What is an interaction designer?

Well, I've briefly explored what a designer is, but I'm sure many of you are asking, "okay, but what is an interaction designer?" An interaction designer is a designer with a specific emphasis on the interaction between human beings and machines. There are lot of terms that seem synonymous, such as User Experience Designer, Visual Designer, Human Factors Engineering and the like. But I've found Interaction Design(er) to be the most appropriate definition. The founders of this term and ixda.org offer a nice definition:

Interaction Design (IxD) is the branch of user experience design that defines the structure and behavior of interactive products and services.

...except, doesn't that seem vague? What is "user experience design?" What is "behavior?" What are "interactive product?" What is an "interactive service?"

Looking at Wikipedia, there is some help:

The practice typically centers around complex technology systems such as software, mobile devices, and other electronic devices. However, it can also apply to other types of products and services, and even organizations themselves. Interaction design defines the behavior (the "interaction") of an artifact or system in response to its users.

And it goes even deeper:

Certain basic principles of cognitive psychology provide grounding for interaction design. These include mental models, mapping, interface metaphors, and affordances any of these are laid out in Donald Norman's influential book The Design of Everyday Things. Interaction Design (IxD) is the discipline of defining the behavior of products and systems that a user can interact with.

...and that's the part I love; the part of my job that is most challenging and rewarding. It's where the rubber meets the road and real design begins. Except that most organizations find it difficult to accept and invest in cognitive psychology and user research. I hope that this will change over time.

But, what does an interaction designer do? Interaction design is essentially a different way of doing product design. Traditionally, companies look at their users as "customers" and try to understand them as customers. This treatment has a range of results from 1) basically, letting the users design the product, to 2) the company designs the product and ignores customer input.

This whole range of results has a fundamental flaw and that is the view of the "customer." Interaction design attempts to look at users from a different perspective... as people; with personal goals, ideals, opinions, efficiencies, flaws and the like. The basic idea of interaction design is to get inside the user's head and use that information to design a product. It includes getting feedback from the users, but it doesn't burden them, nor expect them, to design a product.

With an understanding of users apart from being "customers," interaction design attempts to solve design problems using creative thinking and well-defined patterns. Solving these design problems requires a set of skills and education that includes some principles. Bruce Tognazzini handily distills the basics. Here are a few quotes:

For example, which of the following takes less time? Heating water in a microwave for one minute and ten seconds or heating it for one minute and eleven seconds?From the standpoint of the microwave, one minute and ten seconds is the obviously correct answer. From the standpoint of the user of the microwave, one minute and eleven seconds is faster. Why? Because in the first case, the user must press the one key twice, then visually locate the zero key, move the finger into place over it, and press it once. In the second case, the user just presses the same key–the one key–three times. It typically takes more than one second to acquire the zero key. Hence, the water is heated faster when it is "cooked" longer.

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The great efficiency breakthroughs in software are to be found in the fundamental architecture of the system, not in the surface design of the interface. This simple truth is why it is so important for everyone involved in a software project to appreciate the importance of making user productivity goal one and to understand the vital difference between building an efficient system and empowering an efficient user. This truth is also key to the need for close and constant cooperation, communication, and conspiracy between engineers and human interface designers if this goal is to be achieved.

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Give users well-marked roads and landmarks, then let them shift into four-wheel drive. Mimic the safety, smoothness, and consistency of the natural landscape. Don’t trap users into a single path through a service, but do offer them a line of least resistance. This lets the new user and the user who just wants to get the job done in the quickest way possible and "no-brainer" way through, while still enabling those who want to explore and play what-if a means to wander farther afield.

...

Wherever possible, use multi-threading to push latency into the background. Latency can often be hidden from users through multi-tasking techniques, letting them continue with their work while transmission and computation take place in the background.

I'm sure some of you are thinking, "that sounds like the business team's job", or "...the architect's job", or "...the developer's job". Essentially, you are correct. It is all of our jobs to do these things in the interest of making interactive products behave more like people and to stop making people behave like interactive products such as computers. However, the disciplines behind all of these jobs sometimes precludes these roles from making decisions in favor of users and that is why designers are exerting more emphasis on product design; to return product design back to being more human-oriented.

Cooper, in About Face 3.0 points out,

There is an important conflict of interest in the world of digital product development: The people who build the products -- programmers -- are usually also the people who design them. Programmers are often required to choose between ease of coding and ease of use.

This notion is used to support the hypothesis that product design needs a better process which he calls Goal-directed design. This is the process that I try to use (with my own modifications) to design a product that more accurately meets a user's goals and balances those with the business goals.