At Cooper, interaction designers work in pairs, forming a partnership that supports and encourages leaps of imagination while maintaining cohesion. Team pairings represent two distinct roles that reflect natural divergences in personality and strengths, and we refer to the roles according to the core skills that each must bring: Generation and Synthesis.

For either interaction design role, you must be quick-witted and passionate about designing products the right way. This means that you're also good at:

• Understanding complex systems and processes, both software-based and in the real world of people and atoms.
• Being as excited about data analysis tools as you are about consumer electronics.
• Presenting your work before a room of curious (and sometimes skeptical) developers, interested (and sometimes demanding) marketers, and time-challenged (and sometimes impatient) executives.
• Learning new things. You're as interested in what worries stakeholders as you are in understanding what makes surgeons, commodities traders, teenagers, and purchasing agents tick.
• Being decisive. You value user feedback but don't require it to make a judgment call.
• Working collaboratively. We believe that the exchange of ideas among the members of small, nimble teams is the fastest route to the best solutions.
• Empathizing. Our design method is built around satisfying the needs and motivations of real people. If you want to make things better, we want you.

Both roles are fundamentally concerned with creating compelling interactive experiences, but each brings a distinct perspective, disposition, and responsibility to the partnership.

		IxD: Generation		IxD: Synthesis
Focuses on		Establishing the interactive structure and flow between a human and a product, service or environment.		Articulating and synthesizing the overall experience users have with the product, service, or environment.
Takes responsibility for		Driving the concept direction		Ensuring that the concept is coherent and satisfies user needs and goals
Leads during design meetings		Generating ideas toward a solution		Synthesis of ideas, defining the problem, clarifying the solution, explicating rationale
Expertise		Concept, visualization		Analysis, communication
Disposition toward creativity		Generative		Methodical, synthetic
Comfort zone		Invention		Evaluation, clarification
Approach to problems		Draw a picture, top-down		Tell a story, top-down
Advocates		Structure, flow (interface)		Cohesiveness, context
Thinks in terms of		Concepts, models, experience		Anatomy, relationships, experience

The IxD: Generation role is primarily responsible for invention, driving the concept direction and generating ideas toward a solution.

In design meetings, you'll come armed with a seemingly endless supply of solution ideas for the problems at hand, filling the whiteboard with the strongest design candidate and then leveraging that pool of alternate solutions to nimbly evolve the design through discussions with your partner. Later, you'll document the design in pixels, while your partner documents it in words.

Those in the IxD: Generation role excel at visualizing solutions with digital tools, whiteboard markers, napkins and ballpoint pens, even sticks and patches of dirt. If you're compelled to express your ideas visually anywhere, anytime, in whatever medium happens to be at your disposal, you might be right for the IxD: Generation role.

What it takes to be one
We're looking for candidates with 4+ years of professional experience designing digital products and services. Right now, your job title may be interaction, interface, or user experience designer; information architect; or even GUI developer.

You also:

• Think more clearly when you have a whiteboard marker in your hand
• Can rapidly crank out screens in Fireworks
• Believe that critique and collaboration can bring out the best ideas

If this sounds like the kind of work you want to do, check out our Interaction Design Generation exercise.

The IxD: Synthesis role is responsible for ensuring that the design is coherent, cohesive, and satisfies user needs and goals.

Those in the IxD: Synthesis role excel at evaluation, clarification, analysis, and communication. If you're compelled to ask questions that expose gaps and flaws, draw connections between concepts and ideas, hone designs, and reveal opportunities for additional exploration, all while keeping an eye on the broader context to ensure cohesion within the design and the broader environment into which it must fit, you might be right for the IxD: Synthesis role.

What it takes to be one
We're looking for candidates with 4+ years of professional experience related to high-tech products and services. Right now, you may be an interaction, interface, or user experience designer; an information architect; GUI developer; product or project manager; technical writer; user researcher; usability engineer--or a dilettante in a high-tech job who knows there must be a better way to design and develop products.

You also:

• Help people around you think more clearly.
• Have strong writing skills, along with a strong desire to write.
• Are an organized thinker and project planner who helps others be effective and efficient.
• Salivate at the thought of creating compelling documents and presentations that give life to your research and detailed design specifications.

If this sounds like the kind of work you want to do, check out our Interaction Design Synthesis exercise.