How to create Interactions: A Engagement Saga
I’m going to tell you a marvelous story divided into 4 events which I call the Engagement Saga.
The Interaction Designers.
The book, Smart Systems Design, Applications, and Challenges defines interaction as the act or action that happens when two objects or entities communicate and have an effect on each other.
We can find it in too many places on a day-to-day basis, even in most digital or non-digital things, from using a simple elevator to asking the virtual assistant a question.
IxD (Interaction Design) has the initiative to decide What/When/Why/How the action will occur and, as experience designers, we must focus on creating a dialogue between the digital product, service, or system and the user.
Our objective is to make it easier to interact with the digital product, but for that we not only need to have skills as designers, we also need to know how to use that skill set to attract the users’ attention.
Interaction Design: the age of micro-interactions.
We don’t need a big special weapon for users to want to use our product, what we need is to know how to use micro-interactions to our benefit.
As part of the product flow, you will see too many tasks happening at the same time, in which the user might interact to complete a bigger action, these small actions that complete a specific task are called micro-interactions and are the best we can do to communicate with users and connect them to their emotions. The ability to respond to these actions is tied to the same feedback that the platform gives.
Interaction Design: War of Engagement.
The digital war is about catching your users to consume your products versus the thousands of products that are out there, you must attract attention with slight details, those details are given by a good integration of micro-interactions.
To encourage people to use your digital product, you have to motivate them with a good user experience. One simple way to do this is to get the micro-interactions right. By having good navigation, smooth and simple transitions, you can help users and give them advice on how to use it, you will get good results and users will continue to consume your content.
Interaction Design: addiction game.
We all have a small (or not so small) addiction to our phones, apps, social networks, video games, and even apps for shopping or ordering food. Gamification plays an important role with a reward system where you see some micro-interactions like notifications, refreshing a page to see the news first or scrolling to infinity, a mood analysis system, discovering new milestones (they hook you even if you don’t pay attention to them), it makes you a feel anxious. This is due to a neurotransmitter (dopamine) in our brain that’s released in the same way it’s when we exercise, discover new things, eat, or have certain experiences.
When we perform certain actions, they trigger a pleasant stimulus that makes us happy, but when we abuse the use of them, they can lead to addiction. In this story, we as interaction designers play the role of the anti-hero, because we make sure that these actions are satisfying for the user. Through better micro-interactions, the user can no longer be without their cellphone turned off. Our goal is to create that addiction by creating a unique experience that encourages the user to keep using the product.
The End.
So how can we get users engaged to use our digital products more?
· Be consistent in the way we want users to interact.
· Make people not want to leave the app by making them feel at home.
· Have a purpose for every little detail.
· Encourage users to use every digital flow to have a nice moment using micro-interactions.
If you want to read more regarding this interaction universe, you can browse thru the following resources:
Creating meaningful micro-interactions
https://uxplanet.org/creating-meaningful-micro-interactions-99cbde1fbee7Microinteractions in User Experience
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/microinteractions/Microinteractions: Designing with Details 1st Edition (Dan Saffer) Book.
https://www.amazon.com/Microinteractions-Full-Color-Designing-Details/dp/1491945923/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=dan+saffer&qid=1629125392&sr=8-1
