The importance of craft in interaction design

Definition of craft from Oxford dictionary:
· an activity involving skill in making things
· skill in carrying out one’s work

Being a designer is being a craftsman and the craft of an interaction designer is expressing ideas in four dimensions. The fourth dimension in interacton design is not exclusively time, but time plus behavior.

Let’s take a step back; visual designers’ craft is about exploring 2D space, and industrial design is about crafting in the physical tridimensional world. Interaction designer’s craft relies on and it’s informed by the adjacent disciplines of industrial design and visual design, but uses the elements of animation, and the power of interactivity to build experiences for a completely unique medium. This medium is the digital world, as Gilliam Crampton Smith defines interaction design as architecture for the digital world, (have a look at her TED talk). So to really master all the possibilities offered by the digital material the craft of the interaction designer is a mix of animation, cognitive ergonomics, computational thinking, and computational practice. These ingredients are key to creating successful and delightful interactions and experiences.

There are tools today that allow to prototype without knowing anything about coding, or computational thinking, and these tools are great for many reasons, but I believe that to be well-rounded, making and sketching in code is fundamental for being able to master the dynamic medium we work within.

Craft as Expression in the Dynamic Medium

“Conversation, theater, news and text are all increasingly delivered electronically… electronic technology is bringing all modes of communications into one grand system.”
— Ithiel de Sola Pool

What we call “code” is at its essence logic. Being able to express ideas in the logic of code is empowering because, quoting Ithiel de Sola Pool, the ideas that one can express in the medium of computing can remix different forms of media in a fluid form. A two-dimensional drawing can be enhanced with audio, or animation can be generated as a simulation of a complex system, and a fictional spatial environment can be turned into a video game. One of the most important properties is its dynamicity. Alan Kay’s and Alele Goldberg’s Dynabook, described in this article from 1977, how the material of computation can include poems, letters, recipes, records, drawings, animations, musical scores, waveforms, dynamic simulations, and anything else you would like to remember and change. With this understanding designers can play with the dynamic medium of computation to their full capacity, providing better interactions and more engaging digital products.

Craft as a Reclaiming Tool

“Today’s computer world is based on techie misunderstandings of human thought and human life. And the imposition of inappropriate structures throughout the computer is the imposition of inappropriate structures on the things we want to do in the human world.”
— Ted Nelson

Being able to express themselves in code has nothing to do with software engineering. It’s about freedom. It’s about the freedom of expressing ideas in a multitude of forms, and it’s the superpower of a designer that can simulate behavior in four dimensions without the constraints of other already constructed software (Figma, After Effects…).

This flexibility is manifested in the process of sketching and learning by doing. Kelley Shanaha has a great article where she writes “Because I know how to code, I have a better idea of what is possible to design!”. Moreover, by making, we have a different relationship with engineering partners, we are able to speak their language and bring engineering on “our side”, making the collaboration more fruitful. This empowers designers to materialize thoughtfulness, kindness, and humanity in digital products.

Craft produces Demos

“We made demos. We mixed in feedback. We listened to guidance from smart colleagues. We blended in variations. We honed our vision. We followed the initial demo with another and then another.”
— Ken Kocienda

In product innovation, product design, or design consultancy the power of a designer lies in his ability to communicate ideas and create concepts that fit the technological constraints. Interaction design is about making the right ideas tangible and understandable and in order to push projects forward there is no better way than prototyping.

A powerful means of communication is making demos that simulate the experience. The quality and speed of these demos depend on the craft of an interaction designer. This is the best tool for bringing on board executive leadership of other disciplines. You can read Creative Selection, the excellent book by Ken Kocienda that explain the process of creating software product for Apple.

Craft for Emerging Technologies

“Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the ‘things’ that we sell, rather than the individual, social and cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that they have.”
— Bill Buxton

Sometimes we just focus on the task: a better login screen, an easier way to pay online, or whatever it is. We don’t ask about higher-level problems or philosophies behind digital products, and we don’t think out of the box. The ability to solve problems outside the boundaries of existing technologies, allows us to challenge the status quo, it is an opportunity to deeply understand the context. It requires dedication and big ideas, to read more check Johny Ive’s commencement for the graduating class of 2021 at CCA. In my view, interaction designers should develop a mindset to design, not just for the present, but to design future experiences and imagine how emerging technologies will be integral parts of a future positive reality; with mindfulness, thoughtfulness, and cultural understanding. The only way to push emerging technology ideas into the eyes of stakeholders is to prototype. Video prototyping here can be effective too, can set vision. Prototyping with the material though, can help understand the constraints, can help reveal the properties of that emerging technology, and can help inform how to design for it.

Teaching Craft in Interaction Design

These are the principles behind the 15-week-long Prototyping class I teach at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Students come with a beginner’s mindset and learn logic, computational thinking, principles of animation. We use the Processing programming environment for our sketches, Arduino for exploring interactions in the physical domain and THREEJS when we venture into simulating 3d space into a computer.

The curriculum is fast-paced, and each week is an exploration of some different aspect of craft. Some of the activities involve drawing with computers and developing aesthetic sensitivity, creating data visualizations that are informative and pleasing, prototype with physical interactions really understand the gist of feedback, feedforward, mapping, and affordances. With code, we explore general notions like the ones just mentioned and we explore form, aesthetics and the principles of Gestalt. We create sketches from scratch because it’s important to understand these elements in the most simple and pure way.

These are some of the projects that the students challenged themselves with:

The students gained not just a better understanding of principles of UX and related theory, but also the ability to create in the medium of computation. They have learned how to create for personal expression but also for validation and communication.

To conclude craft in the form of computational thinking and expression is powerful and much needed in design education, giving future professionals tools to be better designers and better thinkers.

References:

· Behind every artifact lurks an ideology, Gillian Crampton Smith, link

· What to Study? Interaction Design, Bill Verplank, link

· Personal Dynamic Media, Adele Goldberg and Alan Kay, link

· Coding for UX Design, Kelley Shanahan, link

· Creative Selection, Ken Kocienda, link

· Commencement Speech CCA 2021, Johny Ive, link

· Do UX Designers code?, Amy Smith, link

· Sketching User Experience, Bill Buxton, link