“Interaction design is about shaping digital things for people’s use” – Jonas Lowgren

Description

Interaction design is a discipline that is concerned with shaping digital technology and make it usable, desirable, and pleasurable for people. Interaction design not only focuses on the form of the technology but also on how it shapes human behavior.
Originating in the scientific field of Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design is a more ‘designerly’ practice of conceptualizing and crafting the interactions between computing systems and humans. In other words, interaction designers approach the problem of designing digital technological products, systems, and services from the perspective of enhancing the people’s interaction aesthetically, functionally, and perceptually. The practice of interaction design includes the design of screens (mobile, desktop and TV), but also expands to emerging devices such as wearable computing, Internet of Things, Personal Informatics, etc.

Guiding principles

At Srishti, interaction design is particularly approached from the perspective of shaping the experiences of people during and after their interaction with digital technology. In other words, we develop novel interaction strategies with the aim of providing desirable experiences for people. This means an understanding that the experience emerges out of a series of interaction with the technology over space, time and contexts. Hence at Srishti, interaction design goes beyond the design of screens to include a deeper understanding of the context, of the users and usage, and their expectations and desires from the experience. Interaction design is informed by the principles of Interaction theory focusing on human perception, cognition, and human factors, and Experience theory focusing on role of human embodiment, kinesthetic, episodic, and situatedness in shaping experiences.

Type of work

Interaction designers produce a range of work such as:

Interactive products and devices

Interaction designers are involved in the design of interactive products such as wearable devices, sensors, ambient displays, etc. along with screen-based devices.

Information architectures

Interaction designers work with information, structuring it so that it makes sense for people when they interact with information systems

Interaction and Experience Evaluations

Interaction designers evaluate existing and new products and services to determine pain-points, gaps, etc. so as to enhance the experience.

Interaction sketching and use-case scenarios, paper prototyping and wireframing

Interaction Designers also do a lot of mock-up of the screens, drawing the interactions into wireframes, and paper prototype the interaction ideas to get feedback as early as possible in the process.

Electronic sketching with arduino and other platforms

As new modalities of interaction emerge that combine the physical along with digital, interaction designers have had to adopt the ways of sketching interactions with embedded electronic devices using the arduino and other microcontroller platforms.