The Interaction Design Research Triangle of Design Practice, Design Studies, and Design Exploration

Interaction design takes a holistic view of the relationship between designed artifacts, those that are exposed to these artifacts, and the social, cultural, and business context in which the meeting takes place. While there is no commonly agreed definition of interaction design, its core can be found in an orientation towards shaping digital artifacts-products, services, and spaces-with particular attention paid to the qualities of the user experience. 1 To be able to deal with user experience-including physical, sensual, cognitive, emotional, and aesthetical issues; the relationship between form, function, and content; as well as fuzzy concepts such as fun and playability-a number of recent efforts have been made in the direction of establishing a better understanding of the role of the user experience in interactive systems design. 2 Unlike the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community for instance, interaction design fully recognizes itself as a "design discipline" in that its ultimate objective is to create new and change existing interactive systems for the better. 3 There is a current plethora of departments, groups, and multidisciplinary labs dealing with interaction design that have their origins in such diverse places as computer science, HCI, anthropology, industrial design, informatics, and applied physics and electronics. Adding to the disciplinary confusion, each group typically also is configured as a multidisciplinary team.