INNOVATING DESIGN PRACTICE

Interaction Equity

Tools for talking about user engagement while designing.

At some point in a designer’s career they create mental models about engagement — why users use an experience, are delighted and continue using the experience or are frustrated and abandon the experience. Having a way to talk about how engaged a user can be useful. A model of measuring engagement that I find useful is Interaction Equity (abb to IE).

Anything that is wasted effort represents wasted time. The best management of our time thus becomes linked inseparably with the best utilization of our efforts.
- Theodore Wilhelm Engstrom

Do you have time to spare, sir?

Interaction Equity is the concept that a user only spares an experience a certain amount of goodwill (equity) to reach a goal, and that each interaction with the application uses up some of that equity. In this way, Interaction Equity provides a framework where a team can discuss how much aspects of an experience reduce a user’s willingness or desire to continue using an experience.

The amount of equity that an experience starts off per user varies based on how much the user wants or needs to participate in the activity. It would be difficult to come up with a…