Introducing Interaction Design
Human/machine communication is the translation of conversations between the device and user.
Action/reaction looks at how interactions happen and unfold.
State ensures that users know what is happening and why in terms of the application.
Workflow ensures that users know who to use a tool or application and what happens next.
Malfunction takes into account mistakes that are bound to happen.

Bob Baxley (2002)

Interaction Designers are concerned with what the goals of a user are, and in turn what interactions are necessary to achieve these goals.

Interaction Designers rely on user research to find out what the goals of the users are before creating a strategy that translates that into interactions.
Interaction Designers are tasked to create task flows and wireframes that lay out the interactions in the product.
Interaction Designers create interactive prototypes for testing.

Getting Started

Introducing Interaction Design
Getting Started
UX Design > Interaction Design
- See UX Project Checklist.
Interaction Designer
- Understanding Expectations
ISO IxD Process
Interaction Design Resources

UX Design > Interaction Design

Interaction Design is a speciality of User Experience Design. UX Design also involves conducting user research (finding out who the users are in the first place), creating user personas (why, and under what conditions, would they use the product), performing user testing and usability testing, etc.

See UX Project Checklist.

Interaction Designer

Excerpt from A Project Guide to UX Design for User Experience Designers in the Field or in the Making:

An interaction designer is responsible for defining the behavior of a site or application in accordance with user actions.
This includes flows in the site across multiple views and interactivity within a particular view.
During the designs of site or apps, common activities are
to create task flows showing interactions across pages or components within the site and
to create wireframes showing in-page interactions such as dynamic menus and expandable content.

See IXD Checklist.

Understanding Expectations

If you're working on a small team or on a project that isn't highly focused on creating new task-based functionality (for example, a brand presence site that mainly includes some content categories, a contact form, and a sign-up form for a newsletter) the interaction designer may then be the role responsible for capturing project requirements.

If you're working as the interaction designer on a project with a high level of new functionality, most likely you'll have a separate person on the team in charge of outlining detailed requirements (for example, a product manager).

The process of gathering and detailing functional requirements can be helped greatly by the skills of a UX designer, and documents such as functional specifications and use cases are affected by experience design.

Be sure to sit down with the person in charge of gathering requirements to discuss how you can best work together.

ISO IxD Process

BS EN ISO 13407:1999 The Human-centred design process for interactive systems.

1. Understand and specify the context of use

For all tasks:

Abstract Task Models (for each user group)
Task Scenarios (of key tasks)
Glossary of specialized terms

For each user group:

User Profiles
User Personae (based on profiles)
Conceptual models (based on task scenarios)

2. Specify the user requirements

See NISTIR 7432 Common Industry Specification for Usability-Requirements.

3. Produce design solutions to meet user requirements

Wireframes
Initial pencil sketches
Digital Wireframes
Lo-Fi Prototype
Application Style-Guide

4. Evaluate the designs against requirements

Prototyping Session Report (for feedback to Activity 3)
Evaluation Report (for completed implementation, ISO/IEC 25062 Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports )