1. What is interaction design?
Interaction design can be defined as:
Designing interactive products to support people in their everyday and working lives.
Source: Preece, J., Rogers, Y. & Sharp, H. (2002). Interaction Design: beyond human-computer interaction. New York: Wiley.
Interaction design is also a combination of many disciplines, including usability and information architecture.
So what does an interaction designer do? Suppose we are designing a website: we would ask potential customers what their needs were, and then make sure that the website fulfilled their needs and was easy to use.
Doing this work keeps customers happy and gives firms a competitive advantage.
2. Why do you call yourself an Interaction Designer?
Other available terms do not adequately describe where I'm coming from:
- Usability is mainly about evaluation, but I like to provide more creative input
- I do a lot of information architecture but I'm not a database engineer
- I enjoy the rigours of experimental HCI, but I can use light-weight methods for business too
- I practise user interface design but I lean towards programming, rather than graphic design
Apart from designing, I believe an interaction designer should also be the 'glue' that holds teams together, can see the big picture and knows where to steer the project.
So interaction design for me describes an 'agile' mix of complementary disciplines that enables me to participate in all phases of a project.
3. How did you become interested in Interaction Design?
Back in 1999 I was managing a collection of websites - normally everything went smoothly but we seemed to be permanently engaged in urgent 'maintenance' or carrying out endless design 'tweaks' rather than working on new designs.
I came to realise that this was because we had failed to properly analyse the requirements of our target audience, and worse, we had never tested any of our designs with any potential users.
Convinced that interaction design would play a large part in the future of the web, I decided to take a sabbatical and plunge myself into further research.
I eventually won a £10,000 degree scholarship at Lancaster University, and went on to graduate with a distinction and the highest score in the history of the course.
Since then I have been building a portfolio which ranges from commercial usability work to academic articles.
4. Where are you based?
I operate in London, England and Paris, France. This explains the french side of my portfolio: Musée français de la photographie, Eurostar, and Crédit Lyonnais.
5. What is your background?
I have quite a varied background - I have a masters degree in HCI/Interaction Design, a first degree in languages and economics, and several years experience in web development, teaching, training, and project management: all useful skills in interaction design.
6. What are your professional goals?
I have two main goals.
Commercially, my aim is to add real value to a project by helping to improve a product's interface. This could be done by researching
customer needs before the product is designed, or with thorough usability evaluations before the product is launched. Doing
this work keeps customers happy and gives firms a competitive advantage.
Example: Musée français de la photographie.
Academically, I strive to carry out research that will produce concrete benefits in technology or understanding to improve people's lives.
It could be by finding better ways to present information so workers can make critical decisions faster and more accurately;
or it could be a better way of interacting with computers, say, by tracking eye movements.
Example: Book Chapter.
7. What does your website logo signify?
The logo has two meanings:
- 'Interaction' - the dialogue between the user and the software designer via the interface (the intersecting arrows)
- The design process as a two-way street: The steady input of research information with constructive design ideas as the product
8. Did you build this site yourself?
Yes! I am the sole author of all site elements; including written content, translation from English to French, programming and graphic design. See Portfolio Website for details.