NRoppel_Summaries

Response to Photos for Interaction
With the new technologies available for use today, interface appearances are at the hands of the designers. With this said, this freedom now opens up the responsibility for the designer to put a higher importance on the visual design for the interfaces. This article proceeds to outline the importance of photography as used in interface design: as content, a design element and its use in software UI Design.

As content, photography has a strong impact, thus extremely useful in presenting a strong message. When using photos as content, the rest of the interface needs to be designed so that it doesn't overpower the images.

As a design element, photography is most commonly used in advertising-related online media. In this case, the photograph is used to, again present a message to the viewer; however, it takes a backseat to the actual site content. Financial institutions, software suppliers and fashion sites often employ this method of photography.

In software design, the role of photography is quite insignificant, often being used in headers. This gives the photograph very little to absolutely no meaning, thus leaving more room for the actual content to be displayed.

Overall, the role of photography could be quite amazing with the potential to have an extremely large impact on viewers; however, in order for software design to get the most out of it, something new needs to be done.