What is interaction design?
Here is a little something that I wrote a few months into the program but hadn’t published. Will try to answer again once it is done to see how my perception has changed.
- What are you studying?
- Interaction Design
- Interior design?
- No, no. I n t e r a c t i o n Design.
- What?
And so it begins: the eternal struggle to explain briefly what exactly this discipline is about. I completely understand where the confused look in peoples face comes from though. I found out about it myself not so long ago, and only until recently I understood what the famous buzzwords UI and UX stood for (nah, actually i don’t get them)
But interaction design is quite different, and to me, much more interesting. So how to define it? Let’s start by taking a look at its name. Interaction and Design. The first thing to notice, and I’m so glad about this, is that the term ‘user’ not longer pops up. But we are still left with such massive words. To try to understand what they mean together let’s take a look at each of the words on their own first.
Interaction (1)
It is typically defined as a reciprocal action or influence. In this sense it involves communication or direct involvement with someone or something. So basically, it covers all of our relationships. Relationships with each other and with the rest of the world.
Design
Design is one of the things that makes us human. It has to do with creating form, order, planification and intent. In a very broad sense it can be said that design is the process through which we create our realities.
To me, interaction design is then about creating a conversation that carries on indefinitely. A conversation that has no reason to only limit itself to human beings and other living things or to have humans at the centre. A conversation about life, about options. It is the possibility of bringing disciplines together in order to understand complexity and transforming systems.
- To take it one step further, rather than interaction I like to think about the concept of ‘correspondence’ developed by anthropologist Tim Ingold
