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1.3 What is interaction design? 9

people were thought to have the right mix of skills and understanding of the differ-
ent application areas necessary to design the new generation of interactive systems.
For example, designing a reminder application for the family requires understand-
ing how families interact; creating an interactive story kit for children requires un-
derstanding how children write and understand narrative, and developing an
interactive guide for art-gallery visitors requires appreciating what people do and
how they move through public spaces.
Now in the 'OOs, the possibilities afforded by emerging hardware capabilities-
e.g., radio-frequency tags, large interactive screens, and information appliances-
has led to a further realization that engineers, who know about hardware, software,
and electronics are needed to configure, assemble, and program the consumer elec-
tronics and other devices to be able to communicate with each other (often re-
ferred to as middleware).

1.3.2 Working together as a multidisciplinary team
Bringing together so many people with different backgrounds and training has
meant many more ideas being generated, new methods being developed, and more
creative and original designs being produced. However, the down side is the costs
involved. The more people there are with different backgrounds in a design team,
the more difficult it can be to communicate and progress forward the designs being
generated. Why? People with different backgrounds have different perspectives
and ways of seeing and talking about the world (see Figure 1.4). What one person
values as important others may not even see (Kim, 1990). Similarly, a computer sci-
entist's understanding of the term representation is often very different from a
graphic designer's or a psychologist's.

Figure 1.4 Four different
team members looking at
the same square, but each
seeing it quite differently.