October 30, 2008 Vol. 1, Issue 10
If a system is both digital and interactive, it falls under design guru Bill Moggridge’s broad definition of interaction design.
In Designing Interactions, Bill Moggridge, designer of the 1981 GRiD laptop computer and a founder of the design firm IDEO, explains how digital designers have come to focus on designing a user’s interaction with a product. Rather than basing designs on strictly aesthetic or utilitarian concerns, the user interaction itself has become the central feature of the design. Moggridge calls this “interaction design,” and cites decades worth of examples, ranging from the computer mouse to the use of windows (small “w”) on desktop computers to the evolution of handheld computers. He interviews the designers of many of these innovations, and examines why they won out over other possibilities. The last chapter, which is currently available as a free download, offers a summary of Moggridge’s theory of interaction design as well as his thoughts on prototyping, learning about human behavior, and the design process.
