Interaction Design is a field and approach to designing interactive experiences. These could be in any medium, not only digital media. Interactive experiences, necessarily, require time as an organizing principle (though not exclusively) and Interactive Design is concerned with a user, customer, audience, or participant's experience flow through time. Interactivity should not be confused with animation in which objects may move on a screen; interactivity is concerned with being part of the action of a system or performance and not merely watching the action passively.
#21297
Teaching Information Architecture to the Design Student
What the design student needs is a design course that stresses usability, human factors, and clarity, instead of the typical branding and interpretation problems they usually encounter in their other design classes. James Spahr recounts a year of teaching at Pratt Institute that attempts to cross those boundaries.
Spahr, James. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Education>Human Computer Interaction>Graphic Design
#10433
Technical Communication in an Altered Technology Landscape: What Might Be 
Technical communicators create support products that mediate between people and their computers. However, human-computer relations of the future may not require the reading of manuals or even direct manipulation of the interface. These relations may be delegated to agents, computer surrogates that possess a body of knowledge about something and about the user in relation to that something. A new class of applications may suggest information relevant to the user's situation, proactively offering advice that the user didn't know to ask for. Technical communicators will have continuing roles in enabling users because of their knowledge of the ways that people want to learn from machines. The skills required for technical communicators in the next computer revolution will change at least as much in the next 5 years as they have in the past 5 years.
Zimmerman, Muriel. Technical Communication Online (2001). Design>Human Computer Interaction
#26079
Technical Writers and Interaction Design
Technical writers are oft-forgotten constituents in the product development cycle. Although they are rarely tasked with participating in product requirements definition and product design, technical writers are in a unique position to affect product design. However, they will find that subtlety and subterfuge are sometimes necessary to make a politically correct impact in an organization that has not embraced interaction design as a formal part of the development process.
Calde, Steve. Cooper Interaction Design (2004). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Interaction Design
#27258
Wie zich onder de eerste lichting world wide web-surfers bevond rond 1994, toen de eerste NetScape-browser de Mosaic-browser vervangen had, kan zich waarschijnlijk herinneren dat webpagina's uit niet veel meer bestonden dan tekst met hyperlinks en een lullig patroontje als achtergrond. Er werd nauwlijks gebruik gemaakt van visuele elementen. Helaas kwam daar snel een eind aan.
Massee, Door Laurens. de Lijst (2002). (Dutch) Design>Web Design>Interaction Design>Flash
#27558
Text in Motion With the Wiggler
When you start using After Effects, there will come a time when you look at the presets and think, 'Gosh, I am bored with these.' That will be the point where you discover Adobe has a wonderful sense of humor and you start using the Wiggler. In the text options, on the timeline, the Wiggly selector can be added to a chunk of text to randomize the values of any of the properties associated with that group. That description may sound rather formal, but when it comes to adding effects, randomness can lead to some happy surprises. Essentially you can have text bend, move, blur, spin, and so on by simply giving it some parameters for the effect.
Green, Tom. Community MX (2006). Design>Web Design>Interaction Design>Flash
#18818
Tools and Trade-Offs: Making Wise Choices for User-Centered Design
How can we choose among customer data collection methods when limited staff and financial resources must be spread across the whole development cycle? This tutorial helps participants understand the tradeoffs, so they can make effective choices among methods at different points during product design and development. It focuses on early user-centered intervention to gain cost-effective, reusable end-user information.
Rosenbaum, Stephanie L., Judee Humburg, Judith A. Ramey and Anne Seeley. ACM SIGCHI (1995). Design>User Centered Design>Human Computer Interaction>Usability
#18930
Top Ten Mistakes of Web Management
Web design and development involves three levels: web management; interaction design (navigation support, homepage layout, templates, search, etc.); content design (the actual writing on the pages, as well as the design of any other media types used to communicate content as opposed to site interaction). Just as in a hamburger, the middle layer is the most tasty and attracts the most attention, including much of my own work on Web usability. I have come to realize that the outer two layers are more important in many ways: users only care about content (in other words, no, the medium is not the message; the message is the message) and the usability of a website is more a function of how it is managed than of how good its designers are. Content will be the topic of many other columns; here I address some classic mistakes in managing the design of a website.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Interaction Design
#24107
Traces of Previous Use: The Communicational Possibilities of Interaction Histories
In the digital environment, human presence leaves no trace; every user of an electronic collection is in effect an isolated user. Some researchers in computer interface design have suggested that a useful strategy for reducing this isolation might be to provide a means for a collection to retain an interaction history. If the system creates and makes accessible a record of activity, subsequent users may be able to derive meaning from the record. One well-known implementation of this strategy is in the amazon.com lists of books that were also bought by people who bought the book currently shown. This strategy holds promise for a wider implementation, and is particularly promising as a tool for interfaces designed for information browsing, where user structuring of the items represented can be a significant indication of how they have interpreted the collection. Issues include the role of intention in communication – clearly purchasers at amazon.com are not buying books primarily to create a message for subsequent users – and the significant effects of presuppositions in any communication process – subsequent users must assume that previous buyers were not collecting a set of "worst books" on the topic. Drawing on previous research on interaction histories, as well as Suchman's ideas on situated activity and the phenomenological approach to interface design proposed by Winograd and Flores, this paper examines the means by which interaction histories might be designed specifically to play a role as a communication tool between users of full-prospect browsing interfaces to electronic document collections.
Ruecker, Stan. University of Alberta (2003). Design>Web Design>Personalization>Interaction Design
#24844
Troubling Aspects of the Online Realm
Find out how the blogosphere is portrayed as stupid, how automatic reloading of web pages annoys users, how it's very difficult or impossible to scroll text entry boxes, why search engines need filters, why usability is not "dead" for web design, why delete must not automatically open the next email message, why "view profile" must not be omitted, and why all user actions need prominent "action succeeded" messages and "view action results" page links.
Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Cyberculture>Interaction Design>Usability
#30008
Trust emerges from interaction. If trust in information systems is to be promoted, then attention must be directed, at least in part, to interaction design. This paper explores issues of trust in the interactions between users and systems from the perspective of interaction design. It considers a variety of pragmatic aspects in interaction design that impact user trust, including, predictability, interface stability, user control, and the match between expectations and performance. It critically examines contemporary design practices, such as adaptive interfaces, in terms of their impact on user trust.
Constantine, Larry L. Constantine and Lockwood (2006). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Interaction Design
#12972
A web magazine for interaction designers.
#23279
Use Cases and Interaction Design
Use cases are widely used in large projects to capture the functional requirements of software systems. In the hands of interaction designers, use cases can serve as a powerful tool for brainstorming workflows and bridging the gaps between design and development.
GUUUI (2004). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Interaction Design
#27718
Use Inverted Colors to Highlight Active Link
It is often difficult to find the cursor when a web site is navigated using the keyboard. Where is the active link? With CSS the author of a web page can adjust how the active link is visualized. Inverted colors are the best way to highlight the active link.
Tverskov, Jesper. Smack the Mouse (2006). Design>Web Design>Interaction Design>CSS
#25839
While no one would argue that email is useless, continued inefficient management of emails makes email worse than useless—--it makes them dangerous.
Mancini, John. e-Doc (2005). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Information Design>Email
#21742
This document outlines typical areas of concern when porting a Microsoft Windows application to Mac OS X, and provides guidance for transitioning to the Mac OS X UI.
Apple Inc. (2004). Design>User Experience>Human Computer Interaction
#30461
User Experience Design and Usability
Blog on interface design, interaction design and usability.
Lipiec, Maciej. User Experience Design and Usability (2007). (Polish) Design>User Experience>Interaction Design>User Centered Design
#27552
Put a new shine on your web applications. Tired of clunky web interfaces and waiting around for a page to reload? Well, it’s about time to give your web apps that pine-scented desktop application feel. What are we talking about? Just the newest thing to hit the Web: Ajax—asynchronous JavaScript and XML—and your ticket to building rich Internet applicationsthat are more interactive,responsive, and easy to use. So, grab your trial-size Ajax,included with every copy of Head Rush Ajax:we’re about to put some polish on your web apps.
McLaughlin, Brett D. O'Reilly and Associates (2006). Design>Web Design>Interaction Design>Ajax
#13172
Using JavaScript to Develop Interactive Self-Assessments 
Interactive self-assessments are effective tools for a variety of audiences; from determining one’s Myers- Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or personality characteristics to self-scoring quizzes of all types for online training. Many Web sites contain such selfassessments that help customers select from among other offerings the type of product or service that meets their requirements. The strategic design and development of interactive self-assessments can also help steer customers to your specific product line or service, or even help them make the decision to buy or award a contract. This paper looks at the effectiveness of self-assessments as a business tool and the use of JavaScript for supporting the interactive elements.
Le Vie, Donald S., Jr. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Web Design>Interaction Design>JavaScript
#29991
Using Tables and DHTML for Menus
Dynamic HTML can be used inventively in many ways. Here's a simple way in which tables and DHTML can be used together to provide a menu function. The technique may be used in a frameset, but to keep things simple, we are going to use the table to control 'targets' in an inline frame (or IFRAME).
Self, Tony. HyperWrite (2005). Design>Web Design>Interaction Design>DHTML
#23291
Visio - The Interaction Designer's Nail Gun
The reason why Visio is the favourite prototyping tool of many interaction designers is because of its ready-made interface objects, you can drag-and-drop onto pages and its ability to link pages together and export them as web pages. But what distinguishes Visio from other prototyping tools is its use of layered backgrounds.
Olsen, Henrik. GUUUI (2002). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Interaction Design
#26840
Visio: The Interaction Designer's Nail Gun (2nd Edition)
This is a second edition of the article on using Visio for rapid prototyping for the web. The new edition includes a new and improved version of the GUUUI Prototyping Tool for Visio 2003.
Olsen, Henrik. GUUUI (2006). Articles>Information Design>Interaction Design>Visio
#32063
Want to know what’s RED HOT? Adobe Flex
I am not going to insult your intellence and try to teach you how to use Adobe Flex because frankly, I am just learning. Over the past few months, every major project and intitiative I’ve heard about has components built using Adobe Flex. With the emergence of Flash as a usable technology and ActionScript as a top notch coding language, Adobe Flex has quickly become the hottest new tool in ubertrendy web development circles.
Robbins, Kyle. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Flash>Interaction Design
#30046
WAP and Accountability: Shortcomings of the Mobile Internet as an Interactional Problem
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is designed to allow access to the Internet on a mobile phone. Attempts to explain its limited success have focused on attitudinal and cognitive reasons for non-use, finding that although people recognize the benefits of WAP, issues like lack of content, privacy concerns, and reference group behavior account for non-use. Such explanations have also been incomplete in that they have not addressed problems related to actual use and interaction with the technology. Our article studies the use of WAP as situated action. We focus on how users make sense of WAP pages and how they disambiguate in situ the responses from the service, i.e., new pages and new menus. Our method of transcribing videos of WAP use following the conventions of conversation analysis offers a cost-effective tool for understanding user interaction with technology and provides useful implications for design.
Koskinen, Ilpo, Petteri Repo and Kaarina Hyvönen. Journal of Usability Studies (2006). Design>Web Design>Wireless Web>Interaction Design
#28204
We Got Sick of Hearing About Design and China, So we Got on a Plane and Went There
There has certainly been a great deal of speculation lately regarding the real or perceived rise of Chinese industrial design. We say 'perceived rise' to emphasize that their impending world domination in this field is not a foregone conclusion, despite the frequent flurries of listserve chatter and design-conference panel discussions supporting such a notion.
Tharp, Bruce M. and Stephanie Munson. uiGarden (2006). Design>Web Design>Interaction Design>China
#28223
Web 2.0 defines a second phase of development of websites, its architecture and its functionality.
Information Architects Japan (2006). Design>Web Design>Interaction Design
