Interaction Design

We’re pioneering a new way to integrate Interaction Design with Agile Methodologies.

Interaction Design has a long history as the last step in a rigid engineering-focused process. This “doing the plastics” attitude has perpetuated the sort of interfaces that frustrate people everyday. We’d like that to change.

» See a portfolio of our Interaction Design work

Why we care about Interaction Design

Products are beginning to truly focus on the needs and emotions of their intended users. Consider Apple’s iPhone. It was designed to shake up the drab world of “functional” cell phone hardware and software. Today’s most popular and most usable products are designed for people. Their designers consider user interaction to be of equal importance to that of simply making the product work. Rather than only products that you can use, we’re now seeing products that you want to use.

At Atomic Object, you’ll find many of this new breed of product in daily use. Our employees care about the form and function of the software or devices we surround ourselves with. Each project we work on benefits from our drive to make interactions with products more poetic and memorable.

How we’re putting Interaction Design to work

Working with your existing design resources…

Interaction Design is an important part of any software project, and you may already have the resources to execute quality designs. We’ve frequently worked with external teams of designers to integrate art assets into projects as they’re built. We are often the responsible party ensuring that the product shipped is usable, understandable, and attention-grabbing.

Providing our own design resources…

We’ve also been engaged with projects as the sole design resource. Our approaches to Interaction Design and writing code are similar. We continuously validate and refine. We favor a working design over a comprehensive specification. We prefer to work on-site with designers and artists, integrating and delivering in short iterations. The best Interaction Designers know that seeking to understand the human users of a product is the best way to prepare for designing it. We have been involved in focus groups, test audiences and demonstrations that have eventually shaped the software we create.

How we improve…

We know that continuous improvement is the best strategy in software development. The same holds true for Interaction Design. We’re excited about emerging ideas in these fields and how they can be put to use to build great software.