"Where are the artists?" asked Hiroshi Ishii, a professor at MIT Media Lab, adressing a panel at the 2008 conference on human factors in computing systems, this year entitled Art.Science.Balance. The question reflected the overall atmosphere of the event and referred to more general issues of aesthetics which are buried by problems of evaluation, functionality, and more recently, social issues. The aesthetic aspects of an interactive experience are often seen as results of an artistic moment of creativity. This essay explores a different approach -one that draws from a structured investigation of the design materials that contribute to an aesthetic experience
