Thanks to folks for responding on this question. *Behavior is Our Medium* I watched the presentation by Robert Fabricant. It was interesting, very reminiscent of some themes in *interactions* lately.
Social engineering has been around for a long time now. Using psychology as a tool to shape people's behavior, in general, has been around for a long time. But I don't think that interaction design's only goal is to give form to behavior. Often, it is more to facilitate behavior or to make behavior more enjoyable or to increase the effectiveness of behavior. In those cases, behavior is not essentially changed or shaped--it's the things that the people are using to accomplish their goals that are being designed. Even in the case of social engineering, it seems you are not actually designing behavior but rather designing *things* to impact behavior, so again, the media could be any number of things but not behavior itself. I would venture to say that the only behavior you can consider a true design medium is your own. The best you can do with others' behavior is try to influence it, not design it. (But I guess this is really a philosophical digression...) To the other things interaction designers can do: *Organization* People have been thinking about organizing groups of people for maximum effectiveness since time immemorial. *Communication* As Robert showed, people have been communicating using whatever tools they have forever. *Commerce* Products and services have been designed and created for a very, very long time as well. I guess the second half of my question is at play here. There are and have been others not in the proper role of "interaction design" who have done all these things. They likely even specialize in these areas. What is it about the interaction design role (or even just the activities) that brings something new and valuable? I think what I'm hearing (not just here) is not so much that "interaction" design is the core but just Design (with the big D, i.e., a specifically-principled approach at designing). I'm hearing that the opinion is that Design can do things better in all these areas, including but not limited to software. That's fine. It's an opinion. It may even be true. But Design, while encompassing (potentially) dealing with interactions, is not limited to that. And I think the point's been made by others many times, Design has been around much longer than "interaction design," so what specifically is new, different, and special about *interaction* design? Why couldn't I just hire, say, an industrial designer to do the same job? Why not just attend an industrial design school? What's the special sauce in "interaction design" as distinct from Design that has been and is being taught and practiced under other auspices? I keep returning to software as being the new thing--this digital, extensible, malleable medium that allows me to take this hunk of hardware that someone else designed (maybe I worked with them on that, maybe not) and add that extra special stuff, using my Design principles, my research/experience with the domain/people, and unique skills understanding the medium of the digital world (software) to make something beautiful come together. Can I (the hypothetical IxD) do other kinds of design? Surely. I can help with organization, communication, and overall product and service design. But my specialty--why I have this specific "interaction designer" self identity/role/title is due to my special skills with this new interactive medium--software. Put another way, if it isn't software (digital stuff) that precipitated this particular role of "interaction designer," then what is it? Why is this role just recently (historically speaking) blossoming? If it does come from software but there has been the gradual recognition that Design needs to influence more than just the software for a holistic experience to emerge, why should "interaction design" be the role that does this? Why not the other design specialties? And isn't there some truth that at some point, if you climb up this ladder influence/focus, you lose (practically speaking) the specialty that gave you the "interaction designer" role in the first place? I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but what we do, our roles, and our names for them should reflect what we're actually doing--if we're doing "service design" maybe we should call it that and not "interaction design." If we're doing "product design" maybe we should call it that and not "interaction design." If we're doing a little bit of everything that ultimately impacts the experience of the people using (users) and/or buying (customers), then maybe the name should reflect that (e.g., "user experience designer" or "customer experience designer" or even just "experience designer,' if you prefer, all of which seem more apropos at that level than "interaction designer"). It seems people agree here that names and words are important, no? And if you do keep the names meaningful in that way, then interaction design retains some meaningful, specific content, with specific activities, goals, and contexts that can be trained for, learned, and practiced above and beyond the generality of Design. Thoughts? --Ambrose P.S. A while back, I ran across this article<http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#interactivity_considered_harmful>. One of the claims is that in some cases, interaction is detrimental to the overall experience, particularly in the case of what he calls "information software." It makes sense, but I would expect that it would be very likely that an "interaction designer" would at some point work on designing something with such a lack of interaction (and would think it good design). Another case where the name seems not quite up to par. ? Or I guess you could say interaction design includes knowing when to avoid interaction. :) ________________________________________________________________ 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
