Drawing similarities between Buildings and Interaction Design
4th Sep 2018 | Seminar One- Interaction Design and Service Design Concepts
In the book “ How buildings learn”, Stewart Brand talks about how buildings adapt, because usages in and around them are changing constantly.
We shape our buildings and our buildings shape us. — Winston Churchill
However, the cycle does not stop there. It is a continuous process during which people and buildings keep shaping each other. A continual transformation is the only constant. I see a similar process in the ever-evolving field of Interaction Design.
Mobile apps have become an integral part of our daily lives. We use it for doing so many tasks in our day to day lives — communicating with each other, commuting to school, managing our finances— there’s an app for everything! Not only has the use of digital products changed us, but we in turn as users have also defined the evolution of these products. One of the core principles of the design process is continuous iteration of ideas and concepts on the basis of the feedback received from users. So we as users have played an equal role in defining and making these digital products as they are today.
Function reforms form, perpetually.
I found that the ‘Six S’ model of layers of change was similar to the model of an interactive product.
‘Stuff’ would relate to all the elements that make up the interface of a digital product, like buttons and other controls, text, images, icons etc. ‘Space Plan’ would be synonymous to the skeleton or the wireframe of that particular app, while ‘Services’ might be similar to connections and workflows that make up the entire app. ‘Skin’ would be the device it is enclosed in, like a mobile phone, tablet, computer, kiosk etc. ‘Structure’ makes up the key features and content of the app that is aligned with strategic goals and ‘Site’ would be the geographical region that the product is currently in. This last attribute however, would change from time to time unlike a building that is always stationary.
The above analogy is inspired from the below diagram that is illustrated by Jesse James Garret in the book ‘The Elements of User Experience Design.’
The dynamics of the system will be dominated by the slow components, with the rapid components simply following along.
The slow parts are in charge, dominating and influencing the rapid ones. In a building, Site dominates the Structure, which dominates the Skin, which dominates the Service and so on. Site would be a slow part as it is difficult or impossible to change, whereas Stuff would become a fast part that can change multiple times without much trouble.
Similarly, in a digital artifact, the Strategy dominates the Scope, which in turn dominates the Structure, that dominates the Skeleton which finally dominates the Surface. For example, the choice of a particular color in a website depends on the layout, which depends on the information architecture which in turn depends on its user’s mental model and business goals of the product. Strategy, which is the slow part is in charge of the other parts under it which are faster. Changes in the layers of Surface and Skeleton are more rapid than those in Strategy and Scope.
