Bangalore: Everything you do today is done through an app, and most of us have grown used to them. But how would it be to have an app awarded for its innovation in design? Interaction Design is an important element to make essential and yet distinguished apps.

 The first annual Interaction Design Awards, sponsored by the Interaction Design Association, was conducted in order to judge the apps that best displayed the principles of App design. The results of the competition will be announced in early February after judgment by various leaders in the field of interaction design, which include Matt Jones (the co-author of Mobile Interaction Design), Massimo Banzi, the co-founder of the Arduino project, and Janna DeVylder Principal at Meld Studios.

Robert Fabricant from DesignMind took a look at the entries of the contest and joined the judges in deciding on the best examples of Interaction design in 2011. Some of the principles to be kept in mind according to the article Fabricant wrote included the following:

1. Don’t look for breakthroughs- Fabricant says that the level of achievement we have achieved in these past few years has been remarkable that it would be best if we didn’t focus on creating or recognizing new breakthroughs—instead we could use our present applications to upgrade our current experiences and use them to the fullest. It would, says Fabricant, be a challenge to identify interaction Design innovation after an idea has already gone main-stream.

2. Embrace the mundane- The next breakthroughs will only be seen when such interaction is seen in things of everyday life. Fabricant says it is more interesting to see mobile devices’ feedback and their effect on transit than on the sharing of files.

3. Don’t buy into the Hype- With technologies such as HTML 5 paving the way for a new dawn, It would be beneficial if we didn’t buy into the hype created by Google, Facebook, and other major firms like Apple. Smart companies, Fabricant notes, do not aim to put all applications on one platform, but rather seek to turn these products into services that are broadly distributed.

4. Look past the screen- Interaction design must stretch beyond the screen with its digital media and interactive information. “The most powerful and meaningful opportunities to improve interaction might not involve any pixels”, suggests Fabricant.

5. Video is the only shortcut- In order to convince audiences of the potency of an idea, videos are the most powerful, and yet the quickest means since they put the whole idea in a nutshell, in ways words, and other media could not.

With these principles in mind, one can easily experiment and innovate with ideas for interaction design.