Interaction Design - Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (1st Ed), by Yvonne Rogers, Helen Sharp and Jenny Preece, is an interaction design textbook usually aimed at graduate level or professional study. The book is titled after the profession of interaction design itself, defined in text as “designing interactive products to support people in their everyday working lives”. You receive 510 pages full of text, illustrations, pictures, models, case-studies, examples and assignments. Any referenced textual content is cited and further reading sections are included. I would consider this text to be a must-read for anyone in the field and an interesting, inspiring read for people related to the field of interaction design.

Let me preface my own review to say that if you are in this field and you haven’t read this book, ignore the rest of this review and just go out and buy it. You need to read this - yes you may have already read many more interesting books aside from this one, but this book covers modern ideas as well as traditional ones. In a nutshell, the authors stress collaboration in working environments, iteration and user-involved design - Just, go buy it, I promise you will learn something new. Did I mention they also include lots of imagery and comics?

Now, the actual review is for the rest of my readers who may not know they want to read this because they don’t do interaction design, they never heard of it and they think all this is foreign computer stuff. To define what the field does in a very simple way - interaction design concerns itself with making sure people using things is an easy and pleasurable experience by making these things easy to use and overall pleasing. I mean things as in: software, web sites, garden tools, mobile phones, VCRs, alarm clocks Joel has to use, calendars, automobiles, forks, and even paper. That’s right, interaction design not only associates itself with technology, it IS the product design field.

Who’s involved in interaction design? The text defines the following as an interdisciplinary field to interaction design: academic disciplines, ergonomics, psychology, cognitive science, informatics, engineering, computer science, software engineering, social sciences including anthropology and sociology, human factors, cognitive engineering, HCI (Human-Computer Interaction), cognitive ergonomics, CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work), information systems, film industry, industrial design, artist-design, product design, graphic design, entertainment, marketing and business. The authors themselves come from an assortment of fields and reference an assortment of researchers and practitioners in the textbook. If you fit anywhere in the above section, you may be interested in reading this book. If you do a myriad of the subjects listed above well, you should fall in love with this industry (and the book, of course). The text goes to great lengths to arrange the chapters and content in a way that many people can enjoy. For example, in the preface of the book, there are two pages where they list a field and then recommend what chapters they should read and perhaps what exercises would be good for them to look at. I really like how they welcome, whole-heartedly, people from other fields to read this book. In general, I got the feeling that each author really loves this field and encourages more people to join in; it doesn’t feel like a secret society that I get from some other texts. (That stuffy feeling like “well, if you don’t know what this means oh well to you, I’m not defining it for you“.) The authors even went out of there way to define other fields and how they coincide into interaction design.

Here is a nice breakdown of some of the fields mentioned in the previous paragraph and what you will get out of this fine textbook:

• Psychology/Social Sciences - You will see how your theory and research findings have been applied to interaction design. Various chapters discuss relevant issues and provide a range of studies and systems that have been informed by cognitive, social and affective issues.
• Computer Science/Development - The book itself doesn’t offer a bit of code but many, many chapters cover establishing requirements, conceptual design, physical design and project management.
• Marketing/Business - You will find many insights in each chapter that inform you of perhaps what is important to users, how to conform design to the brand and how to work with innovative solutions. Although it specifically states the book does not develop business cases or marketing, you will find that you will be able to connect the dots quite easily from the text to how it applies to your field in business. Also, there are some really great pieces of advice on how to do work collaboratively and manage projects.
• Information Systems - This field is covered in all chapters, every single one of them.
• Usability/Design/Web Design - The book does cover all types of software and web site design but you will also find how to apply usability to cognitive study or how to apply design to your communication design, like logos or icons.
• User Testing/Marketing - Although the book won’t particularly be pertinent to your field, the book covers a lot of material when it comes to user testing including how to conduct user research and how to evaluate results. I found these sections of the book to be more broad than the others and easily adapted to other situations.

My favorite part in the whole book is on page 9, an illustration I assume is done by Tech-Graphics, Inc. I really do want to show you this illustration but it isn’t in the free domain to be shared, so I can’t. It’s a black and white illustration of 4 people looking at the same outline of a square ahead of them. Each person has a thought bubble above their head, showing what each are thinking. One person is looking at the square and sees sides X and Y, starts doing calculations of those sides. Another person sees the white space (or negative space) around the square whereas another person sees the light hitting the square and the scene it’s in. Finally, my favorite little guy, is thinking about how the other three people is thinking about this square. I just think it’s a brilliant little illustration. The authors used it in conjunction with the paragraph I will state in this book’s main tip and discussion.

#1 Tip in This Book

• “Bringing together so many people with different backgrounds and training has meant many more ideas being generated, new methods being developed, and more creative and original designs being produced. However, the down side is the costs involved. The more people there are with different backgrounds in a design team, the more difficult it can be to communicate and progress forward the designs being generated. Why? People with different backgrounds have different perspectives and ways of seeing and talking about the world (imagine the figure I described above). What one person values as important others may not even see (Kim, 1990). Similarly, a computer scientist’s understanding of the term representation is often very different from a graphic designer’s or a psychologist’s.”

You may be wondering why I chose this paragraph out of the whole book to quote and discuss. Well, don’t - it’s pertinent to all of us! The way each of us communicates is so important and every single day I see a co-worker, colleague or someone over the internet argue with another over something because of a misunderstanding caused by personal importance in their work. Yes, we should know more about what the people around us do and we should try and use their jargon where appropriate. Better yet, define the words you say in context often. Many of us, in whatever field you are in, work with other people. Everything you do communicates to somebody, somewhere. Web sites, business cards, software, computers, products… other people, all communicate to you every day. Try your best to be empathetic to the people you communicate to through your words or through your work. We all have this social responsibility, no matter what field you are in. You’ll also find your team being that much more productive, on schedule and more willing to go out for a drink when that product is launched.

Visit the book’s web site and online companion.
Buy the Second Edition on Amazon.com - they rated it 3.5 out of 5 stars, has more content, and has “search inside” available.