Interaction Design - Research

I found this really interesting online article about interaction design by Jonas Löwgren who is an interaction designer, researcher and teacher. Currently employed as professor of interaction design at Malmö University, Sweden. Main areas of expertise include cross-media products, interactive visualization and the design theory of digital materials. I have summarized the reading, however the entire article can be found through the link at the bottom.

He writes:

“Broadly speaking, there are two main senses of the concept, coming out of different intellectual traditions but increasingly converging in practice and research, Interaction design as a design discipline and Interaction design as an extension of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction).

As a design discipline, it is more closely affiliated with industrial design and architecture than with engineering and behavioral science. The "shaping of interactive products and services" is an instance of design work, which broadly shares the following characteristics across design disciplines.

* Design work is about exploring possible futures, starting from a situation at hand.
* It intends to change the situation for the better by developing and deploying some sort of product or service, i.e., the concrete outcome of the design process.
* It considers instrumental and technical as well as aesthetic and ethical qualities throughout the design process.
* Design work involves developing an understanding of the task – the "problem", or the goal of the design work – in parallel with an understanding of the space of possible solutions.
* Finally, it entails thinking by sketching, building models, and expressing potential ideas in other tangible forms.

The other interpretation of interaction design is to see it as an extension of human-computer interaction (HCI), a field originating in experimental psychology and computer science and tracing its roots to the 1970s. HCI was originally oriented mainly towards field studies (of, e.g., existing user populations, their cognitive traits and current practices) and evaluation (of, e.g., an existing product or a proposed product concept). However, it was found that the impact on the resulting products and ultimately on the benefits for the users would be greater if HCI practitioners and researchers would engage in the design rather than merely pointing out usability problems after the fact. Hence, the HCI palette of methods, tools and responsibilities was extended to encompass more creative and generative activities.”

http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/interaction_design.html