Lately several design droplets readers have asked for some information and articles on interaction design. There have also been plenty of people in the last few years heralding the future of Industrial Design as a blend of Industrial Design and Interaction Design. So I thought it was finally time to take Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge off the bookshelf, where it has been sitting for the last year since I purchased it, and get stuck into it. If you are looking for something that you can carry around and read on a bus or in a cafe. Then forget it! Designing Interactions is a 700 page plus monster that is heavy!
But If you are looking for an in-depth introduction to interaction design then you need not look any further. The books author Bill Moggridge, an Industrial Designer and co-founder of IDEO, designed the GRiD Compass (the worlds first laptop) for GRiD Systems in 1979. He thus became a key participant in shaping and popularizing the discipline now known as interaction design. Initially his book is a potted history of how interaction design emerged from the industrial design surrounding the early computer systems. However as you dig deeper into the book and get into the later chapters you find that it also provides a good look at where interaction design and industrial design are headed in a world where many objects are becoming embedded with digital technology.
Designing Interactions is made of up of a large selection of casual interviews with many designers who are well known for their contribution to the interaction design discipline, interspersed with Bill Moggridge’s commentary and thoughts. I personally found the book to be very engaging in the first half. The rest not so much so and I found the last couple of chapters – especially the one featuring Jane Fulton Suri to be quite focused on pitching IDEO’s methodologies. The first half of the book was particularly interesting in terms of historical information and the perspectives of the interviewee’s on past events which they had a hand in.
The book also comes with a DVD, which is great if you don’t really like to read as you can get the gist of the book from the interviews featured on it (the interviews are the same ones featured in the book). However if you only watch the DVD then you will miss Bill’s commentary, which provides a web to connect all the interviews. The other thing that struck me about the DVD was it seems a little silly to watch the DVD if you have read the book or vice versa, since either one is largely the same content.
Overall Designing Interactions is an excellent read. The two main criticisms would be that its way too large and heavy, physically (I don’t believe the interactions people have with the book were thought through at all!). Instead of just featuring the interviews of the DVD they could have put together one that would compliment the book by providing more content or even some videos and walk throughs of some of the interaction spoken about in the book.
Have you read Designing Interactions? What are your thoughts on the book? Share them in the comments.
Designing Interactions can be purchased from Amazon.
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