This research explores the rapidly forming field of Interaction Design, and seeks to answer the following questions:

• what qualities and capacities do interaction designers deem essential to their practice?
• how can this knowledge inform academic and professional roles in the development of this emerging field?

Throughout the presentation I really became aware of the way I was setting up academic and professional as opposites. Soumitri, Laurene & Malte picked up on this for different reasons:

Laurene thought it might be too polarized a position to take, and suggested a more nuanced approach, looking at the the two communities that function in unity as a continuum, suggesting that I might find a way to use interaction design (process) to enable the discourse around interaction design (field). She also spoke about the “need to name” and whether it really was a profession, a discipline, field or something else.
I’m interested in the ‘naming’ thing – many people I’ve spoken with so far have been wary of defining interaction design, and I’ve agreed with them. I’m wary of definition because I can see how it tends to become either a process of elimination: “it’s not that, or that or that” or an inclusive motherhood statement: “everything is interaction design”.

Of these two approaches, I tend toward the open “everything” end, possibly because of my multidisciplinary background. (aside – here I’m reminded of David Malouf’s way of curating NYC IxDA meetup topics or presentations: a simple framework of Interaction and/or Design)

I am also becoming more aware that I tend toward dialectic thinking models. Which is possibly a cultural artifact, enhanced by the work I did on Pierre Schaeffer in my Masters. Dialectics worked well for Schaeffer, but the thing to remember is that his model was a multidimensional array of phenomenologically derived qualities. Capture and application of nuance was the objective of his sonic object.

Picking up this thread and delving back into the review feedback, I am more and more excited by the possibilities that aesthetics affords as an approach to this situation from a non-partisan angle. Aesthetics is attractive to me because it connects with the artifact, and is embedded in practice. Both these things exist across the (artificial) poles of academic and professional that I’ve set up so far. I get the feeling that approaching things from this perspective – ways of describing practice and criteria for evaluating artifacts – will help me understand the nuances that exist in the continua I’m examining. This is exciting.
note to self – READ Schön.

Malte had a different take on the academic / professional dichotomy: taken from an Industrial Design perspective, the practice of interaction design is not so recent and has many examples of close collaboration between the academy and the profession. He cited B&O, Boeing, Benz and Xerox.

This is very interesting, and one of the reasons I thin I started on this PhD; I thought that research led industry (eg Xerox PARC), but was very surprised to hear “research” interaction design marginalized by my colleagues in industry. Then, when you think of Xerox, it was Apple who took the GUI to market. Bill Buxton spoke about this a bit at Interaction ‘08 this year, the way interaction designers have to design their work environments.

When you talk about examples of B&O and Benz, I think there’s a lot I need to look at with regard to history and what I’ve heard described as the ‘European situation’. This was explained to me by a Portugese interaction designer working in China: that Europe gave you the ability to work on research projects, the US was more process oriented, but had opportunities in the web and medical sectors, and that Asia was all about designing to a price-point.

This picks up on Soumitri’s comment on the IxDA job postings I showed as an example of the tipping-point interaction design is at. (I used watershed, but Soumitri is right, that’s probably not the best way to describe the situation, so let’s try Gladwell’s tipping point for a while). While recently re-reading John Kolko’s ‘Thoughts on Interaction Design” I had two extremes of response (there’s that dialectic again!)

I was excited to see how Kolko’s argument compliments that of Löwgren and Stolterman, in that it takes a meta view of the practice and discipline. He even made reference to job postings and the change toward more skills and toolset based requirements.

I was also dismayed that I hadn’t taken proper attention when reading this before.. because ‘Thoughts on Interaction Design’ is a key text for me, and one that I need to position my contribution beside. (To be honest, I was a little upset that Kolko had done exactly what I wanted to do – I just hadn’t known I was going in that direction when I last read his book)

So, John Kolko goes to the top of the list for a conversation, he’s giving a presentation on turning research into designs in Vancouver in February, so I’ll have a chance there.

Soumitri asked “what is my method?” Good question. I feel all over the place in this regard. So far I’ve explained that I’m undertaking this as a design project, and that my method is a standard interaction design one: find out about the context, uncover the user needs & design opportunities, prototype solutions, refine. I’m thinking this works for the beginning of the PhD, but that some thinking needs to be done on how this translates toward doing things (projects). My current understanding of this is that provocations, or interventions, are the prototypes, the outcomes from which are refined into a contribution to the field. (in the form of..?)

Current provocations are:

• a literature review
• the DAC theme on Interaction Design Aesthetics,
• an exhibition of interaction designs,
• IxDA education initiatives,and
• the conversations I’m having with designers and educators.

Lets start with the conversations, because I have started doing them. I really need to learn how to do a good interview. Really. Jeff Jones told me this about two years ago when I interviewed the sound designers on the Intimate Transactions project for the book we produced at ACID. I’ve uncovered a bit of research in this area from ethnography to journalism, and am currently reading and thinking about how to go about the next set of conversations. I’m getting a lot of help reflecting on this by writing up the initial conversations I had in SF last month.

The DAC theme and exhibition seem connected to me. I’d like to work collaboratively on both, and have started to work on the networks that might help there.

IxDA education stuff has really stalled,and I need to put some energy in that direction over the next month. I’d like to have a community edited listing of interaction design programs up by Feb in time for our conference.

That leaves the Lit review. After reading Kolko’s book, I’m not sure how to approach this as a unique artifact. He and Jonas Löwgren have  pretty much done it already. Maybe I shouldn’t be so precious, and take a leaf out of my scrum training (release early, release often). I think thats a good idea.