Re: Defining interaction design

1/08/2008

I found Juan Leal’s post about Verplank’s definition on Interaction Desing very interesting, although I am no fan of definitions and compartimentations. I’ll jump to the train, however.

My favorite definition/description/whatever goes like this:

Information Architecture: how it’s structured
Interaction Design: how it behaves
Information Design/Visual Design: how it looks

These definitions are not mine and I cannot recall who wrote them first. I’d appreciate any feedback on it. I am also aware that the boudaries between concepts are not clear at all, especially between the last two. They tend to overlap a lot.

There are 4 comments to this article:

  1. 1/08/2008Ariel Guers says:

    Very much on this line of quasi aphoristic definitions:
    ”Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. (…) Design is how it works.”
    Steve Jobs, in a 2003 New York Times magazine interview
    http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/magazine/30IPOD.html

  2. 3/08/2008Luis Villa says:

    Sometimes I see patterns…

    Information Architecture: how it’s structured
    Interaction Design: how it behaves
    Information Design/Visual Design: how it looks

    Front end
    XHTML - How is structured
    JS - How it behaves
    CSS - How it looks

    Backend
    Model - Data and structure
    Controller - Behaviour
    View - the look, the skin of the system

    Restaurant (I don’t know if I’m kidding here…)
    Kitchen: data, ingredients, structure…
    Waiter: behaviour, orders
    Table: presentation, look

    From my humble point of view, all of these layers in any of the domains (conceptual, logical, physical) has a lot to do with design. Maybe I live in a special place sorrounded by programmers and developers who act_as_designers ;-)

    As a pattern, we’ve got three layers: a fundation, an intermediary which routes actions betwwen surface and fundation and a surface, the part that the user thinks is the system (because, from the user’s perspective, behind the surface there’s magic).

    I’m not a philosopher, maybe I’m saying stupid things.

  3. 11/08/2008Javier Cañada says:

    Thanks Ariel, a good one!

    Wow, Luis, your comment should be a post, somewhere!!

  4. 19/08/2008The Cosmonaut: Sometimes Luis Villa sees patterns says:

    [...] few days ago I posted something about defining interaction design. Luis Villa replied with a comment that is one hundred times [...]

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