Interaction Design Principles and Methods

What is Interaction Design?

Interaction design is a designing process that focuses on creating engaging web Interfaces with logical thoughts, behaviors, and actions. Interaction designers create a meaningful relationship between the user and the products & services they are using (Products means app or Websites here).

The Interaction Design Foundation said.”The goal of design is to build products that facilitate the user to achieve their goals in the best possible way,”

Interaction Design Principles and Concepts

Goal-driven design — Goal-driven design focuses first and foremost on satisfying specific needs and desires of the end-user.

Interface as magic — You don’t even really see the best interfaces. “The best interaction designs don’t exist: they don’t take a long time to load/respond; they don’t make users think, and they don’t give user’s cause for grief.”

Usability — “Interfaces that facilitate the understanding and use of the underlying system state are favored.”

Affordances — “The best designs are those that speak for themselves; in which, as the saying goes, form follows function.”

Learnability — “Every time a similar design challenge arises, the best interaction designers don’t reinvent the wheel. They call on a set of patterns instead.”

Five dimensions of Interaction Design

The concept of dimensions of interaction design defines what interaction design involves. Initially, the idea of four aspects of an interaction design language was introduced by Gillian Crampton Smith. These dimensions are the interaction between a user and the screen. The original four dimensions are words, visual representations, physical objects or space and time. More recently, IDEXX Laboratories senior interaction designer Kevin Silver added a fifth dimension, behavior.

1D (Words) — Words should be simple to understand, and written in such a way that they communicate information quickly to the end-user.

2D (Visual representations) — Visual representations are all graphics or images, mostly everything that is not text. They should be used in moderation, not to overwhelm.

3D (Physical objects or space) — Physical objects or space refers to the physical object a user interacts with, whether it’s a mobile device, mouse, and keyboard.

4D (Time) — Time is the length that the user spends interacting with the first three dimensions. It includes how the user might measure progress, as well as sound and animation.

5D (Behavior) — It is the emotions and reactions that the user has when interacting with the system.

Role of an Interaction Designer

An interaction designer is a person associated with design, development or marketing team that helps to create an interactive and creative design. The interaction designer performs a set of activities that are keys to interaction design. These activities include forming a design strategy, wireframing interactions, and prototyping interactions.

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