An anatomy of interaction: co-occurrences and entanglements

International audienceWe present a new taxonomy for describing the conditions and implementation of interactions. Current mechanisms for embedding interaction in software promote a hard separation between the programmers who produce the software, and the communities who go on to use it. In order to support open ecologies of function and fabrication, where this separation is negotiated by communities of users and designers, we need to reconceive those mechanisms. We describe interaction in two phases: Co-occurrence, the prerequisite conditions for an interaction to take place; and entanglement, the temporary coupling and interplay between elements participating in the interaction. We then sketch a blueprint of a system where those phases and their adjacent mechanisms enable communities of users to build and use interactive software. There are many ways of conceiving this new design space, and we present three dominant metaphors which we have employed so far, based on chemical reactions , quantum physics and cooking. We exhibit different systems which we have implemented based on these metaphors, and sketch how future systems will further empower citizens to design and inhabit their own interactions, express ownership over them and share them with communities of interest

Beyond Grids, Interactive Graphical Substrates to Structure Digital Layout

International audienceTraditional graphic design tools emphasize the grid for structuring layout. Interviews with professional graphic designers revealed that they use surprisingly sophisticated structures that go beyond the grid, which we call graphical substrates. We present a framework to describe how designers establish graphical substrates based on properties extracted from concepts, content and context, and use them to compose layouts in both space and time. We developed two technology probes to explore how to embed graphical substrates into tools. Contextify lets designers tailor layouts according to each reader's intention and context; while Linkify lets designers create dynamic layouts based on relationships among content properties. We tested the probes with professional graphic designers, who all identified novel uses in their current projects. We incorporated their suggestions into, StyleBlocks, a prototype that reifies CSS declarations into interactive graphical substrates. Graphical substrates offer an untapped design space for tools that can help graphic designers generate personal layout structures

Decomposing Interactive Systems

International audienceI argue that systems-oriented HCI should explore software engineering principles and architectures that emphasize user interaction over designer control. Many researchers have argued that user-empowering interaction should decouple tools from the objects they act on. Implementing this decoupling requires actively subverting the traditional architectures of interactive systems, including the encapsulation of interactive systems into closed applications, and the overly coupled event-driven programming model. I present a sketch of an architecture where interaction instruments are a first-class object to address these issues

Critique of ‘files as directories: some thoughts on accessing structured data within files’ (1)

International audienceIn this critique of Files as Directories (FAD) by Raphael Wimmer, I argue that FAD as presented applies primarily to traditional programming tasks, consider FAD as a broader subversion of app-like software, and speculate about the hypothetical design space of FAD beyond programming

Concevoir et programmer des logiciels malléables

User needs for software features and interfaces are diverse and changing, motivating the goal of making it as easy as possible for users themselves to change software, or to have it changed on their behalf in response to their developing needs. However, in my opinion, current approaches do not address this issue adequately: software engineering promotes flexible code, but in practice this does not help end-users effect change in their software. End-user and live programming systems help users customize their interfaces by accessing and modifying the underlying source code. I take a different approach, seeking to maximize the kinds of modifications that can take place through regular interactions, e.g. direct manipulation of interface elements. I call this approach malleable software. To understand contemporary needs for and barriers to modifying software, I study how it is produced, maintained, adopted, and appropriated in a network of communities working with biodiversity data. I find that the mode of software production, i.e. the technologies and economic relations that produce software, is biased towards centralized, one-size-fits-all systems. This leads me to propose a long-term, interdisciplinary research program in reforming the tools of software development to create infrastructures for plurality. These tools should help multiple communities collaborate without forcing them to consolidate around identical interfaces or data representations. Malleable software is one such infrastructure, in which interactive systems are dynamic constellations of interfaces, devices, and programs assembled at the site of use. My technological contribution is a reconstruction of the programming mechanisms used to create interactive behavior. I generalize existing control structures for interaction as entanglements, and develop a higher-order control structure, entanglers, which produces entanglements when particular pre-conditions, called co-occurrences, are met. Entanglers cause interactions to be assembled dynamically as system components come and go. I develop these mechanisms in Tangler, a prototype environment for building malleable interactive software. I demonstrate how Tangler supports malleability through a set of benchmark cases illustrating how users can modify systems by themselves or with programmer assistance. This thesis is an early step towards a paradigm for programming and designing malleable software that can keep up with human diversity.Les besoins des utilisateurs en matière de fonctionnalités et d'interfaces logicielles sont variés et changeants. Mon objectif est de permettre aux utilisateurs eux-mêmes de facilement modifier ou faire modifier leur logiciel en fonction de l'évolution de leurs besoins. Toutefois, à mon avis, les approches actuelles ne traitent pas cette question de façon adéquate : L'ingénierie logicielle favorise la flexibilité du code mais, dans la pratique, cela n'aide pas les utilisateurs finaux à apporter des changements à leurs logiciels. Les systèmes permettant à l'utilisateur de programmer en direct (“live programming”) ou de modifier le code du logiciel (“end-user programming”) permettent aux utilisateurs de personnaliser les interfaces de leur logiciel en accédant et modifiant le code source. J'adopte une approche différente, qui cherche à maximiser les modifications qui peuvent être faites à travers des interactions habituelles, par exemple la manipulation directe d'éléments d'interface. J'appelle cette approche la malléabilité logicielle. Pour comprendre les besoins des utilisateurs et les obstacles à la modification des logiciels interactifs, j'étudie comment les logiciels actuels sont produits, maintenus, adoptés et appropriés dans un réseau de communautés travaillant avec des données sur la biodiversité. Je montre que le mode de production des logiciels, c'est-à-dire les technologies et les modèles économiques qui les produisent, est biaisé en faveur de systèmes centralisés et uniformisés. Cela m'amène à proposer un programme de recherche interdisciplinaire à long terme pour repenser les outils de développement logiciel afin de créer des infrastructures pour la pluralité. Ces outils peuvent aider de multiples communautés à collaborer sans les forcer à adopter des interfaces ou représentations de données identiques. Le logiciel malléable représente une telle infrastructure, dans laquelle les systèmes interactifs sont des constellations dynamiques d'interfaces, de dispositifs et de programmes construits au moment de leur utilisation. Ma contribution technologique est de recréer des mécanismes de programmation pour concevoir des comportements interactifs. Je généralise les structures de contrôle existantes pour l'interaction en ce que j’appelle des intrications (“entanglements”). J'élabore une structure de contrôle d'ordre supérieur, les intricateurs (“entanglers”), qui produisent ces intrications lorsque des conditions préalables particulières sont remplies. Ces conditions préalables sont appelées co-occurrences. Les intricateurs organisent l'assemblage des interactions dynamiquement en fonction des besoins des composants du système. Je développe ces mécanismes dans Tangler, un prototype d’environnement pour la construction de logiciels interactifs malléables. Je démontre comment Tangler supporte la malléabilité à travers un ensemble de cas d'étude illustrant comment les utilisateurs peuvent modifier les systèmes par eux-mêmes ou avec l'aide d'un programmeur. Cette thèse est un premier pas vers un paradigme de programmation et de conception de logiciels malléables capables de s'adapter à la diversité des usages et des utilisateurs

Readymades & Repertoires: Artifact-Mediated Improvisation in Tabletop Role-Playing Games

International audienceGame masters (GMs) are creative practitioners who plan and orchestrate tabletop role-playing games. Through an interview study, we investigate how eight expert game masters adapt everyday technologies and materials as creativity support tools (CSTs) for improvisational and collaborative play. We integrate theories of improvisational and distributed creativity with the human-artifact model, which provides an activity-theoretical vocabulary for analyzing the mediating relationships between specialist practitioners and their tools. We show how GMs prepare and deploy readymade artifacts: analog and digital CSTs that flexibly mediate recurring creative tasks in their practice, such as improvising narrative elements, facilitating smooth play, and creating aesthetic effects. We find that GMs demonstrate designerly thinking as they create, share, and refine repertoires of readymade artifacts. We argue that our theoretical approach can inform future studies of IT-mediated creativity, and that readymade artifacts can be an analytical and generative concept for the design of novel creativity support tools