Dan, In addition to the excellent responses you've already received from Mark, Tania, Andrew, Fred and others, I would include the need to understand the concepts of differentiation and positioning (in a business sense) and the ways in which interaction design can contribute to corporate (or organizational) strategy in these areas.
An example from the interaction design space would be the iPhone and the original iPod and how the IxD of these devices created a clear departure from the existing offerings in (respectively) the smartphone and MP3 player markets. You could also cite examples from consumer electronics in the industrial design space by comparing the approach of Bang & Olufsen with Bose, and the approach to differentiation used by each company in the design of speakers. In digital environments you can see this in operation in the differentiation strategy employed by Google with it's search engine interface at initial release as compared to the interaction design employed by Yahoo! and Alta Vista during the same period. There are numerous other examples - including one you used yourself several years ago with the choice by Victoria's Secret not to employ a 'shopping cart' metaphor on it's Web site, but to use a shopping bag instead. Differentiation is at the core of business strategy and is an important concept for IxD practitioners to firmly grasp and apply to their work. Steve -- Steve 'Doc' Baty | Principal Consultant | Meld Consulting | P: +61 417 061 292 | E: steveb...@meld.com.au | Twitter: docbaty Blog: http://docholdsfourth.blogspot.com Contributor - UXMatters - www.uxmatters.com UX Book Club: http://uxbookclub.org/ - Read, discuss, connect. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
