Interaction Designers are the shapers of behavior. Interaction Designers — whether practicing as Usability Engineers, Visual Interface Designers, or Information Architects — all attempt to understand and shape human behavior. This book exists to better understand the challenges and responsibilities associated with designing for human behavior.
It is the primary goal of this text to better define Interaction Design: to provide a definition that encompasses the intellectual facets of the field, the conceptual underpinnings of Interaction Design as a legitimate human-centered profession, and the particular methods used by practitioners in their day to day experiences. This definition and investigation centers around the issue of argument and rhetoric, and illustrates that Interaction Design is a form of communication that can be thought of as identical in nature to language. As Interaction Design is a vast subject, this text attempts to touch on many topics in a slight manner rather than one topic in a deep manner.
An additional goal of this text is to assure practicing Interaction Designers that they are not, in fact, simply tools to be used in the cleanup phases of a technology-centered project. Interaction Designers need to possess a great intellectual capacity for complicated problem solving, for dynamic inquiry relating to technology, and for substantial empathy of the human experience. This intellectual insight is ideal for solving strategic business problems and for humanizing technology, and the creation of "pretty interfaces" is perhaps the most blatant misuse of this critical resource.
A final goal of this text is to provide Interaction Designers with the vocabulary necessary to justify their existence to other team members: to engineers, to marketers, and ultimately, to management. Without this justification, these advocates for the humane manifestation of technology may end up as simple cogs in the wheel of technological progression.