The Role of Interaction Design in Smart Product Development Activities

Although interaction design is a rapidly growing and even evolving design practice today, interaction designers still often have to explain what an interaction designer actually does and argue that their specialty is not something that anyone could do without a formal education both to stakeholders and clients who buy their designs.Furthermore, there still seems to be confusion when the job of industrial designers and interaction designers are overviewed together. The aim of this article is to build a background for the role of interaction design in smart product development activities within relationship to industrial design. Based on its strong roots within industrial design, this study also aims to present the relationship between industrial design and interaction design in the same activities. We conducted this research by having an interdisciplinary literature review and a field research consisting of 2 phases such as a series of interviews and a case study. The most extensive collaboration between industrial design and interaction design is seen at Planning and Concept Development phases which are the very early steps of product development activities. Compared to industrial design, interaction design is foreseen to have a wider activity area, a more strategic role in especially in early design process such as Planning, Concept Development phases of smart product development activities.