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Notes: 2 / 1 year ago from designaday
The abilities needed in order to be an Interaction Designer
Carl Alviani writes in his post on Creative Seeds titled Five things Interaction Design probably isn’t:
I went to Interaction09 in Vancouver with an intense personal mission to nail down a clear definition of Interaction Designer, and what abilities are needed in order to be one. Almost every time I asked (and I asked a lot of times), the answer was “I have no idea.”
Well, Carl, I’m sorry you didn’t find the answers you were searching for. I find it somewhat embarrassing. All I can say is that you must have been asking the wrong people. I know a lot of designers attending the conference that would have answered your question in great detail. The answers would likely vary a lot, but that is because there is a wide range of activities covered under the IxD umbrella. I don’t recall meeting you, so obviously you didn’t ask me. Let me answer your question now.
The abilities needed in order to be an Interaction Designer:
- You need to be able to learn about activities and tasks that a person participates in through observation, conversation, and research. This typically involves discovering pain points—things that are difficult or unpleasant—as well as what they identify with. It also involves understanding the larger context, including business goals of your customer and concerns of any other stakeholders. You must be able to record what you learn and communicate it to others.
- You must have a foundation of knowledge about visual communication, human behavior, organization, and the medium in which you are working, providing the skills and experience for number 3.
- You need to be able to creatively develop solutions based on what you have learned. As you point out, for the majority of us most of the time, this involves some type of computing device that will in some way improve the person’s experience, making the activity easier or more enjoyable. It may be a hand-held, a piece of furniture, or the box under the desk. There are many different approaches, techniques, and tools for accomplishing this, and there are many debates as to which are more effective, but as Jamin Hegeman pointed out, “any design field is not about its tools, as tools change. Designers use the tools necessary for the given project, and often learn new tools or make their own.”
- You must be able to document the solution and communicate it to others. This may involve drawing, diagramming, writing, and speaking. It may involve documents, models, movies, animations, and acting. It likely requires different types of artifacts and different levels of detail for the different people to which you must communicate.
- You need to be able to work with other people with widely varying skill sets to make the solution a reality. There’s a good chance you will be working with software engineers. You may also work with sales people, business people, domain experts, cognitive psychologists, graphic designers, industrial designers, information designers, and architects. You will certainly be working with customers and users. You must understand the relationships between them, each of their requirements, and work as a negotiator and synthesizer.
- Finally, you must be able to evaluate success or failure of your implemented solution, which takes you back to number one, starting the iterative process all over again.
Admittedly, this is a very high-level overview of the abilities that are needed to be an Interaction Designer. In fact, for the most part, they are the abilities needed to be a Designer—period. What differentiates an Interaction Designer from other types of designers is in large part the artifact (and I use that term loosely) being designed.
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