Designs For Learning - Vol. 6 - No. 1-2 - Designing Learning Opportunities in Interaction Design: Interactionaries as a means to study and teach student design processes

Oct 15, 2026

Vol. 6, No. 1–2 presents a pedagogical model for interaction design education that addresses criticisms of learning-by-practice as time-consuming, costly, and hard to implement in academic settings. The study evaluates a time-constrained collaborative design exercise called an “interactionary”, analyzing student work through learning design sequences and transformation units. Interactionaries reveal patterns across design work, materials mainly document ideas, and critique sessions raise issues missed during designing. Teacher interventions are suggested to coach student design processes.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages29

Reading Time1 h 13 min

AccessFree to download

Designing Learning Opportunities in Interaction Design

Interactionaries and the learning model

Background: practice, empathy, and authentic cases

Conceptualizing interaction design experience

Sketching, prototypes, and multimodal representations

Vol. 6 / No. 1–2 Des igns For Learning Designs for Learning Volume6/ Number 1–2 Designing Learning Opportunities in Interaction Design: Interactionaries as a means to study and teach student design processes roBert rAmBerG, Stockholm University, Sweden HeNrIK ArtmAN, KtH royal Institute of technology, Sweden KLAS KArLGreN, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden Learning by practice, apprenticeship and paradigmatic examples have been prime paths for learning within interaction design. These have been criticized for being time-consuming and costly, of not being implementable in academic contexts. In this article we suggest and evaluate a pedagogical model to address these problems in design teaching and learning. Results from a time-constrained collaborative design exercise, a so-called “interactionary”, are presented. Student design work is analyzed using the framework of learning design sequencesand analysis of the primary transformation unit shows that interactionaries reveal patterns in student design work. Materials are used mainly to document design ideas rather than as a design material to further investigate design ideas and aspects of interaction. In the critiquing sessions, regarded as the secondary transformation unit, many issues hardly addressed during the design work were brought up. Thus, the designers continued to develop their design proposal primed by critique presented by the reviewers. Based on the results, possible teacher interventions to coach student design work are suggested. background Interaction design is about designing novel user interfaces and proposing ideas about the future use of artifacts (Löwgren & Stolterman, 1998) . Creating representations of such future interaction is a task that is difficult to learn, describe and teach as the object of design is of such an abstract and intangible character (Reimann, 2008; Saffer, 2006) . Both Reimann and Saffer emphasize conceptualizing working situations and empathy with users. According to Löwgren interaction design is about creating conditions for 30 DOI:[http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/dfl-2014-0015](http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/dfl-2014-0015) good use of digital designs and maintains that the ”only way to learn those conditions, to understand the relations between design choices and resulting use, is still largely by practice and apprenticeship”(Löwgren, 2002, p. 1). Also more specific skills within interaction design have been claimed to be developed with practice, as maintained by Bill Buxton “a designers’ use of [sketches] is a distinct skill that develops with practice”(Buxton, 2007, p. 96). Intimately connected to the strong emphasis on practice is the importance of not only learning in formal settings but also being exposed to authentic cases. Strong and colleagues pointed out already in 1994 the need for ”an experiential component as well as classroom instruction” in HCI education (Strong et al., 1994, p. 12) . Further, even though novice interaction designers do get involved in authentic cases, there is still the challenge of providing appropriate coaching (Sas, 2006b) . Most design activities are not performed in an isolated context but conducted within an interdisciplinary context with different actors having different roles in regard to a design task. Collaboration is important as a way to reflect on ideas, sketches, design elements or context of use (Artman, Ramberg, Sundholm, & Cerratto-Pargman, 2005; Ramberg, Artman, Sundholm,& Cerratto-Pargman, 2004; Sundholm, 2007) . Collaborative design can be viewed as an activity driven by communicative practices and representations for mediating ideas. Sketches and other intermediating artefacts, not the least language, become important to communicate and present design ideas and concepts. Designers must learn not only visual design, but also how to negotiate the relation or the interplay between some actual system design and design of use (Arvola & Larsson, 2004) . conceptualizing inte

FAQs

What problem does the article address in interaction design teaching?

It addresses concerns that learning-by-practice and apprenticeship can be time-consuming, costly, and difficult to implement in academic contexts. The article proposes and evaluates a pedagogical model to mitigate these issues.

What is an “interactionary” in this study?

An “interactionary” is a time-constrained collaborative design exercise used to generate and analyze student design work. Results from it are presented and interpreted through the learning design sequence framework.

How do critique sessions influence students’ design proposals?

In critiquing sessions, issues that were hardly addressed during the design work are brought up, and designers continue to develop their proposals based on reviewers’ feedback.

Oct 15, 2026

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