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1.3 What is interaction design? 1 1

One infamous dot.com fashion clothes company that failed to appreciate the im-
portance of good interaction design paid heavily for its oversight, becoming
bankrupt within a few months of going public.' Their approach had been to go
for an "all singing and all dancing," glossy 3D graphical interface. One of the
problems with this was that it required several minutes to download. Further-
more, it often took more than 20 minutes to place an order by going through a
painfully long and slow process of filling out an online form-only to discover
that the order was not successful. Customers simply got frustrated with the site
and never returned.
In response to the growing demand for interaction design, an increasing
number of consultancies are establishing themselves as interaction design ex-
perts. One such company is Swim, set up by Gitta Salomon to assist clients with
the design of interactive products (see the interview with her at the end of this
chapter). She points out how often companies realize the importance of interac-
tion design but don't know how to do it themselves. So they get in touch with
companies, like Swim, with their partially developed products and ask them for
help. This can come in the form of an expert "crit" in which a detailed review of
the usability and design of the product is given (for more on expert evaluation,
see Chapter 13). More extensively, it can involve helping clients create their
products.
Another established design company that practices interaction design is IDEO,
which now has many branches worldwide. Drawing on over 20 years of experience
in the area, they design products, services, and environments for other companies,
pioneering new user experiences (Spreenberg et al., 1995). They have developed

'This happened before the dot.com crash in 2001.