[IxDA Discuss] "Design" in Interaction Design?

[Katie Albers]

>In response to Murli's thoughtful "Straw Man" theory and Katie's "Copy
>Paste" abilities; Design does mean a lot of things for sure, but it's not
>undefinable, especially when you're considering something as specific as
>"Interaction Design".

Don't go trifling with my copy/paste abilities :-) More to the point, 
no one's been able to answer that question yet.

Okay. Let me try simple declarative sentences and see if that helps.
My issue is not that I think Design is undefinable.
My issue is not that it means many things.
I agree that Interaction Design is specific.
My issue is that no one has defined design.

I suspect that people are using the word to mean many different 
things, and unless we nail it down in its context(s) we cannot 
legitimately discuss it, and to say Interaction Design is a form of 
Design that is interactive (which is what people seem to fall back 
on) is meaningless. We say that the aesthetic can be multi-valent but 
we don't define what relies on or is informed by the aesthetic.

Many years ago, when I first got into this field, I was in the middle 
of researching what the stakeholders were looking for and they all 
kept using the same terms, but in a highly specialized way that I was 
not familiar with and that didn't seem to match - so to speak. I 
asked each of them to send me a definition of each of 4 or 5 terms 
and got back entirely incompatible definitions. No wonder they 
couldn't communicate with me; they weren't actually communicating 
with each other, although they were certain that they were.

I suspect that something similar is happening here and that we aren't 
having the conversation we think we are having and that concerns me.

Katie

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Katie Albers
katie at firstthought.com