The Purpose of Interaction Design?

Robert Fabricant – Behavior is our Medium from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.
And the answer, invariably: “to elicit a certain behavior”.

Surprisingly, Robert’s assertion was not as obvious to all those in attendance as he had hoped. He got pushback on the idea that designers traffic in behavior. In a follow-up post he writes:

“There is universal acceptance of a holistic approach to human centered design within this community – generally referred to as ‘experience design’ (not my preferred term). This approach considers all of the contexts surrounding use and then tries to build a unified interaction model to support user needs over time, across these contexts. It focuses not just on expressed needs but on those that are unexpressed: the emotions, motivations, and desires that shape user engagement over time. In fact, more and more of our clients are looking for our help in identifying these latent, unmet needs. So, it is interesting to find designers who are very comfortable, in fact insistent, on this holistic approach and yet spooked by the idea that we are in the ‘behavior business’.”

I have to admit that I’m also quite shocked that some interaction designers don’t see what they do as influencing behavior. If you’re not influencing behavior…then what is it you’re doing?

Via Bokardo