Product Design Speak 101: What Is an Interactionary?

Editor’s note: The RTP Product Pipeline is designed to help entrepreneurs, business leaders, educators and inventors better understand the product commercialization process. Montie Roland and Tom Vass are co-founders of the RTP Product Development Guild, Inc. Their column appears weekly.

MORRISVILLE – Last week, I had the honor of being selected as a judge for an Interactionary Design Competition held by the Triangle chapter of the Usability Professionals Association. According to author Scott Berkun, an interactionary is

“an experiment in design education. The idea is to explode the process of design by forcing insane time constraints, and asking teams of designers to work together in front of a live audience. From what we’ve seen, it forces the discussion of design process, teamwork, and organization, and asks important questions about how designers do what they do.”

The event was a lot of fun and helped the participants (and maybe even the audience) sharpen their design skills.

The event began with a keynote presentation from Anthony D. Hall. Hall is responsible for making sure that the IBM.com website is easily usable by a worldwide audience. He spoke from the perspective of a usability professional who has a staff of researchers and developers whose only job is to make a website (with millions of pages) easier to use.

The Interactionary was driven by three teams and a panel of judges. The teams had 10 minutes to design an interface to a voting booth. There was a twist however. The interface had to allow the user to find out more information about each candidate before voting. The interface also had to allow the voter to change his vote if the candidate that he voted for was not currently in the lead.

The event started with first team being introduced to the design requirements. They were then give 10 minutes to find a solution. During those 10 minutes they were encouraged to do user research by polling the audience. They then had two minutes to present their solution and answer questions from the judges.

We (the judges) rated the team on teamwork, approach / process, and the validity of their design. This continued until all of the teams had an opportunity to create a new interface based on the criteria.

This event didn’t teach the team members, or the audience, how to design. Instead it helped them sharpen their design skills. By creating an absurdly constrained situation, the format of the event forced the team members to act in a bold way, while having fun.

Design is about pushing the boundaries and talking bold risks. Events like this make design fun. They make it easier for all to stay passionate about design. That passion gets translated into better products and services. When that happens, everyone wins.

Editor’s note: the opinions of the author are his own and do not necessarily represent those of WRAL Local Tech Wire.

The RTP Product Pipeline is a new feature for WRAL Local Tech Wire. Its purpose is to help entrepreneurs, business leaders, educators and inventors better understand the product commercialization process. Montie Roland and Vass are co-founders of the RTP Product Development Guild, Inc. Roland is also the president of the Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development Management Association Roland runs Montie Design, a product design firm in Morrisville, NC. Their column appears weekly.