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Concept
Interaction design
Summary
Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." While interaction design has an interest in form (similar to other design fields), its main area of focus rests on behavior. Rather than analyzing how things are, interaction design synthesizes and imagines things as they could be. This element of interaction design is what characterizes IxD as a design field, as opposed to a science or engineering field.
Interaction design borrows from a wide range of fields like psychology, human-computer interaction, information architecture, and user research to create designs that are tailored to the needs and preferences of users. This involves understanding the context in which the product will be used, identifying user goals and behaviors, and developing design solutions that are responsive to user needs and expectations.
While disciplines such as software engineering have a heavy focus on designing for technical stakeholders, interaction design is focused on meeting the needs and optimizing the experience of users, within relevant technical or business constraints.
The term interaction design was coined by Bill Moggridge and Bill Verplank in the mid-1980s, but it took 10 years before the concept started to take hold. To Verplank, it was an adaptation of the computer science term user interface design for the industrial design profession. To Moggridge, it was an improvement over soft-face, which he had coined in 1984 to refer to the application of industrial design to products containing software.
The earliest programs in design for interactive technologies were the Visible Language Workshop, started by Muriel Cooper at MIT in 1975, and the Interactive Telecommunications Program founded at NYU in 1979 by Martin Elton and later headed by Red Burns.
The first academic program officially named "Interaction Design" was established at Carnegie Mellon University in 1994, as a Master of Design in Interaction Design.
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Industrial design
Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufacture or production of the product. It consists purely of repeated, often automated, replication, while craft-based design is a process or approach in which the form of the product is determined by the product's creator largely concurrent with the act of its production.
Interaction design
Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." While interaction design has an interest in form (similar to other design fields), its main area of focus rests on behavior. Rather than analyzing how things are, interaction design synthesizes and imagines things as they could be. This element of interaction design is what characterizes IxD as a design field, as opposed to a science or engineering field.
User interface design
User interface (UI) design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience. In computer or software design, user interface (UI) design primarily focuses on information architecture. It is the process of building interfaces that clearly communicates to the user what's important. UI design refers to graphical user interfaces and other forms of interface design.
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