The Dash In Between
What is Interaction Design?
This past week we (2nd semester Interaction Design students at Zurich University of the Arts) started a new course called «Interaction Design Methods» by asking us the question: What is Interaction Design?
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Ever since I got interested in this bachelor program I am struggling with this question. I tried to find a short, informative answer but I am no longer sure if there is one. And actually that was the first comment that came up in our class discussion: Interaction Design is such a big field! But contrary to the assumptions of many people I talked to, it is not all digital. A huge and important part of our work is analog prototyping for example. We are going to talk about prototyping more in-depth in some of our next lessons. So for the moment it is worth mentioning, but I am not going to discuss it any further in this post.
As it often happens, someone mentioned the video «Powers of Ten» by Charles and Ray Eames. Although the clip is rather old (produced in 1977 for IBM) it is still relevant today. Dealing with the relative size of things in the universe, it shows all levels on which Interaction Designers operate. From small scale problems like finding a missing semicolon somewhere in your code to bigger questions. How one can revive a certain part of a city, for example. Or what it takes to connect people from two neighbouring cities. Interaction Design has a lot to do with connecting. It may be a connection between different fields, skills or people. Or between:
human — human
human — computer
computer — computer
computer — nature
nature — human
etc.
So, if you are looking for the core field of an Interaction Designer, you may find the answer in the dash (—) between the examples above, connecting one part with another.
