Why does everyone think they can do interaction design?

Why does everyone think they can do interaction design? Do other design disciplines face this challenge?

As discussed in class, there are many people that think they can do interaction design. I believe this is the product two primary issues - (1) the success of the design is looked at subjectively and (2) cost is rarely considered.

As the saying goes, “you can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time.” When it comes to interaction design, you will always have people that are not pleased with the design. These non-pleased people will typically think they could have done the design better. However, they rarely think about the amount of research and trials that went into the design. Sometime, these people may be 100% correct and their design idea may be more intuitive. But, the majority of the time, these people simply basing their critique of the design solely on personal preference

In addition, people rarely look at the cost and availability of the technology  associate with their proposed interaction design. With high competition and expensive patents, some interaction designs are meant to be done on a budget and, as such, are not intuitive as the could be. Interactive designers often have to dumb down their ideas as the hardware component simply can not handle it. However, this is rarely taken into consideration by people without a design background.

I believe the same challenges exist within graphic design and branding. People typically will look at graphic design and/or branding from a subjective mindset and not take into consideration that the design was meant to reach as broad of an audience as possible and the design will undoubtedly not reach, impress or be relatable to everyone. Just like interactive designers, graphic designers are routinely limited by the amount of time and cost that can be incurred on a project. Moreover, with software like Indesign, photoshop and illustrator becoming more and more user friendly and automated, many people start to believe they can do as good of a job as a graphic designer. They can simply take existing designs, copy them, make minor tweaks and believe that is all that goes into being a graphic designer. Besides potentially breaking trademark laws, these people rarely are able to do the job correctly as they are unable to look past their subjective views.