Interaction design in a decade when the world is subsequently heading towards technological advancement, the relationship between a person and a product remains significant. The design or development of enhancing this relationship, both physical and emotional, is known as interaction design. It works on the manifestation of multi-folding form, function and technology to suit the user experience.
As the name implies, entails designers being called in to personalise the user experience based on the demands, contacts, and constraints of the users. It falls in the flow of creating suitable dialogues to ease personal product conversation.
What we must know is that interaction design integrates things as they could be, based on behaviour, however, there is a thin line of differentiation between user experience and interaction design. The defining factor is momentary interpretation and behaviour. UX field works on the overall user experience from start to end, including interaction, branding, management, etc.
While interaction design works solely on perceiving the “moment of use” by manipulating the five dimensions namely words, visual representations, physical object, time and behaviour. For instance, the upcoming concept of social media apps puts the control in the hands of the users by helping them navigate and streamline the content by source. This way, they navigate through the latest trends by easing the choice of platform.
Career Opportunities in Interaction Design
Interaction Design is a highly evolving field, which offers wonderful career opportunities. If a person has persuasive communication skills, patience, negotiation power, creativity, resourceful behaviour and hunger for knowledge, interaction design can prove to be extremely beneficial. Even though Interaction Design is now gaining popularity as a new discipline, people have been designing interactions for a very long time. This is because it has never been primarily based on web browsing but goes hand-in-hand with physical person product interaction as well.
However, with a major surge in technological advances and digital handling of different necessities, interaction design is now majorly based on digitally computed platforms. Designers as and when opting for interaction design as a career are required to thoroughly research the traditional procedures to deal with products. Then they study the psychological, emotional and physical responses of users and while keeping in mind the time constraints, they are required to produce effortless options.
Qualifications Required To Become An Interaction Designer
Though not many specific courses are available to pursue interaction design, a person can approach the field through different routes. The basic expectation remains, that of a bachelor’s degree in any field including Business Administration, Computer Sciences, market research for graphic designing, engineering visual arts, multimedia design, etc.
However, any field, which specializes in the study of design intervention, social behaviour and anthropometric study can also be a way to Interaction Design as a career option. There are many interaction designers, who have an architectural degree as well. Bachelors in architecture gives them an edge in understanding timelines, creating user-friendly platforms, management and easing the complexity of design to suit it to the users. Interaction design is not a field, which requires a professional degree in the subject and is one of the most trending fields for people to excel in without a background for it.
To suit a job in the field, one must try to gain some experience in mass communication. They must build an interaction design portfolio with some work experience to stand better chances at jobs with a better prospectus.
Global Outlook For Interaction Design
With the global transition from physical person product conversation to digital interactions and dealings related to every field, Interaction Design is becoming extremely important. Global Giants across leading countries including the United States of America, the United Kingdom and even Japan are making themselves rich in this human resource. According to the US Bureau of labour statistics and pay scale, the median salary for an interaction designer in the US is $70000+.
There are many universities in the US that even provide a few full-time courses in M.Des in interaction design including Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Oakland. Companies like Google, Accenture, General Motors, NASA, etc., are also great at providing job opportunities to interaction designers.
The second very important location for interaction designer jobs is the UK where the average salary is similar to the US but the cost of living is a little higher. The UK has a very strong economy powered by service and technology and hence holds great opportunities.
Apart from this, Japan, Sweden, Canada and China are amongst other leading countries to provide great opportunities in this field due to their strive for advancement and forward-thinking.
Online Courses For Aspirants of Interaction Design
There are a lot of short and long-term certified courses in Interaction design available to pursue online. The Interaction Design Foundation is a non-profit organization, which is one of the top platforms for online certification courses in Interaction Design. Their prices for the courses range from $96 to $156 per annum. Another famous Berlin-based company, which provides online Interaction Design courses with a promise of job opportunities, is the Career foundry whose courses range from $699 to $6499. Dublin UX Design institute is also known for its certified courses in UX and Interaction Design courses.
Interaction Design is a field, which is the centre lining the importance of human behaviour to produce incredible experiences. The Interaction Designers study usability even before coding. This field is indeed a breakthrough for a lot of people who are capable of studying and implementing the flow of product conversations.
