I’m an Interaction Designer
You may be wondering why this is posted in the Art News section. I debated this with myself for a while, but in the end, this news is in fact art related.
As many of you know, I make a very clear separation when it comes to art and design. I strongly believe art is created by the artist, based on the artist’s concept with no outside influences or pressure, and fully developed with no financial gain as motivation. Design on the other hand, as artistic as it may be, is always created with another person’s motivation and objective in mind, often, but not exclusively for, financial gain. So why is this post Art News?
It seems upon further reflection that OCAD has provided me with the perfect set of skills to become an Interaction Designer. I hadn’t thought about it until my new manager at Artez, Peter, had asked me if I wanted to be the new Interaction Designer for Artez. Yes, as of last Friday it is official… my job title now lists me as Interaction Designer. Since I now have “design” in my job title, I feel I have reached the goal I set out to achieve several years ago.
First, in case some of you are wondering, what is interaction design? According to Wikipedia:
As new technologies are often overly complex for their intended target audience, interaction design aims to minimize the learning curve and to increase accuracy and efficiency of a task without diminishing usefulness. The objective is to reduce frustration and increase user productivity and satisfaction.
Interaction design attempts to improve the usability and experience of the product, by first researching and understanding certain users’ needs and then designing to meet and exceed them. (Figuring out who needs to use it, and how those people would like to use it.)
Interaction design is about creating design that allows for a simple and effective use of the application or product. If a product is ugly and clumsy, but functions really well, then it is not a good product. Likewise, if a product is really pretty, but doesn’t function well, it is not a good product either. The goal of interaction design is to bridge the gap between aesthetics and usability, function and form, to make a product that is pleasing to use and look at.
Back to my original topic… why is this art news? Quite simply, OCAD turned me into an interaction designer. Well, not quite… actually, my combination of technology education and experience from my “past life”, combined with my recent interactive “new media” art education, as well as my knowledge of design, makes me an ideal interaction designer. Furthermore, it’s something I really enjoy doing! It allows me to explore technology with a design and art view; I can be creative and technological.
I think this is quite an interesting and promising field of work to get into. Not only is it very cutting edge (interaction design, as an area of study and work, has only become prominent in the past 5 years or so), but it is also extremely difficult to find a good interaction designers. I’m sure you’ve all heard of “right-brain” vs “left-brain”, and the different schools of thought surrounding creativity and technology. Simply put, they don’t usually mesh very well. People who are naturally artistic are not generally analytical, and vice versa. Somehow, I have managed to escape this “rule” and I am equally blessed with equal parts creativity and analytical skills (a fact that has cursed me and torn me in two very different directions all my life… until now).
While I would never call my interaction design work “art”, it is comforting to know that my art education was able to be applied to a real world skillset. Let’s just hope I have enough free time to actually create some works of art somewhere in between all this design and technology.
A7
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