What is Interaction Design? What does Interaction Designer Do?
It’s not very surprising to see people getting confused between Interaction design (IxD) and User Experience (UX) Design. Moreover, these two words are used a lot in the field of design. However these is a difference.
Interaction design (IxD) is a subset of user experience Design which examines the interaction between a user and interface of product. In Fact you need to possess specific set of skills as well if you want to be an Interaction Designer (IxD)
So what truly is interaction design? And Who is an Interaction designer?
In this article, we shall cover the necessary skills and best tips needed to become a masterful interaction designer. We shall learn
What is Interaction Design (IxD)?
What does Interaction Designer Do?
Responsibilities of Interaction Designer.
Interaction Design (IxD) vs User Experience (UX)
What is Interaction Design?
Interaction Design is abbreviated as IxD.Interaction Design is designing interaction between users and products. The Ultimate goal of interaction design is to create products that allow users to achieve their objectives in the most efficient way.
From computers to mobile devices to appliances to all interactive digital products to environments; Interaction Design (IxD) seeks to design meaningful relationships between user and the products (physical/digital) or services that they use.
John Kolko – the Author of Thoughts on Interaction Design, has beautifully captured the essence of Interaction Design as
“Interaction Design is the creation of a dialogue between a person and a product, system, or service. This dialogue is both physical and emotional in nature and is manifested in the interplay between form, function, and technology as experienced over time.”
What is interesting is that Interaction Design (IxD) synthesizes and imagines things as they could be while considering to satisfy the users. As we discussed in the beginning that an interactive design is conversational which means that with every input added, there is an action or feedback associated with it.
5 Dimensions of Interaction Design.
The five dimensions of interaction design helps us to understand what interaction design involves. Gillian Crampton Smith, Interaction designer and a pioneer of computer desktop publishing, first introduced the concept of four dimensions of Interaction Design language. Kevin Silver later added the fifth dimension.
What is Interaction Design.
lets understand what are the 5 Dimensions of Interaction Design.
- 1D: Words.
Words communicates information to users. Information should be such that it is meaningful and simple to understand. Words encompass text, such as button labels, menu items, tags which help give users the right amount of information. Too much Information can overwhelm the user. Hence, Convey the information in such a way that users gets an organic experience while interacting with your business.
- 2D: Visual representations.
Visual representations are graphical elements such as images, typography and icons that aid in user interaction. These Visual representations acts as supplement to the words while communicating information to users.
Consider presenting some information with an Image and words beneath it. User is more likely to understand the information if presented visually rather than only in textual form. Visual representations are, indeed as powerful as words.
- 3D: Physical objects or space.
Physical objects are the medium through which users interact with the product or service. A simple example can be when a user interacts with Microwave while in the kitchen. Here the Physical object is Microwave and Space is the kitchen.
User’s physical environment can affect how he or she interacts with a Product/service, hence you must take these considerations in the Interaction Design.
- 4D: Time
The 4rth Dimension might seem a little abstract. Basically, it refers to media that changes with time such as animation, videos, sounds.
Time helps users understand visual changes in a UI. It also helps users track their progress and or resume their interaction some time sometime later.
- 5D: Behavior.
Behavior includes action as well as reaction when User interacts with the product. Moreover, the previous four dimensions influence a user’s interaction with a product.
One of the most important part of Interaction design pays is in fact considering how users perform actions during their Interactions. For instance, how users perform actions on a website, or how users can operate a Washing Machine.
Theis dimension also looks at emotional feedback from the users. The feedback is then used to form new recommendations in order to enhance the user experience.
What does Interaction Designer Do?
Interaction designer is a fairly new profession that focuses on communication or “interactions” between user and technology. The ultimate goal of an Interaction designer is to design meaningful interactions which would help users carry out tasks intuitively.
For Example – the buttons, represented with different labels and icons on the microwave would represent various functions of the machine. Similarly, while browsing through a shopping website different UI elements like Buttons/icons/bars must guide users and help them understand where these interactions will take them.
In order to understand what an Interaction Designer does, it is important that we understand what is user experience design (UX) is.
User experience (UX) is about the experience of the user when they interact with the product. It is in fact a person’s feelings, attitude and emotions they feel while using any product or service. In Fact , User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.
It is the job of a UX designer to design this entire experience of the user when they interact with the product. And it is the job of the Interaction Designer to design these ‘at the moment’ interactions which would contribute to the holistic User Experience (UX).
Responsibilities of Interaction designers
In order to deliver an Ultimate User Experience (UX), Interaction designer has to effectively collaborate with design and research team to generate interaction concepts that enable seamless and relevant experiences for their users.
Basically, the steps followed by UX designers and Interaction Designers are same. The difference lies in the fact that UX Designers need to dive into the design process as early as possible. The information, which includes user personas, product requirements, and user interview summaries, is then passed onto interaction designers to build those ‘moments of Interactions’
Once UX designers provide interaction designers with the required information, interaction designers can start their work. The more information interaction designers have about users, the better interactions they can build between the users and different elements of the user interface.
Lets understand now what are the major responsibilities of Interaction Designer
1. Understand User Psychology
When you design an interface you need to make sure that you can predict in advance as to how user would behave with your Product.
For example – While shopping on a website , weather the user would create an account before shopping, or add the product to cart and then move ahead to sign up, or weather they would like to scroll through the website and then create an account.
Each of these user scenarios has a different user flow, and requires you to design different interface . All of this involves understanding user psychology which would help interaction designer to plan how users would ideally behave.
Furthermore, gaining a richer and deeper understanding of people and their psychology can help you to achieve insights and get an understanding of people.
Not just that, observing self behaviour while interacting with an Interface helps a lot. Studying how you interact with these interfaces and asking a lot of questions on why did you choose a particular path during your interaction with the product would help you in designing an intuitive design.
2. Design strategy
People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it .Whenever you design something, You need to have goal in mind as to what you are trying to achieve with it. The goal in fact is in-line with the User Goals.
Design strategy is an integrated planning process that examines the relationships between user and business goals, and merging them together so that they complement each other, while keeping in account the design thinking and human-centered design (HCD) principles.
Simply put, Design strategy is about approaching a design project keeping the goals and objectives of User and business in mind
Understanding the goals of user also requires you to understand your target user and finding emotional as well as physical interactions that will help to achieve those goals. Conducting User Research helps Interaction designers to find out those goals. Furthermore, it is also important that you understand the User psychology as well.
3. Wireframes and prototypes
A good Design is User Focused. A User Focused Design is highly driven by User Feedback. Wireframing and prototyping is the best way of gathering effective user feedback and catching flaws earlier on.
A wireframe is a static representation or blueprint of the initial product concept however, prototype is a working model of an app or a webpage. Wireframes and prototypes can be low/medium as well as high fidelity.
Wireframing is the stage where you take a concept or design and shape it into something tangible so that you can thoroughly review your work with users and stakeholders and ensure it makes sense.
Creating Wireframes gives Designers the flexibility to play around and do lot of Experimentation . Prototyping helps to review and refine it with the help of User Feedback to turn it into a Polished version that can be Developed to an End Product.
Interaction designers are tasked to create wireframes that lay out the interactions with product, and look/feel exactly like the actual products. Hence, you need to have an understanding of designing interfaces while having a clear understanding of Interaction design principles.
4. Collaboration
While working on a design project, Interaction Designers need to work with many people to ensure that all interaction patterns are implemented correctly in a product. All of this includes stakeholders, UX Designers, UX researchers , product managers, developers and users as well.
For example, While learning about users and their requirements an Interaction Designer has to closely work with UX researcher. When working on design solutions they need to have effective conversations with UX Designers, product managers and other stakeholders. Equally, When doing user testing they need to work closely with users and so on.
By Collaborating with people you would get the opportunity to work in other areas and learn from different people while leveraging each others skill which complement your own. Infact, you can learn many skills by collaboration and repetition.
See, No one is self-sufficient; everyone relies on others. Of course, you need to have the required skills to work on things however, if you want to be successful then collaborating is your key.
Interaction Design (IxD) vs User Experience (UX)
UX design is about shaping the entire experience of a user while they interact with a product. And the Interaction Design is about designing the interactions when the user use the product ‘at the moment’ so that user has a pleasant experience. In simple words ,’UX Design encompasses Interaction Design’.
Designing good interaction design would ultimately lead to a good User Experience. Interaction design is focused on ‘at the moment interactions’ when a user interacts with a product with the goal to improve the interactive experience.
However, User experience design deals with all end -to -end user facing aspects of the product ( touch, feel, interacting, customer service etc) and ‘moment of interaction’ is just a part of the journey that a user goes through when they interact with a product.
User experience & interaction design are essentially distinct roles in bigger organizations. There is however no rule that restrict you to take up both these roles. Just like UX Designers, interaction designers also need to follow UX design process.
For Example – There’s no point in conducting user research to find what user needs, if interaction designers keeps themselves to those needs are kept at arms’ length from UX research outputs.