16 – UX Foundations: Interaction Design

2/21/19

Author: David Hogue

• Interaction designers are most often associated with web and mobile design, but we work on much more than that.
• interfaces themselves are much more diverse than the pixels on screens of laptops and smartphones. It’s common today for people to use touch screens, spatial gestures, voice, and even traditional physical controls. If people are interacting with the product, then an interaction designer should be involved.
• In the course of our work, we contribute to, or create many different types of documents and design artifacts, that capture and organize the information we need, the ideas we have, and the descriptions of the people, products, flow, systems, and services, and more.
• We work closely with researchers, to help understand people and problems. We work closely with engineers and developers, to understand the technical constraints and opportunities. We work closely with product managers, and business leaders, to identify opportunities and solutions, and we work closely with other designers, to coordinate the different efforts into cohesive product design.
• An important part of your work as an interaction designer is to identify what a project needs. Not every document, deliverable, and artifact, needs to be created for every project.
• Finally, the deliverables and artifacts we create are living documents, they evolve and change as our understanding of the people, the problems, and the product solutions change.
• Interaction designers use many tools, and we have a vast array of techniques to help us generate and identify potential solutions. We are pragmatic. We apply our skills and select our tools based on the problems we need to solve, the solutions we need to communicate, and the people with whom we are working.
• These early sketches can also help develop consensus about what problems we are solving and what goals we are trying to achieve. As our designs progress, we typically need an increasing level of detail and fidelity.
• You should spend your time thinking about solving problems. As long as you are able to capture, represent, and communicate your ideas and design intentions effectively, almost any tool can be valid.
• Our problems and design challenges are becoming increasingly complex because technology and people’s expectations are changing rapidly.
• We need to go beyond simply drawing our solutions, and an increasing number of design tools focus much more on creating interactive prototypes to validate our ideas.
• There are many tools to help us bring the pixels to life, so choose those that help you best capture the intent and the experience of the design and the prototype. Remember, you are evaluating the design solution, not launching the product yet.
• There are many fields which have contributed to interaction design because aspects of our work include information organization, digital technology, graphics and aesthetics, ergonomics, engineering, product materials, social sciences, and more.
• Training and classes can help us develop the specific skills necessary to use our software tools, understand the technology for which we are designing, improve our written and verbal communication skills, work efficiently on teams, and participate effectively in research.
• here is no single path to a career in interaction design. There are many ways to contribute, but in the end, we can think about our skills and knowledge, helping us understand three things- people, technology, and design.
• The web is a very very big place and there are more online resources for Interaction Design than we could possibly list here.
• Understanding how people think, feel, understand information and make decisions can help us generate better ideas and solutions and help us craft and deliver better experiences.
• For every problem, challenge or need we seek to address through design we can use methods from psychology to help us gain insights about and take the perspective of the people who will be using your product or service, and we can do this in a very structured and systematic way.
• First, we want to identify what problems should be solved or which needs should be met.
• identifying problems and needs and evaluating how well our product or service addresses them involves research.

1. I already know that I need to identify the problems and needs of my product. I already know that the web is a very very big place and there are more online resources for Interaction Design than we could possibly list here.  I already know that training and classes can help us develop the specific skills necessary to use our software tools, understand the technology for which we are designing, improve our written and verbal communication skills, work efficiently on teams, and participate effectively in research.
2. I learned that interaction designers are most often associated with web and mobile design, but we work on much more than that. I learned that interfaces themselves are much more diverse than the pixels on screens of laptops and smartphones. I learned that the deliverables and artifacts we create are living documents, they evolve and change as our understanding of the people, the problems, and the product solutions change.
3. I want to learn what psychological methods I can use to find out how to fix my problems with my products.