Aesthetics versus functionality : challenging dichotomies in information visualisation

Information visualisation is an increasingly prominent practice focussed on making large amounts of data more accessible through visual media. Furthermore, an increased interest in the aesthetic value of visualisations is evident in the emergence of a sub-category of visualisation known as “information aesthetics”, where visualisation is used in more artistic and experimental ways, with a strong focus on visual appeal. This aesthetic quality of certain information visualisations has attracted considerable debate and some traditional practitioners are concerned that “aesthetics” may detract from the functional or analytical goals of visualisation artifacts. This perceived divide between aesthetics and functionality may, however, result from two common misconceptions about “aesthetics” within design discourse. Firstly, “aesthetics” is often understood as an afterthought, or the superficial visual appeal considered after all other design decisions have been made. Secondly, “aesthetics” is often distrusted, with “decoration” seen as a sign of subjective interference with otherwise objective or neutral information transfer. This article explores various perspectives on the relationship between design aesthetics and functionality, proposing ways in which they may be more closely connected, specifically within an information visualisation context.gv201

Contrasting Views of Complexity and Their Implications For Network-Centric Infrastructures

There exists a widely recognized need to better understand and manage complex “systems of systems,” ranging from biology, ecology, and medicine to network-centric technologies. This is motivating the search for universal laws of highly evolved systems and driving demand for new mathematics and methods that are consistent, integrative, and predictive. However, the theoretical frameworks available today are not merely fragmented but sometimes contradictory and incompatible. We argue that complexity arises in highly evolved biological and technological systems primarily to provide mechanisms to create robustness. However, this complexity itself can be a source of new fragility, leading to “robust yet fragile” tradeoffs in system design. We focus on the role of robustness and architecture in networked infrastructures, and we highlight recent advances in the theory of distributed control driven by network technologies. This view of complexity in highly organized technological and biological systems is fundamentally different from the dominant perspective in the mainstream sciences, which downplays function, constraints, and tradeoffs, and tends to minimize the role of organization and design

Interaction Design: Foundations, Experiments

Interaction Design: Foundations, Experiments is the result of a series of projects, experiments and curricula aimed at investigating the foundations of interaction design in particular and design research in general. The first part of the book - Foundations - deals with foundational theoretical issues in interaction design. An analysis of two categorical mistakes -the empirical and interactive fallacies- forms a background to a discussion of interaction design as act design and of computational technology as material in design. The second part of the book - Experiments - describes a range of design methods, programs and examples that have been used to probe foundational issues through systematic questioning of what is given. Based on experimental design work such as Slow Technology, Abstract Information Displays, Design for Sound Hiders, Zero Expression Fashion, and IT+Textiles, this section also explores how design experiments can play a central role when developing new design theory

Priming system 1 influences user acceptance

The study examines an alternative conceptualization of user acceptance, where acceptance is a function of two modes of thinking: one that is fast, intuitive, and automatic (known as System 1), and one that is slow, more deliberate, and voluntary (known as System 2). Such a conceptualization can accommodate cases of affect substitution, where users rely on System 1 only, without activating System 2. An experiment is conducted (N = 250) in which users are primed for System 1 or System 2. The headline contribution is that, in the context of an unattractive but potentially useful software application, users primed for System 1 show weaker intentions to download the application than those who are primed for System 2 (mean score 5.25 versus 6.30, on a scale of 1 to 7). The difficulty of reconciling this result with traditional frameworks illustrates the relevance of the dual processing model

On Birds, Beasts and Human Beings. An Approach to the Continuity between Art and Life

In 1934 John Dewey laid the foundation of a Philosophy of Art which had its roots in the essential conditions of life, that is, the basic vital functions which human beings share with birds and beasts. Dewey asserted that at every moment living creatures are exposed to conflicts from its surroundings, and at every moment they try to restore the harmony, to satisfy their needs. Fifty four years after, Ben-Ami Scharfstein published his book Of Birds, Beasts and other Artists (1988) in which he tries to show the universality of the art instinct in humans, animals and birds. He returns to the biological background of art and explains how human beings and other animals are pushed to self-expression by their personal and social needs. Although he recognizes an explicit expressive behaviour of human beings, also indicates that if we want to understand our nature and the art we create, we will not deny these biological roots. The aim of this paper is to examine that continuity between art and life from a comparative approach to the views of these authors. This paper’s presentation explores two main points: the naturalistic background of aesthetics and the functionality of art such as manifestation of a culture. I begin drawing a comparison between deweyan naturalistic humanism and Scharfstein’s biological thesis. Both authors emphasize how important it is the natural context to develop aesthetic experiences, however, they present big differences in their epistemological elaborations. Secondly, I would like to address fundamental similarities between Dewey’s notion of art as a celebration of the life of a culture and Scharfstein’s view of art as exhibition of the deep forms of individual and culture, carried in his recent work Art without borders (2009). They show how all human beings share the condition that makes art both universal and indispensable. Despite the divergences, these proposals provide a global overview of art’s creation and reception which attempt to demonstrate the rich background of our lives from which we create art as a way of leading a meaningful life

Generative Design in Minecraft (GDMC), Settlement Generation Competition

This paper introduces the settlement generation competition for Minecraft, the first part of the Generative Design in Minecraft challenge. The settlement generation competition is about creating Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents that can produce functional, aesthetically appealing and believable settlements adapted to a given Minecraft map - ideally at a level that can compete with human created designs. The aim of the competition is to advance procedural content generation for games, especially in overcoming the challenges of adaptive and holistic PCG. The paper introduces the technical details of the challenge, but mostly focuses on what challenges this competition provides and why they are scientifically relevant.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, Part of the Foundations of Digital Games 2018 proceedings, as part of the workshop on Procedural Content Generatio

Difficult forms: critical practices of design and research

As a kind of 'criticism from within', conceptual and critical design inquire into what design is about – how the market operates, what is considered 'good design', and how the design and development of technology typically works. Tracing relations of conceptual and critical design to (post-)critical architecture and anti-design, we discuss a series of issues related to the operational and intellectual basis for 'critical practice', and how these might open up for a new kind of development of the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of design. Rather than prescribing a practice on the basis of theoretical considerations, these critical practices seem to build an intellectual basis for design on the basis of its own modes of operation, a kind of theoretical development that happens through, and from within, design practice and not by means of external descriptions or analyses of its practices and products

Design considerations for delivering e-learning to surgical trainees

Copyright © 2011, IGI Global. Distributed with permission.Challenges remain in leveraging e-health technologies for continuous medical education/professional development. This study examines the interface design and learning process features related to the use of multimedia in providing effective support for the knowledge and practice of surgical skills. Twenty-one surgical trainees evaluated surgical content on a CD-ROM format based on 14 interface design and 11 learning process features using a questionnaire adapted from an established tool created to assess educational multimedia. Significant Spearman’s correlations were found for seven of the 14 interface design features – ‘Navigation’, ‘Learning demands’, ‘Videos’, ‘Media integration’, ‘Level of material’, ‘Information presentation’ and ‘Overall functionality’, explaining ratings of the learning process. The interplay of interface design and learning process features of educational multimedia highlight key design considerations in e-learning. An understanding of these features is relevant to the delivery of surgical training, reflecting the current state of the art in transferring static CD-ROM content to the dynamic web or creating CD/web hybrid models of education

InfoVis experience enhancement through mediated interaction

Information visualization is an experience in which both the aesthetic representations and interaction are part. Such an experience can be augmented through close consideration of its major components. Interaction is crucial to the experience, yet it has seldom been adequately explored in the field. We claim that direct mediated interaction can augment such an experience. This paper discusses the reasons behind such a claim and proposes a mediated interactive manipulation scheme based on the notion of directness. It also describes the ways in which such a claim will be validated. The Literature Knowledge Domain (LKD) is used as the concrete domain around which the discussions will be held