In the narrow view of interaction design, the designer works in the artificial context of bits, pixels, input devices, users’ conceptual models, and organizing metaphors. This perspective is closely related to design disciplines dealing with aesthetics and qualitative values, such as industrial design, graphic design, and architecture. Like these fields, the designer's primary concern centers on user-centric qualities—including aesthetics, subjective and qualitative values, and human factors—to deliver solutions that provide lasting pleasure, satisfaction, and market fit.

Narrow View of Interaction Design

The broad view of interaction design encompasses everyone who applies relevant knowledge and tools to create digital, interactive products for a particular purpose or effect. This work may involve HCI professionals, computer scientists, software engineers, cognitive psychologists, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and designers. Although an individual may perform this work, it usually involves an interdisciplinary team.

Broad Scope of Interaction Design Practice

The narrow definition limits interaction design to the subjective and qualitative aspects of digital, interactive things. The broad definition encompasses the design of everything that is both digital and interactive.

Rutgers University

Google

The designing of interactive products, environments, systems, and services. Common topics include design, human–computer interaction, and software development. A central concern of interaction design is to develop interactive products that are usable, easy to learn, effective to use, and provide an enjoyable user experience to support and enhance the way people communicate and interact in their everyday lives.  Dan Saffer (2010) suggests four main approaches to interaction design, User-centered design, Activity-centered design, Systems design, and Genius design.

Interaction design

Graphic design is the process of visual communication and problem-solving through the use of typography, photography, iconography and illustration. The field is considered a subset of visual communication and communication design, but sometimes the term "graphic design" is used synonymously. Graphic designers use typography, visual arts, and page layout techniques to create visual compositions. Common applications of graphic design include corporate design (logos and branding), editorial design (magazines, newspapers and books), wayfinding or environmental design, advertising, web design, communication design, product packaging, and signage.

Graphic Design

Similar in structure to causal diagrams (i.e. nodes with connections), except the connections are not causal. Nodes contain concepts are organized
in a hierarchy (such as in 1Cademy's knowledge graph).

Concept Mapping

Design Disciplines

Design thinking is a process that works to solve problems in a user-centric way. It has a strong focus on users and humans, to ensure that solutions meet their needs.



Steps to design thinking:

1. Empathize: Understand your users

2. Define: Clearly define the problem and their needs

3. Ideate: Brainstorm potential solutions, create ideas

4. Prototype: Build your solutions

5. Test: Test out your solutions

Design Thinking

I feel that this statement, "Dan Saffer (2010) suggests four main approaches to interaction design, User-centered design, Activity-centered design, Systems design, and Genius design." should be linked as a child node rather than grouped together into this. There is a lot of content in this node and could be made more clear by breaking it down further into more granular content

re-structure nodes

In software development and computer science, ubiquitous computing refer to the idea of computing could be and is made to appear anytime and everywhere. Reflecting to Interaction design and User Experience Design, the term is refer to the idea that user interaction could be in many forms, from laptop computers, phones to everyday objects such as lamps and glasses.

Ubiquitous Computing

- Storytelling
- Prototype
- Concept Mapping
- Visual Direction


Elements of Design

- Motor Behavior 
- Feature Detection (Ware)
- Common Ground
- Extrema 
- IDEO Methods Cards
- Observation 

Design Techniques 

Gestalt principles are laws of human perception that describe how we group similar elements, recognize patterns, and simplify complex images when we perceive objects. These principles include Proximity, Similarity, Continuity, Closure, Symmetry, Figure/Ground, and Common Fate. Understanding these concepts can be enhanced by observing them in real-world examples.

Gestalt Principles

Various types of design and design approaches include:
- Activity-Centered Design
- Designing for Autistic People
- Emotional Design
- Ethical Design
- Genius Design
- Inclusive Design
- Industrial Design
- Product Design
- Systems Design

Types of Design

According to Bill Moggridge in *Designing Interactions*, the core skills of interaction design include:

1. Synthesizing a solution from all relevant constraints, understanding everything that will make a difference to the result.
2. Framing, or reframing, the problem and objective.
3. Creating and envisioning alternatives.
4. Selecting from those alternatives, knowing intuitively how to choose the best approach.
5. Visualizing and prototyping the intended solution.

Core Skills of Interaction Design

When designing for interaction, designers ask key questions to ensure a successful user experience. These core considerations include defining how the user physically interacts with the interface, providing visual clues about behaviors before actions are taken, anticipating and mitigating errors, optimizing system feedback and response time, adhering to strategic standards, and simplifying for learnability.

Interaction Design Considerations

A product-design problem-solving framework built on the journalistic 5W's and 1H: 1. Why – understand the goal. 2. Who – define the audience. 3. When/Where – understand the customer's context and needs. 4. What – list, prioritize, and choose an idea. 5. How – solve the problem and measure success.

5W+1H

Don Norman is an interaction-design figure and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group. In The Design of Everyday Things (1988), he emphasizes designing around users' needs rather than centering the system or interface aesthetics. He also proposed three interconnected levels of design: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.

Learn Before

Related

Learn After