This video was made in 2013 and a lot has changed in these past 6 years. Interaction design has taken has added newer roles to its tally of roles it serves. The whole video was about how interaction design in the past was treated to be about designing for mobile, but then by 2013 the definition had expanded and it was about letting the user experience different spaces. The idea which Andrei Herasimchuk in the video talks of is of how everyone is too fascinated with making the interfaces that can be touched and trying to make digital things as similar, mirroring the real, is really fascinating to me. This is something we had a discussion on,  with our professor Denise recently. The tools presented to us are copying the craft. They simplify things which we produce in real life rather than creating something entirely different. Quoting Jennifer Bove “Interaction design makes those experiments natural and makes them about content and the experience and less about the device”. She also points the biggest challenge of interaction design is that you can not necessarily foresee the consequences. Because users tend to sometime use it in ways for which it wasn’t designed to be used. Which is again true. Take the case of the internet, the reasons for which it came into being vs how it came to be used or the One Laptop per child policy.

A different kind of experience for the user?

The video moved on to talk of understanding the whole system instead of the model where humans are at the center. Thinking of how other elements of the system interact and create an experience of the system as a whole.

“Understanding that ecosystem where human is at the center. Understanding that network of things and how they all work together rather than your thing being at the center”

Understanding that ecosystem where human is at the center. Understanding that network of things and how they all work together rather than your thing being at the center

Robert Fabricant in the video mentioned the next big thing is the Internet Of Things(IOT). And when I look at it from 2019’s pov I would say there are different technologies which can be bigger, IOT when came into called for big announcements but technologies like AR/VR did the same recently and computers, when they came into being they, did that too. I think it is traversing the unknown domain and comprehending the potential that new tech has by designers which makes it be called the next big thing. Remember google glasses? How the fad faded away. Robert talks of IOT making the environment intelligent and smaller units talking to each other. This has its base set in the thinking that the user now wants more physical things rather than digital. Haptic, tactile feedback becomes a really important part to the user because they start comparing digital to the real which I mentioned in the first paragraph too.

The second half of the video was about data visualization of say representation of data visually and this got me thinking of so many questions because there is so much of data being collected, and presenting it not as a list or spreadsheet but in a meaningful way. Natural processing of visual information expression, faces, and emotional content. There is a lot of untapped potential in meaningful mundane parts of our lives like energy. Can we build a layer on the top of it through behavior and right contextual information that can really shift the way we use our resources? The comments went on and took a turn to the medical field where devices are tracking our heart rate. And how the interaction between doctor and patient could be expanded and turn into a conversation. How can interaction design show the connectedness in the world?

Can we build a layer on the top of it through behavior and right contextual information that can really shift the way we use our resources?

I had this question of how you can represent this book of my notes from lectures, videos and things which I collected through this semester and turn it into something of value? Something which gives me information as soon as I ask for it? Because that visualization and the whole experience of the content would be really interesting for me. How can Interaction design create a network and make people more connected?