Areas Related To Interaction Design

Some people have claimed that it would benefit interaction designers if they learned about computer science and software engineering. Now, keeping in mind the FourLayersOfCreation, interaction design is only indirectly related to software engineering and has two levels of indirection to computer science.

This means that optimally every subject area that's directly related to interaction design must be learned before learning about software engineering. And every area that these areas are connected to must be learned before computer science.

What's related to interaction design?

• software-domain skills:
  • programming
    • software engineering
      • computer science
• General study of the human mind and body
  • physiology
  • psychology and social psychology (is that the same as sociology?) no
  • cognitive science
• Human factors (specific to interface design)
  • human-computer interaction
  • usability engineering
  • ergonomics
• Art and media and related sciences
  • Graphical design
  • Color science
  • Acoustics
  • Music
  • Communication and English (or whatever language)
• Sociology
  • politics
  • economics
  • moral philosophy and ethical theory
• DomainKnowledge in whatever actual business or area is being designed for

this list is not inclusive, just what can be thought up in 5 minutes.

I've added a few things and categorized, hope you don't mind... good job

In other words, a rational interaction designer will never get around to studying software engineering, let alone computer science. Especially since actual software engineers on the development team are so freely available to the interaction designer, and so any expertise in the area can be very easily, very cheaply and most efficiently outsourced to the actual experts.

There is zero benefit to be gained from redundancy. People should remember the adage that "if you have one clock then you know what time it is, but if you have two then you never do". When so many areas of human knowledge need to be covered then complementarity rules the day and redundancy is for idiots.

I dispute this; see IntentionalRedundancyDoesNotViolateOnceAndOnlyOnce. If you have two clocks, and they both agree (or are close), that's probably a better indication that the time is correct (within some acceptable error) than having only one - especially if the two clocks are known to be independently set. Both clocks could be wrong by the same amount, but the likelihood of n clocks all being off by the same time is rather low. If you have to clocks that display wildly different times - you don't know what time it is, but you at least know that you don't know what time it is.

With only one clock, you have no way of knowing whether it is correct or not. (This ignores the possibility of using solar position or such to provide a second time source - in which case you then have two clocks, one of which is highly accurate but not very precise, so see the previous paragraph).

Whether or not you agree with this, a German fellow name Gauss thought a bunch of this stuff up. And science has been fruitfully studying this problem ever since. :)

-- ScottJohnson

You realize that the clause "you never know what time it is" drags psychology into it. So much so that it turns the whole into a statement about psychology more than anything else. Certitude isn't the same thing as correctness. One can be very certain of a false fact. Besides, being certain of the wrong time leads to less wrinkles than being uncertain about the right time. Or at least, it does if you adopt a sufficiently fatalist / resignatory attitude so that you don't care that you're late once you know that you're late.

Depends. If you accept the premise that there is a correct time, which is determinable by any independent observer with appropriate and calibrated gear, then we need not drag psychology into it. The time of day, as is defined in our culture and system of laws, can be so determined; there are standards bodies that pronounce the "correct" time, and laws which say that their pronouncements carry weight.

Now what you do with the knowledge of the time - right or wrong - is another matter. :) Whether you hurry up, or say "fuck it, I'm going back to bed", is of little concern to the guys in lab coats with the atomic clock.

It's important to note that when there was only one clock, all we could say was, "that is the time." As soon as we get two clocks, we suddenly spend paragraphs of text not only working out what the correct time is, but also debating what "correct time" actually means. In so doing we completely forget about the actual purpose of the clocks - simply to highlight a point about redundancy. Be careful with your adages - you may completely lose sight of the fact that all you were doing was trying to tell the time.

-- PeteHurst