This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

Designing for Interaction is an introduction to the practice of interaction design, the design discipline behind such products as the iPhone and other touchscreen devices and innovative Web sites like Flickr. Aimed at new practitioners and students--as well as user experience professionals and developers--it is a comprehensive look at the discipline, from current methods to its future. This guide takes a holistic approach looking at interaction design for the Web, software, and devices. This new edition adds information on design strategy, extended research analysis, conceptual models, brainstorming, and user testing and development.

More than just a how-to manual, this is the only book on the subject coming from a design rather that computer science background. Filled with tips, real-world projects, and interviews of leading practitioners such as Marc Rettig, Brenda Laurel and Hugh Dubberly, you'll get a solid grounding in everything you need to successfully tackle interaction design.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 15 Ratings

Useless content, terrible writing - 2008-04-16
Reviewer Rating:
This book reads like the author sat down on a weekend afternoon, typed out a draft and simply published it. The text is basically a sequence of obvious statements. In fact, this book is so bad I don't want to waste many words reviewing it. So I am going to randomly select 4 sentences from this book:

- Most applications and devices that interaction designers design have some sort of visible controls for the user to use to manipulate the features of the product. pg 136
- Designers should be open and nonjudgemental and should not assume that they know the answer beforehand. pg 80
- It is more important now than ever before that our digital tools have the characteristics of good interaction design baked into them. pg 203
- The system needs an assortment of responses to deal with a range of situations. pg 38

Believe me, I haven't chosen these lines consciously - I closed my eyes, turned to some page, put my finger down and typed the sentence my finger landed on. The whole book is filled with such drivel.

I wish I could give this item a rating of zero. Spend your money elsewhere.

Excellent for Aspiring Interaction Designers - 2008-01-16
Reviewer Rating:
I am an aspiring interaction designer and this book by Dan Saffer really nails it for me in terms of laying down a coherent and well-written overview and framework.

This book is essential to the interaction design community in that it defines clearly what interaction design is (and is not) in this early stage of this new industry.

It is also essential reading for all beginning or aspiring interaction designers.

Research for Design (for Interaction) - 2010-01-16
Reviewer Rating:
When I originally added Saffer to my reading list I suppose I was hoping for, among other things, an IxD definition of "interaction"; a view of what it was they were `designing', and perhaps trace amounts of a critical language for analysis of existing (and in progress) artifacts. This was not the place to look. Saffer provides explanations of common phenomena such as Hick's and Fitt's law and a brief section on interfaces. Most of the material is focused on process and issues of problem definition. Products (like the ipod) are presented primarily in the context of the process of their creation. Critical analysis of artifacts is slim. While impressing (rightly) that success can be highly dependent on the proper definition of the design problem(s) at hand , Designing For Interaction becomes effervescent when it concerns actual designing.

As a broad summation of interaction design it offers bits of pieces for everyone, but seems aimed at no one. There are breadcrumbs of potentially useful information for practitioners, and overviews of topics that are likely no interest to students (If i were confronting interaction for the first time, I'd be far less interested in how to align to buisnes strategies and far more interested in exploring foundational formal issues.)

What I found most interesting is the discussion it led me to ([...]). Early in the book while covering various design methodologies Saffer touches on the `Genius' approach to design. Contrary to (various forms of) User Centric Design which place a strong emphasis on research and pre-production work, `Genius' is described as a process that relies on the exceptional experience and skill of an an individual or small group of designers above the preliminary qualitative research that UCD seems to hold sacred. There's then a brief interview with James Leftwich where James proposes the term `Rapid Expert Design' as an alternative to avoid various connotations of the latter. In both the book and online he attempts to describe the differences between RED and UCD related practices. Unfortunately both distill to common design practices in more established design fields; building experience through apprenticship and projects of increasing scale then increasingly relying on said experience to make and explore design decisions intuitively and quickly. To Saffer's credit, his shorter distillation of the `Genius' approach is probably as descriptive, brief, and fair as can be.

Luckily the conversation is advanced by the likes of Jonas LGÇ¥wgren who manages to hit not only the thread's nail on the head, but put words to what's been bothering me about interactive design for years (and perhaps lacking in Designing for Interaction).

"As I read Jim's discussion of RED, the key is the abilities [opposed to methodologies] that the RED designer holds... A general problem in developing design ability is the relative inefficiency of the learning process. Apprenticing and peripheral participation is the most common strategy and it generally takes a long time to reach expert levels of experience and performance... Does the RED approach contain any provisions for increasing the pace of learning? Do you work systematically with product reviews and criticism in your teams? Do you have procedures for debriefing and knowledge sharing after project milestones and completions? How are you working with conceptual tools for articulation of practical knowing, such as patterns or experiential qualities?... I was thinking also of language constructs for talking about what constitutes good interaction. The way I see it, this is one of the main elements of interaction design expertise (the "experience" we talked about earlier in this thread) and my personal approach is to try and articulate so-called experiential qualities to try and create a language in which experienced designers can express and communicate parts of their judgment skills." - Jonas LGÇ¥wgren

As passionate as Leftwich is about RED, and as measured as he is in expressing his points. He unfortunately lacks the critical language to articulate his (and others) experience. There's nothing wrong with mentoring, but there's nothing good about each generation learning everything through trial and error. Knowledge needs to be codified so it can be, at minimum, passed down. While structured methodologies like UCD that focus on preliminary research are valuable, they contain little design knowledge in of themselves.

While I don't fault Dan Saffer for somewhat neglecting this issue, I imagine that moderately skilled interactive and interaction designers with some experience will a little disappointed.

Excellent overview of Interaction Design - 2009-03-02
Reviewer Rating:
Dan Saffer deserves to be congratulated on producing an excellent in-depth introduction to the topic of Interaction Design.

I've put off purchasing this book for a while as there was only one other review of this book on Amazon.co.uk for ages, that gave no idea of what ground was covered or what value the book offered. I then recently saw the book listed in Smashing Magazines' 'Top 10' for great web/usability/design books, and bought it on the strength of this review.

I have not been disappointed, and this is now one of my favourite design books, as it works well both as a well written overview of the topic, as well as a useful source of reference if you are starting to work on either an interactive product or digital (or both) project.

Chapter headings include:

Ch1: What is Interaction Design?
Ch2: Starting Points
Ch3: Interaction Design Basics
Ch4: Design Research & Brainstorming
Ch5: The Craft of Interaction Design
Ch6: Interface Design Basics
Ch7: Smart Applications & Clever Devices
Ch8: Service Design
Ch9: The Future of Interaction Design
Epilogue: Designing for Good

The text is well written, with excellent supporting illustrations, photos and diagrams that complement the clearly explained text throughout. The book is well structured and each chapter builds well on the preceding topic.

One feature I particularly liked was that most chapters have a guest interviewee who is a subject matter expert answering a short series of interesting questions that add depth and perspective to the topic in hand.

Despite the book being relatively short (I see this as a positive at just over 200 pages), it acts as a great starter to the subject, and you can then conduct more in-depth reading on specific chapters as your requirements determine.

My only small gripe with the book is this very point - that there are not reference sources for future research at the end of each chapter or at the end of the book. Dan - please note for your 2nd edition!

Despite being written in 2007, and considering how quickly technology moves along, this is still largely bang up-to-date. I would strongly recommend this as an excellent purchase for anyone interested in broadening their knowledge on this fascinating and increasingly important field of design.

Interesting - 2008-06-09
Reviewer Rating:
This book is helping me to understand how i need to start to design interactivity for Digital Television. A must-have.

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