Principles for Interaction Design, Part 3: Spanning the Creativity Gap

The various responsibilities in intelligent systems design--responsibilities to acquire certain knowledge and skills--suggest strongly that effective interaction design is inherently interdisciplinary. As a consequence, gaps in knowledge acquisition and creativity on the part of design teams are bound to emerge as long as responsibilities are abrogated because they are tied to roles (such as cognitive systems engineers versus systems engineers). Communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing are essential components of success, and a language that cuts across discipline-specific jargon is likely to make the development effort much more effective. This essay describes similarities between two related approaches to interaction design that resonate with each other and share principles: ecological interface design and human-centered computing. These similarities are emphasized by noting similarities between two different interfaces for computer network defense that were independently developed from each approach.