of IxD comes together to create the meaning. According to him IxD builds on 5 main foundations: metaphor, abstraction, time, negative space and intersection (8). Metaphors help designers to describe interaction in their most effective way such as computer desktop, cut and paste commands. They are used in IxD exactly as they are used in languages. Abstraction works aside the metaphor to translate human motions and mental activities to machines like pinch with two fingers to zoom in and out. Time differentiates IxD from other user experience disciplines. It is the cover of our experience of an interaction (9). As I will explain in models and mapping phases of the process there are five elements of IxD that creates their negative spaces, and needs to be used — such as inactivity in motion, silence in sound and emptiness in space. After all design disciplines emerged from architecture none of them separated completely and they always involve in of each other’s processes, so this involvement creates its own intersections.
Model is the phase of IxD process in which users should know about the scenarios and tasks that they need to pass. In order to create conceptual model, which users can understand Bill Verplank suggests that designers should know clearly what the users are thinking (11). When it comes to the creating models three of six elements of IxD that Dan Saffer mentioned in his book “Designing for Interactions” are used: motion, time and space (12). Speaking about the behaviors, until we start to use only brain control for our actions and getting feedback (what I believe is the future) motion is a must to trigger an action for interaction and need to be defined in space (phone screen or a queue in Starbucks) and time (milliseconds or days) to create contexts for models of IxD (just if we forget Special Relativity for a second not to confuse us more).
Mapping is the last phase of the IxD process, where designers find answers for the “How do you do?”-question about displays and controls. The other three of six elements of IxD are used together to convey the idea of how to interact with a product: appearance, texture and sound. Variables like size, shape, weight etc. create an appearance of something, which give people the clue about how it behaves and how they can interact with it. Texture creates the feeling of something in the hand and indicates how and where to use it. Defining sound of something with the pitch, volume and the tone quality evokes different feeling for people and these feelings can be used to guide people to interact with it. On the other hand, while designing the displays and controls of products and services (touch points for services) the patterns of IxD — which are defined by Alan Cooper — can be used to speed up the process or increase efficiency and quality of final results, just like other patterns of different design disciplines. The patterns that he defined are: postural used to define product or service’s general standpoint within relationship with user, structural used in information architecture design and behavioral used to solve problems in particular interactions. Since the idea of capturing IxD patterns emerged from Christopher Alexander’s architectural design patterns, Cooper also states the differences as follows: “One important difference between interaction design patterns and architectural design patterns is the concern of interaction design patterns not only with structure and organization of elements but also with dynamic behaviors and changes in elements in response to user activity.” While Cooper is finalizing the explanation of IxD patterns’ usage, he quotes Jenifer Tidwell’s warning for designers from her book Designing Interfaces: “[Patterns] aren’t off-the-shelf components; each implementation of a pattern differs a little from every other.” (13).
Finally, starting from Verplank’s “Questions of interaction design”, then explaining his IxD process’s phases with Malouf’s foundations, Saffer’s elements and Cooper’s patterns, I would say Interaction Design is: Designing the behaviors of products, services and environments for human use. Well, now I have an answer for my grandma, hope she can figure it out.
References:
(1) Malouf, Dave. “Interaction Design and ID: You’re already doing it…don’t you want to know what it’s all about?” core77.com < http://www.core77.com/reactor/02.08_ixd.asp>
(2) Verplank, Bill. “Verplank’s sketch-lecture to CCRMA HCI Technology Course.” billverplank.com < http://www.billverplank.com/Lecture/>
(3) McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media, McGraw-Hill. 1964
(4) (5) (6) (11) Moggridge, Bill. Designing Interactions. The MIT Press. 2007.
(7) Bolton, Simon. “Understanding Billy — Importance of Design Research To Korean Design.” icsid.org http://www.icsid.org/feature/current/articles984.htm
(8) (9) Malouf, Dave. “Foundations of Interaction Design” boxesandarrows.com < http://boxesandarrows.com/foundations-of-interaction-design/>
(10) (13) Cooper, Alan. Reimann, Robert. Cronin, David. About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design. Wiley. 2007
(12) Saffer, Dan. Designing For Interactions. New Riders. 2009
Special thanks to Benedikt Crone for editing.
