Names, titles and classifications are important. And when I was playing around with MoveableType 3.1’s new sub-category features I ran into a little bit of a problem.
I couldn’t figure out the best possible top-level cateogry to house Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Informaitonal Design, Usability, etc…. What would be the ideal umbrella title/discipline to house these non-design, non-development areas of expertise? And really, it was between two titles, User Experience or HCI. I remember this discussion happening before, and thought that User Experience was the umbrella title decided upon. But when I did a quick search online to confirm this thought, I came up almost empty. (granted, it was a very quick search.)
Then I ran into this great article by IBM Ease of Use entitled “What is user experience design?”. This article answered my question pretty nicely.
User Experience Design fully encompasses traditional Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users. HCI design addresses the interaction between a human and a computer. In addition, User Experience Design addresses the user’s initial awareness, discovery, ordering, fulfillment, installation, service, support, upgrades, and end-of-life activities. HCI design constitutes a major portion of the activities performed by a User Experience Design team, so the following paragraphs provide an overview of HCI design followed by references to additional material about User Experience Design.
Reading through this article gives a great viewport into HCI design: The User, The Computer, The Interaction. (UCI?)
Anyways, I thought you’d like the article. I did. I know that this title thing was beat to death months ago, I just couldn’t recall the order of the umbrella. And this article was a pleasent surprise when looking for the answer.
Tagged As User Experience Design
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Posted at 08:46 AM