[IxDA Discuss] Thoughts on Interaction Design

[Mark Schraad]

I must of done a poor job communicating my point Dave.

You have in fact, done a better job of explaining my point. What I  
was trying to accomplish was to put a trade-off or transactional  
framework to the "micro" behavioral shift. It must be met with  
(arguably) an equal, but preferably a greater utility either in  
convenience or "value added" benefits.

To your example, why would a company move records and contacts to  
Salesforce.com if there was not some added utility? This may seem  
pretty obvious, but it is important for designers to understand that  
pure change, such as moving an activity to the net, is not worth  
doing unless it affords some worthy advantage.

Designers must also be aware that even if the micro behavior change  
brings abundant utility, the change in behavior will likely be a  
hurdle in adoption and diffusion. I see this all the time when a  
"better" web interaction confuses users because it does not initially  
conform to their schema and the affordances they currently utilize.

BTW - I really like the macro/micro context. I was in fact calling  
out the behaviors specific to the interaction. What others were  
referring to, I see as behavioral outcomes of the design's benefits.  
As an example, many of us no longer need to go inside the bank  
because we transact online and use ATM's. I am not so sure this was  
an intended behavior - as much as an outcome of the benefits.

Mark


On Apr 1, 2007, at 9:05 AM, David Malouf wrote:

> I also have to take issue with Mark's notion that our job is to  
> reduce or
> have no effect on macro-level behavioral change. That makes no  
> sense to me
> at all. It really depends on what we are doing. Even in business  
> scenarios,
> you want to work within the right contexts, but the best products like
> Salesforce.com are ones that have really changed the way those  
> businesses do
> business. Creating efficiencies of communication, planning,  
> tracking, mining
> that never existed before in midsized organizations changed the  
> entire sales
> cycle, reducting costs, and focusing the teams. It was the changes in
> behavior that made a product like this a success. There are many  
> examples of
> this.
>
> There are also examples of technological systems that should be less
> disruptive at the macro-behavioral level, or should at least have a  
> toe in,
> walk down the stairs into the cold pool, approach to behavioral  
> change.