Recently I have seen some writers talk about what is new in interaction design. There are many suggestions, such as storytelling. voice-first design, frameless experiences, augmented reality, emotional design, transparency design, systems design. Most of these are quite obvious and we will probably see more of them these coming years. I just want to comment on one trend that I have seen mentioned here and there. The basic idea is that any design should seamlessly function on any device or system. This sounds all good to a user who can move freely between technologies and devices and still use the same functionality, only with different interaction modalities. We have seen this idea being implemented for many years already, for instance, in how websites have been designed to also work on smartphones. Even though the idea is easy to support it leads to some serious design challenges that are not always addressed. I will mention two issues. First, the idea is based on the assumption...
Interaction Design, HCI, Philosophy of Design, Technology and Society