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

Seamful interweaving: heterogeneity in the theory and design of interactive systems

Design experience and theoretical discussion suggest that a narrow design focus on one tool or medium as primary may clash with the way that everyday activity involves the interweaving and combination of many heterogeneous media. Interaction may become seamless and unproblematic, even if the differences, boundaries and 'seams' in media are objectively perceivable. People accommodate and take advantage of seams and heterogeneity, in and through the process of interaction. We use an experiment with a mixed reality system to ground and detail our discussion of seamful design, which takes account of this process, and theory that reflects and informs such design. We critique the 'disappearance' mentioned by Weiser as a goal for ubicomp, and Dourish's 'embodied interaction' approach to HCI, suggesting that these design ideals may be unachievable or incomplete because they underemphasise the interdependence of 'invisible' non-rationalising interaction and focused rationalising interaction within ongoing activity

The vocational ID : connecting life design counselling and personality systems interaction theory

We introduce the Vocational ID that integrates linguistic and visual representations of a career counselling client’s self. Based upon findings from the Life Design paradigm and the Personality Systems Interaction theory, the Vocational ID facilitates working on clients' vocational identity. In this article, we present the theoretical framework, its practical applications, and a case study

EXPERIENCING INTERACTION DESIGN: A PRAGMATIC THEORY

This thesis contributes a theory for the field of interaction design based on philosophical pragmatism. The theory frames interaction design as a pragmatic experience shaped by the inquiries of designers. The contributions of the theory are that it positions the designer at the centre of a theory, describes interaction design practice to be more than a collection of methods and strategies, and provides a sound basis for generating and verifying new knowledge through design. The thesis describes and analyzes two interaction design research projects through self-reflexive accounts that illustrate the proposed theory. The projects are a tangible museum guide and a responsive environment for physical play. The thesis examines the value of understanding interaction design through pragmatism and how interaction design when viewed as experience opens the field up to a new theoretical framework. The two interaction design research projects arc described as design inquiries constituted by a design inquirer, designer intentions, and design rationales. Further descriptions of the projects show interaction design to be comprised of design actions based on judgment and interpretation. Interaction design can be assessed by the degree to which there is integrity between the design inquiry and design actions, as well as by the transferability and discursiveness of the design inquiry findings that are relevant to the wider field of interaction design and related disciplines like human-computer interaction. The implications of the theory lead to new ways of mobilizing interaction design research and interaction design education. The pragmatic theory shows capacity for clear descriptions and analysis of interaction design inquiries in ways that extract and communicate new knowledge from interaction design practice and research. The theory shows interaction design to be a distinct and independent field of inquiry that generates knowledge through design

SMSlingshot a shared encounter in urban space

Interaction design is increasingly situated beyond the desktop and demands new approaches, if it is made for Urban Space. Public and semi-public spaces add new challenges in terms of interaction theory, technology and sociology. SMSlingshot is an interactive unban installation (also named a Shared Encounter) and research vehicle that helps to explore these new challenges

Disciplining the body? Reflections on the cross disciplinary import of ‘embodied meaning’ into interaction design

The aim of this paper is above all critically to examine and clarify some of the negative implications that the idea of ‘embodied meaning’ has for the emergent field of interaction design research. Originally, the term ‘embodied meaning’ has been brought into HCI research from phenomenology and cognitive semantics in order to better understand how user’s experience of new technological systems relies to an increasing extent on full-body interaction. Embodied approaches to technology design could thus be found in Winograd & Flores (1986), Dourish (2001), Lund (2003), Klemmer, Hartman & Takayama (2006), Hornecker & Buur (2006), Hurtienne & Israel (2007) among others. However, fertile as this cross-disciplinary import may be, design research can generally be criticised for being ‘undisciplined’, because of its tendency merely to take over reductionist ideas of embodied meaning from those neighbouring disciplines without questioning the inherent limitations it thereby subscribe to. In this paper I focus on this reductionism and what it means for interaction design research. I start out by introducing the field of interaction design and two central research questions that it raises. This will serve as a prerequisite for understanding the overall intention of bringing the notion of ‘embodied meaning’ from cognitive semantics into design research. Narrowing my account down to the concepts of ‘image schemas’ and their ‘metaphorical extension’, I then explain in more detail what is reductionistic about the notion of embodied meaning. Having done so, I shed light on the consequences this reductionism might have for design research by examining a recently developed framework for intuitive user interaction along with two case examples. In so doing I sketch an alternative view of embodied meaning for interaction design research. Keywords: Interaction Design, Embodied Meaning, Tangible User Interaction, Design Theory, Cognitive Semiotics</p

Story of Use: Analysis of Film Narratives to Inform the Design of Object Interactions

Not only is using a product an experience, it is an interaction and it is narrative in nature. This work in progress paper describes the narrative theory background for this statement, in particular schemata theory and the concepts of agency, tellability and narrativity, then describes methods that are being used in the project to analyse film narratives and apply these to the design of tellable physical products

How Accurate Must Potentials Be for Successful Modeling of Protein Folding?

Protein sequences are believed to have been selected to provide the stability of, and reliable renaturation to, an encoded unique spatial fold. In recently proposed theoretical schemes, this selection is modeled as ``minimal frustration,'' or ``optimal energy'' of the desirable target conformation over all possible sequences, such that the ``design'' of the sequence is governed by the interactions between monomers. With replica mean field theory, we examine the possibility to reconstruct the renaturation, or freezing transition, of the ``designed'' heteropolymer given the inevitable errors in the determination of interaction energies, that is, the difference between sets (matrices) of interactions governing chain design and conformations, respectively. We find that the possibility of folding to the designed conformation is controlled by the correlations of the elements of the design and renaturation interaction matrices; unlike random heteropolymers, the ground state of designed heteropolymers is sufficiently stable, such that even a substantial error in the interaction energy should still yield correct renaturation.Comment: 28 pages, 3 postscript figures; tared, compressed, uuencode

Radicals, Metals and Magnetism

The interaction between unpaired electrons governs many physical properties of materials. Although in a fundamental sense the interaction is simple, a full understanding of the interaction in molecular systems is complicated by the presence of other bonding and non-bonding electrons. The resulting many body problem is very challenging. Nevertheless, much qualitative understanding can be obtained from applying simple molecular orbital theory and considering only the partly filled orbitals. The resulting model can be used to describe existing diradical and metal-radical systems and also has predicative value in the search for molecular magnets and design of nanoscale devices