What is Interaction Design? (Ivera)
13th Sep. 2004
Going through some research articles I had collected I cam across a nicely written press release from Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. I love the final two paragraphs from this piece:
"Interactive technologies need a new kind of design, a fusion of sound, graphic and product design, and time-based narrative. Developing this new kind of design will lead to a new aesthetic: one of use and experience as well as of form. Function and information (and perhaps entertainment) converge.
In the combination of communication and interaction design the real needs and possibilities to improve human existence are given a central place."
Lovely. I've included the whole page for safe keeping. Full credit goes to the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.
what is interaction design?
Twenty years ago computers were expensive tools for professionals or gamesmachines for enthusiasts. Today they appear in all aspects of our daily life, frommobile phones to microwave ovens, from exercise bikes to sewing machines. (There are already twelve computer chips for every man, woman and child on the planet.)
When machines were mechanical there was a direct, physical way to interact with them. You wound up your watch and turned a wheel to set its time; clicked a dial to make a kitchen mixer go slower or faster; flipped a switch to sew in reverse, and couldsee the mechanism which allowed this. But a machine controlled by a computer chipis different. It may require us to master menus and modes, and it responds to us, and often to stimuli independent of us, in more complex, less transparent and sometimesdownright mysterious ways. We rely increasingly on such devices, yet our interactionwith them is too often awkward, baffling and lacking in grace and pleasure.
Interaction design fights this trend. While traditional industrial design concentrateson the product’s functionality and its appearance as an object, interaction designrequires a different emphasis, because a computer-based device must not only work and look well in itself: it must also be designed so that our interaction with it, the waywe exchange information with it and tell it our wishes, is clear and efficient. Only then can it be an experience that improves the quality of our everyday life.
The discipline of interaction design borrows from the theory and the techniques oftraditional design, which it merges with theoretical and practical approaches fromother disciplines. The result is a gestalt-like synthesis of unique procedures and methods, and of a project-based approach to develop objects, environments andsystems. Interaction design seeks to establish a dialogue between products, peopleand physical, cultural and historical contexts; to anticipate how the use of products will affect comprehension; and to determine a form that is appropriate to itsbehaviour and use.
Interaction design concerns not only physical devices but services. Our lives are increasingly connected through telecommunications networks and filled withimmaterial things: music, films, TV and other information sources. These services,provided by companies and public institutions, are as important as the machines through which we access them: the phone, pager, PDA or set-top box. Our experience of them depends on both the architecture of the service itself and how we interactwith the device that connects to the service. So interaction design involves the design of immaterial as well as material things: services and software as well as hardware.
Interactive technologies need a new kind of design, a fusion of sound, graphic andproduct design, and time-based narrative. Developing this new kind of design will lead to a new aesthetic: one of use and experience as well as of form. Function and information (and perhaps entertainment) converge.
In the combination of communication and interaction design the real needs and possibilities to improve human existence are given a central place.
Categorized: Design , Interaction Design