Interaction Aesthetics In and Beyond the Flow

Although almost two decades have passed since the term aesthetics of interaction made its appearance in design-oriented Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), the actual understanding of the concept remains fuzzy and focused on the description of qualities of what constitutes an aesthetic experience. However, by trying to describe specific aesthetic qualities emerging from technology encounters, we risk offering endless definitions of potential aesthetic traits, mostly fixated on pleasurable interactions. This approach may discard other interactive expressions that could potentially lead us to meaningful insights. Drawing on the similarities between John Dewey's aesthetic experiences, Eugene Gendlin's process model, and Martin Heidegger’s analysis of tool use, this article offers a theoretical framework towards a broader, systematized view of aesthetics of interaction. To do so, the discussion exemplifies a series of phenomenological experiences ranging from transparency to breakdown: two opposites in the understanding of how technologies reveal themselves

The Confluence of Interaction Design & Design: from Disciplinary to Transdisciplinary Perspectives

In keeping with the conference theme of rigour and the authors’ interest in sustainability and interaction design, we describe the confluence of design-oriented notions of interaction design and HCI-oriented notions of interaction design in terms of understanding the present and making choices about possible futures. We comment on the variety of research modes in this confluence and then take up the issue of how disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity operate and fail to operate as boundary crossing mechanisms for these research modes. As a complement and extension to disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary practices, we take up the notion of transdisciplinarity and describe how it informs the possibility of values-rich free boundary crossing between research modes in the service of real world issues, while still preserving rigour. Keywords: Transdisciplinarity; Interaction Design; Design Research; Sustainability; Disciplinarity; Multidisciplinarity; Interdisciplinarity.</p

A protocol study of novice interaction design behaviour in Botswana: solution-driven interaction design

Think aloud studies and protocol analysis are well-known in the field of HCI, but most often these studies focus on usability evaluations, or on the use of technology. Rarely are they used to investigate the behaviour of interaction designers. In this paper, we report on a protocol study with novice interaction designers in Botswana. Participants had just completed the design section of an undergraduate module on Interaction Design that actively promotes a problem-driven approach to the design of interactive products, yet the participants behaved in a way that is closer to a solution-driven approach. The module emphasizes user-centred design, prototyping methods to support design development, and evaluating design detail. Yet participants suggest solutions before exploring the context of use, use prototyping methods to capture, rather than to develop, designs, and do not produce detailed designs. In a problem-solving context, some of these behaviours are typical of novices, but in a design context they are also seen in experienced designers. The results presented here reveal the detail of the approach adopted by these students, and contribute to the wider debate concerning the internationalization of HCI education

Inspirational Bits - Towards a Shared Understanding of the Digital Material

In any design process, a medium’s properties need to be considered. This is nothing new in design. Still we find that in HCI and interactive systems design the properties of a technology are often glossed over. That is, technologies are black-boxed without much thought given to how their distinctive properties open up design possibilities. In this paper we describe what we call inspirational bits as a way to become more familiar with the design material in HCI, the digital material. We describe inspirational bits as quick and dirty but fully working systems in both hardware and software built with the aim of exposing one or several of the dynamic properties of a digital material. We also show how they provide a means of sharing design knowledge across the members of a multi-disciplined design team

Pass the Ball: Enforced Turn-Taking in Activity Tracking

We have developed a mobile application called Pass The Ball that enables users to track, reflect on, and discuss physical activity with others. We followed an iterative design process, trialling a first version of the app with 20 people and a second version with 31. The trials were conducted in the wild, on users' own devices. The second version of the app enforced a turn-taking system that meant only one member of a group of users could track their activity at any one time. This constrained tracking at the individual level, but more successfully led users to communicate and interact with each other. We discuss the second trial with reference to two concepts: social-relatedness and individual-competence. We discuss six key lessons from the trial, and identify two high-level design implications: attend to "practices" of tracking; and look within and beyond "collaboration" and "competition" in the design of activity trackers

Applying a User-centred Approach to Interactive Visualization Design

Analysing users in their context of work and finding out how and why they use different information resources is essential to provide interactive visualisation systems that match their goals and needs. Designers should actively involve the intended users throughout the whole process. This chapter presents a user-centered approach for the design of interactive visualisation systems. We describe three phases of the iterative visualisation design process: the early envisioning phase, the global specification hase, and the detailed specification phase. The whole design cycle is repeated until some criterion of success is reached. We discuss different techniques for the analysis of users, their tasks and domain. Subsequently, the design of prototypes and evaluation methods in visualisation practice are presented. Finally, we discuss the practical challenges in design and evaluation of collaborative visualisation environments. Our own case studies and those of others are used throughout the whole chapter to illustrate various approaches

Categorisation of visualisation methods to support the design of Human-Computer Interaction systems

During the design of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) systems, the creation of visual artefacts forms an important part of design. On one hand producing a visual artefact has a number of advantages: it helps designers to externalise their thought and acts as a common language between different stakeholders. On the other hand, if an inappropriate visualisation method is employed it could hinder the design process. To support the design of HCI systems, this paper reviews the categorisation of visualisation methods used in HCI. A keyword search is conducted to identify a) current HCI design methods, b) approaches of selecting these methods. The resulting design methods are filtered to create a list of just visualisation methods. These are then categorised using the approaches identified in (b). As a result 23 HCI visualisation methods are identified and categorised in 5 selection approaches (The Recipient, Primary Purpose, Visual Archetype, Interaction Type, and The Design Process).Innovate UK, EPSRC, Airbus Group Innovation