Designing for Interaction: Creating Innovative Applications and Devices, Second Edition

2. The Four Approaches to Interaction Design

In the field of interaction design, not only are there different schools of thought about what interaction design is (see Chapter 1), but there are also different styles of working that should be examined.

There are four major approaches to tackling interaction design projects:

• User-centered design (UCD)

• Activity-centered design

• Systems design

• Genius design

All four have been used to create successful products, and it is typically up to designers to select (sometimes unconsciously) the way that works best for them. A few assertions apply to all these approaches:

• They can be used ...