I read this chapter in one long “aha!” I can tell the author sounds like someone who has put a lot of thought into the philosophies that drive digital creation, and I would definitely be interested in looking into the later chapters of the book. I can’t think of a time when I really stopped to think along these lines: when people ask me what I want to do with my computer science degree, I blurt out a mushy something that resembles the job description of a web developer. When I work on web or mobile projects, I’m usually doing all the design and code by myself, so finding the line between these things just never came up. But, now enlightened, I can say that there is in fact, a place for a UI designer and an interactivity designer, and I think the final product is more the outcome of how these two agents (among other things) interact with each other rather than simply the sum of their individual contributions.
Definitely a lot of takeaways here (for me at least), but what hit closest to home was something he wrote towards the end: “good interactivity design integrates form with function”. Ever since I discovered Codepen and JsFiddle, I have been integrating the most random effects and interactions in my work. Sometimes a website has frills that doesn’t really add anything to it but doesn’t take anything away either, but in my work I would compromise on function for something that just “looks cool”, regardless of whether it actually complements the remaining UX or gets in the way of the user. If I can take apart my roles when I’m working alone, and think for stakeholders from both arts/humanities and math/science backgrounds, or those from the “Webby” generation or the “Personal Computer” generation, my finished work would probably come together much better.