Interaction 08 In a Word: Better

Source Kevin Mullet, The Essence of Rich Interactive Experiences

As a self-proclaimed synthesizer, I'm always on the lookout for patterns.  There were lots of them at Interaction 08 which just wrapped up over the weekend.  The first pattern was the obvious—everyone there seemed to experience a type of "euphoria" which came from the realization of what they are.

'I'm an interaction designer—and this is what it means—and these people share my values".

The people at interaction 08 came from a number of different backgrounds.  Graphic design, Information Architecture, Industrial Design, Programming, Development,  Web Design, and others that I'm probably missing.  Everyone seemed to share the same struggle—what exactly do we call what we do and how do we evalngilize the value we provide?

And that's exactly what the conference and more importantly the IXDA community is all about.  But there was another pattern that I was interested in.  From Bill Buxton, to Gretchen Anderson, to Chris Conley, to Sarah Allen and even myself—there were clues that interaction design is more than just a practice, it's an integral part of a much bigger ecosystem in which the sum of the parts is ultimately more influential than the individual parts.

For me, the unofficial theme of the event was designing the holistic experience, which can include interaction, drama, storytelling, utility, community, purpose, and many other qualities that add meaning to our lives.  The above visual which I've borrowed from Kevin Mullet captures some of this holistic thinking nicely.  It's the combination of design, engineering and marketing which really matters.  It's the intersections if usefulness, usability and desirability that matter—not putting the emphasis of one over another.

Adam Greenfield calls this "Total Design"—but what we call it is less important that actually doing it.  In fact, while I was happy to see that people at the conference were identifying themselves as "interaction designers"—I didn't want to lose sight of the fact that while this is important—what's also important is thinking about how what we do fits into the bigger picture.

At the beginning of my talk—I said that I wasn't sure what to call myself.  But this doesn't mean I don't know who I am or what my role is in the world of creativity, design and interaction.  As interaction designers—or whatever we want to call ourselves, our goal should be to make things better.  We can make people feel less frustrated, more empowered and confident.  We can make people more productive, less stressed.  We can actually make lives better.

For me—interaction 08 in a word is better.

Better means more integration with technology—with marketing and even sales.  Better means thinking + doing.  Better means improving craft as well as ideation.  Better means reaching out to other disciplines and making connections that will lead to better experiences.

Like Mullet's diagram above—I came to similar conclusions as I pondered the role of experience design within the agency ecosystem.  I started with a sort of hub and spoke model—but then evolved to the "clover" metaphor.  For me, Experience Design was a part of the bigger living organism:



In the end, for me—Interaction 08 was a better way to move a discipline forward.  Like many of the attendees—I've found myself relating to this group more so than other organizations.  I guess that's a good start.  Or maybe it's just better.

Comments

[AG]

I'm not sure I'm getting just why you'd invoke me as support for "total design," David.

I may have misunderstood your intention, but when I talk about "designing for the total experience," I'm generally trying to get across the point that this is a *bad* idea, that designers *cannot* meaningfully anticipate the range of likely contingencies at design time...that we should instead devote our craft to small pieces that can be easily recombined.

This obviously raises significant ethical and practical challenges in itself, but in most cases I think such challenges will actually be easier to address than those raised by poorly-considered "holistic" end-to-end design.

If you're tasked with developing a system for one narrow type of user in a limited range of contexts, perhaps - but otherwise we know from experience that "holistic" designs tend to be brittle, and to degrade rapidly when pushed beyond the envelope in which they were originally intended to function. From my perspective, the ultimate holism is accepting that the world is infinitely more various than our scenarios, personae and use cases suggest.

[DA]

Adam, I went back and re-read your post which I like a lot. I thought what you were saying that it's the ecosystem in the end that matters—and that the design process cannot control that end result fully.

I wasn't saying experience design is the control of the entire experience but that it's a part of a bigger ecosystem that we should keep in mind as we design.

I'll cross out the reference since I misrepresented what you wrote.

[Peter Boersma]

David, could you explain why you switched from Interaction Design to Experience Design and what you see as the relationship between the two?

And, while I'm here: would your model also sketch true in the world of innies (as opposed to the agency world you refer to)?

[DA]

Peter,

Good questions. For me, using the term experience design is a personal preference. I know there are a lot of conversations around the differences between user experience, interaction designer, etc. But I have a preference for experience design because I feel it symbolically reminds us that the end experience is what actually matters. I know a lot of folks will disagree and want to define all of these lables in depth—I just can't offer much more rationale than it "feels right".

Plus, I also think of experience design not as a discipline but as the result of several disciplines.

And more specifically—to what we usually do on the job in my profession, often times it's "digital experience design".

Much of this is debatable. But in the end—when you look at my visual, if I had to choose a name for that "clover"—experience design seems like the appropriate choice from my perspective. If I were to break that clover into disciplines (in application to my profession) it might look like this:

Visual Designers
Writers
Interaction Designers
Motion Designers
Developers

But I could see these roles really overlapping quite a bit. So this may only be one possible scenario.

As far as the agency question—yes, I think much of this can be applicable to "innies"—except maybe for the media part.