interaction design versus user interface design

Tags: Design
February 1, 2008 by Barbara

Over on the Interaction Design Association discussion group, there’s been a long discussion about distinguishing interaction design from user interface design. This is an exercise only those deep in the design professions will care about; I for one have claimed the titles “Human Factors Engineer”, “Usability Manager”, “User Interface Designer”, “Interaction Designer”, and others. All fall under the umbrella of user experience, so don’t overly worry that your organization’s titles don’t fully reflect “proper” definitions.

As I see it, interaction design and user interface design are inseparable and mutually interdependent. One is actual interface (in an engineering/programming/sewing sense): the collection of inputs and outputs that enable the user to interact with the system. Similarly, interaction is the user, software, network, and hardware behaviors that enable the system (human + machine + network + server) to accomplish goals. Of course, the human needs to be informed as to what behaviors are useful; this is communicated via the interface.

Within these definitions, many expertises are needed to fully design a system. Graphic design, human factors, industrial design, system design, and computer science are all included, either implicitly or explicitly. Better experiences arise when each of these is carefully considered rather than mindlessly addressed by business or development professionals.

What is human factors? A profession that brings an understanding of human behavior, human psychology, human emotion, individual differences, human performance, and so forth into the system design process. Some human factors professionals focus on learning more about users, some focus on applying derived principles into large scale system design (think cockpits, power plants, etc.), and some incorporate the above principles into software and smaller device/system design. We focus on the latter. Some of us even do graphic design.

What is usability? It is one of many measures of a system. Other measures include efficiency and learnability. Usability testing measures usability and can also measure some of the other factors. Some usability professionals focus just on measurement; others incorporate design and human factors expertise to design usable systems. We focus on the latter while using the former as a tool.


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