Interaction Design

ITEC 101- HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION

Second Semester, A.Y.
2022 2023 Arvin O. Flores
Interaction Design
●The interaction design label remained relatively
marginal until the mid-1990s; the design community
largely considered the behaviors of the virtual world to
be a specialty within industrial design. During this
period, academia as well as ICT industries were
mainly occupied with usability and human factors
engineering, focusing on ways to operationalize
psychology and ergonomics into methods for creating
efficient and error-free interactions to support work
tasks.
Five major characteristics of interaction design

Interaction design is about shaping digital things

for people’s use

●This is indeed a simple formulation. However, as we

shall see in the following where I discuss one of its
elements at a time, it is not entirely without power of
discrimination.
Five major characteristics of interaction design

●The notion of shaping is used consciously to suggest a

designerly activity (as opposed to, e.g., “building”
which suggests engineering, or “making” or “creating”
that could refer to more or less anything). More
specifically, I find it to be a distinctive trait of interaction
design that the gestation process is a Design
process, in the capital-D sense of the word. This in
turn implies five major characteristics.
Five major characteristics of interaction design

1. Design involves changing situations by shaping and

deploying artifacts
• In other words, design is about transformation and the
means available for the designer to initiate change in a particular
situation is ultimately the designed artifact.
2. Design is about exploring possible futures
• Exploring possible futures in interaction design often
involves inviting the future users in various forms of participation.
3. Design entails framing the “problem” in parallel
with creating possible “solutions”
Five major characteristics of interaction design

3. Design entails framing the “problem” in parallel

with creating possible “solutions”
• From the notions of changing situations and exploring
possible futures follow the conclusion that when we have
designed something, the situation in which it is used is no longer
the same.
• This in turn means that analyzing the existing in order to
define a “problem” - that subsequent design should solve - is
essentially of limited merit.
Five major characteristics of interaction design

4. Design involves thinking through sketching and other

tangible representations
• When sketching snapshots or aspects of possible futures
(such as a not-yet-existing product), the designer is not merely
copying images from her inner eye.
Five major characteristics of interaction design

5. Design addresses instrumental, technical, aesthetical

and ethical aspects throughout
• This holds equally for interaction design: Technical
decisions influence the aesthetic qualities of the resulting
interaction, instrumental choices on features to offer
have ethical repercussions, and so on.
Digital materials and interaction design

●Digital things are what interaction design shapes. This

is essentially to say that interaction designers work in
digital materials - software, electronics,
communication networks, and the like.
●Historically, the digital things made by interaction
designers were largely tools - contraptions intended to
be used instrumentally, for solving problems and
carrying out tasks, and mostly to be used individually.
Digital materials and interaction design

● Digital technology in society today is mostly used for

communication, i.e., as a medium. And as a medium,
it has characteristics that set it apart from previously
existing personal and mass communication media.
Digital materials and interaction design

● Digital technology in society today is mostly used for

communication, i.e., as a medium. And as a medium,
it has characteristics that set it apart from previously
existing personal and mass communication media.
● By limiting the scope of interaction design to digital
things (including media), we also exclude large parts
of service design, organizational design, sociopolitical
intervention, and so on.
Digital materials and interaction design

● Historical analogy
● the typical experience of an enterprise systems consultant in the
1980s whose client asked for a new system to manage payroll.
● analyzing the current situation might have turned up the insight that the old
system as such had no major shortcomings, but that the workflow of the
personnel department was severely convoluted and crippled.
● Would the consultant propose a new system anyway, or more rightly point out the
need for an organizational development consultant?
● Or perhaps even try her own hand on organizational intervention?
People’s use and interaction design
● People’s use is what interaction design shapes digital
things for.
● As indicated above, the historical notion of people’s use
was tightly connected to workplace settings and
instrumental motivations:
● Use the program to get the job done as quickly, efficiently and
correctly as possible.
Conclusion
●Interaction design can understood as shaping
be digital things for people’s
use.
●The practice of interaction is knowledge-
design intensive and multidisciplinary
at heart.
Philosophy of Interaction
●Over the last two decades, interaction design has
emerged as a design discipline alongside traditional
design disciplines such as graphics design and
furniture design.
Terminology
● Interaction "mutual or reciprocal action or
as
influence“
●Taking this definition as a starting point, what is the meaning
of interactive and interactivity?

● Product or service is interactive if it allows for interaction. An

artefact's interactivity is its interactive behaviour as
experienced by a human user.
Terminology
● Interactivity can also be used as a noun to signify everything
interactive, similar to how radioactivity refers to everything
radioactive.

● The user experience is a person's perceptions and

responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a
product, system or service
The scope: Interactive products and services

What makes a product or service interactive?

●One of the simplest interactive products imaginable is a touch-

sensitive light switch like the one in Figure. You touch it once
to turn the light on, and again to turn the light off.
The scope: Interactive products and services

●At the other end of the complexity scale you find interactive
products like the cockpit of a modern aeroplane; allowing
trained pilots to fly the plane through a number of input
devices and visual displays.
The scope: Interactive products and services

●Examples of interactive services include internet banking,

online shopping, and social media, all made possible through
networked digital devices like PCs and mobile phones
The scope: Interactive products and services

All above examples are interactive. Are there digital

products that are not interactive?

●If you solder a light bulb to a battery and leave it on your desk
until the battery is drained, this digital product can hardly be
called interactive.
The scope: Interactive products and services

●A digital photo frame that was programmed to generate

random fractals on a screen (Figure 2B). With no buttons,
handles or other means for interacting, despite its complex
behaviour, neither that product would be interactive.
Formal descriptions of interactive behaviour

●One way of describing the interactive behaviour of a product

or a service is through a formal representation. A number of
such formalisms exist, the simplest being state diagrams. A
state diagram is a visual representation of a Finite State
Machine.
Formal descriptions of interactive behaviour

●Figure 1 shows a state diagram for the touch-sensitive light

switch in Figure 2. It contains two states, "Light off" and "Light
on", and two user-initiated transitions between the states
("Touch switch"). The black dot leading in to the "Light off"
state tells us that this is the initial state, i.e. the light starts out
in the "off" state.
Formal descriptions of interactive behaviour

●We see the state diagram for the non-interactive "Bulb-with-

battery" device. It starts with the light being on and stays in
that state until the battery is drained.
Heidegger: Interaction as tool use

●Winograd and Flores argue in "Computers and Cognition" that

cognitive science takes for granted that human cognition and
communication are symbolic, and that symbols like "cat" refer
in a one-to-one manner to objects in the world.

● Heidegger's philosophy of being rejects this view and starts

out with our factual existence in the world and the way in
which we cope with our physical and social environment.
Heidegger: Interaction as tool use

●Heidegger used a carpenter and his hammer as an example.

●Heidegger does not deny the fact that the light switch exists in
the world as an object to be viewed, touched and
manipulated.
●His point is that the essence of the switch only
emerges through use.
●Its "switchness" is hidden for us until we put it into use.
●An important aspect of its "switchness" is that it allows for
a certain kind of interaction.
Merleau-Ponty: Interaction as perception

●His purpose is to study the "precognitive" and embodied basis

of human existence.
●He ends up rejecting most of the prevailing theories
of perception at his time.
●To Merleau-Ponty there is no perception without
action; perception requires action.
Merleau-Ponty: Interaction as perception

●Applied to an analysis of interactivity, Merleau-Ponty invites us

to see interaction as perception.
●If I test out the light switch in the previous Figure to see if it
works, this interaction can be seen as a perceptual act
involving both eyes and hand.
●I move my hand to the switch as part of the process of
perceiving its behaviour, in the same way as my eyes make
rapid eye movements when I see a painting.
●The hand movements towards the switch result from my
directedness towards the object of perception, i.e. the
behaviour of the switch.
Key points

●Perception requires action

●Perception is an acquired skill
●Tool integration and bodily space
●Perception is embodied
●Intentionality towards-the-world
●The phenomenal field
Implications for interaction designers

●Interactivity is an important part of the user experience

●A product's "feel" should be designed with care to detail
●Perception of "the feel" requires action: Invite the user in
●Design for unforeseen use
●Design for "the lived body“
●Take responsibility for the feel of the total user experience
●Interaction designers need to learn basic programming skills
Implications for interaction designers

●The perceptual field is personal: Test with real users and listen
carefully
●Interaction designers need to learn basic programming skills
●The perceptual field is personal: Test with real users and listen
carefully
●Intentionality and context matters: Make the tests realistic
●Interaction designers should be skilled in kinesthetic thinking
Human Senses

● Exteroception, is the sensitivity to stimuli outside the body,

AKA. how you perceive your environment, or in other terms,
your inclusive attention. (Ex is the Latin root for outside) In
musical performance, they often have some sense of our
environment- the room, the temperature, the people in it, etc,
while performing, thus exteroception. The same is true for just
being in the world- walking, practicing indoors or outdoors, etc.
Human Senses

● Interoception, thus, is our felt experience of the

internal workings of the body, such as digestion, breath
regulation, etc.