Saying that things not traditionally thought of as interactive are certainly not, is dangerous. True, people rarely design the interaction a band has with the audience, but it is becoming more common.
One can argue that this is interaction design as well. As I have said in the past, locking ourselves into digital projects is a bad idea. Our philosophies directly apply to all interaction, and as meat and microchips meld, they won't be so easy to draw lines through anymore. Imagine a day when the lines on the highway are purely saint Elmo's fire in our brains, controlled ultimately by a connection of computers in the map of the street, where ever it comes from, our car, and our own head. Whole streets can change direction at different times of the day, new traffic lights can be erected or their time altered without ever going to those locations. Even suggested route alterations could be presented directly in out field of vision. Perhaps even more subliminally than that. So where in this melange of different systems is the interaction design? It is everywhere. Because road planning and signage theory, and all of this are also a form of interaction design. In fact, interface design is also a form of interaction design, and so is graphic design, and abstract expressionism and so many other things. The difference is the Interaction Designer knows a good bit about all of these types of interaction, and while their core competency might be Abstract Expressionism, an Interaction Designer will not try to solve a problem Abstract Expressionism isn't suited to fix. They will either learn a new competency or point the person who requires the product in the right direction. Interface Designers will always try to solve a problem with an interface, and by that I mean the interfaces they are familiar with, which is normally computer GUI. If they are a web Interface Designer, they will solve a problem with a web interface. Meanwhile, an interaction designer will solve a problem by finding the right kind of interfaces and interactions to solve the problem. Which means, if a new hand-held device that hospital professionals need to carry at all times, which is synced with the hospital via Wifi, and will call out like a pager when someone nearby has an emergency, and can automatically call your team in when the system tracks that it is required, is what it needed, that is what they will say is needed. Even if the company thought they needed to create a desktop app that runs on wired carts that people wheel around the hospital. IxDs are the inventors of the computer age. They see a tool that is needed and are equipped to design something to fit that need. Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=34525 ________________________________________________________________ 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
