“Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch-type has to do with writing poetry.

“The design of interactivity is scarcely taught in programming school.” (Laurel, 1990, p.243)

As software applications are increasingly weaved into the Web and within other Internet-aware applications, information and application controls encounter a multitude of opportunities to mesh intelligently into each other.

Here are some examples:

• Alerts
• RSS news aggregation
• Route finding (interactive maps)
• Visual searching
• Music mixers
• Media players
• P2P file sharing
• Collaboration spaces

Interaction design will become more and more important with the increasing number of distribution platforms available through the Internet.

If you like to know where Web design ends and interaction design begins, read my full article: Interaction Design Meets Online Real Estate.