Imagine you are an older person with dementia who is out walking but has forgotten how to get home. Instead of getting anxious, you reach into your pocket and pull out a smooth vibrating “river stone.” You flip it open and the compass-like device with GPS technology guides you home.
This is just one example of “interaction design” products that UTS students are developing in collaboration with Clinical Associate Professor Laurie Miller, a neuropsychologist at the Royal Prince Alfred hospital. The students worked closely with patients with dementia and their carers to identify circumstances when patients need help remembering things.
The students created easy-to-use prototypes that remind the user of familiar objects, such as a rock or watch. Combining the principles of design with technology, the students analysed the interaction between the user and product to enable the user to solve a problem - in this particular case to get home safely.
Such devices can be life changing for people with dementia, says Dr Miller. “It’s a very ‘can do’ feeling when you create a tactile product that can fix a problem,” she says.
The rapid development of new technology, especially wearables and voice-activated software, has made industries acutely competitive and placed interactive designers with sought after skills in high demand.
So what is interaction design?
“You create an experience,” says Professor Elise van den Hoven, who collaborates with Dr Miller on Materialising Memory, an international research program that the UTS students are working with that operates in the Netherlands, Scotland and Australia.
“It goes beyond pressing a button and hearing a beep. You create a product, object or system that responds to people when people do something with it.”
Interaction design intertwines several fields, says Professor van den Hoven, who teaches at the UTS Faculty of Engineering and IT. “Psychology is very important; the capabilities and the desires of people. What do they want to do? What can they do? How would they like to see these potential products?”
It also combines elements of technology, software and engineering, and finally design. “Design brings everything together,” she says. “Aesthetics is only a small part of it. Design also takes into account how people would like to use products to give them most benefit.”
This increasing demand for trained professionals was part of the impetus for UTS to launch its new Master of Interaction Design, which can also be taken as a Graduate Certificate, Master’s or an extended Master’s when students take on a research project.
“Our degrees have a good mix of design, psychology and technology, while other degrees focus heavily on one of these areas,” says Professor van den Hoven who is the new degree’s coordinator. “It’s also accessible - you don't have to be an excellent programmer to learn interaction design. You don't have to be a product designer or a psychologist - but you’ll learn a bit of all these on the course.”