The influence of Eames, Gerstner and Sutnar techniques on Interaction Design

The Eames Creative Process has a crucial impact on the practice of Interaction Design for the following. First, hundreds of iterations to bring a product to life and keeping improve beyond it. A room for failure is very important in design work. A third element is research. Most of the apps that we interact today have gone through a lot of user research to refine both the idea and the product. These are the characteristics that are embraced by tech companies. The best example is “The Design Sprint” by Google Venture. There are similarity in refining ideas and products.

Gerstner’s use of grid is a core in responsive design today. The grid system provides a guideline on how designer how to map out the flow of information base on the size of the screen. It is much easier to follow the grid as designers need to translate different aspects of contents to fit different size and resolution.

Sutnar broke down the complexity to simplicity in his work. In addition to that, his design work took into account of marketing and target users. This is another core functionality that we see a huge evolution to the user interface and interaction with a complexity object like computers. Sutnar’s information mapping is another core element in interaction design because it is how products communicate with its user. It guides users from point A to point B. For instance, tutorial design of a web or mobile application. It allows the user to learn to use the product quickly and efficiently. If the user needs help, just to the Help tab on the menu bar.

Dreyfuss’s principles affected user research method in many ways. First, keeping user in mind is the number one thing. Then, the target users, which could save time and effort for user research. Secondly, human factor, where everything should fit nicely for human and not the other way round. This involve user testing to gain further insight of the products, while bridging for the new feature. Thirdly, the multiple disciplines like psychology, anatomy etc. The outcome of such user researches bring a lot of pros into the field regardless of the nature of the product.

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One thought on “The influence of Eames, Gerstner and Sutnar techniques on Interaction Design

  1. This is a great overview of these pioneers’ impact on the field of Interaction Design!

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