Style in Interaction Design

Let’s say there are two interaction designers, and let’s assume they work in same medium. Online, let’s say, just for the sake of argument. You know their work; you’ve seen other products they’ve launched. They are both competent designers, at the top of their craft. Now imagine I pointed you to two new web apps that these two designers had done (separately). Could you tell which interaction designer had done which? Chances are, no you could not. Unlike other design disciplines, style is a subtle thing in interaction design.

Design style, according to Fred Brooks from his book The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist, is “a set of different repeated microdecisions, each made the same way whenever it arises, even though the context may be different.” He notes that programmers are able to recognize other programmers’ styles by looking at their code alone, and perhaps the same could be true of interaction designers and their wireframes. But in the final product, where it would matter, interaction design style is hard to detect. I think there’s some reasons for that.

The first is, unlike form-giving design disciplines like industrial or visual design or architecture, interaction designers often rely on form-giving disciplines and on developers to manifest their design in physical form. Unless it is something like a workflow or a purely gestural interaction with a mechanical output, there is almost always an interface as the manifestation of the interaction design. Obviously, interaction designers who can code and do interface/industrial design have a leg up here in having their work embodied as expected, as do interaction designers who are embedded in a collaborative team.

Secondly, the existing palette for interaction design feels more limited by intention. One radio button is much like the next one, for example, and this is on purpose so that users know how to use it, and so that developers know how to easily code it. (Although certainly the palette is wide enough to make a huge variety of applications and products.) Dials and buttons and the like can look different ways, but if they act differently the interaction designer has most likely done something wrong. But compared to the flexibility of, say, a curve or a line or a piece of type, it seems paltry.

Granted, this is starting to waver because there are more “blank canvas” or “terminal” devices out there, like the iPad, touchscreen kiosks, installations, and gaming consoles. And accordingly, it’s not difficult for those in the know to tell game designers apart because of the dynamics of game play and the game “content.”

The last reason is philosophical: some feel that interaction designers, not being artists or form-givers, shouldn’t have a recognizable style. (I’m not sure this is even possible, as some style, as Brooks points out, is unconscious, e.g. I make this decision because it’s worked for me in the past.) But there is a pragmatic/utilitarian streak in interaction design, springing from our roots in usability engineering and human factors, (and currently highlighted by data-driven design decisions) that says efficiency and flow are all. Style gets in the way. We should subsume ourselves in the activity and user goals. The interaction designer should always be invisible.

Perhaps instead of individual styles, interaction designers have a collective style. Perhaps interaction designers are the anonymous craftsmen, the Shaker furniture makers of the digital era. Individual style in interaction design would only ensure users of a quality interaction, after all, and most people can already tell a good interaction from a bad one (although granted, often only after they buy the product). Many people can probably also tell great interaction design from good. And perhaps that’s enough.

This was written by Dan Saffer. Posted on Monday, November 8, 2010, at 12:21 pm. Filed under Interaction Design. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.