Of all my professional work, I've done the most in the discipline of interaction design (IxD). I have experience creating a full number of IA and IxD deliverables, most notably wireframes, sitemaps and user science (personas, etc.)
Interaction Design is the branch of user experience design that illuminates the relationship between people and the interactive products they use. While interaction design has a firm foundation in the theory, practice, and methodology of traditional user interface design, its focus is on defining the complex dialogues that occur between people and interactive devices of many types. [...] Following the fundamental tenets of user-centered design, the practice of interaction design is grounded in an understanding of real users--their goals, tasks, experiences, needs, and wants. Approaching design from a user-centered perspective, while endeavoring to balance users' needs with business goals and technological capabilities, interaction designers provide solutions to complex design challenges, and define new and evolving interactive products and services. (from the Interaction Design Group) |
"User interface (UI) design is the overall process of designing how a user will be able to interact with a system/site. User interface design is involved in many stages of product development, including: requirements analysis, information architecture, interaction design, user testing, documentation, and help-system design."(from The Usability Company)
However, Interaction design is more than just designing a User Interface where a user interacts with a system, be it an application or a web site. No one discipline is responsible for delivering superior user experience, but interaction design (along with information architecture and information design) takes the lead in ensuring that the interactions with a product like a web site is as pleasant and functional as possible and lets the user complete the tasks they want to complete. |
| (One example - Blue Mountain Center for Meditation, www.easwaran.org) |
| Easwaran.org redesign project |
| User Experience Designer, including Business Analyst, Information Architect, Interaction Designer, Information Designer and de facto Project Manager |
| The client had contacted me to revise the existing information architecture for their web site, including an ecommerce component. The existing IA revealed issues that would best be solved through a complete analysis and redesign of the site applying a full user experience perspective on their complete site |
| I needed to analyze how the site was currently performing, how the users were able to perform the tasks on the site. Additionally, I wanted to clarify the goals of the web site and how it operated as a marketing device as well as improve general interaction design on the site and unify the visual theme of the pages. |
| Full user experience design deliverables were created to analyze, develop and support the new vision of the easwaran.org portal site. These deliverables included:
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| Business Analysis |
business goals spreadsheet |
Strategic business goals for the site |
| business process flow charts |
Analysis of business process regarding content creation and delivery |
| conceptual drawings and maps |
Analysis of potential users and their relationship to BMCM products |
| user segmentation |
User segmentation and persona creation |
| available upon request |
Analysis of site visits, including search log results |
| usability heuristic analysis |
Basic heuristic analysis of existing GUI with suggestions for revision and better allocation of real estate |
| Information Architecture |
content inventory |
Inventory to catalogue the existing content and analysis that formed content strategy and recommendations |
| sitemap |
Taxonomy, including labelling, navigational scheme and headings/sections, and content types; sitemap also noted where new content creation was necessary, and advised where existing content needed to be revised |
| Interaction Design |
wireframes |
- Over 71 wireframes detailing a complete redesign of the existing site's structure (IA), each page's layout (visual and information design) and the functions and interactions on those pages (interaction design).
- Created 10 separate sets of wireframes (in OmniGraffle) which separated the content into unique sections. Each contained notations on the functional, creative and technical requirements of the page; basic elements of the page (including type of content, kind of item and description), as well as a legend, issues section, version control area, site flow and type of page.
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A full suite of clear, easy to understand user experience deliverables which allow the BMCM to develop a more usable web site. All wireframes had annotations explaining the design decisions, including the functions and interactions of my proposed designs. In this way, new team members (like developers who had no background or context about the project) could quickly get up to speed with the project.
Other examples are available upon request.
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