Interaction design
Interaction design is the practice of designing how people interact with digital systems and how those systems respond.
Everyday Data Visualization
The practice of designing how people interact with digital systems, including the controls, responses, and behaviors those systems provide.
- How it is used
- Guides interactive visualizations toward clear communication rather than overloaded tooltips, toggles, filters, or hidden information.
- How deep it goes
- Defines interaction design and develops discoverability, affordances, conventions, and aesthetic considerations without tool-specific implementation steps.
- Examples
- Uses confusing doors, refrigerator doors, buttons, toggle controls, and underlined non-link text to illustrate interaction cues.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate/understand whether visualization controls communicate where and how people can interact before they must guess.
Read how Everyday Data Visualization explains interaction design →
Design for Developers
Interaction design is the design of how people interact with a product, including its behaviors, controls, and responses.
- How it is used
- Positions interaction design between wireframing and implementation, while coordinating user flow, visual design, testing, and development.
- How deep it goes
- Develops the practice through prototype choices, collaboration, and testing, but stops short of implementation-specific interaction details.
- Examples
- Uses clickable wireframe prototypes, high-fidelity mock-up prototypes, and small-company feature experiments without formal user research.
- What you can do after
- Apply it by prototyping user flows, involving developers early, planning feedback, and refining features before production coding.
Read how Design for Developers explains interaction design →
Related concepts
- user experiencepart of · User experience is a person’s overall perceptions and responses resulting from interactions with a product, service, or system.
- visual designcontrasts with · Visual design is the practice of shaping the appearance and presentation of an interface through visual elements and composition.
- designkind of · Design is the process of planning and specifying an artifact’s structure, behavior, or presentation, and the resulting arrangement, to meet intended purposes and constraints.
- affordancehas part · An affordance is a perceptible property of an object, environment, or interface that indicates or enables possible actions.
- user interactionuses · User interaction is an exchange in which a person acts on or provides input to a software system and the system responds.
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