Visual Interaction Designers

As long as products have been designed and built, there has been a focus—typically by industrial designers—on the interaction between users and products. The emergence of home computers, video games, and other technology in the 1970s and 1980s created more demand for workers who specialized in human-focused design (which eventually became known as user experience design). The subfield of interaction design emerged in the early 2000s as tech companies increasingly focused on user-product interaction in order to create better products and stand out from their competitors. In 2005, the Interaction Design Association was founded to represent the interests of professionals in the field. Today, it has more than 150,000 participants with local groups around the world.