Why Interaction Design Matters

This morning I came across the below video on “interaction design”.   What struck me from this video is not only the topic itself but rather how the topic of interaction was explained. It was simple, yet brilliant.

The video refers to interaction design “as the design of interactions between people and things.” (1)

Rich Ziade says in the attached video that "the design [in the general sense of giving form or structure to something] around the interaction actually thinks about the dialogue and the flow of the experience that [a customer] is going to have with a product." (2)

As I think about the brand of Saint Mary’s Press, I think about the hundreds of thousands of titles that are sold each year. And then I think about the words that our customers have consistently used over the years to explain their experiences of interacting with our product. They use words including:  

accessible - engaging - relevant.

Those words are not just nice descriptors that we should use in marketing, but rather point to and mark the type of interaction our customers have had in the use of our products, as they have been in dialogue with our products, as they have interacted with our products and as they have forged a path through our products. 

Those words and the reality they point to are labeling not a product, but an experience, not just the words or the look of the product but the sum total of an interaction.

No matter what type of product we are developing, whether we are creating a digital product, a website, or the three legs of the development stool are gathered around a table revising a curriculum, it is the following we must keep in front of us. 

What we are creating and influencing on a daily basis are the dynamics of the dialogue or the interaction between our products and our customers,  “the flow of the experience that [our customers] are going to have  with our product”. (3)  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCeL5ByBwt0&context=C3c99e45ADOEgsToPDskIH_KgIc0Rp7J24kEYRr5eD

1-Sketchcaster. "Why Interaction
   Design Matters." YouTube.
   Web. 31 Jul 2007.
2-Ibid.
3-Ibid.
4-Ibid.

How HP Simplifies the User Experience

To be honest, I first learned about user-centered design through the work we've done here at the press.

However, as I continue to research the best practices of incorporating the customer clearly and concretely into our work, I've come to realize that we are not alone in using this particular approach.  Further, the number & caliber of corporate powerhouses that have embraced this philosophy and understand the value of incorporating these principles is worthy of noting.

Take a look at how HP, a multi-billion dollar company, simplifies the user experience. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTxmiovW848

Data is Meaningless

Last June during a company meeting, John (our CEO) had a conversation with us about metrics and data. He began by saying, "In and of themselves, data is meaningless." (Truth be told, my ears perked up at that point, considering my entire position is framed around data gathering and maintenance of data integrity.) 

He went on to say, "The interpretation and insight generation from the data that leads to improvement decisions is the ultimate aim and value of the performance metrics. In other words,it's not about the metrics and rubrics and data; it’s about the conversation generated from it, and the insight and improvements that flow out of the conversation."

 "It’s about the conversation generated from it, 

and the insight and improvements that flow out of the conversation."

I spent the majority of yesterday in a retreat with about 12 other coworkers around a topic central to one of the markets we serve. To be honest, I found myself shocked at what I was witnessing and came away at the end of the day a bit in awe at what I was blessed to behold.

What occurred to me throughout the meeting was that I was witnessing the fruit of last year’s direct user observation metric. Sure, I had remembered those words, "It's not about the hours, it's about the insight", but now I was hearing conversations that were so strikingly different to those I've heard previously that I felt compelled to share and articulate what I see unfolding. 

Certainly, we all come to meetings, gatherings and project retreats with those insights formed by our own individual experience. But yesterday, a new- more widespread-certainty permeated the De La Salle room. I found myself in the midst of conversation so steeped in customer insight and customer experience that I was surprised again to recall how far we've come in just one year. 

At least 20 different times during the retreat (ok, after 20, I stopped keeping track) I heard the words, "What I've seen in my site visits", "What I've learned from my time with the customer", "When I was at a parish..."

The conversation from our retreat yesterday is one that was generated uniquely from data we've gathered and the insights we've gleaned from our time with the customer. All in all, it's a conversation that finds it's starting point not in the hours of observation, but in the insights we've gleaned from those hours. 

Our conversations will eventually set in motion improvements we will make to solve the problems we know our customers have and the needs we anticipate they may have tomorrow.

But for now, as the insights and wisdom from yesterday's retreat continue to percolate, we can be assured that the new dynamics that help to shape our conversations today, bring us even closer alongside the man in whose footsteps we follow, for St. John Baptist De La Salle never lost sight of the reality of those he served. He stayed with them in many different ways. And in staying with them, he understood better, how he could serve them.