Investigating synergies between interaction design methods

A successful product provides a pleasurable and straightforward experience. This leads to an increasing importance of the human-computer interaction and user experience issues in design. Despite the wealth of methods and tools available to support the design process, these are frequently incomplete and difficult to use. This research contributes to fill this gap by investigating the possible synergies between two design methods, the BadIdeas method (BI) and the Interaction Design Integrated Method (IDIM). BI is an early design method especially suited for the ideation phase of the design process. IDIM deals with design, evaluation, and innovation forecasting, and covers the first part of the product development process. Two limitations are highlighted in each of these methods and their concepts and tools are mutually exploited to improve the other. Suggestions for integration and improvement are presented with examples that demonstrate the benefits of this research