What is Interactive Design

Well apart from the title of this unit, I was thinking as a guess it was design that interacted with the user or allowed the user to interact with it. I think I was half right.

According to Lowgren (2008) Interactive design can be broadly broken down into two categories; the design discipline and as an extension of HCI.

The view of Interactive Design as a design discipline shows it as being more closely related to industrial design or architecture, because of the amount of planning that goes into an Interactive
Design piece. There’s also a link to a Scandinavian school of system designs, where a belief in user participation was a long-standing aim.

The view of Interactive Design as an extension of HCI (human-computer interaction) has its bases in research programs, the major problem with this was that the users would only detail the problems with the design the program had been in use. It was decided from that that if the user was able to make changes to the design there would be better more productive use of the design.

Through changes in the way computers are being used, as well as how, the changes and level of participation users are able to make on programs they are using has been increased. It must however be noted that the user is not always solely in control of how the program interacts, in some cases the programs have been designed in such a way as to alter with the interaction the user provides.