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Why is it called interactive design?
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The software design is defined in the first edition, and it is equivalent to the so-called user interface design. In these two terms, the user interface design has a longer history. I sometimes use this name in the book if it is more appropriate.
However, the scope of this book is much larger than the design of the user interface. The term "interface" refers to the appearance, and the design issues involved in this book are far more than the software appearance on the display screen, and they directly point to what is the core problem of the digital product.
In recent years, there are still some terms to represent this type of design. When the network boom reached the peak in 2000, the discipline of the so-called information architecture (IA) appeared to eventually expressed this design. However, just as the high expectation of the network economy at the time, IA only maintains only the vision of the narrow web center, and the field of page organizations and context navigation. As the new economy has retired, the fate of IA is not very optimistic.
Another term recently started to be popular is an experience design. The American Graphics Art Association (AIGA) is specifically recommended to use this term as a combined with various design and availability techniques to create digital products and systems. This idea is quite attractive, but it still does not answer which design is the true core of the interactive system, one is obviously a new design species with the original design.
The concept of designing the experience itself is also problematic. Experience, in the author's point of view, it is the result of the interaction of people and manufacturing (or life). The experience occurs in the environment, and is further adjusted by various inner, psychological, personal environment, and these inherent environments are determined by different motives, experience, temperament, and various implied factors.
As a designer, we cannot really design the user's experience of a product or system, but we can design the product's interactive mechanism to enhance the user's experience.
Because we believe that the experience is in the interaction of people and products, we choose the term "interactive design" means the design type discussed in this book, this term is first proposed by Bill Moggridge and Bill Verpland in the 1980s. You can't design experience itself, but you can design interactive behavior to adjust and guide experience.
