Ghost in the Pixel

If someone asked me to extemporaneously itemize some personally developed axioms (or “pearls of wisdom”) for practicing interaction design, here’s what I would say:

1. Always question and verify your assumptions, dependencies, and expectations about the project, problem, and client.

2. The three duties of a designer: advocate (for the user), educate (the client about design’s value), and facilitate (among PM/Engin/QA/Doc, etc. to ensure an agreed, consistent design decisions)…and of course create!

3. Useful, usable, desirable –> People, context, content, behavior –> goals/tasks/values (keep these in mind when possible)

4. All design is political because of scope, schedule, budget, resources and competing priorities/goals; deal with it, can’t win all the time.

5. Design functions in a crazy chaotic web of influences: marketing, engineering, QA, tech support, doc. Design’s just one piece, but not the only piece. (corollary to above)

6. Asking the right questions early can be more important than coming up with a clever solution. Conversations tend to invite questions, rather than declarations.

7. Same for identifying the right problem to solve…you don’t want to spend 6 weeks solving the wrong problem!

8. Always take user feedback with several grains of salt. And remember: No one asked for the iPhone or Prius or Wii before they were invented! A designer is an informed visionary.

9. Do less better. Remember this when PM/Engin try to cram features upon features into your product design.

12. There’s always a version 2. Plan for a version 3.

13. Beware of edge cases! 80/20 rule, probability trumps possibility.

14. Alot of design is just perceptual tricks to suggest simplicity, ease of use, etc. Perception is reality.

15. Lighten up, it’s just design. We’re not nuclear engineers or brain surgeons :-)

I only know Dave Malouf via his role as founder and ardent champion of ixda, having met him very briefly when he visited Involution Studios last year. I personally have no idea about his schooling and degrees and training; but he’s clearly an influential voice in the field, which got me wondering about what he’s written and said about interaction design that’s publicly available for consumption. So I googled around and found the following articles (listed here in no particular order), which I’ve started to skim and will absorb and interpret fully soon…

Aesthetics and Interaction Design: Some Preliminary Thoughts (PDF)

Foundations of Interaction Design

Interaction Design and ID: You’re already doing it!

Tips for Designing Powerful RIA’s

Designing powerful web applications using RIA (slideshow)

I’m in the midst of transitioning jobs but will soon post a multi-part series on the place and value of aesthetics for interaction designers. I’ve long had thoughts about this, dating back to my graduate thesis on beauty as an emergent value of user experience, and subsequent papers for CHI and IDSA exploring the various experiential interpretations of beauty, even proposing a model of aesthetics for new product innovation at the IDSA World Design Congress last fall. When I recently saw aesthetics re-surface as a point of debate on the ixda list, I decided to publish more about my ideas on this, leveraging material from my previous papers and talks. However, that was over a month ago! :-) So I intend to make good on that personal promise very soon…

Part 1: General thoughts on design aesthetics

Part 2: Interpretations of beauty as a value of user experience

Part 3: Towards an integrative aesthetic experience