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Designing for Interaction, Second Edition:Creating Innovative Applications and DevicesDan Saer

New Riders

1249 Eighth Street

Berkeley, CA 94710

510/524-2178

510/524-2221 (ax)

Find us on the Web at: www.newriders.com

o report errors, please send a note to [email protected]

New Riders is an imprint o Peachpit, a division o Pearson Education

Copyright 2010 by Dan Saer

Project Editor: Michael J. Nolan

Development Editor: Box welve Communications, Inc.

Production Editor: Becky Winter

Copyeditor: Rose Weisburd

Prooreader: Darren Meiss

Indexer: James Minkin

Cover designer: Aren Howell

Interior designer: Andrei Pasternak with Maureen Forys

Notice of Rights

All rights reserved. No par t o this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any orm

by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without

the prior written permission o the publisher. For inormation on getting permission or

reprints and excerpts, contact [email protected].

Notice of Liability

Te inormation in this book is distributed on an As Is basis without warranty. While

every precaution has been taken in the preparation o the book, neither the author nor

Peachpit shall have any liabilit y to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage

caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instruct ions contained in this

book or by the computer soware and hardware products described in it.

Trademarks

Many o the designations used by manuacturers and sellers to distinguish their products

are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit

was aware o a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner o

the trademark. All other product names and services identied throughout this book are

used in editorial ashion only and or the benet o such companies with no intention oinringement o the trademark. No such use, or the use o any t rade name, is intended to

convey endorsement or other aliation with this book.

ISBN 13: 978-0-321-64339-1

ISBN 10: 0-321-64339-9

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed and bound in the United States o America

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Ad

Te shadow o the two years I spent steeping in design at Carnegie Mel-

lon University looms large over this book. When I wrote the rst edition,

I ound mysel constantly reerring to my notes rom that time and hear-

ing the echoes o my proessors words, including those o Dan Boyarski,

Kristen Hughes, Karen Moyer, John Zimmerman, and Jodi Forlizzi. I want

to particularly note the infuence o Dick Buchanan, who immeasurably

broadened my understanding o this discipline, and my riend and advisor

Shelley Evenson, who taught me at least hal o what I know about interac-

tion design. Without her knowledge and experience, poorly ltered through

me, this book would be shallow indeed.

In the second edition, the infuence o my proessional colleagues at Adap-

tive Path and now Kicker Studio can be elt. Particular kudos to Adaptive

Pathers Brandon Schauer, Peter Merholz, and especially Henning Fischer,

who helped lead me, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the world o

design strategy. Tis book is much improved or its inclusion. My Kicker

Studio partners Jennier Bove and om Maiorana have been generous with

their editing and design help, not to mention encouragement.

My interviewees were generous with their time and expertise and Id l ike to

especially thank them. Your presence in my book honors me.

Im also grateul to companies who lent their case studies and beautiulproduct images to the book, illustrating my points better than I could have

with words alone.

Te sta at Peachpit/New Riders has been a tremendous help in making this

book what it is, in this edition and the last. My editors Michael Nolan, Becky

Winter, and Je Riley have polished my rough edges (and there were many)

into the ne tome you have in your hands (or on your screen). Another spe-

cial thanks goes to my riend and technical editor Bill DeRouchey, whose

insights burnished this book.

Other riends who have lent their support and help with both this edi-

tion and the last: Phi-Hong Ha, Jesse James Garrett, Andrew Crow, Jan-

nine akahashi-Crow, Krist ina Halvorson, Marc Rettig, Adam Greeneld,

Ryan Freitas, Rae Brune, Jennier Fraser, Lane Becker, Brian Oberkirch,

Chad Torton, Rob Adams, Kenneth Berger, Willow Stelzer, Kim Lenox,

odd Wilkens, Uday Gajendar, Chiara Fox, Dave Malou, Kim Goodwin,

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vi AcknowleDgements

Nancy Broden, Alan Cooper, Dana Smith, Rachel Hinman, Erika Hall,

Rachel Glaves, Samantha Soma, Sarah Nelson, Jared Spool, Jody Medich,Mike Scully, Laura Kirkwood-Datta, Liz Danzico, Kevin Daly, Shinohara

oshikazu, Zach Hettinger, my in-laws Mary and Barry King, and my sister,

Meagan Duy.

Tanks to my parents, who bought me my rst computer (a imex Sin-

clair 1000) and a 300 baud modem and who paid the ensuing long-distance

phone bills.

My daughter Fiona, a budding interaction designer hersel, had to endure

my writing when I could have been playing Wii with her. More time or

Mario now.

Lastly, and most importantly, without the support o my wie, Rachael King,

the creation o this book would have been impossible. All writers need time

and space, and those are always her gis to me. Tis book is as much a prod-

uct o her generosity as it is o my words.

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c

Introduction xiii

Chapr 1: Wha Is Iraci Dsig? 1

What Are Interactions and Interaction Design? . . . . . . . . .3

Tree Ways o Looking at Interaction Design . . . . . . .4

Why Interaction Design? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Focusing on Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Finding Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Using Ideation and Prototyping . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Collaborating and Addressing Constraints . . . . . . . .7

Creating Appropriate Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Drawing on a Wide Range o Infuences . . . . . . . . . .8

Incorporating Emotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

A (Very) Brie History o Interaction Design. . . . . . . . . . .8

1830s to 1940s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

1940s to 1960s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

1960s to 1970s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1980s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2000s to Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17A Stew o Disciplines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Products and Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Why Practice Interaction Design? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

For Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Chapr 2: th Fur Apprachs Iraci Dsig 31

User-Centered Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Activity-Centered Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Systems Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Genius Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46


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viii contents

Chapr 3: Dsig Sragy 47

What Is Design Strategy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48Design Strategy and Business Strategy . . . . . . . . . 49

Framing the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

raditional Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Design Brie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Stakeholder Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Metrics and Return on Investment (ROI) . . . . . . . . 59

Competitive Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Determining Dierentiators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Fighting Feature-itis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Pricing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67Visualization and Visioning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Vision Prototypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Project Planning and Roadmapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Product Roadmap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72


Chapr 4: Dsig Rsarch 73

What Is Design Research?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Why Bother with Design Research?. . . . . . . . . . . 75

Research Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Costs and ime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Recruiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Moderator Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Conducting Design Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

What Not to Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Ethical Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

What to Look For and How to Record It . . . . . . . . . 84

Research Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91


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contents ix

Chapr 5: Srucurd Fidigs 93

Preparing the Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94Make the Data Physica l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Manipulating the Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Analyzing the Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Summation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101

Extrapolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102

Abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103

Conceptual Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103

Personas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111For Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Chapr 6: Idai ad Dsig Pricipls 113

Creating Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Getting Started. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Structured Brainstorming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119

Organizing Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122

Creating Design Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126

For Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126

Chapr 7: Rm 127

Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128

Te Laws and Principles o Interaction Design . . . . . . . . .129

Direct and Indirect Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . .129

Aordances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130

Feedback and Feedorward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Mental Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133

Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .134

Fittss Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .134

Hicks Law. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135Te Magic Number Seven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135

eslers Law o the Conservation o Complexity . . . . .136

Te Poka-Yoke Principle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137

Errors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138

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x contents

Frameworks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138

Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138Postures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140

Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140

Documentation and Methods o Renement . . . . . . . . .143

Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .144

Sketches and Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Storyboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146

ask Flows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147

Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .148

Mood Boards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149

Wirerames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .151

Service Blueprint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156

Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158

Non-traditional Inputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165

Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166

Gestures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166

Presence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167


Chapr 8: Prypig, tsig, ad Dvlpm 169

Interace Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170Sound Eects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

Prototyping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

Low-Fidelity Prototypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .177

High-Fidelity Prototypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .179

Service Prototypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180

esting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Heuristic Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184

Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .185

Agile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191

For Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192

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contents xi

Chapr 9: th Fuur f Iraci Dsig 193

Te Next Five Years o the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . .195ools or the Next Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .196

Intelligent Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197

Spimes and the Internet o Tings . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197

Human-Robot Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .199

Wearables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203

Ubiquitous Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .205

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .210


epilgu: Dsigig fr Gd 211

Ethics in Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213

Deliberate Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Index 215

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Ab h Ah

Although he wouldnt hear the term interaction design or another decade

and a hal, Dan Saer did his rst interaction design work as a teenager in

the mid-1980s when he designed and ran a dial-up game on his Apple IIe, a

2600-baud modem, two foppy disk drives, and a phone line. And yes, it was

in his parents basement.

Hes worked ormally in interactive media and product design since 1995 as

a webmaster, inormation architect, copywriter, developer, producer, cre-

ative lead, creative director, and, o course, interaction designer. Currently,

hes one o the ounders and principals o Kicker Studio, a product design

consultancy in San Francisco.

Dan has designed a wide range o products, rom Web sites to interactive

V services, rom mobile and medical devices, to touchscreens, gestural

interaces, and robots. His clients have included Fortune 100 companies,

government agencies, and startups.

He holds a Masters in Design, Interaction Design rom Carnegie Mellon

University, where he also taught interaction design undamentals.

He lives and works in San Francisco and can be ound online at http://www.

odannyboy.com and on witter at @odannyboy.

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Irduci

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xiv IntroDuctIon

In the last decade, and especially in the three years since the rst edition o

Designing or Interaction was published, interaction design as a disciplinehas come into its own. Even people who have never heard o interaction

designwhich is to say, most peopleunderstand that how their devices

work is as important as how they look. A beautiul mobile phone that unc-

tions poorly will cause months o rustration. We know, and the popular

press has celebrated, that the best products are those that are unctionally

and aestheticallybeautiul.

Te past several years have also brought us some absolutely wonderul

examples o interaction design that have sparked the imagination: Apples

iPhone, Nintendos Wii, iRobots Roomba, Microsos Surace, witter,

and social networks like Facebook. More and more, previously dumbproducts are being outtted with microprocessors, sensors, and network-

ing capabilities, while the Web has matured to a sophisticated platorm or

applications o a ll sorts. Desktop applications have become interwoven with

the Internet or interesting combinations. Devices can locate themselves in

physical space and provide geo-located inormation. Exploding processing

power, cloud computing, and cheap digital storage make all sorts o new

products possible.

All o these things mean the rules o interaction design (such as they are) are

being rewritten. Te paradigms o how we interact with computing devices,

such as the desktop metaphor that weve used or around 40 years now, arechanging and being added to. We relate to our productsand thus, to each

otherin new ways. Its an exciting t ime to be in this eld.

Tis book is about the discipline that denes how digital products behave.

It doesnt contain any code; indeed, Ive tried to be as technology and plat-

orm agnostic as possible. Ive written this book or both new designers who

are just getting started, as well as more advanced designers who might want

to rene their processes or add to their set o design tools.

Whas nw i this edii

Tis book addresses a airly serious faw in the rst edition, namely that

while there was a lot o good inormation, there was no process to help new

designers put all that inormation into an order, into practice. In this edi-

tion, Chapters 3 through 8 step through a general design process that can

be used or a wide variety o projects. Not every step needs to be ollowed,

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xvIntroDuctIon

and the process is in an ideal order that seldom happens in designing. But

at least there is a process.

Additionally, several signicant new topics have been added. Design strat-

egy (Chapter 3) is brand new in this edition and I daresay does the best

job Ive seen in distilling this step (and growing eld unto itsel) down to

its essentials. In the rst edition, the translation o research into models

and then into concepts was poorly done; this edition addresses that crucia l

stage. Likewise, there was no mention o design principles, and this was an

unortunate oversight.

Service design, which was its own chapter in the rst edition, has been more

integrated into the book or two reasons. Te rst is that service design has

become its own area o study. Te second reason is that the line between

services and products has gotten blurrier. It is dicult to nd products,

and especially the networked products interaction designers work on, that

arent part o a service o some kind.

Readers o the rst edition also asked or reerences and recommendations

to dive deeper into the various topics, so each chapter now has a For Fur-

ther Reading section at the end as well as ootnotes to specic articles.

I hope this book is a starting point or your work in interaction design. It

is, however, only a book, and books alone cant make you a great designer.

Only designing will do that. I urge you to try out everything in this bookor yoursel, change it as necessary to t your working style, your company,

your users, and the project youre on.

So get to ittheres much to be designed.

San Francisco

June 2009

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1

What Is Interaction

Design?

01_DFI(p3).indd 1 7/13/09 10:09:


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2 chapter 1 What Is InteractIon DesIgn?

Every moment o every day, millions o people send e-mail, talk on mobile

phones, instant message each other, record V shows on digital videorecorders (DVRs), and listen to music on MP3 players. All o these things

are made possible by good engineering. But its interaction design that

makes them usable, useul, and un.

You benet rom good interaction design every time you:

. Go to an automatic teller machine (AM) and withdraw cash with a

ew simple touches on a screen.

. Become engrossed in a computer game.

. Cut and paste cells on a spreadsheet.

. Buy something online.

. witter rom your mobile phone.

. Update your status on Facebook.

But the reverse is oen also true. We suer rom poor interaction design all

around us. Tousands o interaction design problems wait to be solved

such as when you:

. ry to use the sel-checkout at a grocery store and it takes you hal

an hour.

. Cant get your car to tell you whats wrong with it when it breaks down.

. Wait at a bus stop with no idea when the next bus wil l arrive.

. Struggle to synchronize your mobile phone to your computer.

. Cant gure out how to set the clock in your microwave oven.

Any time behaviorhow a product worksis involved, interaction designers

could be involved. Indeed, or the best experience, theyshouldbe involved.

Back in 1990, Bill Moggridge (Figure 1.1), a principal o the design rm

IDEO, realized that or some time he and some o his colleagues had been

creating a very dierent kind o design. It wasnt product design exactly, but

they were denitely designing products. Nor was it communication design,

although they used some o that disciplines tools as well. It wasnt computerscience either, although a lot o it had to do with computers and soware.

No, this was something dierent. It drew on all those disciplines, but was

something else, and it had to do with connecting people through the prod-

ucts they used. Moggridge cal led this new practice interaction design.

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What are InteractIons anD InteractIon DesIgn? 3

In the decades since then, interaction design has

grown rom a tiny, specialized discipline to onepracticed by tens o thousands o people all over

the world, many o whom dont call themselves

interaction designers and may not even be aware

o the discipline. Universities now oer degrees

in it, and youll nd practitioners o interaction

design at every major soware and design rm,

as well as in banks such as Wells Fargo, hospitals

such as the Mayo Clinic, and appliance manuac-

turers such as Whirlpool.

Te rise o the commercial Internet in the mid 1990s and the widespreadincorporation o microprocessors into machines such as cars, dishwashers,

and phones where previously they hadnt been used led to this explosive

growth in the number o interaction designers because suddenly a mul-

titude o serious interaction problems needed to be solved. Our gadgets

became digital, as did our workplaces, homes, transportation, and com-

munication devices. Our everyday stu temporarily became unamiliar to

us; the conusion we once collectively had about how to set the clock on

the VCR spread to our entire lives. We had to relearn how to dial a phone

number and work the stereo and use our computers. It was the initial prac-

titioners o interaction designmostly coming rom other disciplines

who helped us begin to make sense o our newly digitized world and the

Internet, and these same people, now aided by new interaction designers,

continue to rene and practice the cra as our devices, and our world, grow

ever more complex.

W a Ii d Ii Di?

Although we experience examples o good and bad interaction design every

day, interaction design as a discipline is tricky to dene. In part, this is

the result o its interdisciplinary roots: in industrial and communication

design, human actors, and human-computer interaction. Its also because a

lot o interaction design is invisible, unctioning behind the scenes. Why do

the Windows and Mac operating systems, which basically do the same thing

and can, with some tinkering, even look identical,feelso dierent? Interac-

tion design is about behavior, and behavior is much harder to observe and

Figure 1.1

B Mggrdg,

ar f Designing

Interactions and

ndra dgnr fr

n f r app

cmpr, GRD

Cmpa, cnd

rm nracn

dgn afr bng

akd f rm

f-fac.

CouRtesyBillMoGGRiDGe

01_DFI(p3).indd 3 7/13/09 10:09:


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understand than appearance. Its much easier to notice and discuss a garish

color than a subtle transaction that may, over time, drive you crazy.

An interaction, grossly speaking, is a transaction between two entities, typ-

ically an exchange o inormation, but it can also be an exchange o goods

or services. Tis book is called DesigningforInteraction because it is this

sort o exchange that interaction designers try to engender in their work.

Interaction designers designforthe possibility o interaction. Te interac-

tion itsel takes place between people, machines, and systems, in a variety

o combinations.

Three Ways of Looking at Interaction Design

Tere are three major schools o thought when it comes to dening interac-

tion design:

. A technology-centered view.

. A behaviorist view.

. Te Social Interaction Design view.

What is common about all three views is

that interaction design is seen as an artan

applied art, like urniture making; its not a

science, although some tried and true rules

have emerged (see Chapter 7). Interaction

design is by its nature contextual: it solves

specic problems under a particular set o cir-

cumstances using the available materials. For

example, even though a 1994 Mosaic browser

(Figure 1.2) was an excellent piece o interac-

tion design, you wouldnt install it on your

computer now. It served its purpose for its

time and context.

Like other applied arts, such as architecture, interaction design involves

many methods and methodologies in its tasks, and ways o working go in

and out o vogue and oen compete or dominance. Currently, a very user-

centered design methodology in which products are generated with users

is in style, but this hasnt always been the case, and recently these methods

Figure 1.2

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01_DFI(p3).indd 4 7/13/09 10:09:


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Why InteractIon DesIgn? 5

have been challenged (see Chapter 2). Microso perorms extensive user

testing and research; Apple, known or its innovative interaction design,does very little.

The Technology-Centered View

Interaction designers make technology, particularly digital technology,

useul, usable, and pleasurable to use. Tis is why the rise o soware and

the Internet was also the rise o the eld o interaction design. Interaction

designers take the raw stu produced by engineers and programmers and

mold it into products that people enjoy using.

The Behaviorist ViewAs Jodi Forlizzi and Robert Reimann succinctly put it in 1999 in their pre-

sentation Interaction Designers: What we are, what we do, & what we need

to know, 1 interaction design is about dening the behavior o artiacts,

environments, and systems (or example, products). Tis view ocuses on

unctionality and eedback: how products behave and provide eedback

based on what the people engaged with them are doing.

The Social Interaction Design View

Te third, and broadest, view o interaction design is that it is inherently

social, revolving around acilitating communication between humansthrough products. Tis perspective is sometimes called Social Interaction

Design. echnology is nearly irrelevant in this view; any kind o object or

device can make a connection between people. Tese communications can

take many orms; they can be one-to-one as with a telephone call, one-to-

many as with a blog, or many-to-many as with the stock market.

W Ii Design?

Te term design can be dicult to get a handle on. Consider this ina-

mous sentence by design history scholar John Heskett: Design is to designa design to produce a design.

1 Dwnad nn a p://gdgr.cm/dc/AiGAFrzz_Rmann2001.pdf

01_DFI(p3).indd 5 7/13/09 10:09:


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People have many preconceived notions about design, not the least o which

is that design concerns only how things look: design as decoration or styl-ing. And while there is nothing wrong with appealing aesthetics, design can

be more than that. Communication (graphic) and industrial design bring

ways o working that interaction designers embrace as well. Here are some

o the approaches that interaction design employs:

Focusing on Users

Designers know that users dont understand or care how the company that

makes a product is run and structured. Tey care about doing their tasks

and achieving their goals within their limits. Designers are advocates or

end users.

Finding Alternatives

Designing isnt about choosing among multiple optionsits about creating

options, nding a third option instead o choosing between two unde-

sirable ones. Tis creation o multiple possible solutions to problems sets

designers apart. Consider, or example, Googles AdWords. Te company

needed advertising or revenue, but users hated traditional banner ads.

Tus, designers came up with a third approach: text ads.

Using Ideation and Prototyping

Designers nd their solutions through brainstorming and then, most impor-

tant, building models (Figure 1.3) to test the solutions. Certainly, scientists

and architects and even accountants model things, but design involves a sig-

nicant dierence: design prototypes arent xed. Any particular prototype

doesnt necessarily represent the solution, onlya solution. Its not uncommon

to use several prototypes to create a single product. Je Hawkins, designer o

the original PalmPilot, amously carried around small blocks o wood, pre-

tending to write on them and storing them in his shirt pocket until he came

upon the right size, shape, and weight or the device.

01_DFI(p3).indd 6 7/13/09 10:09:


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Why InteractIon DesIgn? 7

Collaborating and Addressing Constraints

Few designers work alone. Designers usually need resources (money, mate-

rials, developers, printers, and so on) to produce what they dream up, and

these resources come with their own constraints. Designers seldom have

carte blanche to do whatever they want. Tey must address business goals,

compromise with teammates, and meet deadlines. Designing is almostalways a team eort.

Creating Appropriate Solutions

Most designers create solutions that are appropriate only to a particular

project at a particular point in time. Designers certainly carry experience

and wisdom rom one project to the next, but the ultimate solution should

uniquely address the issues o that particular problem. Tis is not to say

that the solution (the product) cannot be used in other contextsexperi-

ence tells us it can and wi ll bebut that the same exact solution cannot (or

shouldnt anyway) be exact ly copied or other projects. Amazon has a greate-commerce model, but it cant be exactly replicated elsewhere (although

pieces o it certainly can be); it works well within the context o the Amazon

site. Design solutions have to be appropriate to the situation.

Figure 1.3

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01_DFI(p3).indd 7 7/13/09 10:09:


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Drawing on a Wide Range of Inuences

Because design touches on so many subject areas (psychology, ergonom-ics, economics, engineering, architecture, art, and more), designers bring to

the table a broad, multidisciplinary spectrum o ideas rom which to draw

inspiration and solutions.

Incorporating Emotion

In analyt ical thinking, emotion is seen as an impediment to logic and mak-

ing the right choices. In design, products without an emotional component

are lieless and do not connect with people. Emotion needs to be thought-

ully included in design decisions. What would the Volkswagen Beetle be

without whimsy?

a (V) Bi hi Ii Di

Teres a tendency to think that interaction design began around the time

that Bill Moggridge named it, in 1990, but thats not really true. Interaction

design probably began, although obviously not as a ormalized discipline,

in prerecorded history, when Native Americans and other tribal peoples

used smoke signals to communicate over long distances, and the Celts and

Inuit used stone markers called cairns or inuksuit as landmarks, to com-

municate over time (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.4

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01_DFI(p3).indd 8 7/13/09 10:09:


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a (Very) BrIef hIstory of InteractIon DesIgn 9

1830s to 1940s

Many centuries later, in the mid 1830s, Samuel Morse created a system toturn simple electromagnetic pulses into a language o sorts and to com-

municate those words over long distances. Over the next 50 years, Morse

code and the telegraph spread across the globe (Figure 1.5). Morse not only

invented the telegraph, but also the entire system or using it: everything

rom the electrical systems, to the mechanism or tapping out the code, to

the training o telegraph operators. Tis didnt happen overnight, naturally,

but the telegraph was the rst instance o communication technology that,

unlike the printing press, was too sophisticated or a small number o people

to install and use. It required the creators to design an entire system o use.

Similarly, other mass communication technologies, rom the telephone to

radio to television, required engineers to design systems o use and inter-

aces or the new technologies. And these systems and interaces were

needed not only or the receiving devicesthe telephones, radios, and tele-vision setsbut also or the devices used to create and send messages: the

telephone switches, microphones, television cameras, control booths, and

so on. All o these components required interaction design, although it cer-

tainly wasnt called that at the time. Indeed, it is very common or the rst

Figure 1.5

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01_DFI(p3).indd 9 7/13/09 10:09:


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practitioners o interaction design in any new platorm or medium to be the

engineers who created the technology itsel.

But the machines that ueled these technologies were, or the most part,

just that: machines. Tey responded to human input, certainly, but not in

a sophisticated way. Tey didnt have any awareness that they were being

used. For that, we needed computers.

1940s to 1960s

Te rst wave o computersENIAC and its ilkwere engineered, not

designed. Humans had to adapt to using them, not vice versa, and this

meant speaking the machines language, not ours. Entering anything into

the computer required days plugging in cables or, in later machines, hours

preparing statements on punch cards or paper tape or the machine to read.

Tese paper slips were the interace (Figure 1.6). Engineers expended very

little design eort to make the early computers more usable. Instead, they

worked to make them aster and more powerul, so the computers could

solve complicated computational problems.

At the same time as these developments were occurring in the computing

eld, other disciplines that eventually inormed interaction design were

Figure 1.6

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01_DFI(p3).indd 10 7/13/09 10:09:


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growing, too. Engineers and industrial designers such as Henry Dreyuss

created the new eld o human actors, which ocused on the design oproducts or dierent sizes and shapes o people. Te eld o ergonomics

ocused on workers productivity and saety, determining the best ways

to perorm tasks. Cognitive psychology, ocusing on human learning and

problem solving, experienced a resurgence, led by such academics as Allen

Newell and George Miller.

In 1945, Atlantic Monthly published a seminal article titled As We May

Tink2 (reportedly written in 1936) by Vannevar Bush, in which he intro-

duced the Memex, a microlm-based device or storing books, records, and

communications, which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with

exceeding speed and exibility.

It consists o a desk, and while it can presumably be operated rom a dis-

tance, it is primarily a piece o urniture. On the top are slanting translucent

screens, on which material can be projected or convenient reading. Tere

is a keyboard, and sets o buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an

ordinary desk.

Te Memex (Figure 1.7) was Bushs con-

cept or augmenting human memory.

While just a concept, it was the rst

imagining o hypertext, and one o the

rst or a desktop computing system. It

has inuenced generations o interaction

designers since, starting with Douglas

Engelbart and ed Nelson in the 1960s.

1960s to 1970s

As computers became more powerul, engineers began to ocus on the peo-

ple using computers in the 1960s, and began to devise new methods o input

and new uses or the machines. Engineers added control panels to the ront

o computers, al lowing input through a complicated series o switches, usu-

ally in combination with a set o punch cards that were processed as a group

(batch processing).

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Figure 1.7

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01_DFI(p3).indd 11 7/13/09 10:09:


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In 1960, ed Nelson started his Project Xanadu, with the goal o creating

computer networks with simple user interaces. While it never real ly cameto ruition, it was the rst attempt at a hypertext system. Nelson, in act,

coined the term hypertext in 1963.

1963 also brought Ivan Sutherlands

Sketchpad (Figure 1.8), the rst

computer program to utilize a ully

graphical user interace and a light

pen or input. Using Sketchpad, users

could draw both horizontal and verti-

cal lines and combine them into g-

ures and shapes. Sutherland in 1968created Te Sword o Damocles, which is widely considered to be the rst

virtual reality system. (Te head-mounted display worn by the user was so

heavy it had to be suspended rom the ceiling, thus inspiring the name.)

Sometime around 1965, the rst killer application, e-mail, was invented

as a way or multiple users o a time-sharing mainrame computer to com-

municate. By 1966, e-mail had expanded to allow users to send messages

between dierent computers. By 1971, e-mail was being sent across ARPA-

NE, the precursor to the Internet. Ray omlinson, who created the e-mail

standards still in use (such as the @ symbol in e-mail addresses), sent the

rst e-mail between dierent host systems, reportedly something insigni-cant like QWERYUIOP.

Te ARPANE (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was devel-

oped by ARPA o the United States Department o Deense and was the pre-

decessor o the global Internet. Conceived as the Intergalactic Computer

Network in 1962 by J.C.R. Licklider, the rst two links o the network

(UCLA and Stanord) connected on November 21, 1969. While ARPANE

certainly wasnt a design milestone, its creation lead to the platorm and

medium that caused interaction design to ourish: the Internet.

In 1968, Doug Engelbart did a 90-minute presentation that is now known

as Te Mother o All Demos3 (Figure 1.9). In it, Engelbart showed the

work hed been doing or the previous several years, essentially creating

the next two decades o interaction design. As well as being the rst public

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Figure 1.8

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01_DFI(p3).indd 12 7/13/09 10:09:


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demonstration o the mouse,

Engelbart demonstrated an incred-ible variety o interaction design

paradigms we now take or granted,

such as point and click, hyperlinks,

cutting and pasting, and networked

collaboration.

Many o these paradigms were to nd a home at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto

Research Center), ounded in 1970. Te head o Xerox PARC, Bob aylor, urged

employees to think o computers not as just processing devices, but instead as

communication devices.

Xerox PARC remains legendary. Its

contributions to the eld, many o

which are contained in its signature

products the Xerox Alto (Figure 1.10)

and the Xerox Star, are everything

rom windowing and icons and the

desktop metaphor to WYSIWYG text

editing. Employees included Alan

Kay, who conceived o the rst laptop

computer, the Dynabook, in 1968;

Larry esler and im Mott, who con-ceived o the desktop metaphor and

such now-standard interactions as

cut-and-paste; and Robert Metcale,

who invented Ethernet networking

in 1973.

Famously, Steve Jobs got a demo o the Xerox Star and proceeded to include

its innovations into Apples subsequent computers, the Lisa and, eventually,

the Macintosh.

In the mid-to-late 1970s, experiments like Myron Kruegers VIDEOPLACE

explored virtual reality experiences and gestural interaces, and the rst

touchscreen devices became commercially available.

Te 1970s also began the computer gaming industry with games such

as Pong (1972) and the Atari 2600 gaming console (1977). Tis reected

another major trend in the 1970s: the shiing ocus rom the computer

Figure 1.9

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01_DFI(p3).indd 13 7/13/09 10:09:


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itselthe hardwareto the soware that runs it, particularly soware

that was not designed by computer scientists and engineers or themselvesor trained operators. Designers and engineers in the 1970s rened and

expanded the command-line interace (which had begun in the 1950s)

into such industry-dening soware, as VisiCalc, the rst spreadsheet

soware, introduced in 1979, and WordStar, a popular word-processing

program introduced in 1978 (Figure 1.11).

1980s

Tis new emphasis on users came to ruition in the early 1980s with the

explosion o the graphical user interacespearheaded by Apple Computer,

rst in the Lisa (Figure 1.12) and then in the Macintoshto a mass audi-

ence. Like at Xerox PARC, the interaction design o the Lisa and Macintosh

was a group eort, eaturing designers such as Joy Mountord, Je Raskin,

and Bill Atkinson.

Te 1980s was the era o the personal computer. For the rst time, most

people working with computing devices were working with their own, and

thus had a more one-to-one relationship with one than in previous decades.1981 also saw some o the rst portable computers, such as the Osborne 1.

Te increasing memory and power o the devices a llowed or more sophis-

ticated soware such as Mitch Kapors Lotus 1-2-3 (1983).

Figure 1.11

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01_DFI(p3).indd 14 7/13/09 10:09:


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Tis increasing sophistication and power was demonstrated most capably in

the surge o so-called video or arcade games. Gaming consoles such as

the Sega Genesis (1989) and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1990)

brought unprecedented graphics and computing power to a mass audience.

Tis era also eatured game designers such as the legendary Shigeru Miya-

moto, the Father o Modern Video Games and creator o Mario, Legend

o Zelda, and Donkey Kong. Gaming provided a new set o parallel interac-

tion design paradigms that exist alongside the more traditional or pro-

essional ones or the desktop. (Mobile and touchscreen devices are other

similar parallel tracks.)

In the mid-1980s, bulletin board systems (BBSs) like Te WELL (1985) and

Prodigy (1988) sprung up so that people could leave e-mail and messages

or one another on remote computers using dial-up modems.

In the late 1980s, Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown at Xerox PARC beganputting together the rameworks and denitions or what would become

known as ubiquitous computing, or ubicomp. Its taken about two decades,

but the era o ubicomp has likely already begun (see Chapter 9).

Figure 1.12

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01_DFI(p3).indd 15 7/13/09 10:09:


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1990s

Te era o networked computing, and the beginning o interaction designas a ormal discipline, began in earnest during the 1990s. Te World

Wide Web, which allowed anyone to easily publish hypertext documents

accessible to anyone with a modem worldwide, and the mass adoption o

e-mail, brought the need or better interaction design to the oreront. Marc

Andreessens Mosaic browser (1993) was an important piece o interaction

design, introducing such paradigms as the back button.

It is no exaggeration to state that the advent o the commercial, public Inter-

net changed the world and the relationship o humans to computing devices

and even to inormation. Te early Web was as much a sandbox or new

interactions as was the desktop a decade beore, i not more so. Te Web,along with technologies such as Adobes Flash, a llowed or experimentation

on a grand scale, and or a time, everythingincluding general controls

like scrollbars and buttonswere up or grabs. Eventually, in the late 1990s,

standards began to emerge and the Web stabilized as a platorm.

At the same time, engineers and designers began building sensors and

microprocessors, which were getting smaller, cheaper, and more powerul,

into things that werent considered computers: cars, appliances, and elec-

tronic equipment. Suddenly, these physical objects could demonstrate kinds

o behavior that they previously couldnt; they could display an awareness

o their environment and o how they were being used that was previouslyinconceivable. Cars could monitor their own engines and alert drivers to

problems beore they occurred. Stereos could adjust their settings based

on the type o music being played. Dishwashers could lengthen their wash

cycles depending on how dirty the dishes were. All these behaviors needed

to be designed and, most important, communicated to the human beings

using the objects.

Other pieces o technology acilitated interactions among people, mostly

in the entertainment space. Karaoke spread rom bars in China and Japan

to the United States (Figure 1.13). Arcade video games like Dance Dance

Revolution allowed expression in ront o crowds. Multiplayer games oncomputers and game consoles like the Sony PlayStation acilitated competi-

tion and collaboration in new ways. Online communities like EverQuest

and Te Sims Online incorporated sophisticated economies that rivaled

those o ofine countries.

01_DFI(p3).indd 16 7/13/09 10:09:


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Mobile phones and deviceswhich had existed since the 1980senjoyed

explosive market growth in the 1990s. oday, billions o customers carry

these devices with them. Starting as simply a means o making calls on

the go, mobile phones can now contain myriad digital eatures that rival

those o desktop computers. Personal digital assistants (PDAs) got o to

a shaky start with the ailure o Apples Newton in 1995, but by the end o

the decade, they had gained traction with devices like the PalmPilot and

BlackBerry PDAs.

2000s to Present

Te turn o the millennium also coincided with the era o social soware and

the beginning o the era o ubiquitous computing. No longer did many people

have a one-to-one relationship with devices, but instead had access to many

devices able to interact with each other and the Internet over a network. By

2003, laptops had started outselling desktop systems. As o this writing (2009),

nearly as many people access the Web via a mobile device as with a traditional

desktop or laptop, and that number is likely to be surpassed shortly.

As the Internet matured, so did the technologies creating and driving it.

Since the end o the 1990s, the Internet has become less about reading con-

tent than about doing things: executing stock trades, making new (and

Figure 1.13

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01_DFI(p3).indd 17 7/13/09 10:09:


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nding old) acquaintances, selling

items, manipulating live data, sharingphotos, making personal connections

between one piece o content and

another. Te Internet also provides

several new ways o communicat-

ing, among them instant messaging,

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

(Figure 1.14), and witter.

Te Internet has become a plat-

orm or applications, in much the

same way that Microso DOS oncewas, but these applications can take

advantage o the many eatures o the

Internet: collective actions like the

SEI@Home project in which people

compete to see who can nd extraterrestrial activity rst, data that is col-

lected passively rom large numbers o people as with Amazons People

who bought this also bought... eature, ar-ung social communities such

as that o online photography site Flickr, aggregation o many sources o

data in XML and RSS eeds, near real-time access to timely data like stock

quotes and news, and easy sharing o content such as blogs and Youube.

Access to the Internet, through broadband connections and wireless networks

on portable devices, is changing the types o interactions we can have and

where we can have them. Our cities and towns are becoming platorms and

data sources or geo-located services. Services themselves are being aected

by interaction design (see Products and Services later in this chapter).

Gestural interaces and touchscreen devices such as Nintendos Wii and

Apples iPhone have ushered in a new era o interaction design, where taps

on a screen or gestures in space are becoming a new set o commands or

our devices.

Teres never been a better time to be an interaction designer. Te disciplines

uture (see Chapter 9) contains both many challenges and many possibilities.

Figure 1.14

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01_DFI(p3).indd 18 7/13/09 10:09:


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Marc Rettig on Interaction Designs History and FutureMarc Rettig is a designer, educator, and researcher, as well

as founder and principal of Fit Associates. He has taught

at Carnegie Mellons Graduate School of Design (where he

held the 2003 Nierenberg Distinguished Chair of Design)

and the Institute of Design, IIT, in Chicago. Marc served

as chief experience ofcer of the user experience rm

HannaHodge, and was a director of user experience at

Cambridge Technology Partners.

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01_DFI(p3).indd 19 7/13/09 10:09:


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Marc Rettig on Interaction Designs History and Future(continued)

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a sw Diii

Interaction design as a ormal discipline has been around or less than two

decades. Its a young eld, still dening itsel and guring out its place

among sister disciplines such as inormation architecture (IA), industrial

design (ID), visual (or graphic) design, user experience (UX) design, and

human actors. In addition, some o these other disciplines are also new

and still discovering their boundaries as well, or are radically changing to

accommodate changing design landscape. Figure 1.15 attempts to clariy

the relationships between them.

As you can see, most o the disciplines all at least partially under the

umbrella o user-experience design, the discipline o looking at all aspects

visual design, interaction design, sound design, and so ono the users

encounter with a product, and making sure they are in harmony.

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a steW of DIscIplInes 21

USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN

Content(Text, Video,

Sound)

ARCHITECTURE

INDUSTRIAL

DESIGN

INTERACTION DESIGN

VISUAL

DESIGN

INFORMATION

ARCHITECTURE

HUMAN-COMPUTER

INTERACTION

SOUND

DESIGN

HUMAN

FACTORS

Inormation architecture is concerned with the structure o content: how

to best organize and label content so that users nd the inormation they

need. Yahoo, with its dozens o labeled and categorized content areas, oers

an excellent illustration o inormation architecture. Visual design is about

creating a visual language to communicate content. Te onts, colors, and

layout o user interaces and printed materials l ike this book provide exam-

ples o visual design. Industrial design is about ormshaping objects in a

way that communicates their use while also making them unctional. Phys-

ical objects like urniture, kitchenware, and mechanical objects illustrateindustrial design. Human actors ensure our products conorm to the limi-

tations o the human body, both physically and psychologically. Human-

computer interaction is closely related to interaction design, but its methods

are more quantitative, and its methods are more those o engineering and

Figure 1.15

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01_DFI(p3).indd 21 7/13/09 10:09:


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computer science than o design. Architecture concerns itsel with physical

spaces: their orm and use (program). Sound design denes a set o noises,spoken word, or music to create an aural landscape.

Its easy to see why people are conused!

Although these disciplines are separate, as the gure illustrates, they still

overlap a great deal. In act, where the disciplines overlap can be major areas

o practice, such as interace design, where visual and interaction design

meet; or navigation, where visual and interaction design meet inormation

architecture.

Te best products involve multiple disciplines working in harmony. What is

a laptop computer except a blend o the ruits o many o these disciplines?Separating them can be nearly impossible.

Youll also notice that many o these disciplines have parts that lie outside

the user experience realm. Tis is because many o these disciplines have

tasks that have to do with getting their designs produced, developed, and

built, and those tasks may have little to do with what the user experiences.

It is also important to note that not every organization needs a specialist

working in each discipline; within an organization, one person, who might

be called anything rom an inormation architect to a user-interace engi-

neer, canand probably willshi back and orth as needs require. Its the

role that is important, not the title. Te imagineer at Disney might do ajob similar to that o the user-interace architect at a startup company.

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a steW of DIscIplInes 23

The Company

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The Problem

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Case Study: Microsoft Ofce 2007

01_DFI(p3).indd 23 7/13/09 10:09:


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The Process

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The Solution

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Case Study: Microsoft Ofce 2007 (continued)

Designing for Interaction 2nd Edition (Sample)

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Transcript of Designing for Interaction 2nd Edition (Sample)