1. Definition and scope of interaction design
Interaction design refers to the design of interactive digital products that support people’s daily work and life. One of the early theorists of interaction design, Terry Winograd, professor at Stanford University and author of "The Art of Software Design", once described interaction design in 1997 as "the design of spaces for human communication and interaction" "[1]. Dan Saffer, an interaction design expert who graduated from Carnegie Mellon University, also believes: "Interaction design is about people: how people connect with other people through the products and services they use." [2] He also A diagram was drawn to depict the relationship between interaction design and other related disciplines, emphasizing that interaction design falls under the category of user experience (Figure 1). The above views represent the current mainstream understanding of interaction design in academia: interaction design is an interdisciplinary practice category targeting user experience. From a broad perspective, interaction design belongs to the service design of communication and communication. From a chivalrous perspective, it refers to the knowledge and skills related to software design and product development. The knowledge scope of interaction design includes cognitive psychology, usability analysis, UI design and information Contents such as architecture (software engineering) also overlap to a considerable extent with disciplines such as industrial design and visual communication. Although interaction design requires actual products and services as a medium, its essence is still communication between people. Therefore, most of the current main positions of interaction designers belong to the operation, planning, product development and customer complaint departments of software companies. The company's product managers or project managers often have rich experience in interaction design.
2. From needs to experience: theoretical research on interaction design
The prototype of the concept of user experience or user-centered design (UCD) can be traced back to the 20th century 1950s. With the rise of industrial design and ergonomics after the war, the "people-centered" design idea became popular. For example, the first-generation industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss (1903-1972)'s book "Designing for People" pioneered the design concept based on ergonomics. At that time, the "hierarchy of needs theory" proposed by Abraham H Maslow (1908-1970), a famous American psychologist, provided a psychological basis for user experience. In his book "Motivation and Personality" published in 1954, Maslow regarded motivation as consisting of a variety of needs of different natures: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs. These needs are like a pyramid, showing a ladder-shaped development level from low to high, so it is called the "hierarchy of needs theory". The psychological study of human needs and the development of early ergonomics became the theoretical basis of modern interaction design. However, because the objects of demand psychology research are too broad, and early ergonomics focused more on the collection and analysis of human body physical data, they did not take the user experience of specific product consumers as the research object.
Since the 1990s, with the rapid development and popularization of high-speed processing chips, digital media and Internet technology, software products have become the intermediary for people’s social, business activities and leisure entertainment. Similar to early product design In contrast, "immaterial design" with digital virtual products as its core pays more attention to users' emotional needs and experience. In 1998, Terry Winograd predicted the future development trend of the computer industry. He once wrote the article "From Computing Machinery to Interaction Design", which pointed out the direction of the development of interaction design from the perspective of computer and artificial intelligence experts. This paper predicts the changing trend of human-machine relationship in the next 50 years based on the development trend of human-machine interaction. He believes that the increasing importance of communication and interaction design will cause the entire industry to tilt toward studying the human aspect, that is, user experience, rather than toward studying the machine aspect. Figure 2 shows this development trend from material design to immaterial design. With the advent of the information age, the traditional mechanical engineering and manufacturing fields are gradually integrating with computer intelligence and moving towards subjective and humanized design. At the same time, industrial design, visual communication, etc. pay more attention to user experience. Interaction design is at the forefront of this category.
User Experience (UE or UX for short) refers to all the user’s feelings before, during and after using a product or service, including emotions, beliefs, preferences, achievements, cognitive impressions, physiological and psychological reactions. James Garrett, an American interaction design expert, believes that user experience “refers to the way a product behaves and is used in the real world” [3]. He believes that user experience includes user experience of brand features, information availability, functionality, content, etc.; while American cognitive psychologist D. A. Norman (D. A. Norman) extends user experience to user interaction with products. all aspects. He believes that human cognitive and emotional experience includes three levels: instinctive level, behavioral level and reflective level.
User experience is influenced by the user, the product, social factors, cultural factors, and the environment, all of which influence the user experience during interaction with the product. In recent years, research on user experience has begun to focus on the specific goals of usability research and emotional experience. For example, Preece and others believe that interaction design is about creating new user experiences. The goals of interaction design include the dual goals of usability and user emotional experience. That is to say, in the process of interaction between products and systems and people, in addition to achieving the usability goals of efficiency, effectiveness, ease of learning and remembering, safety, and versatility, they should also possess other qualities such as: satisfactory, interesting and useful, It is inspiring, full of beauty, and gives people a sense of accomplishment and emotional satisfaction [4] (Figure 3). Alan Cooper and others have established an operational user experience standard for interaction designers through the software development process of "goal-oriented design".
User experience and demand analysis are even more important in the mobile media era. With the development of technology, changes in user experience often become the "killer" of enterprise products. For example: Nokia, which had the advantage of feature phones, was once popular in the 2G era. However, in 2007, Apple launched the compact and lightweight 3G mobile phone iPhone, which made Nokia collapse. Similarly, the iPhone's 3.5-inch screen was once considered the "golden size" of smartphones. But in the era of quad-core driven cloud services, Samsung's 5-inch and 5.5-inch Galaxy series mobile phones have made this kind of screen obsolete, although many people have questioned the portability of mobile phones and the consumption of large screens. Electricity, etc., but this kind of "phablet" is still very popular. In 2013, it surpassed the sales volume of Apple iPhone in one fell swoop and became the current popular trend. These facts fully illustrate the importance of a deep understanding of user experience to the survival of an enterprise. At present, with the vigorous development of e-commerce such as group buying and online shopping, major software companies such as Alibaba, Taobao, Tencent, JD.com and Dangdang have all intensified their efforts to deeply mine the massive data in the network backend, trying to Conduct detailed modeling and analysis of user purchasing behavior and trends to provide a basis for precise marketing and promotion of the company's products. Figure 4 is a model diagram of Alibaba’s Alipay data business in 2012 [5]. From this we can see that with the advent of the 3G era, network-based data mining is becoming a powerful tool for user experience research, and scientific and systematic Customer behavior analysis will become an important force in promoting theoretical research on interaction design.
III. Conclusion
In summary, with the development of broadband networks, wireless networks, cloud computing and touch-sensing technologies, interaction design has a broader space. At the same time, It also raises new topics for theoretical research on interaction design. Dr. Butler Lampson, winner of the ACM Turing Award in 1992 and chief software engineer at Microsoft Research, once pointed out that “computers have three functions: first, simulation; second, computers can help people communicate; third, computers have three functions: The third is interaction, that is, communication with the real world... People want computers to be able to see, listen, speak, even better than people, and to be able to process in real time” [6]. Computer science and technology and cognitive science are the foundation of interaction design, and the understanding of technology, products, services and human nature is the core of interaction design. From human needs to user experience is a process in which theoretical research on interaction design gradually becomes clearer. With the development of e-commerce, it has become a trend to use scientific methods such as data analysis to deeply study user behavior. It is foreseeable that user research in the 3G era will become the main direction of interaction design theory in the future.
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[3] [US] Garrett, J.J. Elements of user experience: user-centered Web design [M]. Translated by Fan Xiaoyan. Beijing: Electronics Industrial Press, 2008: 31-32.
[4] [US] Jennifer Preece et al. Interaction Design - Beyond Human-Computer Interaction [M]. Translated by Liu Xiaohui et al. Beijing: Electronic Industry Press, 2003: 25.
[5] Jing Ke. Product analysis of massive data applications[J]. Baidu Library. /view/2ee9be42b307e87101f696ca.html
[6] Dong Shihai. Human-computer interaction Progress and challenges [J]. Journal of Computer-Aided Design and Graphics, 2004, 16(1): 24-26.