Welcome to the second edition of Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, and our interactive website at www.id-book.com. Building on the success of the first edition, we have updated, clarified and streamlined the book to provide an accessible introduction to the multi-disciplinary field of Interaction Design.

This textbook is for undergraduate and masters students from a range of backgrounds studying classes in human-computer interaction, interaction design, web design, software engineering, information systems and information studies. A broad range of professionals and technology users will also find this book useful, as will graduate students who are moving into this area from related disciplines.

Our book is called Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction because interaction design is concerned with a broader scope of issues, topics, and paradigms than has traditionally been within the scope of human-computer interaction (HCI). To be successful, interaction designers need a mixed set of skills from psychology, human-computer interaction, web design, computer science, information systems, marketing, entertainment, sociology and business. We define interaction design as:

Interaction design relies on an understanding of the capabilities and desires of people and on the kinds of technology available to interaction designers, as well as a knowledge of how to identify requirements and evolve them into a suitable design. Our textbook provides an introduction to all of these areas, teaching practical techniques to support development as well as discussing possible technologies and design alternatives.

The number of different types of interface available to today's interaction designers has increased steadily over the last 5 years, so our text likewise has been expanded to cover this variety. For example, we discuss and provide examples of robotic, wearable, shareable, mixed reality and multi-model interfaces as well as more traditional desktop, multimedia and web interfaces. To bring the book right up-to-date, we have also included examples from contemporary research.

The book has 15 chapters and includes discussion of the wide range of interfaces that are now available, how cognitive, social, and affective issues apply to interaction design, and how to gather, analyse and present data for interaction design. A central theme is that design and evaluation are interleaving, highly iterative processes, with some roots in theory but which rely strongly on good practice to create usable products. The book has a ‘hands-on’ orientation and explains how to carry out a variety of techniques. It also has a strong pedagogical design and includes many activities (with detailed comments), assignments, and the special pedagogic features discussed below.

The style of writing is intended to be accessible to students, as well as professionals and general readers. It is largely conversational in nature and includes anecdotes, cartoons, and case studies. Many of the examples are intended to relate to readers' own experiences. The book and the associated website are also intended to encourage readers to be active when reading and to think about seminal issues. For example, one feature we have included in the book is the ‘dilemma’, where a controversial topic is aired. The aim is for readers to understand that much of interaction design needs consideration of the issues, and that they need to learn to weigh up the pros and cons and be prepared to make trade-offs. We particularly want readers to realize that there is rarely a right or wrong answer, although there is a world of difference between a good design and a poor design.

This book is accompanied by a website at www.id-book.com, which provides a variety of resources and interactivities, including extensive case study material that presents more in-depth coverage of the design process. The website offers a place where readers can learn how to design websites and other kinds of multimedia interfaces. Rather than just provide a list of guidelines and design principles, we have developed various interactivities, including online tutorials and step-by-step exercises, intended to support learning by doing. There are also PowerPoint slides for instructors, which can be downloaded and adapted for specific classes.

Changes from the first edition

The new edition has been produced in full colour, providing an added dimension to the overall structure, layout and illustrations. Interaction design is moving very quickly, with new developments coming thick and fast. We have included many new images to illustrate these. To reflect the dynamic nature of the field, the second edition has been substantially updated throughout with many new examples that cover the recent advances. In addition, we have included several case studies which discuss different aspects of interaction design. These case studies are summarized in this book, and expanded upon on the book website. In the future we may add other case studies that are not previewed in the book so readers are encouraged to check the website from time to time.

As well as updating the material, we have restructured the chapters and their contents. Older material that is no longer mainstream has been removed to make way for the newer material, and other material has been repositioned. The most significant changes include the addition of one new chapter, Chapter 6 Interfaces and Interactions, which has been included in response to reader feedback. This covers the wide range of modern interfaces available to the interaction designer, but also describes earlier developments, thus providing context for the later technologies. It highlights both practical issues and research directions for each interface type. The old Chapter 15 on case studies has been removed (although this whole chapter is still downloadable from the website), as we have considerably enhanced the provision of case studies throughout the book and on the book website (see below).

Also in response to reader feedback, the material on data gathering and analysis has been streamlined and brought together in Chapters 7 and 8. The material on data analysis has been extended, and we now also cover data interpretation and presentation. This streamlining has allowed us to expand the evaluation chapters with additional examples.

Special features

We use both the textbook and the web to teach about interaction design. To promote good pedagogical practice, we include the following features:

Chapter design

Each chapter is designed to motivate and support learning:

• Aims are provided so that readers develop an accurate model of what to expect in the chapter.
• Key points at the end of the chapter summarize what is important.
• Activities are included throughout the book and are considered an essential ingredient for learning. They encourage readers to extend and apply their knowledge. Comments are offered directly after the activities, because pedagogic research suggests that turning to the back of the text annoys readers and discourages learning.
• An assignment is provided at the end of each chapter. This can be set as a group or individual project. The aim is for students to put into practice and consolidate knowledge and skills either from the chapter that they have just studied or from several chapters. Some of the assignments build on each other and involve developing and evaluating designs or actual products. Hints and guidance are provided on the website.
• Boxes provide additional and highlighted information for readers to reflect upon in more depth.
• Dilemmas offer honest and thought-provoking coverage of controversial or problematic issues.
• Case studies illustrating the application of interaction design techniques have been included throughout. Overviews of the case studies are included in the book, with full length versions on the www.id–book.com website.
• Further reading suggestions are provided at the end of each chapter. These refer to seminal work in the field, interesting additional material, or work that has been heavily drawn upon in the text.
• Interviews with nine practitioners and visionaries in the field enable readers to gain a personal perspective of the interviewees' work, their philosophies, their ideas about what is important, and their contributions to the field.
• Cartoons are included to make the book enjoyable.

www.id-book.com website

The aim of the website is to provide you with an opportunity to learn about interaction design in ways that go ‘beyond the book’. Additional in-depth material, hands-on interactivities, and material to support students' learning from the text are provided. Specific features include:

• Hands-on interactivities, including designing a questionnaire, customizing a set of heuristics, doing a usability analysis on ‘real’ data, and interactive tools to support physical design.
• Expanded case studies. The text includes brief overviews of case studies and full versions are available from the website.
• Hints and guidance on the assignments outlined in the book.
• Suggestions for additional material to be used in seminars, lab classes, and lectures.
• OHP slides to support the 15 chapters of the book.

Readership

This book will be useful to a wide range of readers with different needs and aspirations.

Students from Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Information Studies, Psychology, Sociology, and related disciplines studying courses in Interaction Design and Human-Computer Interaction will learn the knowledge, skills, and techniques for designing and evaluating state-of-the-art products and websites, as well as traditional computer systems.

Web and interaction designers, and usability professionals will find plenty to satisfy their need for immediate answers to problems as well as for building skills to satisfy the demands of today's fast moving technical market.

Users who want to understand why certain products can be used with ease while others are unpredictable and frustrating will take pleasure in discovering that there is a discipline with practices that produce usable systems.

Researchers and developers who are interested in exploiting the potential of web, wireless, and collaborative technologies will find that, as well as offering guidance, techniques, and much food for thought, a special effort has been made to include examples of state-of-the-art systems.

In the next section we recommend various routes through the text for different kinds of readers.

How to use this book

Interaction Design is not a linear design process but is essentially iterative and some readers and experienced instructors will want to find their own way through the chapters. Others, and particularly those with less experience, may prefer to work through chapter by chapter. Readers will also have different needs. For example, students of Psychology will come with different background knowledge and needs from those of Computer Science. Similarly, professionals wanting to learn the fundamentals in a one-week course have different needs. This book and the website are designed to be used in various ways. The following suggestions are provided to help you decide which way is best for you.

From beginning to end

There are 15 chapters, which progress through the interaction design process from background information to evaluation, so if students study one chapter per week during a fifteen-week semester course then this will represent a coherent thread through the field of interaction design. However, some of the chapters contain more material than could be covered in this way, and we recommend that you consider in advance which aspects of each chapter to study. In particular, Chapter 6 is not designed to be read from beginning to end, but should be treated more as a historical overview of three decades of interface development that can be read as three sections (one per decade) or dipped into when learning about a particular type of interface. Also, Chapter 8 on data analysis contains examples of theoretical frameworks for analysing qualitative data which will require more time and effort to study than the simpler analysis techniques introduced earlier. These could be skipped over in a sequential reading of the text, but particularly pertinent ones might form the basis of a discussion in a more advanced class on interaction design.

Getting a quick overview

For those who want to get a quick overview or just the essence of the book, we suggest you read Chapters 1, 9, and 12. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to interaction design and is essential for anyone using this book. Chapter 9 discusses the process of interaction design. Chapter 12 provides an introduction to the issues involved in evaluation. These chapters are recommended for everyone.

Suggestions for Computer Science Students

As well as studying Chapters 1, 9 and 12, Chapters 10 and 11 contain the material that will feel most familiar to any students who have been introduced to software development. In addition, Chapter 9 discusses lifecycle models in software engineering and HCI and how they are related. These chapters cover the process of interaction design and the activities it involves, including establishing requirements, conceptual design, and physical design.

Suggestions for information systems and information studies students

Information systems students will benefit from reading the whole text, but instructors may want to find additional examples of their own to illustrate how issues apply to business applications. Similarly, information studies instructors may add examples from digital libraries and other applications that provide information resources. Some students may be tempted to skip Chapters 3–5 but we recommend that they read these chapters since they provide important foundational material. This book does not cover how to develop business cases or marketing.

Suggestions for psychology and cognitive science students

Chapters 3–5 cover how theory and research findings have been applied to interaction design. They discuss the relevant issues and provide a wide range of studies and systems that have been informed by cognitive, social, and affective issues. Chapters 1 and 2 also cover important conceptual knowledge, necessary for a good grounding in interaction design. Chapter 6 discusses the wide range of interfaces available and the practical and research issues related to each, showing how theoretical ideas may be translated into more concrete practical guidance.

Practitioner and short course route

Many people want the equivalent of a short intensive 2–5 day course. The best route for them is to read Chapters 1, 9, and 12 and dip into the rest of the book for reference. For those who want practical development skills, we recommend Chapter 11. Chapter 6 provides an extensive overview of interfaces that can be dipped into.

Web designer route

Web designers who have a background in technology and want to learn how to design usable and effective websites are advised to read Chapters 1, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15, and relevant sections in Chapter 6. These chapters cover key issues that are important when designing and evaluating the usability of websites. A worked assignment runs through these chapters.

Usability professionals' route

Usability professionals who want to extend their knowledge of evaluation techniques and read about the social and psychological issues that underpin design of web, wireless, and collaborative systems are advised to read Chapter 1 for an overview, then select from Chapters 12–15 on evaluation. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 provide discussion of seminal user issues (cognitive, social, and affective aspects). There is new material throughout the rest of the book, which will also be of interest for dipping into as needed. This group may also be particularly interested in Chapter 11 which provides practical design examples, and the case studies which are spread throughout the book.

Plan your own path

For people who do not want to follow the ‘beginning-to-end’ approach or the suggestions above, there are many ways to use the text. Chapters 1, 9 and 12 provide a good overview of the topic. Chapter 1 is an introduction to key issues in the discipline and Chapters 9 and 12 offer introductions to design and evaluation. Chapters 2–5 cover human issues while Chapter 6 provides a comprehensive view of the various interfaces available and can be used flexibly to focus on interfaces that are particularly pertinent to your own goals. Chapters 7 and 8 look at data gathering, analysis, interpretation and presentation. Requirements and evaluation activities rely on the material in these chapters, so if you want to cover practical activities, then some study of these chapters will be needed although it is not necessary to study every element in depth. Practical techniques for establishing requirements are in Chapter 10 and techniques for prototyping and design are in Chapter 11. Chapters 12–15 cover the various approaches to evaluation—you may choose to look at usability testing and field studies (Chapter 14) or analytical evaluation (Chapter 15) or both chapters. Case studies are included throughout the book, but you could focus on one or two of them in depth, using the material on the website as a basis to expand areas particularly of interest. Another approach is to start with one or two of the evaluation chapters after first reading Chapters 1, 9, 12, then move into the design section, drawing on Chapters 2–6 as necessary.

Acknowledgements

Many people have helped to make the second edition a reality. We have benefited from the advice and support of our many professional colleagues across the world, our students, friends, and families, and we thank you all. We also warmly thank the following people for reviewing the manuscript and making many helpful suggestions for improvements: Alia I. Abdelmoty, Lynne Baillie, Alan Blackwell, Nick Bryan-Kinns, Sandra Cairncross, Deryn Graham, John Halloran, Paul Irvine, Chris Johnson, Ian Mackie, Michael Mahemoff, Alan Newell, Janet Read, Shamus Smith, James Tam and George Weir. Yvonne would like to thank her colleagues at Indiana University for providing constructive feedback on earlier drafts, in particular, Jeff Bardzell, Eli Blevis, Kay Connelly, Blaise Cronin, Dennis Groth, Youn-Kyung Lim and Alice Robbin. She also thanks her students for their continuous supply of interesting articles and websites, keeping her up-to-date with the very latest developments, especially Richie Hazlewood, Justin Donaldson and Tyler Waite. Helen would like to thank Judith Segal, Debbie Stone and Mark Woodroffe for helping to shape her ideas about Interaction Design, and Lynne Coventry, Daisy Mwanza, Debra Haley, Luis Palacios, Josie Taylor, and Giasemi Vavoula, for help with writing the case studies. Jenny would like to thank the members of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland, who help to keep her updated through their discussions and seminars, especially Ben Bederson, Allison Druin, and Ben Shneiderman. She would also like to thank her colleagues in the International Children's Digital Library Community Project, particularly Jade Burro, Allison Druin, Anita Komlodi and Weimin Hou.

We are particularly grateful to Sara Bly, Karen Holtzblatt, Jakob Nielsen, Abigail Sellen, Suzanne Robertson, Gitta Salomon, Ben Shneiderman, Gillian Crampton Smith, and Terry Winograd for generously contributing in-depth interviews.

The following people generously developed additional case studies: Sylvie Charland, Heather Collins, Matt Davies, Simone Diniz Junqueira Barbosa, Vanessa Evers, John Halloran, Hans Hillen, Assadour Kirijian, Aaron Loehrlein, Matthew Myers, Raquel Oliveira Prates and Clarisse S. de Souza. We thank Jonathan Lazar for generously helping us to identify some of the case studies and for commenting on drafts.

A special ‘thank you’ goes to our webmaster for the last 5 years, Harry Brignull, who has been helpful, knowledgeable, available and supportive throughout the development and maintenance of the www.id-book.com website. He also supplied various interactive materials.

We are grateful to our editors at Wiley: David Barnard, Deborah Egleton and Jonathan Shipley. Thanks also to Claire Jardine for her work on copyright clearance.

About the authors

The authors are all senior academics with a background in teaching, researching, and consulting in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Europe, Mexico, UK, and the USA. Having worked together on two other successful textbooks, they bring considerable experience in curriculum development, using a variety of media for distance learning as well as face-to-face teaching. They have considerable knowledge of creating learning texts and websites that motivate and support learning for a range of students.

All three authors are specialists in interaction design and human-computer interaction (HCI). In addition, they bring skills from other disciplines. Yvonne Rogers is a cognitive scientist, Helen Sharp is a software engineer, and Jenny Preece works in information systems and information studies. Their complementary knowledge and skills enable them to cover the breadth of concepts in interaction design and HCI to produce an interdisciplinary text and website. They have collaborated closely, supporting and commenting upon each other's work, to produce a high degree of integration of ideas with one voice. They have shared everything from initial concepts, through writing, design and production.

Yvonne Rogers has just returned to the UK to take up a chair in Human-Computer Interaction at the Open University. From 2003–2006, she was a professor of Informatics and Information Science at Indiana University. Before that, she was a Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the former School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences (now the Department of Informatics) at Sussex University, UK, where in 1997 she co-founded with the late Mike Scaife the Interact Lab, an interdisciplinary research center that was concerned with the possible interactions between people, technologies, and representations. She has also worked as a senior researcher at Alcatel Telecommunications company and has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Apple Computer Inc., and the University of Queensland.

Yvonne is well-known for her work in human-computer interaction, interaction design, computer-supported cooperative work, UbiComp and interactive learning environments. Her research focuses on augmenting and extending everyday, learning, and work activities with interactive technologies that move beyond the desktop. This involves designing user experiences through appropriating and assembling a diversity of pervasive technologies. A main focus is not the technology per se but the design and integration of the digital representations that are presented via them to support social and cognitive activities in ways that extend our current capabilities. Yvonne was one of the founding Principal Investigators of the six-year UK Equator interdisciplinary research collaboration (2000–2006). Many of the innovative projects are reported in this textbook, including the research she led on the design of pervasive and mobile technologies for enhancing and provoking the way children learn, understand, and play.

Jenny Preece is Professor and Dean of the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Prior to joining the University of Maryland in 2005 Jenny was Professor and Department Chair of Information Systems at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Before coming to the USA in 1996 Jenny was a Research Professor at South Bank University, London, for two years where she created and directed an interdisciplinary center for People and Systems Interaction. In the mid-1980s, Jenny joined the Open University (OU) where she was an Associate Professor. At the OU she worked on a variety of projects in computer-based education, human-computer interaction and computer education. Jenny and Yvonne, with a team of academics from the UK and Holland, developed the first Masters distance learning course on human-computer interaction, which was regularly studied by around 1000 students. This experience provided the foundation for authoring one of the first major texts in HCI—Human Computer Interaction (1994), Preece, J., Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., Benyon, D., Holland, S., Carey, T—and initiated the successful authoring partnership between Helen, Yvonne and Jenny.

Jenny's teaching and research interests include: online communities of interest, communities of practice, social computing, and human-computer interaction. She was one of the first researchers to point out the importance of online communities for providing social and emotional support to their members as well as for obtaining and exchanging information, particularly in patient support communities. She has also researched the differences in participants' behavior in different types of online communities including the reasons why people do or do not participate. Jenny has written extensively on these topics and her work includes a book entitled Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability (Preece, 2000).

Helen Sharp is Associate Professor at the Open University and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for HCI Design at City University London. Although Helen first joined her current department about 20 years ago, she has held permanent and visiting positions at other institutions during that time, including City University London, University College London, Middlesex University, and various publishing companies.

Helen was originally trained as a software engineer and she developed and maintained a variety of software applications for several years, watching the frustration of the systems' users and the clever ‘work-arounds’ they developed when the delivered systems did not support them in their jobs. It was this experience that inspired her to investigate HCI, user-centred design and the other related disciplines that now underpin the field of interaction design. Her research interests focus on the intersection between interaction design and software engineering: in particular, how to ensure that the needs of the user are incorporated into the design of interactive products.