This article should have 15K applause! More than the bogus ones written by so-called design experts who wrote about a narrow view of IxD.

1. You refer to IxDA for the definition of IxD
2. You can distinguish affordance and signifier!
3. You don’t decouple research and design, because understanding the problem is necessary

Yes this article can still illustrate the richness of IxD discipline without the advanced stuff:

• systems thinking
• storytelling
• design your life
• collaboration can be broken into the basic and the advanced (e.g. facilitation)

Based on my experience mentoring IxD, they began with empathy and collaboration mindset, then skillwise (reversed order for people who enter IxD with social science background):

1. affordance & signifier
2. prototyping
3. user test + analysis
4. research + synthesis

And then in no particular order:

• storytelling
• advanced collaboration
• systems thinking

Thank you for writing!

PS: My article on life design