What the f… is Interaction Design?
Ever since I started studying at CODE, there has been one question I have been asked between ten and 536 times. That’s why I’d like to answer it once and for all, so whenever the question comes up, I can just refer to this article.
As you might have guessed, it is the question about my study program: what is Interaction Design? I have to admit, it is not an easy one. First, people tend to associate the university I study at with coding. Might have to do with the name. When they then hear that the course is called „Interaction Design“, they get confused, because it does not sound as nerdy as they expected. Maybe this university is not about sitting in the basement and writing weird green lines on a black background, but about painting pictures and designing … stuff. Or maybe, to put it in a technological context, about deciding which color the buttons on a website should have.
Those are the assumptions I want to challenge with my answer. And this is not an easy task. So I want to tell you what the mysterious term Interaction Design means to me.
The most important „thing“ my work as an interaction designer depends on is something (or someone) everyone knows: the human being. As an interaction designer, I try to understand what people think, what they feel, why they feel it and what problems they might face (sometimes without even being aware of it). Those problems can be very small things annoying you in your everyday life, like always forgetting where you put your wallet. But it can also be about the bigger picture, touching for example social or environmental issues. For every problem, it is crucial to consider the environments and systems people live in, where they come from and what obstacles they have already faced in life. On that basis, an interaction designer tries to design solutions that make the problems smaller or even disappear completely.
And now comes the tech part: technology can help make people aware of existing problems. It can also help to design great solutions, which most often involve people interacting with machines (in what way ever). And this is what Interaction Design means to me.
I will post two of my favorite projects that I find very inspiring and that might be a good example and give you a clearer idea of what I am talking about. The first one is about making people aware and visualizing problems with the help of technology. The second one is about solving problems with technology. Enjoy and let me know what you think.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH--XMgZsuw
2: https://www.provenance.org/case-studies/martine-jarlgaard
