Dix, Alan

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--- validityAlan Dix, Lancaster University, UKwww.hcibook.com/alan/papers/chi2004-lit--- dry eyesTwenty years on from the Ethiopian famine of 1984 the BBC broadcast adocumentary.  Michael Buerk revisited the people he had interviewed and theplaces he had visited.  The programme also covered the subsequent events,including the Band Aid Christmas record and Live Aid concert.<1>The scenes from the original footage were harrowing, even knowing that theevents took place ago 20 years ago.  In 1984 a young woman, ClaireBertschinger, had been in charge of a feeding centre for children at one of themajor camps.  Each day she would walk down the line of listless shrunkenchildren and babies and select those who would be let inside.  She did notchoose the weakest.  they would be fed for a day and die regardless – a day'sfood wasted.  She chose only those she believed would be saved.  A fewmoments assessment of pitted eyes, parchment skin and stick-like limbs and achoice: life or death.She too was brought back to Ethiopia.  For twenty years she had held thehorror of that time, and believed that those she had worked with and thosethat had been at the camp, would regard her, like the commandant ofAuschwitz, a dealer in death.  Of course she was greeted with joy and love byall who had known her all those years back; they remembered the life she gave.Twenty years on her healing could begin.Holding our own work against the lamp of these events is perhaps toorevealing, but perhaps Band Aid itself is easier to deal with.So, let's ask the question "was Band Aid a success?" and see what that tells usabout the measures of validity in our own arenas.--- successOf course in true deconstructive style, Band Aid itself is not an isolatedincident, but is part of this wider unfolding.  Bob Geldof was moved by thereporting of Michael Buerk, by the images of death and suffering.  He was apop star, and a fading pop star, but also one who, through character orexperience, was able to recognise that.In the documentary he recalls how he thought that a Christmas record couldnet seventy two thousand pounds<2> but knew that a Christmas record by himwould not be the success it needed to be.  In humility uncharacteristic of theindustry he went instead to his friends and contacts rather than going alone.Of course we all know how Band Aid was in fact a great success and nettedover eight million pounds with its own chartered boats and lorry conveystaking medical supplies and food to the heart of a war torn and droughtstricken country.Now this is a metric of success or validity that a traditional HCI practitionerwould love: £8 million raised with an initial specification target of £72 innocence of snowdrops beneath rain damp trees and gold glow summer misted hills,the sound of laughter in the street outside, ring hollow in those dry eyesAlan Dix Validity 2thousand.  We might question the professional competency of a designerwhose system outperforms expectation by 10,000%, but we can hardlyquestion the success.  Hard numbers – yes!But Band Aid was not just a fund raiser, but also a record and a song, so whatabout aesthetics?  Bob Geldof said it didn't matter whether it was a good songor not, he just wanted it to sell.  But would public guilt and a hall of fame assingers been enough on its own to make it a commercial success?  Could badmusic or bad lyrics have been simply a way of drowning out the silent eyesstaring from those news reports?  I would guess that unless the tune and theperformance had been adequate it would not be the case.  It is no good itsimply being a good record to buy it needed to be a good record to listen to aswell.Of course, now we are treading the ground of more artistic judgement, or atleast popular taste.Not only were the listeners of Band Aid moved aesthetically but also they wereoften moved to empathy and action.  For one Christmas, Band Aid changed thespirit of the public and, because of this, governments also had to change theirpolicy.  The £8 million the record made was magnified many fold in state aid.Perhaps the most major effect of the record was its affect.... and for Bob Geldof himself, his life was changed forever.  While theBoomtown Rats are known by one musical generation, his association with BandAid and Live Aid cut across age and class.--- for usThe practical success in raising money was an important criteria of success,but of course that required other forms of success.  This is exactly thesituation facing those of us in HCI as we consider issues of user experience.Like Band Aid neither purely functional nor purely aesthetic considerations aresufficient to understand the full issues.Traditional HCI takes its notions of theoretical validity from base disciplinessuch as psychology and ergonomics.  Usability testing and metrics haveformalised this in terms of measurable efficiency and effectiveness andresearch looks towards scientific experimental method.  The truth of a designrule and the measure of an interface’s value are taken from the externalaspects of its behaviour in use.In contrast, literary and artistic theory looks for its validity in less objectiveareas.   M.H Abrams, in the introduction of The Mirror and the Lamp, says "Agood critical theory has its own kind of validity.  The criterion is not thescientific verifiability of its single propositions, but the scope, precision, andcoherence of the insights that it yields into the properties of single works ofart and the adequacy with which it accounts for diverse kinds of art."<3>  It is interesting that this focus on insight does not refer at all to the successor quality of the works being studied.  However, it is clear that much of thehistoric study of arts has focused on trying to understand what it is thatmakes a work 'good' and how to achieve this quality in practice.  For example,the study of metre and rhyme can be used both to account for some of the'quality' of verse and to guide the poet.hands that fed, turn magazines and open tins of soup, feel velvet moss on autumn walks and gatherempty milk bottles at night, but still recall the paper touch and sickly drag of weightless fleshAlan Dix Validity 3This tension between the singularity of each work and general rules has beenrecognised for many years.  The classical Roman author of On the Sublime,known as Longinus, writes of other contemporary critics "Works of naturalgenius are spoilt, they believe, are indeed utterly debased, when they arereduced to the bare bones of rules and systems.", and he then goes on tocounter this view and produces a work of literary criticism that has beeninfluential for nearly 2000 years!<4>This classical voice sounds strikingly familiar if we consider those advocates ofvarious models and theories of HCI who seek for generalisable knowledge andthose who emphasise the more contextual and singular aspects of eachinteraction and situation.<5>This has been a problem with 'normal' work-based systems and the design ofthem.  However, it is even more problematic when the systems we design areintended to elicit emotions, to be fun, to yield experiences.  These things taketheir validity from their subjectivity.John Searle, famous for his Chinese Room Argument, distinguishes two types ofsubjectivity: epistemic and ontological.<6> A statement such as "I think theEmpire State building is 1273 feet tall" is epistemicly subjective - it is a matterof belief. In analysis, science prefers epistemic objectivity – the measuredheight of the building. However where personal preference, aesthetics, pain orother feelings are the domain of discourse, as in this work, then we haveontological subjectivity - where the subjectivity is the very essence of thething being studied.However, the development of certain types of art in the latter half of the 20thcentury also gives us cause for caution.  The subjectivity of experience istransmuted into a critical tradition where the values are aesthetic have nogrounding outside the cognoscenti.  The role of theoretical critique of humanexperience should be to explain the felt effects not define what they should be.--- the real thingTo discuss critical theories M.H. Abrams uses a framework thatis surprisingly similar to ones we see in HCI.  He looks at fourelements: the artistic work itself, the artist who produces thework, the audience for whom the work is produced and the'universe' the people, events and topics that the work is about.Adams uses this to discuss different critical theories which oftentend to focus on one or other element.In HCI we can substitute designer for artist, user for audience, context anddomain for universe and the designed system for artistic work.  In HCI we alsofind that different techniques focus on designer, user or context.The universe is interesting as there are often two things that a work is 'about'– its subject matter and the deeper reasons for its production.  Miller's 'TheCrucible' is about the witch trials in Salem in 1692 and also ‘about’McCarthyism in the 1950s.When Claire Bertschinger first heard Band Aid over a crackling radio set shethought it was a sick joke, someone making money off the back of those shesaw dying around her.  It was only later that she realised that it was not onlyabout the famine, but 'about' making money to alleviate it.the sound of jumbo jet or wagner at full volume cannot drown the silent stare,accepting little when all is lost and ears still hear the sound of those dry eyesUNIVERSEWORKARTIST AUDIENCEAlan Dix Validity 4The first 'about' is concerned with the internal nature of the song.  The second'about' is concerned with the why, the external meaning; it is a singleutterance within a wider context: the economics of EU grain and buttermountains, the politics of a war over parched land and dying children.<7>Band Aid's validity was not in measurable profit or felt experience but in thisother 'about'.  Looking towards this other validity seems equally important aswe practice and theorise in HCI.--- notes1. Ethiopia: a Journey with Michael Buerk – This World.  Clifford Betsall (director),Kern O'Conner (editor).  BBC2 9pm, Sunday 11th January 2004.2. I'm not sure where the figure of £72,000 came from, perhaps a previous Christmasrecord.  However, this is figure the target figure that was iterated several times inthe programme.3. M.H Abrams.  Chapter 1 Orientation of critical theories, from The Mirror and theLamp: romantic theory and the critical tradition. 1953.4. Longinus On the Sublime. In T.S. Dorsch (trans.) Aristotle Horace Longinus:Classical Literary Criticism. Penguin Books, 19655. This tension is also evident in more recent theory.  The concept of iterability iscentral to the distinction and lack of distinction between spoken word and text inDerrida's writings and followers.  Each utterance of a symbol creates a newinstantiation which is both the same and different from previous utterances: "thestructure of iteration ... implies both identity and difference" Jacques Derrida,Limited Inc. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1988, pp. 53.quoted in Section 4.1 Iterability of Kevin Halion. Speech Act Theory andDeconstruction: A Defence of the Distinction between Normal and ParasiticSpeech Acts. PhD Dissertation, McMaster University, 19896. J. Searle.The Mystery of Consciousness. Granta, London, 1997.7. On reading a previous draft of this, monica schraefel pointed out that there was aninteresting further context in that this was all happening at the time of the Britishminers’ strike.  Reflecting on this, although there were not millions of childrendying in the UK, there was certainly considerable hardship and hunger amongst thefamilies of miners.  Furthermore the causes of the Ethiopian famine were as muchto do with the war raging there as the drought, and the famine, by depopulatingthe rebel territories, was to some extent a tool of war.  Similarly in the UK thegovernment sequestered the funds of the miners union cutting strike pay and thusforcing many to break the strike due to hunger.  monica wondered whether in away it was easier for people to care about those far away than those on theirdoorstep.  Similarly in preparing this paper I wondered am I, like ClaireBertschinger thought Band Aid was when she heard record, in some way exploitingor trivializing the Ethiopian famine in drawing the analogy between Band Aid andHCI design.  Turning this on its head I wonder whether it is more that we can easilyas researchers, artists or designers deflect away our own responsibility in the smallfor our creations by seeing it as unimportant in the large.

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