Interacting With Interactive Design

Now that you've got a handle on web 2.0, what's next? Interactive design, or interaction design, is, quite simply, the design of things that we interact with. These days, it's commonly used to refer to web and computer interface design, because of their ubiquitousness in today's society; but it can also refer to anything from product design to packaging.

Sturgeon's Law, written by American science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, states that "ninety percent of everything is crud." (see Sturgeon's Law). This principle applies to design, too. For all the brilliant design there is on the web, there's a lot of bad design. To save you the trouble of sorting, I'm going to show you a couple of the good examples.

picocool: Picocool, an archive of good design, is itself an example of good interactive web design. The site is designed in simply black and white, with colour only entering the site in the large pictures. Below the picture is an auto-generated set of related designs, which are easily clicked and open in new windows. Any text about the object is in a clear paragraph to the right of the image. These features together combine to make a sleek, simple piece of interactive design that is easy to use and interactive, while still providing the maximum information.

BBC Doctor Who Website:

Rather the opposite of Picocool, the BBC's website for hit program Doctor Who is a colourful, picture-filled extravaganza. As the main audience for the site is children (the show's intended primary audience), the site has been built to allow maximum engagement. There is little to no text, only simple explanatory captions, that make it easy for younger audiences to access pages on the site. While the site is not as "sophisticated" as other websites, it is not intended to be - it works perfectly for the intended audience.

Google:

Finally, we come to Google, possible the best piece of interactive design ever created. More or less nothing but a logo and the interactive search bar, Google's simple, minimalistic design made it stand out among other cluttered search engines of the early 21st century. Updated to currently include a top bar with links to other Google services, and with copyright links below, the Google homepage is still one of the best-designed pages on the internet.


And that's interactive design. As I hope I've shown above, good examples of interactive design don't have to be simple, and they don't have to be complex - they need to suit their audience. Whether you're shooting for designers, children, or everyone, you'll be fine as long as you take their needs into account.