Response to Thoughts on Interaction Design (9-51)

Prior to this reading I tended to lump together fields such as interaction design, interactive design, GUI design and graphic design under the very broad label of “media arts.” In this way I considered designers of this sort to be essentially “applied artists”—taking what they know about aesthetic planning and applying it to products they help to develop. Kolko presents interaction design as something wholly separate, suggesting that the field’s emphasis on “the creation of a dialogue between a person and a product, service or system” (20). This human-centric view of design seems to draw heavily upon research methods and concepts from sociology, psychology, business science, computer programming and even architecture to synthesize a user-focused experience.


The Zimmerman, Evenson and Forlizzi “process of design” described in the text has a distinctly scientific quality to it. As with the scientific method, the problem must first be defined to provide a clear focal point for generating ideas and gathering data, allowing one to come to some sort of hypothesis. I was intrigued by Kolko’s suggestion that interaction designers should utilize scenario narratives for building a conceptual framework in which their hypothesized product would function. This proclamation of the power of story-telling suggests that Kolko acknowledges the strong relationship between human thought and narrative structures— with interaction design’s heavy emphasis upon the human-factor, utilizing such a fundamentally human process as narrative could lead to products which more naturally accommodate and anticipate the way users act and think. The later steps in the process become a cycle, much like the scientific cycle of experimenting and analyzing, and both involve interpretation of the results produced.


The chapter on managing complexity provides useful frameworks for working with what, in interaction design, can be nebulous, multimodal concepts that can be difficult to tie together in a comprehensive way. As a student of English I understand the great importance of organizing one’s thoughts before writing—outlines have become part of my way of life. An effective one helps me visualize the structure of an essay, allowing the grouping of similar concepts into comprehensive sections. My outlines tend to resemble the concept map Kolko presents, although his map can be utilized in a less linear fashion to consolidate a breadth of disparate elements. I agree with Kolko that visualizations can aid understanding by illustrating the metaphysical links between ideas, and especially appreciated his “ecosystem diagram” for its depiction of the multidirectional interactions between elements functioning as parts of an intricate system.


Perhaps the most significant insight Kolko offers to designers is the mantra “the user is not like me” (25). This simplistic notion calls to mind not only the infinite diversity of users, each of which possesses an entirely unique perspective when interacting with technology, but an awareness of the innate biases of the designer. It reinforces the practices of ethnography and extensive user inquiry, firmly supporting important point that interaction design should concern itself with the human user before all else.