Bill Moggridge (1943–2012)

In Designing Interactions (2007) Moggridge outlines a much-needed canon of interaction design by focusing on milestone works and interviewing their creators. It was very successful, and deservedly so. In this book, Moggridge tries the same approach with the intention of understanding how the "new media" transform society's media structures. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this attempt falls kind of flat on its face. One reason could be that the book covers only the mainstream of "new media" (Facebook, Twitter, current.tv, Wikipedia, Wired and so on) without addressing any more conceptually important developments. Or perhaps is it because there is no trace of analysis informed by media studies or any other relevant branch of social science? Yet in my opinion, the most likely explanation is that what is interesting about the "new" media is that they are collaborative -- but Moggridge's approach of interviewing CEOs, journalists and lead designers leaves the users and their uses completely out of sight. We are left with an extremely one-sided producer's perspective, which may be useful to some extent but clearly tells less than half the story.… (más)

A truly remarkable book, painting a rich picture of interaction design practice by means of some forty journalistically rendered interviews with outstanding designers and a substantial piece of reflection on the author's own experience as an interaction designer. There are several strengths to the book: It adopts and illustrates a consistent design perspective (as opposed to, e.g., a HCI perspective); it gives roughly equal weight to hardware and software design; it covers the history of interaction design for personal computing as well as related fields including games, multimedia and service design; it is well designed and produced in itself, with a beautiful flow between sections and with generous and appropriate image material. The appended DVD provides interview segments and, more importantly, some demos to illustrate key topics. The only drawback I can find is a slight bias towards Silicon Valley people and practices, which is certainly historically justifiable but still constrains the overall picture somewhat. Nevertheless, I would consider this book to be required reading for all students, teachers and practitioners who need a comprehensive and up-to-date view of interaction design practice.… (más)