[IxDA Discuss] No Ideas But In Things

[Bill DeRouchey]

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006, Dan Saffer wrote:

> On Oct 18, 2006, at 11:34 PM, Jonas Löwgren wrote:
>
>> Dan, thanks. Certainly interesting. I can't help noticing the focus
>> on monofunctional input devices (buttons, levers, etc),
>> electromechanical control panels and information graphics that for
>> me brings back memories of late-1980s Donald Norman views on
>> interaction (affordances, mappings, gulf of execution vs gulf of
>> evaluation, and strong notions of goal-driven-single-task use
>> situations).
>
> Partially, this is what we're surrounded by (and ignore) every day.
> At least, this is what I am, living in San Francisco. It wasn't meant
> to express a philosophy of interaction design.

This is how I view it too (and partly why I've been working on the History 
of the Button). Every artifact around us was made by a person. Whether 
they know it or not, they were designing. They had to make choices about 
icons, lettering, positioning, form, etc. So looking at everyday objects 
gives us a sense, a sliver, of how people understand objects.

And since objects will be increasingly "smarter" in the near future, we as 
interaction designers need to understand the language of objects. Because 
as objects become part of the everyware, interaction designers are the 
natural community to figure out how that's going to work. It's 
pre-thinking.

Or, it's also just fun to look at random objects. It makes us more 
connected with the world we live in.

Bill
www.historyofthebutton.com