My first few weeks contracting

I'm a few weeks in to my first contracting role and so far, so good. It feels like a pure interaction design role, which is really what I was looking for. In my experience these kinds of roles have been quite difficult to find though, and I'm not 100% sure why that is. More thoughts around that in a bit.

I've been itching to blog about something, which I take as a good sign that I'm feeling productive, but also not exausted. But I couldn't think of what to write. This blog post formats for teams website from Giles Turnbull really helped spur me on to try a post, even if I'm not going with regular weeknotes for now.

Interaction design versus service design

I've been thinking a lot about interaction design as a profession, and how it blurs with service design. And whether or not that's a good thing.

(If you're unfamiliar with the terms, this page on GOV.UK defines the user-centred design job family pretty well.)

I have a huge amount of respect for service design, and I know that many people are able to do both interaction design and service design (or perhaps some people have to because that's what their team or situation demands). But sometimes it feels like we expect interaction designers and service designers to be able to pick both things up, and I'm worried that we're letting both professions down a bit by not being clearer with boundries between the two?

I'm feeling less sure that interaction design is very close to service design (at least when compared to other UCD (user centered design) roles). Many content designers, user researchers, product managers and engineers are great at thinking about service design too, but there doesn't feel like the same expectation on those roles to be doing both things at the same time?

Anyway, in a round-about way, I'm saying that this new role I have feels very focused on interaction design, and I feel like I'm bringing some specific and useful skills to the team, rather than trying to wear lots of hats. Hopefully this continues to be the case!

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