Interaction Design
Interaction design is the discipline of shaping how people and interactive products communicate, focusing on the form, behaviour, and feel of interactions rather than only the underlying technology.
Definition
Interaction design is the practice of designing interactive products and systems to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives, guided by an iterative process and by principles linking a product's perceivable structure to users' goals.
Scope
This area covers the design side of human-computer interaction: principles such as affordances, visibility, feedback, and mappings; recurring interaction styles and paradigms (command line, direct manipulation, graphical interfaces, conversational and tangible interaction); the iterative design process of understanding, prototyping, and evaluating; and the conceptual models that designers communicate to users. It addresses how interactive behaviour is specified and refined, not the empirical measurement of usability (covered under usability and evaluation) nor the low-level mechanics of specific input devices (covered under input and interaction techniques).
Sub-topics
Core questions
- What design principles make an interactive product understandable and easy to act on?
- How do different interaction styles and paradigms shape what users can do and how they do it?
- How does an iterative process of prototyping and evaluation improve a design?
- How can a designer convey a clear conceptual model so users form an accurate mental model?
Key concepts
- affordance and signifier
- visibility and feedback
- mapping and constraints
- interaction style and paradigm
- direct manipulation
- conceptual model
- iterative design
- design rationale
Key theories
- Affordances and signifiers
- Perceived affordances suggest the possible actions an object supports, while signifiers are the perceivable cues that communicate where and how to act; good design makes the right actions discoverable and the consequences visible.
- Direct manipulation
- Interfaces that present continuous representations of objects, use physical actions instead of complex syntax, and give rapid reversible feedback let users feel they are acting directly on the task domain, reducing the gulf between intention and execution.
- Design as a conversation for action
- Winograd and Flores recast system design as structuring the recurrent commitments and conversations among people, arguing that what a tool does is inseparable from the human practices and breakdowns it is meant to support.
Clinical relevance
Interaction design principles guide the design of nearly every digital product, from consumer apps and websites to medical devices, automotive dashboards, and industrial control systems, where a clear conceptual model and good feedback reduce errors and learning effort.
History
Interaction design emerged as the personal-computer era shifted attention from raw functionality to usability and experience. Norman's work in the 1980s popularized affordances, mappings, and the gulfs of execution and evaluation, while Winograd and Flores offered a design-oriented reframing of computing. The field consolidated through the 1990s and 2000s as a named discipline of designing interactive products beyond classic HCI.
Key figures
- Donald A. Norman
- Terry Winograd
- Yvonne Rogers
- Jenny Preece
- Helen Sharp
Related topics
Seminal works
- norman2013
- winograd1986
- dix2004
Frequently asked questions
- How is interaction design different from user experience design?
- Interaction design focuses specifically on the behaviour and structure of interactions between people and products, while user experience design is broader, encompassing the whole felt experience including visual design, content, and emotional response. In practice the two overlap heavily and interaction design is often treated as a core part of UX.
- What is the difference between a conceptual model and a mental model?
- A conceptual model is the intended design model that a system communicates through its interface, whereas a mental model is the understanding a user actually forms through use. Good design aims to make the user's mental model match the designer's conceptual model so the system behaves as expected.