Smart Digital Solutions and Desirable Human-Machine Interactions: a Contribution in Terms of Design Methodology

Digital and interactive products and services are spreading in every field of application so producing deep changes in social organizations, in the ways we perform activities, in culture and personal mental frames. The implications of the digitalization of products and systems are vast and deep, and they should be investigated and predicted within the design process; therefore, we need to upgrade the existing interaction design methodologies so to support a critical discussion on the consequences of the design choices and to manage them. Through the discussion of some examples, the paper illustrates the vastness of the change we face. Furthermore, the paper deals with the issue of designing innovative paradigms of interaction and presents a classification of metaphors commonly employed in application driven digital solutions and in some artistic and game design experiments. The conceptualization of interaction design metaphors is presented as an opportunity to upgrade the interaction design methodologies.