The Process Of Interaction Design

The Process Of Interaction Design

1. Interaction design is interactive products that support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives

   • Fields: graphic design, architectural design, industrial and software design and each discipline has its own interpretation of ‘designing,’
     • Fundamental activities: understanding the requirements, producing a design that satisfies those requirements, and evaluating the design
   • Developing a system is deciding how much choice will be given to the user and how much direction the system should offer. Often the division will depend on the purpose of the system
     • Getting the balance right requires experience, but it also requires the development and evaluation of alternative solutions.

2. Useful and easy to use computer system

   • 1. Early focus on users and tasks
     • Principles
       • Users’ tasks and goals are the driving force behind the development. Users’ behavior and context of use are studied and the system is designed to support them. Users’ characteristics are captured and designed for.
   • 2. Empirical measurement
     • Specific usability and user experience goals should be identified, clearly documented, and agreed upon at the beginning of the project.
   • 3. Iterative design
     • Allows designs to be refined based on feedback

3. Understanding what activities are involved in interaction design is the first step to being able to do it, but it is also important to consider how the activities are related to one another so that the full development process can be seen

   • The term lifecycle model is used to represent a model that captures a set of activities and how they are related

4. Some Practical Issues

   • Who are the users?
   • What do we mean by needs?
   • How do you generate alternative designs?
   • How do you choose among alternatives?
   • How do you integrate interaction design activities with other lifecycle models?