{"id":21235,"date":"2021-12-08T14:00:35","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T14:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/?p=21235"},"modified":"2021-12-08T14:17:51","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T14:17:51","slug":"fundamentals-good-interaction-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/fundamentals-good-interaction-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a foundation of excellence: Intercom’s 9 fundamentals of great interaction design"},"content":{"rendered":"

The design community no longer has to prove the value of design to get a seat at the table. Designers have demonstrated that design can be a central pillar of business success. But they’ve also lost something along the way.<\/p>\n

Designers have stepped off their island where slick, yet ineffective and impractical design is made. They’ve embraced cross-functional relationships<\/a> and work closely with partners all across the organization. More than ever, they understand who their customers are and what they care about. They design systems, not destinations<\/a>. And instead of primarily thinking about interfaces, they think about the product strategy. They design for business outcomes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But when you’re deep in all of these additional layers of building products, it’s easy to forget about the importance of also nailing the thing designers are experts at: interaction design, the optimization of the interactions between user and product.<\/p>\n

When we recognized this issue in our own design team<\/a>, we established the fundamentals of good interaction design. They are a reminder about the things that are deeply important to us, but sometimes forgotten.<\/p>\n

It’s by no means an exhaustive list and since they incorporate our product design principles<\/a>, they are not universal to every company. They are fundamentals that we at Intercom care about. But hopefully they can serve as a reminder for you as well and maybe even get you thinking about the fundamentals of interaction design that are important to your company.<\/p>\n

1. Present the same object in a familiar way everywhere<\/h2>\n

Intercom, with its vast breadth and depth, can feel overwhelming. We can make it easier for our customers by making the core objects in the system (e.g. conversations, users, messages, etc.) easily recognizable and ensuring they behave the same way everywhere. Recognizing is easier than recalling.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\u2705 Do<\/strong>
\nDefault to showing an object the same way everywhere. When you do have a strong rationale to deviate, make it feel familiar and consider whether the object needs to be displayed differently elsewhere in the product.<\/p>\n

\u274c Don’t<\/strong>
\nMake local optimizations that are not reflected elsewhere, or are inconsistent with other contexts. Don’t create multiple similar, yet slightly different, variations of the same object.<\/p>\n

Ask:<\/strong><\/p>\n