Intent
A person arrives with a goal, not an interest in the interface.
HAAM skills / Interaction design
Make complex behaviour feel obvious.
Interaction design shapes the dialogue between a person and a product: what people can do, how the system responds, and how that exchange feels from moment to moment.
Design the conversation, not just the screens.
The core model
Every interface is a conversation on a loop.
A person acts, the system answers, and the quality of that exchange, its speed, clarity, and honesty, is what people experience as good design.
Action
They act on whatever the design suggests is possible.
Response
The system changes state and must make that change visible.
Interpretation
The person reads the result and decides what to do next.
What is interaction design?
Five dimensions, not just pixels.
The classic Gillian Crampton Smith and Kevin Silver model is useful because it makes the material of interaction design explicit: words, visuals, physical context, time, and behaviour.
Words
Labels, buttons, errors, and instructions. Short interface copy carries disproportionate weight.
Visuals
Typography, icons, imagery, and layout communicate state and hierarchy before anyone reads closely.
Objects & space
The device and context matter: a thumb on a phone outdoors is a different problem than a mouse at a desk.
Time
Animation, sound, latency, progress, waiting, and change over time all need to be designed.
Behaviour
How the system reacts to what people do, including mistakes. This is where an interface earns or loses trust.
The principles
What makes an interface feel obvious.
These principles are older than most digital products. They remain useful because human attention, expectation, error, and learning have not been replaced by new interface technology.
Affordance & signifiers
Things should look like what they do. A clear button invites action; an ambiguous control taxes attention.
Feedback
Every action deserves a visible reaction. Silence after a click is how people learn to distrust an interface.
Mapping
Controls should relate naturally to their effects so people do not have to translate the interface in their heads.
Constraints
Good interfaces make errors hard to commit by limiting choices to what is currently valid.
Consistency
Same problem, same pattern. Needless variation makes people relearn the product instead of using it.
Forgiveness
Undo, confirmation for destructive actions, and recoverable states keep inevitable mistakes cheap.
The detail work
Microinteractions carry the experience.
A saved draft, a password check, a pull-to-refresh: tiny loops of trigger, rules, feedback, and repetition. Products feel polished when hundreds of these are deliberately designed and broken when they are accidents.
TriggerRulesFeedbackLoops & modes
How HAAM helps
Design the behaviour, then prove it.
The educational model becomes practical product work when flows, prototypes, edge cases, accessibility, and implementation are treated as one interaction system.
Shape the flow
Map intent, information, decisions, and handoffs so the shortest useful path is visible.
A flow people can understand at a glance.
Prototype real behaviour
Use clickable or coded prototypes to test timing, hierarchy, feedback, and content before those decisions become expensive.
Confidence in how the product actually feels.
Design every state
Loading, errors, permissions, empty states, keyboard paths, and responsive behaviour receive the same care as the ideal journey.
A product that remains clear under pressure.
What you leave with
A product language that holds together.
Interaction decisions should be understandable, testable, buildable, and extensible without losing the thread.
- Journey and flow architecture
- Interactive or coded prototypes
- Accessible component behaviour
- State and implementation specifications
- Interaction principles and reusable patterns
Make the product easier to understand.
Bring the complex flow, awkward state model, unclear AI behaviour, or interface that makes people stop and think when they should be moving.
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