In his seminal book The Psychology of Everyday Things, Donald Norman outlined a world of things around us that are poorly designed because their designers did not apply psychology to the design process. The idea that psychologists can answer questions about design, through a user-centered design process, is a thesis that has guided our field for several decades. However, if we examine what the world’s top industrial designers, such as Yves Béhar, Jonathan Ive, Karim Rashid, and Philippe Starck, actually do, it becomes clear that they work quite differently. To them, thinking about function is like thinking intuitively about three-dimensional shapes. Interaction design is at the dawn of a new age: Flexible Organic Light Emitting Diodes (FOLEDs) and Flexible Electrophoretic Ink (E Ink) present a third revolution in display technologies that will greatly alter the way computer interfaces are designed. Instead of being constrained to the flat surfaces, we will have the ability to shrink-wrap displays around any three-dimensional object, and thus, potentially, every everyday thing. You will order your morning coffee through a display on the skin of your beverage container and your newspaper will be displayed on a flexible paper computer. These "computational things" will need to be designed by artists who understand three-dimensional form if they are truly to become everyday. Industrial designers will become the new interaction designers. This does not necessarily mean current interaction designers will lose their jobs, as our field will expand to address new markets. Interaction design will in fact be everywhere when computers become so ubiquitous they are just everyday computational things.

Dr. Roel Vertegaal

Dr. Roel Vertegaal is Associate Professor in Human-Computer IRoel Vertegaal is one of Canada's top designers of interactive technologies, a scientist and musician. He is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at the prestigious Queen’s University in Canada, where he directs the Karim Rashid-designed Human Media Lab (www.humanmedialab.org). Roel is also President and CEO of Xuuk, Inc, a startup that founded the digital signage metrics industry, and directs the Computing and the Creative Arts Program at Queen's. Roel studied Electronic Music at Utrecht Conservatory in The Netherlands, and holds an MPhil in Computer Science and PhD in Human Factors. Amongst others Roel founded the alt.chi sessions at the annual ACM CHI conference and co-founded the Eye Tracking Research and Applications conference. Prof. Vertegaal pioneered the use of 2D spatial input for sound synthesis, eye tracking in user interfaces, Attentive User Interfaces for notification management, and NUI-style input via body, head and eyes. He also designed PaperWindows and PaperPhone, the world's first flexible paper computers, as well as the first non-flat UIs. His scientific contributions range from studies of the effect of eye contact on turn taking in group conversations to modelling the effects of streptococcal pathogens on collagen autoimmunity. He is currently working on Organic User Interfaces: flexible and multi shaped display interfaces that allow industrial designers to embedded multitouch user interfaces into products of any shape.

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