In reaction to the comment Jullius Huijnk (from www.makingthesite.com) placed to my former article, I have written this new article in an attempt to answer his question.

Hi Julius,

very interesting how you came to be the first and ever fastest writer on my blog But welcome and thanks for the extensive reaction. I will try and give feedback as fully as I can.

I think we are on the same page, only we name it differently. For instance, you say that all design is the same. It all has the same kind of decisions to make to come to a design.

This is true. But on a very abstract level. The model I drew up does not show this layer because I only focus at the field of Interaction Design. But you could think up a layer under the “Basic Knowledge” layer in the model. This would represent all overall “Design Knowledge”.

However, to get to concrete solutions and designs, I think it is necessary to specify. Designing for Interaction needs a certain specialization as does Graphic Design, Industrial Design, etc.

Saying you are a designer is true for everyone on some level (as shows the new IKEA campagne ;). But in that sense everybody is a bike mechanic (you mend your own bike, right?) and a stylist (you buy your own clothes, right?) and a …

Of course we all know something about anything. But for professional application of these skills one needs to know more then just a bit.

Just because you know how to use a knife and sometimes sow your own clothes, doesn’t make you a surgeon. First you will have to have general knowledge of the body (be it human or animal). Then you need to build knowledge on the toolkit at hand (the knives, the stitching techniques, etc). And from there on you can choose to specialize.

This is the same for any other field. And therefore for Interaction Design it is no different. Of course you can choose to be generalist in the field (like a house doctor). But you can also choose to specialize in a certain field (hart surgeon, or plastic surgeon).

Continuing the example of the surgeon, in that field there is knowledge available of over thousands of years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgery). Techniques and tools have refined and specialized over and over again. Enabling surgeons with more and more knowledge and understanding of the human body. Thinking up new techniques, cures and tools.

Interaction Design has been around for only as long as there has been computers. Which is about, give or take, 50 years. It should be clear that there still is a lot of discussion to be done to really get to the core of things on this field.

In order to be able to discuss, there has to be something to be discussed. In that sense, saying that Interaction Design is like any other design, is a great first step for a discussion.