Foundations of Interaction Design – Boxes & Arrows
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I’m really excited about my latest article on Boxes & Arrows entitled “Foundations of Interaction Design”. It’s been a long time coming and I really appreciate the patiences of Chris Baum who personally held my hand through the editing process.
Check out the article and contribute a comment or two on B&A.
The crux of the article is to try to talk about elements that set up the foundation of interaction design as a discipline that differentiate it from the form based design disciplines that cooperate with interaction design towards creating a complete user experience.
The four elements are:
Time – this actually breaks down a bit more into sub-elements because as we know time is relative.
Metaphor – interaction design is narrative design and you can’t really have a descent narrative without metaphor. I mean Willy taught us that.
Abstraction – this relates to the physical movement of the user vs. the way that movement is abstracted or represented through the digital interfaces we design
Negative Space – every design discipline has an absence of something. What does it mean to “lack” in interaction?

