Excerpt: Three Stages of Interactive Design

By | February 7, 2000
 

From Interactivity By Design: Creating & Communicating with New Media by Ray Kristof and Amy Satran (1995, Adobe Press; ISBN 1568302215; Amazon | B&N.com)

Critical Tasks of Information Design

  1. Define goals for the product
  2. Define what the audience wants to do
  3. Decide how the product will reach its audience
  4. Choose the authoring tool
  5. Create a content inventory list
  6. Create a project plan
  7. Organize the content
  8. Produce a content flowchart

Critical Tasks of Interaction Design

  1. Create a guidance system to orient users
  2. Design the navigation and access routes
  3. Define what happens in every screen
  4. Design controls for interaction
  5. Create a storyboard

Note: HTML limits these options to fairly accepted Web standards (underlined hypertext links, “page” orientated sites). However, other formats such as Shockwave/Flash broaden designers’ options.

Critical Tasks of Presentation Design

  1. Define the visual theme and style
  2. Design a system of screen layouts
  3. Create the structural elements of each screen (backgrounds, windows, etc.)
  4. Create the control elements (buttons, etc.)
  5. Integrate the media elements (images, etc.)
  6. Create prototype screens