Differnce between user interface and interaction design?

Demers, Scott

Thursday 5:06pm

Hi, Folks -

Cheers,

Scott DeMers

Replies (64)

Most Recent by Jai Godara

Luis de la Orden Morais

Thursday 8:47pm

The story says UI designer delivers the interface, the IxD plans it, sometimes in this very order : ).

Some agencies in London have Interactive Designers which translates as a Web Designer with Flash and good design flair; he codes and designs and used to be known as "Das Multimedia Designer" at the time Macromedia Director ruled the earth.

If one is out of work, then they can call themselves an "inactive designer" as well : )

Cheers,

Luis

Jeff Howard

Thursday 9:11pm

Hi Scott,

One aspect of your question could cause confusion. Are you asking about the difference between disciplines or between roles? I think the answers you receive may vary depending on which question people choose to answer.

Here's how I see the difference:

Interaction designer is to interface designer as art director is to graphic designer. It's an imperfect analogy but it demonstrates how the roles are linked. I think of interface design as the form-giving counterpart to interaction design. I believe that interface design differs from interaction design primarily in its focus on the behavior of artifacts rather than the behavior of humans.

Although the two roles can certainly be embodied in a single individual in the broad strokes you might be able to tell the difference between an interaction designer and an interface designer by their tools. Whiteboards and Post-it notes or Omnigraffle and Flash?

// jeff

Manish Pillewar

Thursday 10:21pm

Just some random thoughts:

The idea of Define a designation dictionary for
designers is a really uphill task. The very nature of designers to be different and not fall into a rules bucket, is an issues itself. Our responsibilities
stretch across different domains and expertise. While some of us are formally trained as Interaction
Designers, we do involve ourselves with coding as
well. We do requirements, which should be done by the business analysts, we do usability testing, which
should be done by cognitive scientists/ergonomic folks and /or human factors specialists, we do documentation at times which should be done by technical writers, etc. Each organization, each group that you belong to professionally, defines designers as they see fit with them. I may be called a user experience designer or a User Interface Designer or a Interaction designer or a UI/Usabiity analyst or a zillion other things. It's anyways the work that i do defines who i am and what value i bring to the organization i work in.

And we have discussed this so many times but I really hope there is a solution to this :-)

Cheers!
Manish Govind Pillewar
Inactive Designer
Thoughtworks India Pvt. Ltd.
Bangalore

Luis wrote:
"
User interface designer is what we used to call our web designers, the
guys that put together the HTML, mostly the ones who dare to have a little
bit of
an opinion and hate to be called Web Developers
because most recruiters
think you do ASP.NET.

The story says UI designer delivers the interface, the IxD plans it,
sometimes in this very order : ) .

Some agencies in London have Interactive Designers which translates
as a Web Designer with Flash and good design flair; he
codes and designs and
used to be known as "Das Multimedia Designer" at the time Macromedia
Director
ruled the earth.

If one is out of work, then they can call themselves an "inactive
designer"
as well : )

Thanks and Regards
Manish Govind Pillewar
Sr. User Interface Designer-UXD
Bangalore-India
Tel. +91 9880566951 (M)
+91 80 41113967 (Eve.)
Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface :-)

Yahoo! Answers - Got a question? Someone out there knows the answer. Try it now. http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/

Melvin Jay Kumar

Friday 12:15am

The Solution.

Wipe out the entire design colony and start afresh and just name anyone who does work in any of these areas as a Designer.

You become a senior as you add the various specialities into your arsenal.

You identify yourself by the various specialities you have worked in as well as academically gotten them.

Thats a solution!!!

I create, design, architect , produce .but ultimately what I care about is if the customer is happy and enjoys the end product.

On 1/25/08, Manish Pillewar manish1022 at yahoo.co.uk wrote: Just some random thoughts: The idea of Define a designation dictionary for designers is a really uphill task. The very nature of designers to be different and not fall into a rules bucket, is an issues itself. Our responsibilities stretch across different domains and expertise. While some of us are formally trained as Interaction Designers, we do involve ourselves with coding as well. We do requirements, which should be done by the business analysts, we do usability testing, which should be done by cognitive scientists/ergonomic folks and /or human factors specialists, we do documentation at times [trim]

Adrian Howard

Friday 2:56am

On 25 Jan 2008, at 08:15, Melvin Jay Kumar wrote:

The Solution. Wipe out the entire design colony and start afresh and just name anyone who does work in any of these areas as a Designer. You become a senior as you add the various specialities into your arsenal. You identify yourself by the various specialities you have worked in as well as academically gotten them. Thats a solution!! Amen brother.

Adrian

Alexander Livingstone

Friday 3:29am

On 1/25/08, Demers, Scott scott.demers at cudenver.edu wrote:

Just curious how some of you would differentiate an interaction designer from a user interface designer? Apologies if it's been discussed to death before. Looked quickly on the discussion archive and didn't see anything. If you're talking in terms of selling the concept to people (which I am having to do right now!) I'm finding that picking out and using their buzzwords 'against them' is very persuasive.

I'm selling IxD with two main points:

1) They align the products with processes(!) - and then you qualify this with high-level business strategy(!) , all the way down to the work minutiae of the people on the coal-face (my worklplace is where clichés come to die) . I then use the example of:

2) During work I staple, and remove staples from, things. I keep my stapler on my desk and my remover in my drawer as I staple far more often than I unstaple, and I want my desk to be clear.

Obviously I flesh these out slightly and change the emphasis depending upon my audience, but it seems to work pretty well and seem to I get a lot of 'this guy knows what he's talking about' looks. Either that or I'm fooling myself ; )

-- Alex.

dave malouf

Friday 4:35am

Melvin said:
"You identify yourself by the various specialities you have worked in as well as academically gotten them."

Uh! doesn't this mean creating a title for yourself? I identify myself as an interaction designer b/c that is my primary specialty and what differentiates me from UI Designers.

Wait! we just said we can't tell the difference ...

Seriously, though. I think that we as a group are closely aligned enough to IA that we should be able to solve the
taxonomic/ontological/faceted/semantical/syntactical nature of our practice and discipline.

IxD is about behavior and interactions of the systems and products we design. It is a horizontal design discipline that almost every other design discipline has to engage with. it is the intangible part of the the tangible form making design disciplines out there.

This is what is killing most people. Further, most of doing IxD do it as part of a practice that IS form giving, like UI Design or Industrial Design. OR we work directly with form givers in partnership (or in servitude) .

For those of us that LOVE to concentrate on IxD as its own separate practice and partner with form designers, this is an amazing job, but also a curse. To constantly defend the art of the aesthetics of the intangible is really difficult. This does not mean it doesn't exist, but rather a big part of our job is being able to speak, argue, define, and communicate what it is that IxD really is.

-- dave

Todd Zaki Warfel

Friday 5:33am

On Jan 25, 2008, at 5:56 AM, Adrian Howard wrote:

Wipe out the entire design colony and start afresh and just name anyone who does work in any of these areas as a Designer. Amen brother.

That makes two of us.

Cheers!

Todd Zaki Warfel
President, Design Researcher
Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. Contact Info
Voice: (215) 825-7423
Email: todd at messagefirst.com
AIM: twarfel at mac.com
Blog: http://toddwarfel.com
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they are not.

Mark Schraad

Friday 5:41am

I am on board. The friggin silos drive me nuts.

Mark Schraad
designer

On Jan 25, 2008, at 8:33 AM, Todd Zaki Warfel wrote:

On Jan 25, 2008, at 5:56 AM, Adrian Howard wrote: Wipe out the entire design colony and start afresh and just name anyone who does work in any of these areas as a Designer. Amen brother. That makes two of us. Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel President, Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: todd at messagefirst.com AIM: twarfel at mac.com Blog: http://toddwarfel.com In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* [trim]

Paul Eisen

Friday 5:48am

Wipe out the entire design colony and start afresh and just name anyone who does work in any of these areas as a Designer. Amen brother. That makes two of us. That unfortunately still doesn't solve the problem that often people - including arguably at least two postings to this very thread - refer to people who develop interfaces as designers. But that opens up a whole new can of worms that I doubt I have the appetite for.

Paul Eisen
Principal User Experience Architect

tandemseven
416.840.4447 office/mobile
peisen at tandemseven.com
http://www.tandemseven.com

W Evans

Friday 6:20am

Long live silos!!
Titles, and all other remnants of the roman army and feudalism are important in maintaining power in a hierarchical society.

*Will's definitions:
* Interaction Designer: Anything Dave M. does (and the only thing he does :-)

Interface Designer: Anything LukeW does (and the only thing he does :-) Curmudgeon: Anything I do on this list.
Information Architect: A glorified library science school dropout. UX Architect: Someone who doesn't have the skills to be a UI designer Usability Speciality: Someone who hates IxDers enough to enlist "users" to publicly humiliate the interaction designer.

Lot's of love folks!

On Jan 25, 2008 8:41 AM, Mark Schraad mschraad at mac.com wrote:

I am on board. The friggin silos drive me nuts. Mark Schraad designer On Jan 25, 2008, at 8:33 AM, Todd Zaki Warfel wrote: On Jan 25, 2008, at 5:56 AM, Adrian Howard wrote: Wipe out the entire design colony and start afresh and just name anyone who does work in any of these areas as a Designer. Amen brother. That makes two of us. Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel President, Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. Contact Info Voice: (215) [trim]

—
~ will

"Where you innovate, how you innovate,
and what you innovate are design problems"
will evans
user experience architect
wkevans4 at gmail.com

Charlie Kreitzberg

Friday 6:58am

I think that the idea of having a single profession with specialties is right on. As a designer I do UI, IxD, IA, Ux and probably a few other thing.

I can do all this things competently — that does not make me a specialist in these areas and when I have a complex problem I will bring in someone who specializes in one of these areas.

The medical profession has had this model for years. You get an MD and that qualifies you to basically do anything in medicine (e.g. you are a physician and surgeon." If you want to specialize in a particular field you can do so and get as many specialization credentials as you want (e.g. you can be a psychiatrist and a neurologist) .

By doing this you can present a simple, easily comprehended profession to the outside world.

It also suggests a curriculum for training new professionals. And in the future, if we ever move to certification of some sort (don't panic!) it will provide a model that enables people go gain basic certification and then go after their "merit badges."

Charlie

dave malouf

Friday 7:57am

Isn't this just delaying the inevitable?
Sure, (Kumbaya!) we are all "D"esigners, great! (I actually think that most of us aren't designers, btw, but that's a separate topic) .

Ok, so you get your MD (masters of design) . So then what? do you go for boards in Interaction Design? Oh wait!!! don't you need to define IxD so that you can build a specialty around it? I mean how will I know I graduated from ixD (thoracic surgery) instead of ui (cardiology) .

Guys! please, you might not like it, but semantics are required to build, reflect, advance, and advocate for any profession. we need to be able to communicate value inside and outside and all around the eco-system. We need to be able to educate, elucidate, explore and experiment. Sometimes the definitions are "easy"; In our case it is a challenge b/c we are the bastard children of design.

Now, a possible more important question is whether these conversations are useful on THIS list. The frustration level is obvious to many. At one point, we had a list called "working group" that was for the purpose of defining IxD and IxDA. We knew we wanted to keep the primary list balanced on tactics and theory, but not distracted on semantics and logistics of the org.

The logistics part is well taken care of by the relatively new Board of 7 (soon to be 9) . But the definition piece has fallen back on this list time and again especially over the last 2 years.

To me this speaks of a great need to do either 2 things:

1) Turn the definition page on the web site into a "wiki" page with commenting capabilities. It will be the living permanent answer to this question once and for all.

2) We create a list for people like myself who will forever be obsessed with defining the damn thing!

But i'm afraid these threads on this open list is turning into noise for too many people.

But then again, since less than 1% of the total subscriber base actually posts anything, it is almost impossible to know (BTW the poll request response rate is even lower than that) .

-- dave

Jared M. Spool

Friday 8:37am

On Jan 25, 2008, at 3:15 AM, Melvin Jay Kumar wrote:

You become a senior as you add the various specialities into your arsenal. You identify yourself by the various specialities you have worked in as well as academically gotten them. While we're exploring other models, I'd recommend a World of Warcraft approach.

As you "kill" off designs, you gain experience points. Once you reach a certain number of points, you become a more experienced designer.

At a certain level, you can choose a specialty, for which you are awarded certain powers. As you continue to kill off more designs, you can further refine your specialty by choosing more powers.

Of course, when you reach level 50, you have to stop, but you can fight in the advanced battlefields and can start up new characters easier.

And, you have to pay $40/month for this. Make checks out to:

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: jspool at uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks

Jarod Tang

Friday 8:48am

On Jan 25, 2008 12:47 PM, Luis de la Orden Morais luis at webalorixa.net wrote:

User interface designer is what we used to call our web designers, the guys that put together the HTML, mostly the ones who dare to have a little bit of an opinion and hate to be called Web Developers because most recruiters think you do ASP.NET. The story says UI designer delivers the interface, the IxD plans it, sometimes in this very order : ) . Some agencies in London have Interactive Designers which translates as a Web Designer with Flash and good design flair; he codes and designs and used to be known as "Das Multimedia Designer" [trim] it's more like, interaction designer, which emphirsize the design from the design's method (how the designer view the world and product? some friends also call it some special kind of system design, by this means) and interface design emphirsize the result and what the designer works on ( or which part of the product/service the designer works on) , and interactive design more on which kind of product/service designed

Cheers
-- Jarod
-- Designing for better life style.

http://jarodtang.spaces.live.com/
http://jarodtang.blogspot.com

Adam Connor

Friday 12:13pm

If I recall correctly this topic has come up before on IxDA.

I've been working in house for the same company for almost 7 years now. In that time I've held the following titles.

Web Designer
Interactive Designer
Interaction Designer
User Interface Designer
Online Experience Architect
User Experience Specialist

Through all those titles though, my activities have never really changed:
I work on Info Architecture, Interactions, UI, etc.

To be honest I stopped caring about my title a few years ago. Perhaps it would be different if I weren't an in-house, but it seems more important to me to just deliver the best products I can.

Demers, Scott

Friday 4:52pm

Hi, Folks —

I appreciate the responses to my question.

I liked Luis' definition:

"UI designer delivers the interface, the IxD plans it"

I think that would make sense to a .NET developer, who's used to thinking in terms of "the user interface designer" (which, by the way, is why I asked the question) .

"... interface design differs from interaction design primarily in its focus on the behavior of artifacts rather than the behavior of humans."

I especially like this one, but it would definitely require our lunchtime conversation extend beyond an hour (not a bad thing, really) .

" IxD is about behavior and interactions of the systems and products we design. It is a horizontal design discipline that almost every other design discipline has to engage with. it is the intangible part of the the tangible form making design disciplines out there."

This one, as accurate as it may be, would have him shaking his head and dismissing me as a complete flake. Considering the source, maybe not a bad thing either : )

Cheers,

Scott Original Message
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Demers, Scott
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 6:06 PM
To: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Differnce between user interface and interactiondesign?

Hi, Folks -

Cheers,

Scott DeMers

lukeisha carr

Friday 5:34pm

"Just curious how some of you would differentiate an interaction designer from a user interface designer? Apologies if it's been discussed to death before."

I think these kind of questions keep coming up again & again for some of the following reasons:

1. Companies give many different titles to the same group of duties. So, which titles does one need to look for in a job search to ensure that you cover all of your bases?

2. Many people have different backgrounds. So, how does one know if he/she has the correct experience or training for the any of the multiple titled positions. i.e. My background is mostly in "back-end" web development. Even though, I've coded in HTML/JavaScript, but the "design" parts, like image croping/creation, colors, etc. was done by someone else. So, does one with that kind of background need to become proficient in Photoshop, Illustrator, or Flash to be a good IxDer?

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if these kind of questions will slow down, until the field is many years old and dedicated training will define what these positions do. But the challenge will still be how to keep different companies from making a mis-mash of all the title.

dave malouf

Friday 7:02pm

Scott, if this is who you're dealing with, this is how I would put it.

the UI Designer, says, the button is left aligned, bevelled, has this rollover, and that action state, and this disabled state.

The IxDer says how did the user even get to the page with the button, why is the button necessary and what comes after the button is pressed.

This is what I would say to my wife, or someone else who asks me what I do for a living and really just doesn't get it.
The other trick ... In many many many environments this is the same human being.

BTW, i'm not sure I buy that IxDs are not interested in human behavior.

-- dave

Andrei Herasimchuk

Friday 9:58pm

On Jan 25, 2008, at 7:02 PM, dave malouf wrote:

the UI Designer, says, the button is left aligned, bevelled, has this rollover, and that action state, and this disabled state. The IxDer says how did the user even get to the page with the button, why is the button necessary and what comes after the button is pressed. Actually, an interface designer does the same as the interaction designer by that definition as well. If the interface designer didn't concern themselves with the behavior they'd be simply a graphic or visual designer.

In fact, at most software companies, they have interaction and visual designers combine their work to create the interface because there has always been a distinct lack of people who can do both at the level needed to ship professional software. But given that one is an "interaction" designer and the other is a"visual" designer and what they ultimately make is the "interface, " logic dictates that an "interface" designer would in fact do the job of both.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

dave malouf

Saturday 3:31am

It seems Andrei, whether or not you are right, that the question was already couched in terms of separating logic from presentation. The person then wanted to know, how to tell an idiot how this works. Titles be damned.

Challis Hodge

Saturday 4:31am

Here's a model describing the distinction between the roles. In reality they are typically filled by 1 or 2 individuals.

http://www.challishodge.com/models_edequation.html

Note: the model is biased toward digital/interactive.

-challis

Mark Schraad

Saturday 4:45am

Dan Safer (by way of Carnegie Mellon I believe) does a nice job of this in his book, and includes a helpful vin diagram. While it is not the end all answer to your questions it is an excellent place to start.

Mark

On Jan 25, 2008, at 12:34 PM, lukeisha carr wrote:

"Just curious how some of you would differentiate an interaction designer from a user interface designer? Apologies if it's been discussed to death before." I think these kind of questions keep coming up again & again for some of the following reasons: 1. Companies give many different titles to the same group of duties. So, which titles does one need to look for in a job search to ensure that you cover all of your bases? 2. Many people have different backgrounds. So, how does one know if he/she has the correct experience or training for [trim]

pauric

Saturday 5:32am

Scott: " I liked Luis' definition:

"UI designer delivers the interface, the IxD plans it" "

I would expand that a little. Interaction Design as I perceive the role I play considers how the user interacts with the system/product, not just the interface.

So while I do truly hate semantics I have to agree with Dave that defining/differentiating what we practice is very necessary.

Therefor, for me;
Interface Designer focuses on the presentation layer.

IxDs are generalists who utilise aspects of the fields of IA, Industrial & Interface design in a world of increasingly complex products & services.

I think the fact that most IxDs are/were Interface designers, and the majority of the work is in the web, really clouds the issue.

Jared M. Spool

Saturday 8:56am

On Jan 25, 2008, at 5:02 PM, dave malouf wrote:

Why must there be a difference?

Isn't this just a Yam/Sweet Potato thing?

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: jspool at uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks

Adrian Howard

Saturday 8:59am

On 25 Jan 2008, at 13:48, Paul Eisen wrote:

Wipe out the entire design colony and start afresh and just name anyone who does work in any of these areas as a Designer. Amen brother. That makes two of us. That unfortunately still doesn't solve the problem that often people - including arguably at least two postings to this very thread - refer to people who develop interfaces as designers. But that opens up a whole new can of worms that I doubt I have the appetite for. And that's a problem why?

(just in case your appetite has returned :-)

Adrian

Adrian Howard

Saturday 10:09am

On 25 Jan 2008, at 17:34, lukeisha carr wrote:

"Just curious how some of you would differentiate an interaction designer from a user interface designer? Apologies if it's been discussed to death before." I think these kind of questions keep coming up again & again for some of the following reasons: [good reasons snipped]
Unfortunately, I'm not sure if these kind of questions will slow down, until the field is many years old and dedicated training will define what these positions do. But the challenge will still be how to keep different companies from making a mis-mash of all the title. The thing is I just don't care whether the roles are defined or not :-)

There's a whole bunch of knowledge, skills and practices that need to be applied to get a successful product from inception to release.

I care a great deal that there are people involved that have all of the necessary knowledge, skills and practices - and know how to apply them and work together well.

I care very, very little for picking a subset from the list and calling it interaction design, or usability, or information architecture, or accessibility, or software architecture, or domain design, or ...

Talking about knowledge, skills and practices. How to learn and apply them well. That helps me a huge amount. Talking about what a particular subset should be called and where a person with that subset sits in the org chart doesn't help me at all.

But maybe that's just me...

Cheers,

Adrian (possibly being unnecessarily grumpy :-)

Adrian Howard

Saturday 10:13am

On 25 Jan 2008, at 12:13, Adam Connor wrote:
[snip]
To be honest I stopped caring about my title a few years ago. Perhaps it would be different if I weren't an in-house, but it seems more important to me to just deliver the best products I can. <AOL Me too! </AOL

Adrian

dave malouf

Saturday 10:41am

I find there are two ways of looking at this problem.

1) What do I need to do my job today?

2) What will it take to advance practice and discipline and community?

The first group are "d"esigner/developers/engineers.

The latter tend to be interaction designers.

Part of this is about environment.
Part of this is about background.
Part of this is about personal taste.

If you are in the camp, that its all "blank" and it doesn't matter how or if you dissect the pieces, I suggest, this conversation is not pertinent to you, or your practice or your future. In essence it is an academic endeavor, at best is entertaining, at worst is filler in your mailbox.

If you are in the other camp, and believe that the trees make up the forest and not the other way around, this discussion about semantics, roles, and titles is at worst entertaining, and at best incredibly strategic.

Here are the background questions that concern me:

1) What does the future of formal education look like for the eco-system of interaction designers?

2) What are the problems, and how do we solve these problems that are coming up in the next 100 years? Big # , right? But I love how Allan from Core77 Thurs night said that "designers don't design things they design consequences." That's HUGE. Further Sigi Moeslinger will be talking about a common interaction design notion of interaction design is designing interventions.

3) How do we know that a design is good? From an art critic perspective? I bet those in group 1 could care less, so long as it makes money. To me that perspective is Souless design and is the difference between an HTC and an Apple. Even IKEA has more soul in their design eco-system than HTC or ASUS or Disney between Katzenberger's departure and Pixar's acquisition.

4) Human Resources - I'm sick of people responding to job descriptions they have no right to respond to. And I'm sick of head hunters not knowing what it is I do. This wastes time and thus money and well spirit and soul.

I got a note from someone who said, (paraphrasing) , "I've been calling myself a UI Designer for 20 years. All of a sudden this group comes a long and now says that what I've been doing is Interaction Design. WTF?" Well, my response is, I bet someone else will change that. I.e. Royal College of Art changed the name of their program from Interaction Design to Designing Interactions. What it means, I'm not so sure, but I'm not really all that upset about it.

--d ave

Julie Stanford

Saturday 6:57pm

I'm with Jared. This is a ridiculous semantic distinction. Like there's some mythical confused poor UI designer sitting in a cave who doesn't even know to think about the whole interaction or like there's some interaction designer who never gets into the details of buttons. Let's move on. :-)

On Jan 25, 2008, at 5:02 PM, dave malouf wrote:

Why must there be a difference?

Isn't this just a Yam/Sweet Potato thing?

Jared

Jeff Howard

Saturday 7:21pm

Jared wrote:
Isn't this just a Yam/Sweet Potato thing?
That's an apt analogy. If two tangible objects so objectively distinct (the yam is over two meters long) can be confused and treated as identical, how much more difficult to recognize and agree on subjective differences?

One of President Lincoln's favorite riddles was this: How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg? The answer? Four. Just because you call the tail a leg doesn't make it so.

// jeff

Troy Gardner

Saturday 8:04pm

To be contrarian, I routinely work with UI designers who take wireframes (from an IA/IxD) and convert them to high fidelity comps (primarily in photoshop but sometimes in illustrator) . They are thinking I need:

1) the whole page layout to be properly blocked and centered

2) whole ui to be consistent in feel, Rounded edges vrs square edges, particular fonts. Colors in the ui need to compliment or contrast sufficently with the the main video/game/etc.

3) themed inline with BrandX, BrandY, etc.

They are so immersed in the page by page metaphor,they often miss any interactivity at all, be it modal, or tabs, or preloading. Almost 100% of the time don't think about hover or disabled states...I frequently have to hound them to put them in.

So in that sense they are a truly UI designer.

Troy

On Jan 26, 2008 8:56 AM, Jared M. Spool jspool at uie.com wrote: On Jan 25, 2008, at 5:02 PM, dave malouf wrote: the UI Designer, says, the button is left aligned, bevelled, has this rollover, and that action state, and this disabled state. The IxDer says how did the user even get to the page with the button, why is the button necessary and what comes after the button is pressed. For real? Why must there be a difference? Isn't this just a Yam/Sweet Potato thing? Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA [trim]

Robert Barlow-Busch

Saturday 9:22pm

So in that sense they are a truly UI designer.
I dunno, that sounds like a visual designer to me — which, in my mind, is someone who's able to skillfully adapt the craft of graphic design for an online medium.

Stew Dean

Sunday 3:26am

On 27/01/2008, Troy Gardner troy at troyworks.com wrote: To be contrarian, I routinely work with UI designers who take wireframes (from an IA/IxD) and convert them to high fidelity comps (primarily in photoshop but sometimes in illustrator) .

That's not UI design - that's visual or graphic design.

User interface design is the designing of the interface which is what you do when you do wireframes (in part collaboration with your designers I presume) .

Most people equate design to visual design so I can see why you use that label - elsewhere it's not the same - the UI designer creates the wireframes. But then I've never had any labeled UI designer working on any project I've worked on. Interactive designers I've worked with and are, as someone pointed out, often design and build guys who do flash stuff, mostly at the microsite end of things in the UK new media market.

-- Stewart Dean

dave malouf

Sunday 7:19am

Yams and sweet potatoes do taste different and a real chef will cringe at the thought of using one over the other. ; )

BTW, I do like that ... "Isn't that just a visual designer?" ... Well yes, it is. It's a visual designer who is expert in interfaces, as opposed to a visual designer who is expert in print, or graphics, or iconography or packaging, or or or.

In the end, I agree with Jared in that this aspect of the discussion is not meaningful.

Where it becomes more meaningful is not in the comparisons with other practices, or with aspects of the same practice. Where it becomes meaningful is in the long-term strategic building of a community of practice around a growing discipline which cuts across many practices. I.E. UI Designers would not do button layouts for a cellphone, but an industrial designer with the aid of an interaction designer. I've never seen a UI Designer in a 3D studio before, except to help with the software that goes on embedded devices, not the devices themselves and even then, b/c the same position usually has to do the work on the devices themselves, the IxD does double duty.

But my main point here is that people tend to fixate on their experience and their current practices, as opposed to seeing a much wider and holistic vision for a growing discipline. Interaction Design has the most to offer the widest range of formative design disciplines when we think of its gravitational center as being around behavior and interaction among people, devices and services. Glomming on form based pieces of the practice, or making IxD synonymous with those form based pieces, degrades the specificity of interaction design.

Why is this important? Because as of yet, we have not paid attention to a true academic understanding of what actually interaction is from a design perspective. This work is constantly put on hold by practitioners who get caught up "in the work", or gets subsumed by non-designer disciplines who don't understand the contextual need for a design-centric approach to defining the discipline.

Our language for evaluation has been completely dictated by HCI and Usability. Because of this, I get called into other people's agencies all the time with the question, "How can I get my IxD group to be treated as a strategic and creative part of the organization parallel to visual design or industrial design?" Since we do have an aesthetic based foundation that we can communicate with amongst each other or among other design peers, the language we do use, leaves us in the realm of those from a science-centric perspective, which is more closely aligned with engineering.

How many people who work as innies (inside the corporate sphere) for a technology company have their UX groups being managed by engineering? Almost every group I've been in for the last 8 years dotted lines through the SVP of Product Development. Now this isn't about being the "C". Usually on this path it is through Product Management (though sometimes directly through development) . Is this really where a design discipline can best be managed? It is just meant as an example, not meant to be a complete and comprehensive survey.

So yes, there are many places where UI Design and Interaction Design are the same practice. There are other places where interaction design and formative design are separated from each in bad ways (non-collaborative) and good ways (partnered) .

Those environments are so varied and distributed that we will never come to agreement. But the fact that the yams and the sweet potatoes ARE separated by some, says that the separation can be meaningful in those organizations, ergo if it can be separated, it can be defined.

BTW, I'm really liking the analogy that a UI Designer is to pixels, what Print Designer is to ink. Both are visual designers. But yes, many do a lot more, ie. interaction design & typesetting, etc.

-- dave

Troy Gardner

Sunday 12:08pm

That's not UI design - that's visual or graphic design. It's a venn space, where these terms and people's skills are probably pliable enough to make them general guidelines at best.

In the agencies I work with they are significant enough. When I say the product is in "UI design" in these agencies it's past the point of the IA's handoff of the wireframe and into a visual/graphic artists hand. But in this case there are specific designers to do the work, and specific designers that are not doing the work:

Motion designers (afterfx people) are thinking the same thing just in time and 3d.

User interface design is the designing of the interface which is what you do when you do wireframes (in part collaboration with your designers I presume) . Most people equate design to visual design so I can see why you use that label - elsewhere it's not the same - the UI designer creates the wireframes. But then I've never had any labeled UI designer working on any project I've worked on. Interactive designers I've worked with and are, as someone pointed out, often design and build guys who do flash stuff, mostly at the microsite end of [trim]

lukeisha carr

Sunday 2:01pm

Maybe this article from AIGA.org website will shed some light on the confusion. What I get from the quote/article, is that interaction design and ui design are both design of the user interface, but one may contain more of an "art" element, which is the visual design aspect. The "art" element is one where some interaction designers may implement in conjunction with functional design, but others may not. Unfortunately, the titles really do not make a clear distinction between the two. Therefore, titles do not matter, but what matters are the tasks that a position asks for, and what an individual is willing to do. So, that individual must choose the appropriate position for them, regardless of title.

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/art-vs-design

[Start Quote]
"Now it is my understanding that design in the commercial sense is a very calculated and defined process, it is discussed amongst a group and implemented taking careful steps to make sure the objectives of the project are met. A designer is similar to an engineer in that respect and must not only have an eye for color and style but must adhere to very intricate functional details that will meet the objectives of the project. The word 'design' lends itself to a hint that someone or something has carefully created this "thing" and much planning and thought has been executed to produce the imagery or materials used for the project.

On the other hand Art is something completely separate, any good artist should convey a message or inspire an emotion it doesn't have to adhere to any specific rules, the artist is creating his own rules. Art is something that can elicit a single thought or feeling such as simplicity or strength, love or pain and the composition simply flows from the hand of the artist. The artist is free to express themselves in any medium and color scheme, using any number of methods to convey their message. No artist ever has to explain why they did something a certain way other than that this is what they felt would best portray the feeling or emotion or message."
[END Quote]

Niemelä Sami

Sunday 11:11pm

Hello,

and greetings from Helsinki. As someone coming from web/visual design background, I think this is a good topic for a first...: )

The pure graphic designers don't think in UI elements, they are purely pixel pushers (90% of their time in photoshop) . They are happy to make every button look different. To contrast a UI designer will recognize that there are at least some groupings of topNav/bottomNav that should be consistentthey understand what a wireframe is. I feel this is something that shouldn't be generalized on the discipline as a whole. Every graphic/visual designer involved making a product, digital or physical should be aware of the basic set of rules and boundaries to play with. Visual hierarchy, flow, navigational states... or a physical size of buttons, paper quality, reading distance etc.

This has something to do with the whole paradigm shift that design industry is facing with - there are lot of people out there with traditional print background thrown into digital world, with insufficient training to begin with.

Illustrators are thinking in curves and lines, trying to make every element look like a piece of art They design icons, they are obsessed with font kerning...without regard to what the text block says or how that is similar to another nav element. Regarding the bigger picture and perceived quality of the final product, good typography is very important, as is good iconography. Along with many other things, IxD involved - persons doing the actual craft shouldn't miss this.

In the past the best interaction designers I've been honored work with are quite visual - they understand the visual constraints set by dimensions, space and movement and hence play nice with visual designers, prototypers and other people to ensure the end result is the best it can be. Even with bigger teams the best people tend to be "fuzzy" – multidisclipinary to at least the extent they understand the boundaries and possibilities set by other discliplines.

cheers,
sami

-- Sami Niemelä
sami.niemela at gmail.com
+358 50 528 9265

Adrian Howard

Monday 2:58am

On 27 Jan 2008, at 07:19, dave malouf wrote:
[snip]
Why is this important? Because as of yet, we have not paid attention to a true academic understanding of what actually interaction is from a design perspective. And that's important because?

This work is constantly put on hold by practitioners who get caught up "in the work", or gets subsumed by non-designer disciplines who don't understand the contextual need for a design-centric approach to defining the discipline. [snip]

Isn't the only way to figure out that need to get 'caught up "in the work"'?

Cheers,

Adrian

dave malouf

Monday 5:13am

Adrian, if all you do is the work, then who is setting up the criteria and standards by which to evaluate it? Critique based on a shared understanding of foundational criteria is at the core of what makes for a successful design discipline. One that not only produces, but can be shared amongst peers, evaluated, and described.

What would an interaction designer be/do if they were part of X school of design theory? How does IxD play into that? Should it? Can it?

-- dave

Bill Abel

Monday 7:16am

You know, no one seems to have mentioned that user interface design typically refers to a graphic designer working on the visual design of some sort of software-driven product.

An individual may actually perform both roles under either title, or a completely different title.

But, the interaction design in my opinion is about how it works and why, while interface is much more about aesthetics.

It's the interface designer who will make it pretty.

But, it's the interaction designer who understand that a 'pretty' interface tested beside a 'dull' interface will always work better in the minds of most people. It's the cognitive psychology element.

Interaction design goes beyond software, it includes pretty much anything man-made.

Bill

W Evans

Monday 7:22am

Agreed Niemela:

They are happy to make every button look different. Wow. Greater ignorance of graphic design has never been uttered with such impunity. Shame on you. You obviously have never worked with real visual designers.

On Jan 28, 2008 2:11 AM, Niemelä Sami sami.niemela at gmail.com wrote:

Hello, and greetings from Helsinki. As someone coming from web/visual design background, I think this is a good topic for a first...: ) The pure graphic designers don't think in UI elements, they are purely pixel pushers (90% of their time in photoshop) . They are happy to make every button look different. To contrast a UI designer will recognize that there are at least some groupings of topNav/bottomNav that should be consistentthey understand what a wireframe is. I feel this is something that shouldn't be generalized on the discipline as a whole. Every graphic/visual designer involved making [trim]

—
~ will

"Where you innovate, how you innovate,
and what you innovate are design problems"
will evans
user experience architect
wkevans4 at gmail.com

Pierre Roberge

Monday 8:09am

At my current job, I have worked with an interface designer and the way he approached the design of the B2B we are building is from the developers' perspective. He looked at the data-model and the functions the developers developed and put all those fields and functions on screens grouping them based on their nature (all the customer information on one screen, all the policy information on one screen, ...). Then he created navigation to go from screen to screen. He used generic standards he found on useit.com to guide his design and always tried to make sure that the application was easy to use for a first-time user.

He did not looked at the business process, nor talked to the users. So, his design was not inflected in any way causing the users to complain about having to navigate from screen to screen just to get a complete mental picture of a customer or to complete their sales process. Also since he did not research users, he catered to first-time users only which was not optimal since people are using the system all day along to sell insurance.

The end result was a generic software that did not reflect how people think about the work and perform their work. His screens were consistent, buttons were in the same place from screen to screen, he carefully chose the font size and screen resolution based on statistics he found on the web.

To me, the difference between user interface and interaction design is the process. Both of us, decide where to place widgets on the screen, how to navigate from screen to screen. IxDers start with the users (top) and design layout and behavior (functionality) to serve real people. Interface Designers start from the bottom up. Since they don't analyze users, the business process nor meet the takeholders, they need to wait for business analysts or programmers to tell them which fields and functionality the system will have so they can start spreading widgets on screens based on generic guidelines.

Of course, this is only anecdotal. : )

Pierre Roberge
User Experience Designer - Business Analyst
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mauro pinheiro

Monday 8:41am

On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 07:16:07, Bill Abel billabel at mac.com wrote: You know, no one seems to have mentioned that user interface design typically refers to a graphic designer working on the visual design of some sort of software-driven product. Bill, we should avoid generalizations...I've worked in a company where I was responsible for a group of people that we could call interface designers, (and another group of information architects) but none of them were concerned about visual design...in fact, there were another group (they called themselves "brand designers" ) that were 100% concerned about visual aspects of the user interface. Basically, we (information architects and interface designers) designed the user experience, working closely with the marketing guys, who defined strategy and other not-so-funny stuff. But to say that user interface designers typically work with "visual design" is not precisely what interface design is, IMHO.

And interaction design is concerned with the underlying design (the system) of how a product works - even why it exists in the first place. Interaction design requires the understanding of the user's behavior, the user's mental model, etc... Interaction design is more like product designer/industrial designer/architect in my mind, while user interface is more like art direct/graphic designer/visual designer. [...] But, the interaction design in my opinion is about how it works and why, while interface is much more about aesthetics. It's the interface designer who will make it pretty. I think the best word would not be "aesthetics", but "surface". Interaction design works more closely to the structure, the foundations of the experience/software or whatever. Interface designers work more closely to the surface, to the presentation level. Not necessarily with the "aesthetics". Those who deal with aesthetics are really visual designers (sometimes could be the same guy) .

6 or 7 years ago George Olsen wrote a nice article ("Names are for tombstones, baby" ) about this fuzzy discussion - what is this, what is that... Although many of us have a different concept about what is interface design, interaction design, Olsen did a good job on defining some boundaries.

It was published on Boxes and Arrows, among an article wrote by Adam Greenfield. http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view /whats _in _a _name _or _what _exactly _do _we _call _ourselves _

What strikes me is that, as we can see by this discussion that took place on this thread, the article is still valid, even after years!

I would like to stress an important concept here...many of us define "interface design" or "interaction design" using computer screens as the output of our work, as interaction would be something limited to computer screens.

We're entering the helm of ubiquitous and pervasive computing, nanotechnology. We should broaden our minds and think far beyond computer screens. ANYTHING could be a "computer", an interaction device. This gives us another perspective of what experiences we should be designing.

Interaction design is NOT limited do computer screens, wireframes, menus...we should set our vision of our profession onto another level.

cheers,
-- prof. mauro pinheiro
universidade federal do espírito santo
centro de artes
depto. de desenho industrial

Andrei Herasimchuk

Monday 10:17am

On Jan 28, 2008, at 8:41 AM, mauro pinheiro wrote:

Interaction design is NOT limited do computer screens, wireframes, menus...we should set our vision of our profession onto another level. With that being the case, the issue as near as I can tell becomes:

What's the group for those people who do and have done "interface" design up to this point? And what interface design will become in the very near future, which is the digital component design of products that will have a software or code component? Interface design being defined as the need to deign both the interaction and visual components, either by a single person or team of people.

Is that group the IxDA or is it some other group? Will it ever be the IxDA or is the desire to define interaction at a technology agnostic level going to be something that keeps it too general to support folks who want to design for technology and all that entails?

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

Dmitry Nekrasovski

Monday 10:49am

IMHO, there are plenty of groups out there for people who want to "design for technology". They are called developer forums.

"The desire to define interaction at a technology agnostic level" is a wonderful thing, and is what differentiates the IxDA community from so many others. I, for one, would like to keep it that way.

Dmitry

On Jan 28, 2008 10:17 AM, Andrei Herasimchuk andrei at involutionstudios.com wrote:

Will it ever be the IxDA or is the desire to define interaction at a technology agnostic level going to be something that keeps it too general to support folks who want to design for technology and all that entails? — Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. andrei at involutionstudios.com c. +1 408 306 6422 *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) ! To post [trim]

dave malouf

Monday 11:42am

Yes, I would call it the "interactive design" community. But even then, that might be MORE specific than Andrei was thinking, and that is my question.

Andrei does interaction design require pixels? I.e. is there always a need for a screen? Is what the interaction designer/UI designer working on always embedded inside of said screen?

If code can be manipulated by other means: voice, 3D (snap domes; other) , gestures (not screened) , presence determined/spatial (I think you get my point) then I think there is no disagreement for the vast majority of those on this list about what IxD is.

The only exception are the small group of people who are doing services. But I see this as applying interaction design techniques and methods to non-technological problems. I think that this is healthy and natural in any design organization.

If we are limiting to just screen-based IxD/UID then we are probably looking at the opposite orientation of making a SIG for the type of work you are discussing.

With about 5500 people on this list, and 7000 total subscribers, maybe we have finally reached the critical mass where we can start having topic specific communities.

No thinking about this has been done yet (multiple lists vs. one list) , but heck, anything is possible.

-- dave

Robert Hoekman, Jr.

Monday 11:58am

Isn't this just a Yam/Sweet Potato thing?

There is definitely a difference between these two roles, but the fact is, it doesn't matter. The job titles are used so randomly in the real world that this White Tower hair-splitting simply won't make a difference.

There are people all over the place called "user interface designers" that do visual design only, and ones who do some interaction design. There are interaction designers all over the place that do user interface design and don't do any of the more conceptual, product-definition stuff we normally associate as part of an IxD's job.

And, of course, there are "web designers" who do all of this, because they are a team of one and have no one else around to take on other roles.

Job titles are very often totally meaningless.

-r-

W Evans

Monday 12:11pm

Job titles are very often totally meaningless. Amen. Can we just let this turd of a thread die?

Titles are meaningless. Anyone who thinks they will be taken more seriously because of a title, or a proper understanding and general consensus of the definition of a title relative to other competing definitions is silly - or delusional. Having a stronly typed definition of interaction designer versus interface designer will not make you either, and you won't make anymore money. The only thing that defines you is not some title, but your skills, knowledge, expertise, and reputation. If you don't have these - no amount of bellyaching about the relative fluidity of titles will get you respect. I know many product design/product development teams that have come to realize the complete waste of time worrying about titles and definitions are - that they have adopted the old Bell Laboratory habit - everyone gets the same title "Member of Technical Staff." We did that at Kayak - because you should derive self-actualization from your work - not what's printed on your business card.

On Jan 28, 2008 2:58 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. robert at rhjr.net wrote:

Isn't this just a Yam/Sweet Potato thing? There is definitely a difference between these two roles, but the fact is, it doesn't matter. The job titles are used so randomly in the real world that this White Tower hair-splitting simply won't make a difference. There are people all over the place called "user interface designers" that do visual design only, and ones who do some interaction design. There are interaction designers all over the place that do user interface design and don't do any of the more conceptual, product-definition stuff we normally associate as part of an [trim]

—
~ will

"Where you innovate, how you innovate,
and what you innovate are design problems"
will evans
user experience architect
wkevans4 at gmail.com

Adrian Howard

Tuesday 2:10am

Hi Dave,

On 28 Jan 2008, at 05:13, dave malouf wrote:

As I said in this message, a design discipline that is ONLY about financial success is not much of a discipline if it is not moral and aesthetic. It takes pause to come up with these standards of evaluation. I'm not sure how you got the idea that financial success was the only way I was judging things :-)

<aside
That said, I'm not sure how do you apply moral criteria to define IxD. For example, personally I would not work on developing products for the gambling industry. However I certainly wouldn't argue that the very talented folk who create the user experience of the Vegas cash-removal machines weren't doing damn fine interaction design / usability / ia / whatever.

The APA ethics code don't define what psychology is, just what ethical standards members of the APA need to have.

These are community and organisational issues. They're very important, but I didn't think this was what we were talking about here? </aside

What would an interaction designer be/do if they were part of X school of design theory? How does IxD play into that? Should it? Can it? I don't know. How would it help me make better things?

We could talk more about that :-) Having come into the user experience area from a development/cog-sci background I'm not really familiar with different design schools.

Your description of studio work was really interesting - and matched up with the way I've seen really productive groups work. I'd love to so more discussion about the knowledge, skills and practices that we can use from these areas.

What makes up the clay that we form into interactions? Pixels & waves (sound)? Plastic & metal? I don't think so. That is the form, not the interaction. We mold time, metaphor, and physicality instead of line, color, volume, texture and space. But without the pixels and waves, plastic and metal you don't have an interaction. A form-free interaction is a nonsense - like a marble free sculpture.

Give a group of specialty print designers a layout to look at. They may disagree on good vs. bad, but they will most likely be able to use a language of aesthetics to communicate that reason. The best I've seen our community do is to talk about usability. Usability at best has a limited understanding of aesthetics and usually but not always in practice puts function ahead of form or feel in their focus of their evaluations. Seems like we talk about more than usability - mental models, scenarios, use cases, user stories, persona, hierachical task analysis, ethnography, structured vs unstructured interviews, cognitive walkthroughs, Fits' Law, etc. etc.

But I'm all for talking about more ways to practice the art. That seems to be a more productive conversation than trying to define what the art is :-)

Cheers,

Adrian

Adrian Howard

Tuesday 2:31am

On 28 Jan 2008, at 16:09, Pierre Roberge wrote:

Of course if the underlying data-model and the functions don't map well to the business processes and the way the user needs to interact with the system the designer is pretty much doomed anyway - the intervention needed to happen earlier...

Cheers,

Adrian

David Malouf

Tuesday 5:56am

HI Adrian (I wish the web version had better "quoting" features.)

see adrian's reply to me above ...
Yes, you can do both. You should do both, but you shouldn't do one w/o the other. I'm not saying that you are or aren't, but your posts (my limited insight into who you are) project that you are focusing on one aspect, at least in a unbalanced way, so I'm probably reacting in a further unbalanced way.

As for studio. I understand how agile environments have become more collaborative, but it is still not studio. It's hard to explain, but what is hard is that even in design studios today b/c of the focus on computers, a lot of the studio experience of ID is lost. Imagine if you had a big wall and on that wall was a projection of everyone's code, and everyone can see it. Imagine a place where people can see your name attributed to your code, and then if someone sees something they want to comment on, they just walk up to you and butt their noses right into your space and tell you what they think. Something like that. ; ) . There is a frenetic creativity (not efficiency) that evolves from this environment. I'm not saying it would work for coding.

As for what can this do?
Ok, here is the example. Cooper's concept on posture. I'm not saying this is a foundation of IxD, but it is a good axis. Understanding the posture of application will radically change the forms you use communicate the interaction paradigms. You might have really similar task (i.e. messaging) but b/c email has a different posture than instant messaging (even though in reality they are REALLY the same thing) , the forms take on a very different flow.

This in my mind explains two things:

1. IxD exists outside the form.

2. Understanding foundations can have a profound effect on your day to day.

I'll take it back to studio.
A real foundation of IxD is pacing. Like any narrative, there is pacing. In a studio setting what a student or practitioner might do is play with various forms to embody different pacings. They would then hone in on the right source.

This is very similar to how a graphic designer will do different comps that change specific axis of color, line, text, white space, etc.

Unless we have the same foundations to sketch against, it is hard for us in a processed/controlled and explainable manner communicate the differences between different interaction models. They are just different, and the only way we can communicate about them is in terms of usability.

-- dave

-- David Malouf
http://synapticburn.com/
http://ixda.org/
http://motorola.com/

Jim Leftwich

Tuesday 9:01am

The phrase "interface design up to this point" and calls to limit the definition of Interaction Design and the scope of IxDA invites an examination of the term's history.

The definition of Interaction Design isn't, (and more importantly) won't ever be, limited to just the "digital" domain because it never was and isn't inherently limited in that manner as a practice in reality. The term "Interaction Design" itself, which was coined by Bill Moggeridge and Bill Verplank at IDTwo (one of the three companies that combined to become IDEO) in the mid-to-late 1980s, represented the design of interaction across a variety of technologies and product and system design boundaries. Interaction Design certainly involves design of any and all patterns of usage.

Interaction Design was a term I was able to easily adopt around 1987, for something I'd been practicing in the design consulting field since 1983 on products, software, systems, and combinations thereof.

The first interaction designs I did involved designing and modeling the interaction of users with physical components in devices and equipment that had multi-step processes. As more and more equipment began to include digital components and digital control and information, that also became part of what was involved in the interaction design. Fairly recently, an interaction design project of mine (as a component of designing medical equipment that I also did the industrial design, physical controls design, and information architecture for) , involved analyzing, modeling, and designing physical components involved in the device's physical interaction that were not associate with the product's digital features and functions. To separate various aspects of the device's interaction into technological domains (presumably to be handled by separate designers, or one designers who's very conscious to take off a hat with one label and put on another hat with another label) is, in my opinion, somewhat absurd and completely overlimiting to our field as a whole.

I'm happy to see Victor Papanek's name come up in this thread, as he was the head of my alma mater, KCAI's School Of Design, and left an indelible mark of wholistic approach to Design at our department. There's probably not a day that goes by that I'm not grateful for having had the great fortune to study a wide scope of Design (from typography and corporate identity to computers and software to industrial design and manufacturing technologies) and thus having been equipped to enter my career without the limiting boundaries and categories that have preoccupied so many in the field, and kept many more from pursuing the opportunity to design a greater range of the interactive aspects of products, systems, and environments.

I realize that many of the members of IxDA are web designers, and live and breathe entirely within the virtual realm or within the bounds of software running on devices. This is understandable.

But it's altogether another thing, and a highly regrettable thing at that, when the specialists begin to demand that the field of Interaction Design, or IxDA be similarly limited in scope.

Limiting Interaction Design, or IxDA, to just the digital stems from a myopia of the non-generalists, who make up the wide part of the field's Bell Curve (due to the huge number involved exclusively in the web and software) . And furthermore, I think this myopic insistence on categorization, limitation, and specialization has led to many products and systems being very poorly designed, interaction-wise. Think the vast majority of mobile phones and devices and equipment. Specialization and insistence on limited scope for something as necessarily all-encompassing as Interaction Design is the first step towards a dangerous "dilution of responsibility" among specialists. At best, this leads to inelegant bolted-together separate design efforts. At worst it leads to more of the type of poorly designed products and systems the world is already plagued by.

I'm not that worried about Interaction Design, or IxDA, being limited in definition or scope however. There are a number of generalists that have been around for a long time that will continue to point out the value of embracing a more encompassing view of Interaction Design as IxDA moves forward and grows. As for the specialists and those practicing within specific domains - perhaps they would benefit by forming specialist sub-groups *within the larger and inclusive organization*. But it will prove impossible and impractical to artificially limit the profession that's been being practiced for decades, nor the organization that's beginning to represent us all.

Jim

James Leftwich, IDSA
CXO - Chief Experience Officer
SeeqPod, Inc.
Emeryville, California
http://www.seeqpod.com

Orbit Interaction
Palo Alto, California
http://www.orbitnet.com

Mark Schraad

Tuesday 9:11am

I agree entirely Jim. I know interaction designers that specialize in brochures.

The definition of this group, as a desciption of self is getting a bit tiresome.

Mark

On Tuesday, January 29, 2008, at 12:02PM, "Jim Leftwich" jleft at orbitnet.com wrote: The phrase "interface design up to this point" and calls to limit the definition of Interaction Design and the scope of IxDA invites an examination of the term's history. The definition of Interaction Design isn't, (and more importantly) won't ever be, limited to just the "digital" domain because it never was and isn't inherently limited in that manner as a practice in reality. The term "Interaction Design" itself, which was coined by Bill Moggeridge and Bill Verplank at IDTwo (one of the three companies that combined to become IDEO) in the mid-to-late 1980s, represented the design of interaction across [trim]

W Evans

Tuesday 9:13am

snark
Beside turning the page of a brochure - what are some other types of interactions between a user and a brochure? Taking it out of the envelope? /snark

On Jan 29, 2008 12:11 PM, Mark Schraad mschraad at mac.com wrote:

I agree entirely Jim. I know interaction designers that specialize in brochures. The definition of this group, as a desciption of self is getting a bit tiresome. Mark On Tuesday, January 29, 2008, at 12:02PM, "Jim Leftwich" jleft at orbitnet.com wrote: The phrase "interface design up to this point" and calls to limit the definition of Interaction Design and the scope of IxDA invites an examination of the term's history. The definition of Interaction Design isn't, (and more importantly) won't ever be, limited to just the "digital" domain because it never was and isn't [trim]

—
~ will

"No matter how beautiful,
no matter how cool your interface,
it would be better if there were less of it." Alan Cooper
- "Where you innovate, how you innovate,
and what you innovate are design problems"
will evans
user experience architect
wkevans4 at gmail.com

Mark Schraad

Tuesday 9:22am

Where am I when I get it?
How did I get the brochure - mail, handed, pick it up? How do I interact with it... flip pages, fold outs, turn it over, etc What do I you do if interested?
What if I am not?
Who do I contact?
Do I save it?
Is there a part I can send back in the mail?
Should I read the rest on the web site?
Is there enough information?
Maybe too much?
How does it relate tot he trade show booth I am standing in front of? Ooh, I like this! Where can I see on in person?

You might call this user experience design... or just graphic design, but these are definitely interactions.

On Tuesday, January 29, 2008, at 12:13PM, "W Evans" wkevans4 at gmail.com wrote: snark Beside turning the page of a brochure - what are some other types of interactions between a user and a brochure? Taking it out of the envelope? /snark On Jan 29, 2008 12:11 PM, Mark Schraad mschraad at mac.com wrote: I agree entirely Jim. I know interaction designers that specialize in brochures. The definition of this group, as a desciption of self is getting a bit tiresome. Mark On Tuesday, January 29, 2008, at 12:02PM, "Jim Leftwich" jleft at orbitnet.com wrote: The phrase "interface design up to this point" and calls to limit [trim]

Jeff Howard

Today 1:15pm

Will snarked:
Beside turning the page of a brochure - what are some other types of interactions between a user and a brochure? Taking it out of the envelope? Try not to think of it as interacting with the brochure. That's a red herring. Instead, think of it as interacting through the brochure with something else. The brochure mediates an interaction. Here's an example. No one goes to Expedia to interact with it. They operate the interface in order to interact with United or Southwest Airlines. Same thing with MySpace. It's not about interacting with the site. It's about using the site to interact with your friends.

It's certainly possible to create interactive paper-based artifacts (choose your own adventure, pop-up books, etc) but for the most part I don't consider them to be significant examples of interaction design.

// jeff

Jeff Howard

Today 1:41pm

Here's an example I do consider significant from Dan Lockton's Architectures of Control weblog:

Mentor Teaching Machines - 1971
Depending on the answers the reader gives, he or she is routed through the textbook in a different order, with areas of weakness addressed in more detail to ensure better understanding before allowing the reader to progress to the next level.

http://tinyurl.com/yuueze

His entire blog is a treasure trove of analog interaction design examples. Well worth digging through.

// jeff

Gloria Petron

Today 2:29pm

Hm. For a static brochure I could see that logic. But paper forms require thoughtful layout in order for me to "interact (??)" with them. Or is that where the term "usability" comes in?

Andrei Herasimchuk

Today 3:12pm

On Jan 29, 2008, at 9:01 AM, Jim Leftwich wrote:

To be fair, I don't think anyone intends that to be the case, but when people say things like "interaction design is to interface design like art direction is to graphic design, " or that "interface designers draw while interaction designers don't, " well... that's exclusionary. (And in the art director analogy, a bit on the absurd side since art director's are notoriously seen by many in the graphic industry as outsiders who never learned how to draw, so they tell others what to draw. I'm generalizing obviously, so my apologies to any art director's in the audience.)

To me, it seems if you want to have a larger and more inclusive definition of what interaction design is, then the core skillset has to be broader as well. In this specific case, that broader definition is going to have to include visual and aesthetic at some fundamental level. Not to the degree of needing a major in graphic design, but core fundamentals that are needed that apply to interaction, especially when interaction has to be defined for technology products. Most of this core set of skills are probably found in a few books like Tufte's Envisioning Information, among a few others. It's not needing an entire Art History degree or getting into the nitty gritty of making posters with letterpresses, but certainly some level competency with aesthetic needs to be a core interaction designer skill.

Why is this? I personally think has to do specifically with digital. I understand at a conceptual level how an interaction designer can help design an analog telephone or rework a service flow for FedEx. But when you start making digital products — desktop client applications, web sites, web applications, stand alone kiosks, mobile interfaces, interfaces for the iPhone, etc. — the aesthetic part is integral to the success of the interactive part in a way that's not easily separated, like it might be for non-digital forms of interaction design. Given that, for the large swath of people that are going to focus on digital, if they are calling themselves interaction designers, removing the aesthetic from the definition of what they do isn't going to help matters. It's fine for teams of people today to work together on the interaction and aesthetic collaboratively, but in the future, you really are going to want more and more people who know how to do both, and are trained in how to do both, even if they focus on one or the other in a team environment.

Why? For the very same reasons industrial designers are trained in both form and function.

If a designer is compartmentalized to ignore or not having accountability on the aesthetic at a personal level, then the definition of interaction design is narrowed vertically as a job description, even if it's horizontal as a job that applies to broader market spaces. This is the crux of the problem, as near as I can tell.

At a high level, having interaction design not be responsible for the aesthetic or be a core skill of an interaction designer is obviously fine, and can work for a variety of people. But for the ones that are looking to work in narrow market sectors, like focusing on digital products) , they need a broader job definition horizontally on what it is they are held accountable for in the overall design of the product. To not do so would, it seems that calling oneself an "interaction designer" does neither the designer in that position nor the field of interaction any justice. The designer silo's themselves in a way that limits what the business expects them to work on or can work on, and profession suffers from confusion on what interaction designers actually do and are best suited for, since it would be market dependent in a way that's not accessible to those not in the know.

Yes. Job titles and semantics matter, for these very reasons.

That's pretty much it. Does interaction require competency with core fundamentals of graphic design or not? If it doesn't, we're back to square one on the problem since a definition that excludes an aesthetic will keep people segmented in a way that as digital products evolve, will not allow the designer to gain credibility or accountability for the totality of the design. It would be like an industrial designer looking for someone else to figure out if the product should be painted blue or red. Seems odd to me if that were to be the case, and extremely limiting. And for what it's worth, I'm of the opinion that if interaction designers insist on not needing aesthetic skills for digital product design, they will find themselves phased out of the design process by those that can do more at a broader. That's just my personal opinion, it's obviously not a proven fact. We'll have to wait ten years to see if that starts to emerge.

With interaction design, the desire to go broad with the core definition but exclusionary on what the skills are actually winds up limiting the designer's role in a specific market like digital product design. This limitation is only a problem if you're someone like me who wants to work primarily on digital products.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

Mark Schraad

Today 4:10pm

Nicely framed Andrei. While have been pushing for broad sweeping inclusive definitions, it was pointed out to me that that approach greatly limits their usefulness. Perhaps if the majority is included, and it give a more finite description, we will be better off.

Mark (trying to be less pedantic ; )

On Jan 29, 2008, at 6:12 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:

On Jan 29, 2008, at 9:01 AM, Jim Leftwich wrote: I'm not that worried about Interaction Design, or IxDA, being limited in definition or scope however. There are a number of generalists that have been around for a long time that will continue to point out the value of embracing a more encompassing view of Interaction Design as IxDA moves forward and grows. As for the specialists and those practicing within specific domains - perhaps they would benefit by forming specialist sub-groups *within the larger and inclusive organization*. But it will prove impossible and impractical to artificially limit [trim]

Andrei Herasimchuk

Today 4:50pm

On Jan 28, 2008, at 11:42 AM, dave malouf wrote:

Andrei does interaction design require pixels? I.e. is there always a need for a screen? Is what the interaction designer/UI designer working on always embedded inside of said screen? In my market space, yes. In other market spaces, I can see how it would not. But you are also talking to someone who calls that person an "interface designer, " so I never had to worry about that sort of confusion since interfaces are largely digital in conception.

If we are limiting to just screen-based IxD/UID then we are probably looking at the opposite orientation of making a SIG for the type of work you are discussing. See the message I posted out of order. (Been spending the past few days on a new contract, so I'm out of order on what has been said. My apologies.) The larger issue is actually more fundamental: do interaction designers need to have aesthetic skills?

The answer to that question makes the rest of the entire debate/ argument/discussion, etc., simplified. If the answer is yes, then the whole discussion is VASTLY simplified. If the answer is no, then I think it begs the question on whether interaction design is the field to help define things like what it means to work on digital products, since aesthetics are integral to those products in the same way aesthetics are integral to industrial design.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

Michael Micheletti

Today 4:55pm

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:15:14, Jeff Howard id at howardesign.com wrote:

Try not to think of it as interacting with the brochure. That's a red herring. Instead, think of it as interacting through the brochure with something else. The brochure mediates an interaction. Here's an example. No one goes to Expedia to interact with it. They operate the interface in order to interact with United or Southwest Airlines. Same thing with MySpace. It's not about interacting with the site. It's about using the site to interact with your friends. This put me in mind of the "hanging chad" Florida ballots of a few years back. Paper-based interaction design writ large.

Michael Micheletti

Jai Godara

Today 6:35pm

It seems futile to argue over title/terms of what means what when majority would agree that these are essentially roles/phases in a larger system design approach%u2026yes, they do have overlaps, of course, in terms of required skills, knowledge, and even certain processes. yet they are essentially different in terms of their individual focuses and outputs.

All the great products, services, end-results that provide a delightful and successful experience are most often that way because of their underlying structural units/attributes work cohesively with each other to serve the purpose. So in an ideal world, interaction design & UI design would not exist or work in isolation%u2026but rather in tandem. Pretty much the same idea that Jeff underlined earlier with "I think of interface design as the form-giving counterpart to interaction design".

Essentially, Interaction designer role takes care of high-level interaction or, in other words, chalking out the planning part of interaction. Similar to a holistic system design approach where one is not just designing the product in isolation but also considering how it fits in a larger system and works in that environment. Therefore, Interaction designer role has to take care of various permutation and combination of activities that need to be supported (again, high level) ; the orders of activities (process flows) ; relationships among design elements, etc. And afterwards, UI designer role kicks in and starts refining those big pictures to the levels of individual pixels. Or course, there is fair amount of overlap of activities and intentions, therefore, the disagreements, misunderstandings, and apparent heartburns.

That is precisely the reason that I tend to agree with Dave on the value that semantics and defining these roles (not the titles!) provide. Not only it would give us perspectives on finer nuances of these roles, such as what we do in these roles that make sense and what does not? What are the finer distinctions between two? or even better, what lies in that overlapping space of Venn diagram between two? Could we discuss activities/processes and their orders in these different roles? It may be another of those endless debatable issues, nonetheless, a rewarding one as we may stumble upon insights that have always stared us in the face and we never noticed.

To further the point, there are other fields/professions that have the same role (or have a similar focus and set of outputs) , albeit, with a different title. My question is what can we learn from those professions that share the same attributes of IxD? May be it would help us get deeper insights. May be it would stop us from reinventing the wheel so yes, Dave you have my vote on the need and value-addition of exploring the semantics.

To Jared: It seems like a yam/sweet potato discussion only when we are focused on two terms/titles in pure isolation. However, once we treat IxD and UI designer as the roles or set of processes in a given endeavor and not just two standalone entities; we would see value in discussing. So a more apt analogy could be designing a house plan, brick laying, and coloring while building a house.

In the end, Sold to Adrian who said, "I'm all for talking about more ways to practice the art. That seems to be a more productive conversation than trying to define what the art is." May we move beyond the silliness of comparing inane titles and get deeper insights into what we do and why we do.