Page 61 -

30 Chapter 1 What is interaction design?

Key points
Interaction design is concerned with designing interactive products to support people in
their everyday and working lives.
Interaction design is multidisciplinary, involving many inputs from wide-reaching disci-
plines and fields.
Interaction design is now big business: many companies want it but don't know how to I
do it.
Optimizing the interaction between users and interactive products requires taking into
account a number of interdependent factors, including context of use, type of task, and
kind of user.
Interactive products need to be designed to match usability goals like ease of use and
learning.
User experience goals are concerned with creating systems that enhance the user experi-
ence in terms of making it enjoyable, fun, helpful, motivating, and pleasurable.
Design and usability principles, like feedback and simplicity, are useful heuristics for an-
alyzing and evaluating aspects of an interactive product.

Further reading

Here we recommend a few seminal readings. A more compre- NORMAN, D. (1999) ACM Interactions Magazine, MayIJune,
hensive list of useful books, articles, websites, videos, and 38-42. Affordances, conventions and design. This is a short
other material can be found at our website. and thought-provoking critique of design principles.
WINOGRAD, T. (1997) From computing machinery to inter- GRUDIN, J. (1990) The computer reaches out: the historical
action design. In P. Denning and R. Metcalfe (eds.) Beyond continuity of interface design. In CHZ'90 Proc. 261-268.
Calculation: the Next Fifty Years of Computing. New York: GRUDIN, J. (1989) The case against user interface consistency.
Springer-Verlag, 14S162. Terry Winograd provides an Communications of the ACM, 32(10), 1164-1173.
overview of how interaction design has emerged as a new Jonathan Grudin is a prolific writer and many of his earlier
area, explaining how it does not fit into any existing design works provide thought-provoking and well documented ac-
or computing fields. He describes the new demands and counts of topical issues in HCI. The first paper talks about
challenges facing the profession. how interface design has expanded to wver many more as-
pects in its relatively short history. The second paper, consid-
NORMAN, D. (1988) The Design of Everyday Things. New ered a classic of its time, discusses why the concept of
York: Doubleday, (especially Chapter 1). Norman's writing consistency-which had been universally accepted as good in-
is highly accessible and enjoyable to read. He writes exten- terface design up until then-was in fact highly problematic.
sively about the design and usability of everyday objects like
doors, faucets, and fridges. These examples provide much Interactions, JanuarylFebruary 2000, ACM. This special
food for thought in relation to designing interfaces. The issue provides a collection of visions, critiques, and sound
Voyager CD-ROM (sadly, now no longer published) of his bites on the achievements and future of HCI from a number
collected works ~rovides additional videos and animations of researchers, designers, and practitioners.
that illustrate in an entertaining way many of the problems, IDEO provides a well illustrated online archive of a range of
design ideas and issues raised in the text. interactive products it has designed. (see www.ideo.com)