Tensions in Interface Design

The principle concern of all three authors in their discussion of computational interface design seems to be the limits of current linear and formal design paradigms on user experience – where interactive design should enhance rather than encode. They each offer perspectives that lie outside of the formalist design box, so to speak, in favor of paradigms that allow for emergent user interaction/experience, flexibility and narrative. Interactive design should foster play, movement, engagement, exploration, experimentation, action, etc.

Literalism and Magic:

In his overview of the Alternate Reality Kit, Smith talks about the tension between interface design features that enhance usability versus functionality (where “functionality” is distinguished from a specific function and understood as a user’s capabilities). He points out the utility of basing interface design on known metaphors i.e. the physical world, in terms of its “learnability” for users. These “literal” features of the interface reduce learning time for the user, thus enhancing the usability of the interface. Smith contrasts literal features with “magical” features which are harder to learn because they break with the metaphor, but provide more user capabilities and thus enhance functionality. One of the magical features of ARK is the “interactor” feature which allows users to play with the physical laws of nature, even as the interface is based on a standard physical metaphor. By removing the constraints of the laws of physics, the gravity interactor allows ARK users to navigate a “physical” world they recognize, but with more options and enhanced capability that are absent within an RL instantiation of the metaphor; this in turn empowers the user in terms of exploration, creativity, etc. ARK can be likened to Second Life, as a simulation based on a physical metaphor but with magical features that empower users to “build their own magic spells” and explore the “magic latent in computers” (Smith 67); an emphasis or consideration of the “magical” over the “literal” is parallel to Hallnas and Redstrom’s focus on “presence,” where “usability becomes subordinated to expressiveness” (118). Smith’s observations of human subject interaction with ARK elucidate the constraints of metaphor, particularly interfaces that operate on a single metaphor, even as its utility becomes apparent through evidence of abstraction as an integral component of human learning.

Use and Presence:

Hallnas and Redstrom propose a change in the design focus of computer systems from “efficient use to design for meaningful presence” (108), that is, designing not for the computational device’s specific use but for its everyday presence in the user’s “lifeworld.” They argue that while human-computer interaction is currently dominated by “functional descriptions…based on general notions of use” (107), as new media technologies become increasingly ubiquitous and transparent in users’ everyday lives, the context of human-computer interaction changes; so then, a design focus in a device’s “expression” (meaning) becomes more useful than a focus in its use, where design is grounded in aesthetics (versus prescribed function).

As human-computer interaction becomes more transparent, users increasingly understand information technologies through existential definitions (based on its role and context in the user’s life) and less through literal, functional definitions. Understanding a thing by its existential definition, is essentially understanding it through a narrative and contextual lens, in which it is imbued with meaning; existential definitions are dependent upon the intersection/interaction of temporal, spatial, cultural contexts, and thus are emergent “expression-identities” as opposed to static ones. An example of a cell phone’s emergent expression-identity in a hypothetical parent’s lifeworld: portable communication device –> teenager monitor device/worry-reducer device; here an understanding of a cell phone’s functional capacity is superseded by its presence in the parent’s life. So then design considerations must include the literal function of a cell phone, as well as its performative functions which are determined through its many “presences”. H and R reference Bormann’s notion of “focal things” which are “things that ask for attention and involvement; they desire a practice that cannot be characterized by consumption but by engagement’” (114), and must be understood in practice, through the dynamics of that engagement.

I was reminded of Michel DeCertau’s tension of space and place (in the context of narrative stories) which layers H and R’s tension of use and presence (in the context of design), particularly their conceptualization of presence. H and R assert that “if we want to understand what it means for an artifact to be part of someone’s everyday life – and eventually design for this – we have to consider its presence beyond just being physically there” (108). In stories, place indicates the “being-there of something,” while space is determined “through operations…the actions of historical subjects” (The Practice of Everyday Life 118). DeCertau differentiates between “place” and “space,” where place is understood through its distinct and static position and location, and space is “composed of intersections of mobile elements” (117), that is, it is situated by its presence and expressions (he references Merleau-Ponty’s contention that “space is existential” and “existence is spatial”). A street is a place as a location on a map, and a space as it is oriented by the action of people walking on it. The expressions, spaces, focal things are defined by human interaction.

Process and Improvisation:

Dourish’s “Accounting for System Behavior” almost struck me as a treatise for autoethnography, which could be equated with his “causally-connected self-representations,” what he calls “accounts.” His accounts model of system architecture addresses “the failures in the notion of ‘abstraction’ in software engineering” as well as “thinking of computational representations as resources for action.” Where autoethnography – reflective self-representations – provides a stage for action (“they use narrative as a source of empowerment and a form of resistance to counter the domination and authority of canonical discourses” – Ellis and Bochner 749), so the “story that a system tells about itself” empowers the computational user “not only to describe behavior, but also to control it.” In his data transfer example, the user would have a framework from which to understand the system’s behavior in relation to the specific circumstance (partial file transmission) and thus be able to improvise a solution or take an informed course of action, without being trapped behind an “abstraction barrier.”

Like personal narratives, accounts are partial and specific, thus the issue of “accuracy” becomes one of accountability instead: “essentially a form of constructed consistency…based in the direct relationship between action and representation…and which distinguishes accounts from simply simulations.” The autoethnography and the account allow for modification of the system, which is important if we are to avoid the domination of static ideological paradigms; “changes in the system are reflected in changes in the representation, and vice versa.” Specificity versus universality (subjective versus positivist truth) allows for questioning and open exploration where we are not trapped by the totalizing effect of grand narratives. A phenemonological approach to the disciplines of design and study can better explore the emergent and dynamic landscape of cultural development in the posthuman era because it is emergent and dynamic itself. The common thread between all these models of design is their inter-active nature, they empower rather than dominate the human subject; positivist truth collapsed with the crisis of representation and one negative effect was the immobilization of human agency. These active models restore it by putting our new understandings of human subjectivity to use. What are the implications of prescriptive versus performative approaches to interface design? What are the ethical considerations for designers who wield the power of influencing the way human agents interact with systems?

~ by glycerine517 on October 8, 2007.