Thoughts on Interaction Design

Computer applications are not humans, they are ‘machines’, we all know that. Yet, they have a behavior, not always very human-like but it is a behavior. Applications show me things, they tell me things, they make sounds and they react in a certain way when I try to make them do something. We interact with each other as I react on what it tells me and vice versa. It is perhaps not always sophisticated behavior and it is perhaps better not compared to human behavior at all, but it somehow almost feels like you are interacting with a person.

So if we think about an application as a person, what kind of person would it be? Is it a rude person or a very gentle one? Is it a blunt person or very tactful person. Does it like me, or is it just doing what I asked? You may wonder why I ask all these questions. The main reason is that as a designer of an application we basically have the ability to determine what kind of ‘person’ the application will be and how it will behave. (more…)