What is interaction design?
Interaction design is the design of products, services, systems, made possible by communications and information technology. That is, computers, the internet, mobile and fixed-line phones.
These technologies make it possible for us to design tools for the mind, human extensions, to allow people to:
make or control things
(CAD, wordprocessing, video editing, air traffic control systems etc);
organise and access information
(web pages, information visualisation, phone info services, e-learning, etc);
entertain themselves
(video games, music making, digital movies);
communicate with each other
(online chat, email, video conferencing, etc).
Users of these systems access them through interfaces and �displays� perceived by the senses:
Vision
(from watch-size screens to building-size visual displays; from highly precise to ambient suggestion)
Sound
(from a single mini speaker to surround-sound)
Haptic (touch)
(from the tactile qualities of the form of a device to force-feedback controllers)
Kinaesthetic (gesture and muscle memory)
(from gesture at the level of the finger to that of the whole body).
Interaction design draws on the communicative and expressive languages used in art and design and readily understood by a wide range of people: words and dialogue (eg literature, radio); graphic composition (painting or advertising); typographics, (books or posters); the language of 3D form (eg in sculpture or consumer products); sound and music, film and animation, architecture and space.
