Dan Saffer: 'Interaction design is an applied art' August 13, 2008

http://www.designinterviews.com/interviews/interaction-design-is-an-applied-art

Reading this interview with Dan Saffer was really interesting to see how someone who works as an Interactive Designer thinks and uses his time.

What I thought was just as interesting is how similar Dan Saffer is to myself. I found myself agreeing with almost everything he said. On comments I hadn't thought about on my own, I read what he had to say and found myself understanding and wanting to know more about what he had to say. For example,

"What are the core elements of an interaction that web designers measure during the creating process?

Usefulness, usability, and desirability. If your design fills a need in people's lives, works well, and looks beautiful, you've got design gold. There are lots of secondary characteristics that fall under these headings, like efficiency and balance and trustworthiness and a whole host of other traits, most of which can only be fuzzily measured but are important nonetheless."

This was really interesting for me as its gives you 3 main aspects to try and work towards when designing for interaction and general application of creative skill. Usefulness, usability and desirability are the essence of design within the industry and can be applied to almost any interactive content. Even on something such as an electric hand dryer. Usefulness as the user has wet hands and doesn't need to press the button. Usability is simple as the user only has to place their hands under the dry and desirability is there too as it's novel and makes us feel ever so slightly more technically advanced, life's simple pleasures comes to mind.

I also found Dan Saffer quite inspiring in terms of his principles he follows in his work,

'The Way you know is not The Way.' –Tao Te Ching

'A body in motion tends to stay in motion.' Newton's First Law

'If it was easy, then everyone would do it.'

Reading these three really struck a cord with me. Recently in my personal life the first of the three has been quite a prominent feature and something I will have to work on to change, so it was refreshing to see it written by someone else completely unrelated. Also, I think that all 3 of the statements are very true. At the end of the day, if you're working hard and pushing yourself continually with the ability to critically analyse yourself, you're going to go far and develop as a designer and that's why were at University, to learn, change and advance.