I'm doing some visual design prototypes this evening, preparing to call "my" visual designer tommorrow, and thinking this isn't an academic subject or splitting hairs. I feel interaction designer and visual designer are not idealized roles, but are how people break down at the mastery level. If you're trying to do world class work these 2 people are different. A competent interaction designer will have a visual aesthetic, and intuit what avenues are worthy of exploration for the client/project, but they may look to an expert visual designer for backing on the visual design front. The interaction designer better be the one who is so embedded in the client's world view that s/he's probably the one chomping at the bit with tangents and avenues worth looking into from a visual designer. At least that's how I feel. Interaction designers key attributes have to be empathy for the user's you are working for, and intuition about some end state of the user experience. The interaction designer probably is "calling in" the visual design expert to help achieve that end-state.
I thought I would share what I'm working on because it seems clear to me by example. At my company, I'm the in-house IxDesigner, and the visual designer is contracted out. In my case, it is a matter of when I call in the "big guns." I do interaction design in the medical imaging space. Things are changing here quick, 3d imaging data from the newest scanners is becoming available to physicians and those virtual human images will no longer be something you only see on the Discovery channel but in the hospital. For a facile analogy, think flight simulator is now available to your gastroenterologist, who has only ever played the arcade version of Pole Position. Problem: With all of these fancy images in all planes, we find that even imaging experts have a hard time visualizing where one image (one slice) is in relation to another spatially. Surprise, surprise, non-expert physicians (e.g. surgeons) have even a harder time, and shy away from using imaging systems in a lot of cases. Instead, they cut people open to find what out what the anatomy is, or to find out what size stent to use etc. Uneeded operations? Yes. People avoid technology if they aren't confident with it. So, while working on some interaction scenarios tonight, I thought "can we modify some visual cues on these images to give people a better sense of where one plane is in relation to another?" This is not the objective of our project (remember we're making flight simulator for the medical world), but just an inkling of one of many such intangible user needs I keep near at mind. So I tried a visual design prototype in 20 minutes (temporary link http://phosted.com/0801/ixda_work_screen.jpg). The prototype isn't there yet, but I can see it might go somewhere if we can give physicians a perceptual sense of "looking" into the planar relationships. I could continue doing visual design, but now having honed in on a specific problem worth solving and what looks like a possible fruitful path I'm going to hand it off. I'd rather steep the visual designer in the problem and user's needs and have him come back at me with new ideas. Is this prettying up an interface? No. Is it branding? No. It is visual communication, mostly of a static form, and there are visual designers who are specialists there. My goal for these users to give physicians people a sense of spatial relations so they use fancy-shmancy images and can "see" where they are in the body. I'm well aware that my current initiative may not be the one, we may need to envision a rotating orb with plane slices all through it, or something else entirely. I think it is part of the interaction designer makeup to really persevere until the user's goals are met, and a visual designer is one person to enlist on the way there. To summarize, I'm sure some interaction designers can do the gamut of branding, icongraphy and top notch static visual communicaiton. I'm sure many visual designers can create a sensible interaction design in the complex space of business, technology and people. But do people really find that there are people who are equally motivated to do it all, and are equally talented in both...or is it more the case that people naturally fall into these two roles? I think it is something like to do world-class work you'll generally find that the interaction designer and visual designer have two skill set domains that overlap, but they are different roles and these people fallout naturally. The interaction designer better be breadth heavy in more skills and the visual designer better be depth heavy in fewer. You want both on your team. Navid Sadikali Interaction Designer Agfa Healthcare On Jan 29, 2008 6:12 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Jan 29, 2008, at 9:01 AM, Jim Leftwich wrote: > > > I'm not that worried about Interaction Design, or IxDA, being > > limited in definition or scope however. There are a number of > > generalists that have been around for a long time that will continue > > to point out the value of embracing a more encompassing view of > > Interaction Design as IxDA moves forward and grows. As for the > > specialists and those practicing within specific domains - perhaps > > they would benefit by forming specialist sub-groups *within the > > larger and inclusive organization*. But it will prove impossible and > > impractical to artificially limit the profession that's been being > > practiced for decades, nor the organization that's beginning to > > represent us all. > > That's all fine and good and makes plenty of sense at a high level. > The major issue I've had is the outward claims by some that > interaction design is "bigger than digital" on the one hand, but then > bypass issues that are claimed to be outside the scope of > "interaction" on the other. > > To be fair, I don't think anyone intends that to be the case, but > when people say things like "interaction design is to interface > design like art direction is to graphic design," or that "interface > designers draw while interaction designers don't," well... that's > exclusionary. (And in the art director analogy, a bit on the absurd > side since art director's are notoriously seen by many in the graphic > industry as outsiders who never learned how to draw, so they tell > others what to draw. I'm generalizing obviously, so my apologies to > any art director's in the audience.) > > To me, it seems if you want to have a larger and more inclusive > definition of what interaction design is, then the core skillset has > to be broader as well. In this specific case, that broader definition > is going to have to include visual and aesthetic at some fundamental > level. Not to the degree of needing a major in graphic design, but > core fundamentals that are needed that apply to interaction, > especially when interaction has to be defined for technology > products. Most of this core set of skills are probably found in a few > books like Tufte's Envisioning Information, among a few others. It's > not needing an entire Art History degree or getting into the nitty > gritty of making posters with letterpresses, but certainly some level > competency with aesthetic needs to be a core interaction designer skill. > > Why is this? I personally think has to do specifically with digital. > I understand at a conceptual level how an interaction designer can > help design an analog telephone or rework a service flow for FedEx. > But when you start making digital products -- desktop client > applications, web sites, web applications, stand alone kiosks, mobile > interfaces, interfaces for the iPhone, etc. -- the aesthetic part is > integral to the success of the interactive part in a way that's not > easily separated, like it might be for non-digital forms of > interaction design. Given that, for the large swath of people that > are going to focus on digital, if they are calling themselves > interaction designers, removing the aesthetic from the definition of > what they do isn't going to help matters. It's fine for teams of > people today to work together on the interaction and aesthetic > collaboratively, but in the future, you really are going to want more > and more people who know how to do both, and are trained in how to do > both, even if they focus on one or the other in a team environment. > > Why? For the very same reasons industrial designers are trained in > both form and function. > > If a designer is compartmentalized to ignore or not having > accountability on the aesthetic at a personal level, then the > definition of interaction design is narrowed vertically as a job > description, even if it's horizontal as a job that applies to broader > market spaces. This is the crux of the problem, as near as I can tell. > > At a high level, having interaction design not be responsible for the > aesthetic or be a core skill of an interaction designer is obviously > fine, and can work for a variety of people. But for the ones that are > looking to work in narrow market sectors, like focusing on digital > products), they need a broader job definition horizontally on what it > is they are held accountable for in the overall design of the > product. To not do so would, it seems that calling oneself an > "interaction designer" does neither the designer in that position nor > the field of interaction any justice. The designer silo's themselves > in a way that limits what the business expects them to work on or can > work on, and profession suffers from confusion on what interaction > designers actually do and are best suited for, since it would be > market dependent in a way that's not accessible to those not in the > know. > > Yes. Job titles and semantics matter, for these very reasons. > > That's pretty much it. Does interaction require competency with core > fundamentals of graphic design or not? If it doesn't, we're back to > square one on the problem since a definition that excludes an > aesthetic will keep people segmented in a way that as digital > products evolve, will not allow the designer to gain credibility or > accountability for the totality of the design. It would be like an > industrial designer looking for someone else to figure out if the > product should be painted blue or red. Seems odd to me if that were > to be the case, and extremely limiting. And for what it's worth, I'm > of the opinion that if interaction designers insist on not needing > aesthetic skills for digital product design, they will find > themselves phased out of the design process by those that can do more > at a broader. That's just my personal opinion, it's obviously not a > proven fact. We'll have to wait ten years to see if that starts to > emerge. > > With interaction design, the desire to go broad with the core > definition but exclusionary on what the skills are actually winds up > limiting the designer's role in a specific market like digital > product design. This limitation is only a problem if you're someone > like me who wants to work primarily on digital products. > > -- > Andrei Herasimchuk > > Principal, Involution Studios > innovating the digital world > > e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] > c. +1 408 306 6422 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* > February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA > Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
