---
title: "What Is Interaction Design? Examples | Utkarsh Panwar"
description: "What is interaction design? Designing how a product responds to people, step by step, with examples from payment retry states and hand-gesture web toys."
url: https://www.utkarshdesign.com/glossary/interaction-design
author: Utkarsh Dhairya Panwar
updated: 2026-10-08
---

# What is interaction design?

Glossary · By [Utkarsh Dhairya Panwar](https://www.utkarshdesign.com/about) · Updated 8 Oct 2026

**Interaction design (IxD) is the design of how a product behaves when someone uses it: what they can do, what happens when they do it, and how it shows the result and the next step. UI design decides how a screen looks. Interaction design decides how it responds.**

## The questions an interaction designer answers

- What can I do here? (affordances and signifiers: does it look pressable, draggable, editable)
- What happens when I do it? (the response, and how fast it comes)
- Did it work? (feedback: a state change, a message, a sound, a movement)
- What if it didn't? (errors, recovery, undo, retry)
- What can I do next? (the next step, made obvious)

A static mockup only answers the first question, which is why this work lives in prototypes, state diagrams and written rules as much as in Figma frames.

## A product example: when a payment fails

At FamPay, a payments app for teenagers in India, I worked on what the iOS app does when a payment doesn't go through. A timeout, a bank decline and a retry had been sharing one generic failure message, even though they're different situations.

| Situation | What the person needs to know | What they can do next |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Timeout | The outcome isn't known yet, and money may or may not have moved | Wait for a final status, without paying twice |
| Bank decline | The bank said no, and no money moved | Try another method, or retry later |
| Retry | What will happen this time, and that the first attempt won't also go through | Confirm the retry with that reassurance in view |

Giving each situation its own state, with one error pattern across the app so people learn it once, is the plainest example of interaction design I have. The full story and test results are in my guide to payment failure UX.

## A playful example: interfaces you touch with your hands

Outside client work I build small interactive pieces with AI coding tools, partly to practise this. Mitti, at the top of the page, is a pottery wheel you shape with webcam hand gestures. Type Piano turns typing into posters. Neither has buttons to fall back on, so a gesture without instant, readable feedback makes the whole piece stop making sense.

Type Piano: each key press lands on the poster immediately, so you always know which key did what.

## Common misconceptions

- "It means animation." Motion is one tool for feedback. A well-written error message is interaction design too.
- "It happens after the visual design." States and rules should be decided before screens are polished, or engineers end up guessing them.

| Discipline | Main question |
| --- | --- |
| Interaction design | How does it respond, and what can I do next? |
| UI design | How does it look: layout, type, colour, components? |
| UX design | Does the whole experience solve the problem? |
| Information architecture | Where does everything live, and what is it called? |

## Questions people ask

### What are the principles of interaction design?

The usual set is visibility, feedback, constraints, consistency and clear affordances, mostly from Don Norman's work. In practice: show what's possible, respond to every action, and make mistakes recoverable.

### Does an interaction designer need to code?

No, but they have to show behaviour as well as screens. I build working prototypes with AI coding tools when timing or gestures matter, and use Figma prototypes for most flows.

### What does an interaction designer deliver?

User flows, interactive prototypes, state definitions for each component (loading, empty, error, success) and written rules engineers can build from.

## Sources

1. [10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/), Nielsen Norman Group
2. [Signifiers, not affordances](https://jnd.org/signifiers-not-affordances/), Don Norman, JND.org
3. [What is Interaction Design (IxD)?](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/interaction-design), Interaction Design Foundation

## Working on this?

Tell me what you're building and where it's stuck: [book a 30-minute call](https://cal.com/utkarsh-design/30min), email [work@utkarshdesign.com](mailto:work@utkarshdesign.com) or [send a brief](https://www.utkarshdesign.com/contact).

## Related

- [Payment failure UX for timeouts, declines and retries](https://www.utkarshdesign.com/guides/payment-failure-ux)
- [The product design process for startups](https://www.utkarshdesign.com/guides/product-design-process)
- [What is a user flow?](https://www.utkarshdesign.com/glossary/user-flow)
- [Mobile app UI/UX design for startups](https://www.utkarshdesign.com/services/mobile-app-design)

---

Utkarsh Dhairya Panwar, Founding Product Designer and Design Engineer (IIT Roorkee; Founding Designer at CodeAnt AI, YC W24). Email: work@utkarshdesign.com · Book a call: https://cal.com/utkarsh-design/30min · Hire: https://www.utkarshdesign.com/hire · About: https://www.utkarshdesign.com/llms.txt