Transforming Grounds

Again I returned to the writings of David Pye. His writings have been with me since the early 80s. The nature and aesthetics of design " is one of the absolute best books ever written about design.

One of the most preached principles in design, and particularly in interaction design, is to strive for simplicity. It is yet difficult to find any examinations of what simple really means when it comes to design (there are some good exceptions, such as Maeda and Mollerup, see references below). In many cases, being simple is of course good. Nevertheless, we also know that we live in a world that is complex and sometimes requires complex actions. We also know that people can do amazing things even with devices that are highly complex. Virtuosity can be achieved. So, the question becomes, can we design artifacts that require complex actions in a way that could support the efforts of reaching virtuosity? Below is an excerpt from our book "Things That Keep Us Busy - the elements of interaction" (MIT Press, 2018). This is from Chapter 6 "Control". "6.5 Virtuosity Can we imagine artifacts that are highly complex while still being inviting to a user and prov...

The hype around VR has lately been growing and ads are making the case that it is time to take on this new form of interaction for all kinds of applications. However, in a great article  (published by TechCrunc) the writer  Sibjeet Mahapatra argues that there is a major problem in the world of VR. The problem is the missing killer app. Mahapatra discusses what he sees as the two values that VR can offer, primarily a sense of presence. But he also argues that VR still lacks when it comes to authenticity. The author makes a good case for what is needed for VR to really become something wanted by a larger audience. So, a good read about interaction and interactivity. [And of course, I always like someone who  mentions Rorty and his "experience machine"!]

I am just back from a trip to Europe where I among other things taught a two day Ph.D. course called "The Elements of Interaction". The course was organized at the department of computer science at Aalborg University by my colleague Peter Axel Nielsen. It was an intense experience. Two full days completely focused on our new book "Things that keep us busy--the elements of interaction". We worked through almost all chapters in the book. It led to wonderful discussions. The doctoral students were great. They were curious, critical and inquisitive. And to me, it was a great way of exploring if the content of the book make sense and work for others than me and my co-author Lars-Erik. Based on the experience, I learned two things. Our book seems to work fine with PhD students and they were able to relate the content to their own research in ways that might help them. Secondly, to teach a PhD course in this format, two full days, is excellent. It leads to complete foc...

In an interesting article , Byung-Chul Han examines the notion of what is an original artifact versus a copy. He explains the different notions in the East and West in a way that is relevant to anyone thinking about design and creativity. The major argument that Han makes is that in China (and other Eastern societies) the notion of what is an original might appear as strange to us in the West. According to him, in these cultures, a perfect copy is the same as the original and has no greater value than the original. The article tells a number of fascinating stories of when this difference in thinking between East and West has led to serious misunderstandings and conflicts. I was intrigued by this article. I have no idea how correct it is and how true it depicts the cultural  differences, but even if it is not a true depiction, it does raise a lot of exciting questions about how to think about what is an original and if an original should have any particular status. Again, all rele...

One aspect of interaction that keeps emerging is related to complexity. A lot of people complain that interacting with systems and devices today is too complex. As a natural reaction to that, a lot of designers argue for simplicity as an important design principle. But what is complexity when it comes to interaction and why does it appear? In our recent book "Things that keep us busy -- the elements of interaction" we spend two chapters on interaction complexity and the related notion of control. We do this by examining what interaction complexity is and what causes it. This leads to a theory (or model) of interaction complexity that consists of four different types of complexity. This is what we write (on p 85). "We will identify and define four main loci of complexity of an artifact or system (see figure 5.1), all with respect to its designed purpose:       1. internal complexity       2. external complexity       3. interacti...