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Teach

Week 12 - Interaction Design Methods

This was our last lessons, and instead of presenting a subject to our co-students we have to teach eachother a particular skill to each other. We had 5 Minutes time to teach.

I was teamed with Dave, Daniela and Andreas. Dave gave us an insight into the terminal, which was really important for us because of the Bits & Atoms class. Daniela showed us how to sketch fast and efficiently, while still getting a nice drawing. Andreas showed us how to fold our shirts Marie Condo style. I taught them how to draw a little geometric shape, that could be used for art or mind maps.

It was nice to end this course on that note, since we kind of teached each other things throughout the whole course by presenting and giving small exercises. Readings

Ackermann, Edith K. 2016. “Learning to Code: What is it? What’s In It For The Kids?— A Tribute to Seymour Papert". Trans. version from publication in Tecnologie didattiche (TD 27-2002).

Moriwaki, Katherine & Brucker-Cohen, J. 2006. “Lessons from the scrapyard: creative uses of found materials within a workshop setting”. In AI & Society. 20:4. 506-525. 

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Speculative design, design, art

Week 11 - Interaction Design Methods

Speculative design has no boundaries. James Auger tells in his book "Speculative design: The products that technology could become":

"[...] remove the constraints of the commercial sector that define normative design processes to create a space for thinking, questioning and dreaming." – James Auger

Speculative Design, according to Elliott Montgomery, is something inbetween art and design. The questions often arises; is design art? are art and design separate or a co-living matter? In my opinion something can be a design object, as well as an art piece. I personally dislike labels.

Most speculative design objects are not intended to go to the market. It seems to be more a surreal, utopic or dystopic idea, than an actual useable product. That makes me think of a perfect example on how a design piece can also be an art piece. Less because of the beauty of it, but more because of the message it will send. Speculative design can be ridiculous, absurd, provocative, because of the function the object should have. I find that very interesting and amusing, reminds me of use / missuse.

Here an example that was shown in the presentation:

Readings Auger, James. 2012. “Speculative design: The products that technology could become”. In Why Robot? Speculative Design, the domestication of technology and the considered future. PhD Thesis. RCA, London. Campbell, Jim. 2000. “Delusions of Dialogue: Control and Choice in Interactive Art”. In Leonardo. 33:2. 133-136. Dunne, Anthony and Raby, F. 2001. Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects. August / Birkhäuser. Edmond, Ernest A. 2014. “Human Computer Interaction, Art and Experience”. In Candy, Linda & Ferguson, S. (eds.). Interactive Experience in the Digital Age. Evaluating New Art Practice. Springer. Tsaknaki, Vasiliki & Fernaeus, Y. 2016. “Expanding on Wabi-Sabi as a Design Resource in HCI”. In Proceedings of CHI ‘16.

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Innovation for all

Week 10 - Interaction Design Methods

Designer, especially interaction designers, need come up with innovative ideas on how to solve problems. There is a need to be present and familiar with the situation you want to improve, and emerse yourself in the user, to better understand the needs, based on knowledge from the outside. Reflecting through your own experience in the field broadens ones perspective. To innovate requires creativity, knowledge.

Readings

Blanchette, Jean-François. 2011. “A Material History of Bits”. In Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 62:6. 1042-1057.

Jones Rhys, Haufe P., Sells E., Iravani P., Olliver V., Palmer C. and Bowyer, A. 2011. “RepRap - The Replicating Rapid Prototyper.” In Robotica, 29.

Kelley, T. (2001). The Art Of Innovation: Lessons In Creativity From IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm. Crown Business. 23-52.

Ou, Jifei, Dublon, G., Cheng, C., Heibeck, F., Willis, K.D.D. & Ishii, H. 2016. “Cilllia - 3D Printed Micro-Pillar Structures for Surface Texture, Actuation and Sensing”. In Proceedings of CHI ‘16.

Seago, Alex & Dunne, Anthony. 1999. New Methodologies in Art and Design Research: The Object as Discourse. In Design Issues. 15:2. Summer 1999.

Additional Readings

Kelley, T. (2001). The Art Of Innovation: Lessons In Creativity From IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm. Crown Business. 53­-66.

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Visual abstractions

Week 9 - Interaction Design Methods

Sketching User Experience

Donald Schön talks about the importance between two aspects of design, specially in product development: Problem solving (how do we build this?) and problem setting (What is the right thing to build?). In Addition to that I we get to know what the right design and design right means. Especially what the differences between those two terms are. 

The relationship and division of responsibilities between design and engineering by comparing it to the role of the architect and structural engineer in designing a building. Bill Buxton says, the extra step we have to take to have a better design phase, by getting the design right, which means by Iterating and developing your choices, continually refine your choices as the better solutions become apparent and add in new ideas as they come up. And also by getting the right design, which means generating many ideas (brainstorming, discussions, observations), reflect on all your ideas and choose the ones that look promising. 

Data-Informed Product Design

What means design especially with Data? Why is Data important even for design? Companies select data nowadays in these different ways: A/B tests, usability testing, interviews, analytics and so on. The following graph explain the differences between Big-Data and Thick-Data.

There are three ways to use Data in Product Design: Data can reveal patterns and trends to drive innovation, we can use data to incrementally improve the product experience, Data can measure success, whether tracking across time, across versions, or against competitors.

Guidelines for using data: 

Use data form a variety of sources to inform your design

Include numbers and context to tell the real story

Ensure that data is sensitive (to humans)

Use data to track changes over time

Decide on meaningful categories 

Develop a way to share and discuss data (within the organization)

Human-Computer Interaction

There are two types of requirements  and they arise from the data-gathering and interpretation activities: functional requirements (what the system should do), non-functional requirements (what constraints are on the system and its development).

Different Data Visuals 

Visualizations have been used by mankind since ancient times as instructions, storytelling and carrying meaningful messages. There are differences between data used as presentations to communicate and as visualization to answer certain questions. There are many historic moments that changed data visualization today, and they illustrated how visualization can be helpful if not fundamental for conveying information and problem solving, and how data visuals can and are manipulated to exaggerate certain informations and convey the wrong message as described by Darrell Huff in his publication “How to Lie with Statistics”, published in 1955. 

Guidance on how to design graphical data views in statistical mappings

There are 3 types of marks used in graphical data, and these marks have around 6 properties that defines them, as described by Jacques Bertin in “Semiology of Graphics”. Visual prompts affect the human perception, that can be experienced with simple experiments. There are three different types of data (Nominal, Ordinal, Quantitative) and there are certain ways in which it is best to represent each, interactivity can also be very helpful for data visualization. 

Data as a currency

In digital times data has become economic value that can be bought, sold and traded. The government plays three principal roles in the emerging data economy, as a producer, consumer and facilitator. The market for data has open data providers, data aggregators, data for service and data protectors. 

Big Data Analytics

What is our data used for? And why is it so important? Company executives, government agencies, researchers and scientists and many more base their decisions and actions on the analysis on the data they gather, through the discipline of big data analytics. Data analysis usually serves to figure out digital but also real-world usability issues and therefore trying to solve these issues. But Boyd and Crawford argue that big data is still subjective and that automated data collection is not self-explanatory. Data sampling and cleaning processes are in particular prone to potential error and bias.

The term of analytics work, which mean data-driven decision making, is used in two groups : corporate analytics teams and academic research scientists. The purpose of their work is different, but the steps they take in their analyst activities are the same, which are the following: acquiring data, choosing an architecture, shaping the data to the architecture, writing and editing code and finally reflect and iterate on the results.

References: Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, Jenny Preece, Yvonne Rogers, Helen Sharp, Chapter 7, 2002  Sketching User Experiences, Bill Buxton, 2007 Data-Informed Product Design, Pamela Pavliscak, 2015 Designing Great Visualizations, Jock D. Mackinlay, Kevin Winslow, 1999 Interactions With Big Data Analytics, Danyel Fisher, Rob DeLine, Mary Czerwinski, Steven Drucker, 2012 Deloitte Review, Data As The New Currency, William D. Eggers, Rob Hamill, Abed Ali, 2013

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Re: Evaluation

Week 8 - Interaction Design Methods

To evaluate our designs we mainly use two procedures:

Summative evaluations to test against standards.

Formative evaluations to test users’ needs, from the early stages of the development until tweaking a final prototype.

There are three main approaches to evaluate design: Usability Testing, Field Studies, Analytical Evaluation. Usability testing is used to measure user’s performance on typical tasks, test environment controlled by evaluator, quantification by specifying the optimal and minimal performance levels. Field studies are useful to identify opportunities for new technologies, establish requirements for design, evaluation data takes form of events and conversations. Analysis is done using a variety of methods. Analytical evaluation is used for heuristic evaluations based on common-sense and usabilty guidelines, walkthroughs, where experts go through scenarios, where users don’t need to be present, and to predict user performance by using theoretically based models, such as fitt’s law. These methods can also be combined to save time and money. Additionally opportunistic evaluation is performed to save time and money.  Opportunistic evaluation: get quickly feedback on what you do from collegues, family, friends. This method is quick but not as elaborated as the other evaluations. 

What usabilty evaluators do in practice is think-aloud testing, which is widely employed in usabilty testing method. The immediate analysis of observations is important. Investigating the problems that are experienced rather than expected is also very important. 

Incentives in Evaluation

Usability evaluation can also be overused. It is most commonly used in HCI education. Academic conferenced push for evaluation components to be included in papers. But how can a culturally significant system be created if the system is validated before a culture is formed around it? 

Sketching is also very important in the prototypying process, but a sketch should not be prematurely judged as a prototype itself. 

It is important to note that usefulness precedes usability. The usability will follow when competition emerges. 

Sometimes it takes time beofre culture will adopt an innovative idea, the value will be added after the idea has been adopted.

In a design object, a service, a prototype there can be multiple interpretations. Using a certain product in just one way could be wasteful. There doesn’t have to be just one intended use. By interpreting the use of a system in different ways it can accommodate different groups of people with different needs. This allows a larger range of possible ideas. 

A product which doesn’t have a clear function, but can be used in different ways is “The History Tablecloth” by Equator IRC. It is a tablecloth which remembers when certain objects have been put on it by illuminating the surface. The longer the object stays on the cloth, the more spread the illumination will get.

Following question was asked in class: How would you interpret the use of this product? Here some answers of the students:

I would use it as a security system to see if someone was present

I would use it to have dinner in the dark

I would use it as decoration

Evaluation conclusions

Evaluation can take place before, during and after athe development of a project.

Before developing a project, the evaluation is usefull for evaluatin ideas, intuitions and hypotheses. The designer does do by conducting field research, interviews, desk based research (sources, data, related work, precedents), by discussing with peers and advisors and by co-designing and participatory design. This process that is done before the development of a project must be done to set the objectives.

During the development of a project evaluation is usefull for evaluating work in progress, and to give the right directions. You do so by prototyping, documenting, going back to the field research, enacting scenarios, storytelling and again discuss with peers and advisors. This way you set controlled experiments based on certain criteria and rules. 

After the project is done, there is still some evaluating that has to be pursued. You’ll have to evaluate with the objectives you have set have been reached, if there are any objectives that are missing or if there are any contributions that have to be added. You do so by studying analysis and stats, the typology of uses, quotes. You have to make sure your project is visible to the public through reports, publications, exhibitions and dissemination.

Readings

Bardzell, J., Bolter, J., & Löwgren, J. 2010. “Interaction criticism: three readings of an interaction design, and what they get us”. In Interactions. 17:2. 32–37.

Greenberg, S., & Buxton, B. 2008. “Usability evaluation considered harmful (some of the time)”. In Proceedings of CHI ’08.

Nørgaard, M., & Hornbæk, K. 2006. “What do usability evaluators do in practice?: an explorative study of think ­aloud testing”. In Proceedings of DIS ��06.

Preece, J., Rogers, Y., & Sharp, H. 2002. “Introducing Evaluation”. In Interaction Design. Wiley.

Sengers, P., & Gaver, B. 2006. “Staying open to interpretation: engaging multiple meanings in design and evaluation”.  In Proceedings of DIS ‘06.

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Evaluation by narration

Week 7 - Interaction Design Methods

Story Telling

Story telling and Stories have been a practice since the ancient time. We consume stories all the time. Stories give us a better understanding of the world and human beings. It will always be easier for someone to relate to a person or a situation through a story. It serves as a way to keep things grounded and closer to the human experience. Stories provide a real context. And at the centre of stories, there are real people.

In design story telling is:

Gather information on users

Convey empathy

Innovation

Share Ideas

Better understanding

Story telling can help:

Describe a context or situation

Illustrate problems

Help launch a design discussion

Explore a design concept

Describe the results of a new design

Approaches to give another perspective:

Exploratory play

Filtering

Future Thinking

Having an idea and make it in an organization. How to sell your idea and how to move in organization. How to move into inner workings with:

Strategy

Politics

Culture

Emotions

When trying to sell your idea remember the following selling points, or points of resistance: show business priorities, what your project can contribute, key players and their emotions, appropriate ways to introduce your idea.

Alternative presents are similar to speculative futures. While in speculative futures you image a scenario that could happen, in alternative presents you think about the present in a provoking perspective. This way you offer a perspective on the challenges of the present. Alternative presents:

Grounded

Relatable

Plausible

In conclusion storytelling helps with ideation, starts discussions, explains situations and functions, evaluates a concept, proves a concept, can evaluate success or failure, can be used to gain funding (f.e. kickstarter). But this format could also be overused, it can become counterproductive, can used to manipulate (information, entertainment, faming of storytelling).

Stories can be too simplistic, too many labels, not open enough.

Stories can open imagination, reinvent objects, tools…

‘meta’ level: texts also propose a story of design.

‘zombie media’ text creates a narrative about planned obsolescence.

‘Demo or die’ James Auger, worked on speculative design, ‘publish or perish’ has a similar meaning, if you are not prototyping, presenting, publishing in conferences and journals, you are basically not existing so you are pressured to be in this narrative mode, mostly to look for funding. Pitch to venture capitalists funders ➡ selling your design / invention / start up, selling to customers, to your clients, to kickstarters funders.

Tangible Bits

Graphical User Interface GUI: distant, can’t touch

Tangible User Interface TUI : there is a certain direct interaction

Radical Atoms: physical manifestation so we can interact directly with it

Tangible bits can be manifested in the following ways:

embodied kinetic tangibles and kinetic tangible toolkits

2D tabletop discrete tangibles

2.5D deformable/transformable continuos tangibles

Antigravity tangibles

Radical atoms is „the future material that can transform their shape, conform to constraints, and inform the users of their affordances. Radical Atoms is a vision for the future of human-material interaction, in which all digital information has a physical manifestation so that we can interact directly with it. We no longer think of designing the interface, but rather of the interface itself as material. We may call it “Material User Interface (MUI).” by Hiroshi Ishii.

Radical Atoms

Transform its shape

Conform to constraints

Inform users

Hiroshi Ishii also said: “Even though we may need to wait decades before we can invent the enabling technologies for Radical Atoms, we believe the exploration of interaction design techniques can begin today”.

Then we had an exercise. We had to improve the life of a designer with a product he could use in his everyday life. We had 3 minutes time to sketch or write down an idea, here are the results:

Readings

Auger, James. 2012. “Demo or die: Overcoming oddness through aesthetic experience”. In Why Robot? Speculative Design, the domestication of technology and the considered future. PhD Thesis. RCA, London.

Hertz, G. & Parikka, J. 2012. “Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method”. In Leonardo. 45:5. 424–430.

Ishii, Hiroshi & Ullmer B. 1997. “Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms”. In Proceedings of CHI ‘97.

Ishii, Hiroshi, Lakatos, D., Bonanni, L. & Labrune, J. “Radical Atoms: Beyond Tangible Bits,Toward Transformable Materials”. In Interactions. 19:1. January/ February 2012. 38-51.

Kim, J., Lund, A. & Dombrowski. 2010. “Mobilizing Attention: Storytelling for Innovation”. In Interactions.

Loch, Christopher. 2003. Moving Your Idea Through Your Organisation. In Laurel, Brenda (ed.). Design Research. Methods and Perspectives.

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The question of the prototype

Week 6 - Interaction Design Methods

Why use prototypes?

A prototype is an early sample, model or release of a product built to test a concept or process. A first or a preliminary version of a device or vehicle from which other forms are developed.

Lichter categorized different kinds of prototypes in the following way:

Presentation prototype → communicating ideas among clients and manufacturers

Prototype proper → understanding user experience, needs and problems

Breadboard → evaluation and testing of manufacturing

Pilot system → final adjustments

A prototype can demonstrate what the product is supposed to be doing, or how it could be used. There are low fidelity and high fidelity prototypes. Fidelity is the degree to which the detail and quality of an original such as a picture, resemble the final product.

Low fidelity: easily made, loose, not defined, made out of few materials, out of paper, it’s cheap in labor and material cost, test fast all the things you need to test.

High fidelity: functionality is already there, can be used by the user, proper material, is used more to test if the final product works.

“The sketch pad is not just a convenience for artists, not simply a kind of external memory or durable medium for storage of particular ideas. Instead, the iterated process of externalising and reperceiving is integral to the process of artistic cognition itself” (Clark 2001, p.19). What this quotes is saying is that the realised idea becomes a discussant, a collaborator, helping us to understand and examine our own ideas (Schön 1987). Therefore, when a designer creates and envisions an idea, she necessarily develops the idea by moving it out into the real world.

The anatomy of prototypes: Prototypes as filters, prototypes as manifestations of design ideas

Appearance dimension

Data dimension

Functionality dimension

Interactivity dimension

Station structure dimension

This incompleteness structures the designers traversal of design space by allowing decisions along certain dimensions to be deferred until decisions along other dimentions have already been made

Prototypes as manifestation:

Material

Resolution

Scope

The manifestation dimensions affect the performance of the prototype - not in the once of how much the prototype performs like a final product but how well the prototype performs as a tool for evaluating design ideas and generating better design ideas - without altering the filtering dimensions the designer has chosen to evaluate.

We interact with the computer with our fingers. How could we interact with the computer more in a physical way? (installations, sound based interaction).

Here are some opinions of the different kinds of prototypes discussed in class:

High fidelity prototypes could be a waste of time is the end product ends up being something completely else.

With high fidelity prototypes the users tend to criticize less than with low fidelity prototypes.

Prototypes is a different way to think with, more than writing, sketching, mind mapping, ect…

Prototyping as a mode of thinking or of advancing concepts, “Learning by doing”, “Thinking with makings”.

Low-fidelity prototyping :  little functionality built in, user can see what it could do but it doesn’t react to user input, used to discover problems

There are non-functioning prototypes, which are usually the low fidelity ones. When testing such a prototype you have to simulate the function.

Functioning prototypes are usually high fidelity ones.

Tools and Methods used in prototyping:

Sketching & paper prototyping: visually transmit the concept, users can test and act like it is a finished product even if it is just on paper

Storyboard:      1. Define the scenario      2. Brainstorm concepts      3. Create a storyboard prototype      4. Test

Role-Plays / Games

Digital prototyping (Screen-Design programs, CADs)

Physical prototyping (Cardboard, Foam, 3D Print): get and idea on how the product could work

These is also Rapid prototyping: Ideation, Prototyping, Testing. We were asked to create something with paper that can hold a pen 10cm above the desk top. Here are the results.

Cybernetics:

Acting

Sensing

Comparing

Cybernetics is a way of prototyping in which the product regulates itself to a defined goal.  Where you want do steer: creating conditions for interaction.  It’s an open system that allows interactions without pre-determining all of the components of those interactions, a framework to establish some rules for the ecosystem.

Cybernetics: a system of organisation or governance → programming simulations, nature of computers, AI, machine learning, etc... is well adapted to cybernetics.

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The experience & the user experience

User Experience    

“Experience is the sum of made mistakes divided by the own stupidity”  William Saroyan.

Experience can be:

Physical

Mental

Emotional

Social

Virtual and Simulation

Spiritual

Religious

Every experience is subjective, every experience is different.

When testing a prototype on a user we have to consider the:

Expectations

Perceptions

Reaction

The user experience is useful, usable, findable, credible, desirable, accessible, valuable.

How to track a user experience: 

Test methods (how)

Test factors (where to look at?)

Test different target groups, ask if they had problems, give examples, give tasks, make them feel comfortable by telling them they are not being judged but the product is being judged. If the user is shaking the mouse, that is probably a sign of anger of frustration.

Test factors:

abandonment rate

error rate / task success

task time

average order value

clicks to completion

To the user testing there are two different approaches:

The evaluative approach: why the person is using something, question if the results are achieved

Observing: observe via bodystorming, capture essence of experience, interviews

Designer assesses experience with both a form of subjectivity and objectivity. 

Personas, Scenarios, Experience, “Real” Users create possibilities, look at your assumptions (5-6 characters, those are the typologies of my users).

When testing a design it is difficult to know what will change during the braudel. Braudel is the time between the first invention and the application release, and that can sometimes take years. That is something to keep in mind.

Communicating intimacy

"I present "The Bed", an environment providing a new form of abstracted presence for intimate, non-verbal inter-personal communication. This secure and familiar environment is explored for its ability to become a shared virtual space for bridging the distance between two remotely located individuals through aural, visual, and tactile manifestations of subtle emotional qualities. As an example, I describe the application of these tangible interfaces and ambient media into a working prototype.”  Chris Dodge

With this application you can feel a pulse in the pillow and warmth when the other user is using it, when they talk a light goes on and wind is blowing. It is a way to connect in a more physical and intimate way with someone who is far away.

Current ways users make themselves feel present is through the Facebook “Poke”  by “poking” a friend. That means greeting them, reminding them of oneself, to let someone know you’re thinking of them or just for fun. A similar app is the “Yo App”, with that you can send a “YO” to a friend. Now you can also share you’re location or send photos. Apparently this app has been used in Israel to warn others of coming bomb attacks. 

The following question was asked in class: What difference could such a co-presence/activity awareness make, for example for older or sick people who are often alone? Do you know a product that goes in this direction?” Here are some of the answers students made:

Caru smart sensor: speak with it, join group chat with family, ask for help, smart enough to call for help when it becomes aware something is wrong

Social media: express what you are thinking, be in contact with your friends

A retirement home who made a glass room in the garden so that the residents could see their dear ones without getting in contact with them. They see eachother and talk on the phone through the glass.

Architecture for enviroments, the affordance of enviroments. Round table → encourages you to interacr with each other, classroom → incourages you to focus on the teacher.

Once a product is online we have to observe the:

Persistence: the durability of online expressions and content

Visibility: the potential audience who can bear witness

Spreadability: the ease with which content can be shared

Searchabilita: the ability to find content

In the class then has been said that “Digital technology liberates the user from the time and place of communication, but it can also destroy the integrity of places and social encounters face to face. When meeting in a social group, those present tend to be distracted with the presence of mobile phones, a distraction caused by the knowledge that a message or a call might occur.”

We have been asked if we had similar experiences and what does it do with the social experience?

Here are some of the responses:

Can be disrespectfull to use the phone when you’re with friends

It is distracting when you have a phone in your hand or on the table

We are in a culture of short attention span, phone and internet are distractions   → put away computer, practice mindfulness

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Human-Computer Interaction and methods

Week 4 - Interaction Design Methods

In this week’s lesson, we discussed Human-Computer Interaction, in short HCI. The Interaction Design Foundation defined HCI as “a multidisciplinary field of study focusing on the design of computer technology and, in particular, the interaction between humans (the users) and computers”.

We got a glimpse of the historical background of computers and HCI in particular. The first digital computer was the Z4 designed by German engineer Konrad Zuse. The computers that followed, like the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, 1946) or the IBM 709 (1958) were high in maintenance, there were many people needed to operate them and big expertise was required. In 1967 the first color television came in Germany, thanks to Willy Brandt. Now everyone could have a piece of high technology in their home for daily use. In 1975 the term Human-Computer Interaction was first used. In that period the computers evolved further, and the consideration of the interaction between the user and the machine became more relevant. The newer computers like the Apple 1 (1976), Apple 2 (1977-1993) and the Commodore 64 (1982-1994) were designed for business and personal use. Now digital computers were meant for all people, and for all kinds of purposes, and not only for scientific use. These machines needed to be manageable and intuitive so that any potential customer could use them.  

HCI could be described as a combination of:

Computer Science: the study of processes that interact with data and that can be represented as data in the form of programs.

Human Factors Engineering (HFE): the act of studying how people use systems or equipment in order to design, develop, and create technology that is safer, more effective.

Cognitive Science: the interdisciplinary study of the mind, intelligence, and learning, including research in psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and artificial intelligence.

HCI is an academic discipline that conducts scientific research and studies the way people interact with technology. We as interaction designers could benefit from it by understanding how to design systems for people and involving potential users during the design process. 

Bodystorming method

The “bodystorming method” is a good way to study potential future users. It is a method that consists of the study of a combination of role-playing and simulation, it takes place in a physical environment, instilling a feeling of empathy for the users. What do they like? What do they dislike?  What do they need? What do they want? What bothers them?

Cultural probes

An approach to HCI and the study of users is Cultural probes (or design probes). It’s a technique used to inspire ideas in a design process. It serves as a means of gathering inspirational data about people's lives, values and thoughts. Bill Gaver used this approach on elderly people in diverse communities by giving them disposable cameras to document everyday life, a diary to record television, radio use and to note telephone calls, maps to showcase the attitude towards the environment and postcards. The study by Gaver has taken place during 1999, what would be used today as cultural probes? This question was asked in class and these are some of the responses the students gave: 

Many of the students saw Smartphones, computers and social media networks as a source to study potential users. These devices and services gather so much information about their customers, more than a simple diary could. 

Then the theme shifted to Ubiquitous Computing, a concept created by Mark Weiser, a technology embedded in the physical environment, providing useful services without disturbing the natural flow of human activities. 

Where we find ubiquitous computing today?

Here a few responses from the students:

iPhone / smartphone, because you have it always with you

Every well-designed computer in our everyday life.

paying informations

Any technology that fades into the background

Computers still bias our perception of reality 

All the smart technologies, which implement computing in many systems of our surrounding.

maybe as well the smart scales

surveillance cameras

How to increase creative potential (in the design process)?

Here a few responses from the students:

Bodystorming.

Let there be silence.

Co-design with the people that are going to end up using and implementing the design.

Gaining different perspectives.

Be open to different opinions and approaches.

Have a structure so that the creativity can run.

Improvisation Design.

Readings:

Buur, J., Fraser, E., Oinonen, S., & Rolfstam, M. 2010. “Ethnographic video as design specs”. In Proceedings of SIGCHI Australia’ 10.

Liz Danzico . 2010. “From Davis to David: Lessons from Improvisation”. In Interactions.

Fogg, B.J. 2003. “Conceptual Designs”. In Laurel, Brenda (ed.). Design Research. Methods and Perspectives.

Gaver, Bill, Dunne, T., & Pacenti, E. 1999. “Design: Cultural probes”. In Interactions, 6(1), 21-­29.

Oulasvirta, A., Kurvinen, E., & Kankainen, T. 2003. “Understanding contexts by being there: case studies in bodystorming". In Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 7(2), 125­-134.

Sanders, E., & Stappers, P. J. 2008. “Co­creation and the new landscapes of design”. In CoDesign, 4(1), 5–18.

Verplank, Bill. 2008. Interaction Design Sketchbook.

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Design in the everyday context

Week 3 - Interaction Design Methods

The themes of this week’s lesson where the design in the everyday context and the design in the sci-fi movies, and how the ordinary of the everyday things and the extraordinary of sci-fi movies intertwine. 

We see in sci-fi movies, where they potray an utopian or dystopian far future, they operate with futuristic machines and gadgets. Most of them have interfaces, similar to the products we find in store today. An Interface is the part of a system that is used to communicate with the user. 

In class we saw that in sci-fi movies there are 4 main types of “Interactions”:

Volumetric Projection: 3D Visuals used for communication, navigation and medical imaging

Gestures: Re-Embodiment technology, touch-screen, canonical gestural

Augmented Reality

Sonic Interfaces

What I found particularly interesting was the gestures portrayed in those movies used to interact with the interfaces and how similar they are to the gestures we make use of to interact with our  apparatuses, be it a smartphone or a portable computer. Here a list of some of the gestures mentioned:

Wave to activate (the water of the sink, for example)

Push to move

Turn to rotate

Swipe to Dismiss

Point or Touch to Select

Pinch and Spread to Scale

We saw that the Science Fiction movies go beyond entertainment, they have also functions. They show us how a potential future could be. They are testing ideas and technologies without the limits you usually would have in a real design process. Designing with no constraints can result in incredible projects. Fiction has the role to question humanity and what kind of society we want to build. It can show a utopian side of view, but most of the time the movies go more into a dystopian direction. A good example for an utopian sci-fi series is Star-Trek. In Star-Trek there is no war, no hunger, no violence. It is about exploring space and meeting new communities, and not colonizing space. Star-Trek also had many technologies that later came into the everyday world. For example the medical tricorder from that series became the well known Blackberry phone. In the series they had voice activators, voice recognition, teleportation, the Holodeck and the Replicator which has a similar functionatily as today’s 3D printers.

From the extraordinary we focused on the ordinary, of the everyday things. We looked at objects in a way in which they lost their meaning and function. That way of observing is called defamiliarization. Term that was first used by Viktor Shklovsky in 1917 in “Art as Technique”. Wikipedia says that defamiliarization means “presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way in order to enhance perception of the familiar.“ A good example for defamiliarization is the artwork of Marcel Duchamp, called “Fontana”, which is a simple porcelain urinal with his signature on it. This artwork was an example of missuse, and a question to what the real worth of art is. 

Then we had to analyze an object in groups, trying to defamiliarize it. Our group had an apple, we tried to describe the apple the way we would describe it to an alien who has never seen one before. It has a spheric shape, but not a perfect sphere. It has a reflektive skin, with gradient colours of red and green and strokes and point that create a pattern on it. It is wet on the inside but dry on the outside. You can make many apples out of a single apple. All these facts seem obvious, but it was really interesting to analyze an object so well known to us that way. You discover many things that before you haven’t really thought about. It can improve a design project when you try to defamiliarize it. That way you can see a new perspective, and maybe discover something new.

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Perspectives of design

Week 2, Interaction Design Methods

In this week, after discussing the readings we had for that day (see list below), we talked about the things that we had to keep in mind when reading a text that we may want to include in our work. To understand the content and to verify it as valid we have to look through numerous factors. Who are the authors? Where do they work? Who do they refer to? We have to consider the time is was written in, what year. The background and profession the author has is a key information to determine the point of view the author has and if their work is valid for us. Age, experience, writing style, choices, motivation, nationality, location (university, agency), related work literature and formats (journal, conference, autobiography, case study, manifestos) are informations that we have to consider when reading and/or including a text. It is important to possibly include more diverse sources as possible, regardless of nationality or gender, to give to the topic the most possible points of view. Peer-reviewed Papers are the most trustworthy. It is also important to consider if the author was sponsored, which could alter the opinions and informations stated. 

The topic then shifted to the best way to do a presentation. 

Include visual support.

Minimize amount of text (2 to 3 sentences).

Involve the audience with questions, exercises and make eye contact.

Structure the presentation so it becomes really clear for the listener.

Readings:

Carroll, J. M. (2000). Making Use: Scenario-­Based Design of Human­Computer Interactions. The MIT Press. “the Process”

Dreyfuss, H. S. (1955). Designing for People. (26-­43).

Dubberly, H. ­(2004). How do you design? Dubberly Design Office.

Kolko, J. (2011). Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis (Oxford Series in Human­Technology Interaction) (1 ed.). Oxford University Press, USA.

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What is Interaction Design

Week 1, Interaction Design Methods

In the first lesson we discussed together what Interaction Design is for us. The first thing that came to mind is designing and creating the interconnection between a machine, a service, and the human, the user. Then we digged deeper than that. Interaction Design is about finding problems and solving them. It is about proposing alternatives. Interaction design can create problems too, and not only solve them. Analyzing is a crucial part of the design process. For example analyzing the market in a disruptive way. 

Interaction design not only focuses on the interaction between machine and human, but also between humans themselves. The social aspects of interaction design are very important. Designers can connect people and elevate their interaction with various services and artifacts. 

An interaction designer can  also create experiental projects, which don’t serve a concrete and logical purpose but are based more on experience. Interactive installation can play with the perception of reality of the user. Installations that focuse on embodiment become interactive with the movement of the body, or the sense of touch. Installations of this kind can become interesting and immersive experiences for the user.

The literature we had to read and the topics discussed in class also focused on the design process. From the ideation to the final product. 

We had to reunite with the group we worked with in our last project, “Food Experiments” in the Digital Fabrication course of the first semester and rethink the different steps we took to come to our final outcomes. We found that the process went like this:

Research into existing projects

Material research and testing

Fabrication methods testing

Analyzing Objects created

Testing human perception (of our objects)

Elaborate on interesing finding during testing process

In class we then saw an optimal design process, called the excursive method, which consists of these following components:

Investigation: confronting the topic, the literature, related work

Play: prototyping, learning skills, trials and errors

Everyday: real world, pop culture, observations, discourses

Tensions: art vs. design, individual vs. team, compromises

Enactment: talks, demos, workshops, documentation submissions

Dissemination: legacy, deliveries, sharing lessons learned, entrepreneurship, survey

We all saw a pattern repeating in the responses the different groups gave and the similarities our workflow has with the excursive method. It is quite clear that such a workflow is intuitive for good design work.