Interaction Design, Design Education, Design Thoughts
{ Monthly Archives }
So I bought a new iPod. There have been many articles have their been lauding and fewer criticizing (mostly the battery) the iPod. I think this one is going to do a little critiquing, but hopefully for the purpose of moving IxD forward and less to give pointers for the next version of the iPod or anyone else wanting to use (with or without permission) a Click Wheel.
Expanding on my earlier explanation of user experience (UX) design, I gave a presentation (PDF; 325kb) on both what is UX and then where does IxD fall in that universe. The discussion that followed ran the gambit of …
To put it simply there are 6 components to User Experience Design or more simply (less jargony) Product Design, and those components themselve break out into impacting the solution vs. making up the solution.
The impact is strategy, reserach, and validation.
The solution itself is made up of structure, behavior, and presentation.
Through what we have learned from Information Architecture we know today that proper nomenclature and taxonomy are an important force in organizing not just information but also people. Organizing people effectively is something that the UX field has not achieved as of yet. We are still misunderstood by our peers and have not achieved the same level of enfranchisement as the other components that go into the marketing and implementation of the types of products and services we create.
Some key phrases you hear lately in the press sound like …
“MegaCorp is creating its strategy for bringing the PC into the living room.”
or
“Networking company connects your office PC to your stereo.”
or
“MegaMegaPC is building a PC that stacks right in with your stereo.”
What do you see in common here? Its the nastiest two letters in HCI, In My Humble Opinion (IMHO; This will be the last time you see this spelled out). What is it about the PC? Why has such a technology that has past its prime stayed around without any real competition. Its not like they haven’t tried. Java Network Systems from Oracle and Sun were “the rage” way back when. e-Mail terminals and WebTV also had a small little outcrop in the late 90′s as well. But they all failed in comparison to the PC. So now because of those failures we are stuck with a product, basic OS interaction structure, and metaphor model that really doesn’t satisfy the growing new universe that is pan-device, multi-system, convergent, and pervasive in ways that a brick, even a laptop verion of a brick can satisfy.