Feature: Strolling through Interaction Design History with Bill Moggridge

Bill Moggridge, designer of the first laptop computer and a founder of design firm IDEO, will tell you his life has been divided into three parts so far. First as a designer, then helping other people design, and then, telling stories about design. His first offering of stories, "Designing Interactions", is an impressive collection.

The book, which Moggridge describes as a 'living history', includes dozens of interviews with the "who's who" of interaction design from the past 30 years. 'Interaction Design is such a recent topic, I was able to interview whoever I wanted - people who have been involved in creating what's come to be known as Interaction Design.'

Those who made it onto Bill's "who's who" list for Interaction Design are legends such as Doug Engelbart (inventor of the mouse), Larry Testler (responsible for such staples as participatory design, cut-and-paste, and editable dialog boxes) to more surprising inclusions like the London-based service design team Live|Work and game design guru, Will Wright and dozens more. The discussions range from application design, to web design, to mobile and tangible technologies.

"Designing Interactions" is not just a book, but also a DVD of interviews and a website as well (http://www.designinginteractions.com/). A somewhat novel package for a publisher so, like any good designer, Moggridge created a prototype. 'Most publishers are not that interested in anything except books... so it took a protototype to find the right publisher to go with it.' In the end that publisher was MIT Press, who were even supportive when Moggridge set out to conduct double the number of interviews originally planned.

That was not the end of the "hands on" approach taken with the book. Moggridge also shot and edited the video interviews found on the website and DVD. 'Every time I do something for the first time,' he says, 'I like to do it myself. If you're working with other people it helps if you've been through the process, because then you know something about the pain, as well as the pleasure.'

The narrative approach to the content means that this is not a "how to" book or a detailed history of IxD. There are learnings for designers, but these are found more in the patterns that emerge than in the individual case studies. 'If you don't like the stories,' says Moggridge, 'this is not the book for you.'

In some ways, this is almost like a mythology of interaction design, with classics such as the design ‘in one night’ of the dropdown menu system.

Of course, as Moggridge clarifies when we speak, although the dropdown menu was designed in one night, its design was the outcome of many weeks of ongoing prototyping, testing and iterating. He calls it one of the best examples of User Centred Design - not quite the moment of inspired genius that Larry Testler conjures up in his interview.

Whatever its weaknesses, this story telling approach makes what would otherwise be an imposing volume (at around 700 pages) approachable and entertaining to anyone with an interest in how we have come to interact with technology and what that interaction might become.

What can we learn about how good design happens from these stories?

'All the successful designs have this in common: first they tried thinking about what people wanted and could use and what would be really valuable for them; then they made prototypes; and then they took the prototypes back to the people and tried them.'

Prototyping and iteration are central to almost all of the stories, and the final chapter "People and Prototypes" pulls these themes together. This is terrain that is very familiar to Moggridge as User Centred Design practices including iterative design and prototyping has been integral to the successful methodology of IDEO in recent years.

Multidisciplinary teams and project spaces, where teams work intensively together are also considered integral to fostering design excellence.

'For high technology products you need to have lots of disciplines working together... the complexity is high enough that it is better to work as a shared mind.'

And, in a way, that’s exactly what "Designing Interaction" offers – the chance to share the minds of Interaction Designers who have shaped the way we interact with technology today and to gain an understanding of the history of our craft.

Leisa Reichelt
Flow Interactive

[UN will be featuring two extracts from the book over the next few weeks]

Associated Link: Leisa Reichelt's Disambiguity blog (and record of Moggridge interview to come)

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