Is Interaction Design a dead-end job?

I dislike the term 2.0 (at least it’s not 3.0), but I agree with Fabricio (at least I think I’m agreeing). I think Interaction Design is a layer of considerations added to what you already create as a designer (things, services, experiences, fear, whatevs). Maybe it’s the most important layer sometimes.

Of course, many are keen on a greater distinction between disciplines and specialties. I think it’s natural for people to want to do that – people who like rules, definitions, hierarchies and things that can be easily understood and communicated. Very much the things that design is not.

Maybe if we make a framework chart of our research synthesis and wireframe some ideas using a meaningful information taxonomy we can get to the bottom of this! Yay!

Ludeman, what do you say?

Seems to me like an old debate—think of the venue of desktop publishing and the death of graphic design(ers)—re-applied to interaction design. As I find it’s usually the case with such articles, the comments that come after them are more interesting. I would agree with the comment of the second person that interaction design—or any form of design for that matter—is a craft. A craft which you spend lots of your time learning and that builds on History.

I never find the argument that designers (or in this particular case, interaction designers) are going to be extinct or unnecessary particularly impressive. Especially not when the bulk of the text of the author relies on a paraphrase (B. Moggridge) and some personal observations. Not that all of it is worthless, just that it’s this person’s opinion and that he’s trying to be some sort of (very mild) polemist. Maybe that’s why I don’t like the article—too mild.

There’s also the fact that he seems to describe interaction designers as they have no other background than interaction design—he cites as examples developers and industrial designers that already can do our job well. It may be so. But it doesn’t seem very convincing to me.

Just take the people in our program as an example: most have a BA in industrial/product design, some in graphic design, some engineering, etc. These people add different sets of skills and ways of thinking to their original craft—in other words, the specialize themselves in the field of interaction design.

Of course there is interaction everywhere and in anything (god that’s cheesy!). But that doesn’t mean that any girl or guy on the street—or any Designer—is apt at making a good attempt at understanding it (the interactions, that is).

Well, Billy-boy wasn’t the only one making gloomy comments after watching the film. The apple-guy said that the developement in rapid prototyping has distanced designed designers from the actual process and the guy who designed the embryo chair said that ‘democratisation pollutes design’, meaning that everyone can be a designer now and in his opinion they produce crap and landfill.

I wanna see the film now. Seems like it’s going to make question the profession of our choice, which I already do.

Anyways, I think that the democratisation of tools and techniques is just good for this (kinda fake) profession, we are already too many designers doing too many shit products. So if the same garbage is just made on Joe Sixpack’s desktop printer and the interaction in Flash CS300000 to accompany it or by a consultancy for €2340384 with the same set of tools, it makes absolutely no difference, except Joe didn’t invest anything at all. Besides, if there is a lot more people doing the same thing, we all learn a lot more.

I actually really happy about the Applestore, people can make their own interactions and make money out of those. And it really shows what people want: farts at the press of a button.