What Is an Interaction Designer?

An interaction designer curates the user experience of a product. When you open a website or mobile application (app), you might move through each tap, click, and swipe without thinking about your actions. This “seamless” experience might seem natural, but each step has been carefully thought out and designed by an interaction designer. Interaction design offers an opportunity to influence how people experience technology daily, whether using a mobile banking app or setting up a smart thermostat. 

Consider different types of interaction design, skills, and qualifications essential to the role and possible career paths to decide if a career as an interaction designer is the right fit for you.

What is an interaction designer?

An interaction designer is a design professional specializing in how users engage with digital products. In this role, you anticipate user behavior to create a seamless and intuitive interface. You carefully consider each moment the user spends with the product (every scroll, transition, tap, or click) and try to create an interface that naturally guides the user to the “ideal” next step, such as subscribing, posting, or purchasing. 

Dimensions of interaction design 

When considering how users interact with your product, it can be helpful to break these interactions into five dimensions. Learn more about each dimension and its role in the user experience.

• Words: Text, such as button labels, the product displays during interactions

• Visual representations: Graphical icons, typography, and other images

• Physical objects or space: Objects, such as laptops, fingers, or touchpads, used to interact with the product

• Time: Media, like animations, videos, or sound, that change over time.

• Behavior: Users' actions when interacting with the product, like navigating the site or responding emotionally to product features.

Once you become familiar with these dimensions, you can frame them as questions to conceptualize how to integrate each into your design strategy and put yourself in the user’s mindset. Example questions you might consider in each category include:

• Words: How can you communicate your message to users most effectively?

• Visual representations: What type of graphics creates a unified brand image?

• Physical objects or space: How will objects appear on different screen sizes, and how will users interact with each feature?

• Time: What sounds or animations will occur during each portion while the user interacts with the project?

• Behavior: How do you anticipate the user's behavior, and how can you make the interface more intuitive for these movements?

• Harmony: How can you integrate and coordinate each of the above dimensions?

Interaction designer duties and responsibilities 

Your daily responsibilities will likely center on developing and implementing your design strategy to optimize the user experience. Your role may integrate with user interaction (UI) or user experience (UX) functions, especially if you work for a smaller company. However, the interaction design portion of your professional responsibilities will likely include:

• Coming up with new design strategies and ideas

• Creating and testing different design prototypes

• Identifying important product features

• Improving digital functions

• Verifying your design meets industry regulations and standards

• Conducting user research to determine likely behaviors

• Creating user journey maps

• Designing wireframes

• Designing visuals and animations

• Performing tests before implementation

• Communicating with design team members

What is the difference between a UX designer and an interaction designer?

Interaction designers focus on the interaction between a user and a product, while UX designers consider the entire user experience. For example, while an interaction designer may focus specifically on how a button behaves when clicked or the precise wording on a menu, a UX designer considers the broader picture, such as identifying a market gap, how easily users find the product, and the overall flow of the experience.

Essential interaction design skills

To build a successful career in this field, you will likely need a solid foundation in interaction design principles, such as usability and accessibility, which ensure all users can navigate products and guide the creation process. You’ll also need to blend your technical ability with strong problem-solving skills and the ability to collaborate with others effectively. Employers in this area look for professionals who design thoughtful user interactions, work effectively across teams, iterate on feedback, and remain current with design and digital trends. 

Essential workplace skills

As an interaction designer, it’s unlikely you’ll work in isolation. Instead, you’ll continually work with other designers, developers, and company team members, making these skills and strategic thinking just as necessary as technical expertise. 

Top interactive designer skills required by employees include collaboration, innovation, and communication skills—each of which plays an essential role in fostering a positive work environment for you and your team. 

Essential technical skills

When it comes to technical skills, a working knowledge of UI and UX design forms the foundation of what you’ll be doing. While different employers may look for specific software or technical skills, many interaction designers share a common foundation. According to ZipRecruiter, top technical skills listed by employers or employees include:

• Adobe photoshop

• Adobe illustrator

• HTML

• JavaScript

• Social media

• Prototype design

• Interaction design

Interaction designer salary and job outlook 

As an interaction designer, you can expect to earn an attractive salary. An entry-level interaction designer earns an average annual base salary of $75,097. This increases as you gain more experience. Once you have at least a year of experience, you can expect your yearly salary to grow to $88,157, reaching an average of $133,904 after accumulating 15 or more years of experience [1].

In addition to high pay, you can anticipate job growth rates for web developers and digital designers, the umbrella under which interaction design falls, to increase by 8 percent from 2023 to 2033. This represents a faster-than-average growth rate [2].

How to become an interaction designer

You can take several routes into interaction design, making it an accessible career path for people with different professional backgrounds. You can opt for routes ranging from complete degree programs to individual online courses based on your desired time commitment and learning goals. 

Education and training

If you are looking for a comprehensive option, one of the most straightforward pathways into interaction design is to earn a degree in a related field. The skills you build are generally more important than the degree title, and choosing between degrees such as art, graphic design, user experience, and interaction design can help you build the foundation necessary to create intentional designs. This may be best suited for learners interested in a longer academic path rather than a quick career switch.

Choosing a boot camp is a great option if you want to dive into specific, career-oriented skills in a condensed time frame. Boot camps typically last a few months (much shorter than multi-year degree programs) and are often tailored to learners with a specific career in mind and the skills they want to develop. However, it’s worth noting that the condensed learning time frame may mean a higher workload, so if you’re balancing other responsibilities, this is something to consider.

If you’d like to explore interaction design before making a bigger commitment, online courses provide a flexible option to learn a new skill without requiring a considerable investment. Learning platforms like Coursera offer courses you can tailor to your interests. Options you might start with to understand the broader foundations of interaction design and related fields include Principles of UX/UI Design by Meta, Human-Centered Design: an Introduction by the University of California, San Diego, and Interaction Design UX/UI Principles by Xbox.

Gain experience

While education is vital for learning foundational skills, gaining experience helps you apply what you learn into practice. As you gain experience, creating a portfolio to showcase your work and style can help you stand out to employers, allowing potential employers to see how you approach your designs and examples of different types of work. Examples of what you might showcase in your portfolio include:

• Menus

• Error messages

• Animations

• Transitions

• Content

• Images

• Wireframes

Start your career in interaction design with Coursera

Interaction design focuses on how users interact with products. Strengthen your knowledge and build foundational skills in the practice on Coursera while exploring areas that suit your interests. You can build fundamental skills in design and visualization with the Data Visualization & Dashboarding with R Specialization by Johns Hopkins University, where you’ll have the opportunity to learn how to create static and interactive data visualizations and publish them on the web, preparing you to provide insight to many types of audiences.