DESIGN · Product & Design
Interaction Designer
Map out the paths people take, so complex things become easy to understand.
This role across the eras
Design: AI-native interaction (conversation, multimodality, presenting uncertain results), with AI-generated assets entering the design workflow.
2023–present · Read about the Large Model Era: its background, pain points, and new technology
Common tasks
The following is a composite example scenario; it does not correspond to any one company or person.
The information on a page: why is it arranged this way? Starting from this question, look at how a role connects needs, execution, and feedback.
Understanding today's problem
Map out in what situation a user completes what task. Organize the information and actions into paths that are easy to understand, and identify the places that would confuse people.
Moving forward with the team
Discuss with the team using sketches and prototypes. Design the normal state, and also the empty, error, waiting, and insufficient-permission states. Consider the experience of text, the keyboard, and different screens.
Delivery and continuous improvement
Check the implementation with engineering, and revise the design based on usage feedback. Write down the interaction conventions, so similar problems get a consistent way to be solved.
Role names help us see how work is divided; everyday collaboration is what truly connects those divisions.
How the role evolved: related papers
Papers per year in this site's sample for the arXiv categories related to this role (Human-Computer Interaction cs.HC, Computers and Society cs.CY). It reflects how research topics shift, not the number of people employed.
Data source: this site’s list of arXiv papers, counted by the year each paper was first published. A paper listed in several categories counts once in each line, so the lines do not add up. Not employment data.