Thoughts on Interaction Design

I’ve been discussing the layout of the book with the designers, and we’ve identified a theme of Mind, Body and Soul that permeates the text. It is interesting to connect Mind (thinking), Body (doing), and Soul (feeling) to the idea of Usable, Useful, and Desirable.

The practical manifestation of usability engineering is almost always reduction and tradition. Reduction (or simplicity) is generally a good design principle – I certainly buy into and agree with John Maeda’s nearly tongue-in-cheek investigation of Simplicity - but the push towards tradition (or commonality) that is usually associated with usability certainly gets in the way of innovative design thinking.

On the other side, unbridled creativity has become rather commonplace in interaction design solutions that embrace flash. This is exactly the type of overzealous “design” that Nielsen freaks out about; the tool and the technology drives the aesthetic elements.

But human behavior is made up of rationale thought, irrational thought and actions; we need all three elements in our designs for some degree of harmony. I’m sure we could also find connections to Id, Ego and Superego; there is something rather base or innate about this triad approach.

Anyway; the next step is to dismantle the text to correspond better to these three pillars, and see how the thing reads when approached with this in mind.

Compare the following:

I received in the mail permission to quote liberally – nearly a hundred words – from the PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds, which includes quotes from Steve Jobs as he discusses Apple’s rise to power. In addition to the gratis permission that is the norm with publishing companies, I received a greeting card from their permissions editor, thanking me for being pleasant during the rather tedious process.

On the same day, I received “permission” from Pearson Education to quote about thirty words from Bringing Design to Software, for the cost of $150. Considering the book will most likely retail for around $30, that’s five copies of an estimated print run of 500.