[IxDA Discuss] Interaction design is design of time

[Bret Hekking]

I agree with a previous post that interaction design is primarily concerned
with attention. Time management is a side-effect.

It's how users allocate attention that we first need to understand and
subsequently design for. Simplicity in design helps achieve this goal. By
enabling people, through design, to allocate their attention to what they care
about, we enable them to succeed with a minimum of wasted effort...and time.

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes on this topic:
"What information consumes is...the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth
of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that
attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources..."
- Herb Simon (father of aritificial intelligence)

"Create less clutter, or make sense of it faster than the competition, and you
win."
- Bill Jensen, Simplicity

--- panu.korhonen at nokia.com wrote:

> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted material.]
> 
> Interesting thread!
> 
> I like very much the concept of time for differentiating interaction
> design from (some) other related design disciplines, like graphic design
> and industrial design. Interaction is about the behavior of the thing in
> time. A direct sign of this is the popularity of scenarios and use cases
> for describing interaction. In that, the discrete events are ordered on
> a sequential timeline. 
> 
> I'm working a lot with industrial designers who create the 3D appearance
> of products. For them, the product usually "is" or "looks like", and the
> product is the subject of the discussion. For interaction design, the
> product is an object and a (sometimes implicite) user "does", like
> "first the user presses this button, and then...". The discourse about
> interaction design is different - it includes both time and the user.
> For the industrial designer, the object will still be red if there would
> be nobody there to look at it... (Jeff mentioned that interaction design
> works with language; the differences in language designers use about and
> in their design would need another thread.)
> 
> Time is difficult to present. For industrial design or graphic design,
> if you show the object or design at hand, the audience will see all of
> it at once (well, for 3D you may need to turn the object around a few
> times). For interaction design, if you show one image, e.g. the starting
> screen of the interaction, the audience will only see the tip of the
> iceberg. It will take a lot of time and exploration by walking through
> the different interaction paths to really see the full designed object
> in interaction design. I think this is one of the reasons why
> interaction design has a challenge in the organizations. Because it's
> time based, with the short attention span of hectic business life will
> never see and therefore don't fully appreciate the complexity of
> interaction design. Anyone ever experienced an underestimated and
> underbudgeted UI design project?
> 
> Regards,
> Panu
> 
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com 
> >[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On 
> >Behalf Of ext Jeff Howard
> >Sent: 05 April, 2006 07:50
> >To: discuss at lists.interactiondesigners.com
> >Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Interaction design is design of time
> >
> >[Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant 
> >quoted material.]
> >
> >> Oleh Kovalchuke said:
> >> The goal of interaction design is to remove time fluff
> >
> >I don't think that the goal of interaction design is 
> >necessarily to remove time fluff. In some cases, efficiency 
> >might be prized. In others, not. In some cases, flow might be 
> >prized; other interactions are more cursory, or more 
> >considered. Wasn't Myst all about time fluff?
> >
> >Interactions take place in the realm of time, but they also 
> >take place in the realm of language, and color and form. I 
> >don't think you can discount "space" quite so easily either. 
> >Certainly not in physical interactions.
> >
> >> Dan Saffer said:
> >> I wouldn't exactly say that it is the design of time, unless you are 
> >> some sort of divine entity. :)
> >
> >The book Einstein's Dreams offers some nice insight into how 
> >that might work...
> >
> >// jeff
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