Digital interaction design the view form 2011.

What is digital interaction desgin and what uses does it have in the 21st century?

This is the question every designer should ask themselves to fully understand what they want to achieve in designing in the modern world.

I have decided to look at three designers that have quite different ideas and views on digital design but who are all connected together by thier passion for design and their want to excite people with what they create.

Bing Gordon, is one of the six founders of EA (elcetronic arts) founded in 1982. Bing has had a huge impact on the games and design world. He was part of the team that brought the world games such as The Sims, Need for Speed and Tiger Woods golf .

Picture taken from Bing's webpage

He recently gave a talk on “gamification” where he says when designing a game a lot of thought should be put into getting engaging interaction between the person and the game.

“any kind of avatar that people can buy into can dramatically change engagement. It makes sense that people love things that give them a sense of identity. If a game, service or anything really can give them that then they’re hooked.”

In my opinion this is an invaluable piece of information, if the audience do not connect with the service that a desigener is trying to sell then it will not excite people thus making it a bad piece of tecnology. If the designer did not understand what the audience wanted then they havent researched enough about the service or understood what the people wanted from the device.

Another designer who I would like discuss is Anthony Dunne.

Picture taken from innovationsforum

“Dunne uses design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of existing and emerging technologies.”

Dunne is the head of Design interactions at Royal Collage Of Art in London. He was awarded the Sir Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education in 2009. When he was asked what roles design should be playing in modern society he answered:

“ I think there is a real need for design to address the public as well as industry, and to explore new ways of getting discussions going about what people really want and how industry can help us achieve it, rather than the other way around.”

Dunne, like Bing Gordon believes that technology and design should be used together to make the best products possible that can really connect with the audience and have a positive effect on people.

Durrell Bishop is a modern interaction designer who is the founder of “itch.ltd”, he has a masters degree in interaction design from the royal collage of art and he is a co-founder of “luckybite”. Both luckybite and itch.ltd are companies which work for a client to make beautiful products;

picture taken from luckybite.com

“luckybite undertakes product and interaction for clients. It’s special skills are in combining innovative products and user interface design with the ability to build the experience”

One of my favorite pieces of design for Durrell Bishop is the “bird box”. A very simply designed piece of technology which make the iPhone become a alarm clock which uses birds sounds to tell the hour and a cuckoo alarm.

All of these designers strive to make beautiful yet useful and meaningful pieces of design to allow people to get the most out of a product. I think that all three of the designers have had an impact on the interaction design world and a large impact on my thoughts on designing and what the consumers want from a product. They all seem to have the same message of making the product connect completely with the target audience to make them as enthusiastic about the product as the designer is.