(Nice portfolio site by the way).

I agree with you on this and feel the learning curve is part of the experience of discovery. I would also be interested in how the people who made the comment that you shouldn’t have to work it out feel about the iPhone or macbook mousepad. For me both of those have a very slight learning curve in exactly the same way as the site however once you have made that discovery they become to many instantly more usable as a result. I miss the macbook trackpad when I go back to pc laptops that said I know my mother would probably hate it in comparison.

I think its often better to create those opinions than be middle of the road to all people and not really create any passion in anybody.

The idea that you should be able to quickly and efficiently find what you are looking for isn’t always valid. That is a pure task oriented, tool-based approach to interaction design and ignores much of the experiential process of interaction. Yet experience is the fundamental differential between interaction design and any other kind of design.

If you are trying to find a formula for DNA, making a banking transaction, or some other very task focussed activity, then it makes sense to try and streamline the process and for the interface to disappear as much as possible (though this doesn’t happen much, despite all the interaction, experience and usability people involved in such projects).

On the other hand, if you are trying to demonstrate the kinds of experiences and alternative ways of thinking about interaction design that you can come up with to potential clients, then it makes sense to provide them with one of those experiences. Games and play are pleasurable not because you know all the rules and know exactly how to win. In fact, if that is the case, they’re usually rather boring. Finding out what you have to do is where a large part of the pleasure comes from playing them. But this isn’t something confined to games – most people have the experience of installing a new piece of software, which might be quite tool-based, and not bothering to read the manual before diving in. There is pleasure to be had finding out what the system is, what its affordances are, how the designers have gone about solving problems, even trying to break it. This pleasure isn’t just an additional nicety, it’s the difference between people using one application over another and can be the difference between entire brands and operating systems. It’s certainly the difference between Windows (very task and work oriented) and the Mac (aesthetically oriented in order to make doing tasks more pleasurable). Those little jiggly icons on the iPhone when you change their order or go to delete them, or the smooth logarithmic friction of a scrolling element in a Flash app are all examples of this.

It is entirely hypocritical, not to mention arrogant, when designers, who both employ and enjoy all these techniques themselves, assume that they are the only ones who will “get the cleverness” and that the average Joe won’t. Whilst plenty of designers have iPhones, to continue that clichéd example, the vast majority of iPhone owners aren’t designers. What the “average Joe” (who isn’t so average) enjoys most are all the “cool bits”, not the functionality alone. It’s not that the iPhone can surf the web or has different applications that makes it so successful alone, it’s the way it does it that is the big leap. Functionality, usability and aesthetics are inseparable, especially in interaction design.

I stand by my original post about the intuitive nature of the mN site. In order to explore it, you just have to scribble. I hardly have to learn any navigation and the elements that I do have to learn are pleasurable to learn and explore. So I want to explore more and go deeper into the site, which is what makes it intuitive and playful and intuitive because it is playful.

If you narrowly think that all people care about doing is completing a task when they are looking for an interaction design agency, you’re only understanding about a quarter of what makes up a person’s experience. The reason I find the ‘critique’ on Australian InFront so lacking is because it isn’t really reasoned critique at all – on what research, information or experience is the above quote based? What is the “transaction” that DesignRonin is alluding too? It’s not a site for Amazon.com, there’s no web site shopping cart. It’s knee jerk reaction to something that, frankly, most of them wish they had done in the first place and from designers who are playing the usability card they don’t believe in themselves because it’s the trendy thing to do. And this from someone whose own site looks like an error page for which they can’t be bothered to create anything better and out of the other three sites linked to from their page, one has broken image links and another throws a Invalid Hostname error.

Usability and functionality come in many forms and they are part of a more complex mix of elements that make up a successful piece of interaction design. They’re not just buzzwords that are cool to say in a forum without any sense of understanding behind them.

Going back to the purpose of mN’s site – it’s there (I assume, albeit with some inside info) to attract the kind of clients that are going to want a different way of thinking about interaction, web and Flash design to most other agencies. If it self-selects by not attracting people who want a site that looks like every other, then that’s probably not a bad thing.

You have to pitch your wares and style and be clear about it. There’s no wrong or right there – some designers focus on very clean, simple HTML and CSS sites and that’s great because there are plenty of clients that want that. Others focus on overblown motion animation and that’s fine too, because there are clients that want that too. Others focus on interesting and novel ways of exploring interaction and that’s fine too.

There appears to be an assumption in some of the In Front thread that interaction design is a done deal, that we now know everything there is to know about it and there are a handful of approaches that work and that people follow. I know many of the founders of In Front and know many of the people on it. I also know that the age group is relatively young, even though they might have several years experience in the industry. This comes through loud and clear in much of the troll commentary and the lack of knowledge of interaction design over roughly four decades that it has existed for.

Despite those decades, interaction design has only really been an area that most designers have engaged in – in the way that we know it – in the last 18-20 years. It is still an extremely young area and there is still an enormous amount to discover and work out, not least because the technology and audience experience are changing all the time.

dylan’s last blog post..Capatcha EP now as free mp3

I can’t say whether the mN site is a site for other designers or not. It does demonstrate their approach and style and they’re not afraid to show clients that. Some clients wont get it and they are probably not the right clients for mN. My jab at Australian studios is that they too often go for the safe route that is nice, but not particularly original or inspiring. That’s not always the case, of course. But I’ve seen it more often than not in my time there.

dylan’s last blog post..Capatcha EP now as free mp3

Most of them are missing the point, but that’s okay, better to polarise than to produce something average that nobody has an opinion about, which is what so much Aussie design does.