The Origins of Interaction Design
Written for Interaction and Service Design Concepts, a course taught by Molly Wright Steenson at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design
As an undergrad student at Parsons, I had the opportunity to explore many areas of design. Everything from physical product development to high-level design strategy. It was through these diverse experiences that I began to form an understanding of — and appreciation for — interaction design.
While the introduction (and adoption) of digital interfaces may have been the primary catalyst behind the formation of interaction design, I believe that the roots of interaction design lie in other disciplines. More specifically, graphic design and product design. As a relatively nascent discipline, practitioners of interaction design had to incorporate the principles and processes from both areas in order to successfully work through the challenges presented by designing for digital interfaces. This ultimately culminated in the development of new design strategies and methods and in turn led to the birth of interaction design as we know it today.
For example, an important component of interaction design is the visual display of information, the origins of which are rooted in graphic design. The study of graphic design focuses on the organizational aspects of design and using the right visual cues to communicate with the user, whether it involves conveying the functionality of an object or evoking the right emotions. Principles include the use of color, hierarchy, typography, grid layouts and composition, all of which are used by interaction designers to facilitate user behavior and to create more usable interfaces. In fact, graphic designers have been working on computer interfaces since the emergence of the graphical user interface in the 1980s.
The importance of graphic design principles can be seen in the introduction of custom fonts to computer interfaces. For instance, in 1984 Apple introduced its iconic Chicago font. Not only did this become an important part of Apple’s brand identity, but because of its legibility on low-resolution screens, became an important point of differentiation for Apple’s early products as well. In fact, 20 years later when Apple launched the iPod, the company went back to its Chicago font in order to provide its users with a font that easy to read on tiny, low-resolution screen.
If graphic design guided the visual principles of interaction design, then the product design & development process provided the framework for how interaction designers approach thinking through how users will interact with their digital interfaces. Even a quick comparison between both frameworks will reveal a lot of similarities. The product design process includes researching customers’ pain points, brainstorming, rapid ideation and prototyping, testing and iterating. All of these are phases within the interaction design process, however, even experienced product designers faced new challenges once they began designing for digital interfaces. IDEO co-founder, Bill Moggridge, discusses these challenges in the video excerpt below from the documentary Objectified.
“…and within a few moments, I found myself forgetting all about my physical design and realizing everything I was really interested in was happening in my relationship between what was happening behind the screen…and the interaction between me and the device was all to do with the digital software, very little to do with the physical design. And that made me realize that if I was truly going to design the whole experience, I would really have to learn how to design this software stuff…which we ended up calling Interaction Design.”
In other words, this was a different beast and new techniques were required to design for these increasingly complex interfaces. One of the complexities of computer interface design was the emergence of a two-way relationship with an object. The physical object (i.e. the computer screen) stayed the same, but the interface it displayed would change depending on the behavior of the user. Potential interactions and use cases became much more numerous and complex.
Take for instance the rotary phone as compared to a smartphone. Before phones had computational power, they were quite simple to use. You placed your finger through the hole of the number you wished to dial and rotated until your finger touched the metal stop. There were affordances built into the design, tactile feedback from the drag of the dial and a limited number of actions one could take. Now consider the iPhone. Its touchscreen interface, an infinite number of apps and features and its ability to interact with other services and devices (e.g. iTunes, your computer, etc.) makes it an infinitely more complex device to design for.
The question of how we design for complex behaviors — where user input and feedback changes the fundamental nature of a product — is at the heart of interaction design. It involves a deep understanding of situational context and the user. But most importantly, it involves a deep understanding of how the user’s behaviors impact the interface. And in turn how the interface impacts user behaviors. By incorporating best practices of both graphic design and product design, designers will be well equipped to tackle many of these challenges. But the continued development of interaction design as a focused area of study is necessary to address the ever-changing challenges presented by digital interfaces.
