Five Lenses: Towards a Toolkit for Interaction Design

Thomas Erickson of the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center says:

I suggest that rather than trying to construct a unified, coherent account of interaction design, we would do better to take a more syncretic approach, gathering appropriate concepts and exploring their interplay without, however, insisting on resolving their tensions and contradictions. In this essay I explore these issues.

• I begin with a definition, and illustrate my approach to partitioning the terrain of interaction design using five conceptual "lenses."
• In so doing, I cover most of what I see as the theoretical roots of interaction design.
• I then turn to the role of theory in interaction design, and suggest that a good way to begin is to assemble a toolkit of concepts for interaction design that consists of appropriately sized theoretical constructs.