core to the practice of Interaction Design

One of the primary rules of interaction design starts with people and comes towards a specific solution from the crowd’s perspective. The core practice and design principles can provide interactive design a better guideline. Searching for unmet human wants and needs opens up the outcomes of the design process to include experiences, systems, and services as well as physical things (Ellen, 2014).cs

Eames has a well-known philosophy called the banana leaf parable. He relates the progression of design and its process where the banana leaf is transformed into something fantastically ornate. The banana leaf is the simplest thing to eat. The banana leaf can be made more complex and more ornate, but the function cannot be changed. Eames explained that function is the most crucial element of design. Based on this theory, Eames designs a multiscreen film Think, which is projected onto 14 large screens and eight smaller ones, explored problem-solving techniques for simple and complex issues. The film emphasized similarities in how humans and computers process and interpret information (Colin, 2016). He firmly believes that each design work will eventually return to the simplest and specific functions design.

Karl Gerstner uses art literature and scientific resources to study the basic visual elements of color and form. He discussed the design idea of continuously and uniformly measuring changes in the three dimensions of color, which provides a more detailed reference for the color research of interactive design. Besides, the mathematical ingenuity of Karl Gerstner’s grid, designed in 1962, is considered an irreplaceable design. The smallest unit in the Gerstner matrix is 1Opt (baseline to baseline). Plus, the central area of text and images is a square grid, with the title and running head area above. The final structure of the combined grid is five smaller grids. Gerstner’s innovation was to propose a rule set or system defined by the designer to determine all aesthetic decisions for a given product: for example, a logo might also function as a layout grid system or inspire a font (Karl, 2019).

Sutnar is considered as one of the pioneers of information design. He has made many attempts in the field of interaction between graphic devices and information graphic design. He created essential manuals of form manipulation, including Catalog Design (1944) and Catalog Design Progress (1950) to clear away the chaos of printed material and regulate visual standards. He recollected and organized information through coordinated visual systems of geometric shapes, navigational signals, and constructivist colors. After his redesign,  these catalogs are identifiable, functional, and dynamically visual. Besides, Sutnar proposed a theoretical structure that defines “what is good design?” to build a rigorous design framework. Moreover, he defines a “new design synthesis” for his designed Internet page. The design principles and the graphic work’s geometric structure were explained in analytic animations projected and presented a large amount of data clearly and orderly to facilitate customer consumption (Fischer, 2005).

“Design for people” emphasizes that design is a design process that mainly focuses on serving user groups, and design requires user experience as the center to improve customer experience. Designers meet their individual needs about diverse sizes, types, fields. Henry Dreyfuss was asked to create a new telephone set due to the changing user targets. He conducted diverse data collection, rich practice, and unveiled the Model 302 telephone in 1937. The exterior design of Model 302 telephone is based on ergonomics and fully considers the experience’s comfort. However, the Model 302 telephone has insufficient functions, which does not consider people’s needs for hands-free calls and the triangular handset design cannot fulfill this function. Dreyfuss did not continue to create abstract product angles and curves to create the next generation of telephone equipment. Instead, and started random usage research and data measurement of user groups to calculate the most suitable distance between earpieces. Dreyfuss finally launched the Model 500 in 1823 to successfully solve this problem. Meanwhile, Dreyfuss emphasizes that designers need to know enough about users, manufacturing processes, and customer markets to improve product design and continuously improve user experience continuously. Dreyfuss’s design principle that considers the design’s functional requirements from the user’s perspective also affects the user research method. This principle highlights the product update design by observing user needs and conducting a sufficient number of user tests.

The key to the interactive design is to establish a comfortable and safe connection between the product and the user, and “people-oriented” is a useful tool to achieve the design effect. In this research, Eames, Gerstner and Sutnar’s designs include standard and standardized formats and rich design elements and practical functions to establish a good relationship between users and products. In other words, the target of design is determined by users’ demands. Therefore, the design of interaction transfers from ergonomics satisfies user’s spiritual needs (Song, F. H., Ma, F. J., & Liu, Y., 2012).

Reference

Colin Martin. (2016). Eames design: from fractured limbs to human cognition. The Lancet Neurology.

Ellen Lupton. (2014). Beautiful users：Designing for people. New York, New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Fischer W. (2005). Ladislav Sutnar: Design in Action by Ladislav Sutnar. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. University of California Press, vol. 64, No. 1, pp. 102-105.

Karl Gerstner. (2019). Designing programmes: programme as typeface, typography, picture, method. Lars Muller Publishers.

Song, F. H., Ma, F. J., & Liu, Y. (2012). About Five Senses and Six Feelings in Interaction Design. Applied Mechanics and Materials, vol. 263–266, pp. 1574–1577.