Architecture as urban interface
Introduction
Interaction Design, often abbreviated as IxD, is defined as "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services."[1] While the digital side of this statement is true, Interaction Design is also valid when a physical (non-digital) space has been created as products, covering the ideology of how a user can interact with it. Common topics that interaction design is most often associated with include design, human computer interaction, and software development. While interaction design has an interest in form (similar to other design fields), its main area of focus remains on behavior.[1] Rather than analyzing how things are, interaction design synthesizes and imagines things when they may or may not be. This element of interaction design is what clearly marks IxD as an aspect of a design field as opposed to a science or engineering field.[1].
While disciplines such as software engineering have a strong focus on design for the technical parts of a project, interaction design is more oriented toward meeting the needs and wants of the majority of users of a given product.[1].
History
The term interaction design was first coined by Bill Moggridge and Bill Verplank in the mid-1980s, but it took 10 years before the concept began to take hold.[1] For Verplank, it was an adaptation of the computer science term user interface design for the industrial design profession.[2] For Moggridge, it was an improvement over soft-face, which he had coined in 1984 to refer to. to the application of industrial design to products that contained software.[3].
The first programs in the design of interactive technologies were the Visible Language Workshop, started by Muriel Cooper at MIT in 1975, and the Interactive Telecommunications Program founded at NYU in 1979 by Martin Elton and later directed by Red Burns.[4].
The first academic program officially called "Interaction Design" was established at Carnegie Mellon University in 1994 as a Master's Degree in Interaction Design.[5] Initially, the program focused primarily on screen interfaces, before moving to place greater emphasis on the "big picture" aspects of interaction: people, organizations, culture, service, and system.
In 1990, Gillian Crampton Smith founded the MA in Computer Related Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London, which became Interaction Design in 2005, directed by Anthony Dunne.[6][7] In 2001, Crampton Smith helped found the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII), a small institute in Olivetti's hometown in northern Italy, dedicated exclusively to to interaction design. The institute moved to Milan in October 2005 and merged with the Domus Academy. In 2007, some of the people originally involved with the IDII created the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID). After Ivrea, Crampton Smith and Philip Tabor added the topic of Interaction Design (IxD) to the Visual Communication and Multimedia degree at Iuav, University of Venice, Italy, between 2006 and 2014.