In Section 1, I wrote “… if the technology is going to India, and the form is going to China, what is left for the United States? The answer is Interaction Design, in a rich manifestation of mind, body and soul. One of the more strategic levels of design encompasses Interaction Design as defined in this text: the creation of a meaningful relationship between a product and a person, identified and created through ethnographic and other user-centered design methods. Interaction Design is positioned to become a strategic differentiator for businesses looking for innovative differentiation, and thus the field is a likely evolution for many Industrial Designers. This strategic level of design is one that Interaction Design is prepared to participate in, and even own—if this type of designer is able to speak the common language of business and strategy.”

Since writing this in 2007, it’s become increasingly true, and increasingly false. The most pragmatic aspects of interaction design have gained momentum in many of the Fortune 500, as “UX managers” lead teams through the creation of wireframe documents and task flows. In this capacity, these people – many of which come from backgrounds of product management and business – are, indeed, designing for behavior and trying to use  interaction design to differentiate their products in the marketplace. This does, indeed, point to a field that has increased in size and scope in the United States while remaining relatively small in size in many Asian countries. Yet much of this type of work is, for lack of a better term, lifeless; while created with the best of intentions, simply producing a specification of hundreds of pages of wireframes does not achieve the level of meaning that is implied by designing for behavior. With no purposeful pejorative emphasis, this form of work will be offshored to a cheaper, production oriented environment; these jobs are not “safe”, and nor should they be. To speak the language of business and strategy through interaction design work requires an intellectual approach to design and a passionate approach to design; the product of a requirements document, or a specification, or hundreds of wireframes is only tangentially related to the strategic differentiation described above. This form of work is a commodity; it will soon be given to the lowest bidder.