Transforming Grounds

Dewey, user experience, and design

2012-01-25T08:28:00.000-05:00

I know I have written about this before, but yesterday I lectured in my course, "Experience Design", about human experience based on a text by John Dewey. The text is the chapter "Having an experience" from his book "Art as experience". Reading this text and explaining it, once again I realized how extremely rich it is. The way Dewey discusses human experience and what it means to have "an" experience is amazingly valuable to any designer.

It is fascinating that with the notions that Dewey develops to analyze human experience he reveals and opens up for so many questions that are not usually addressed when it comes to user experience design in our field. For instance, it becomes clear that having "an" experience is in itself not a goal, and that "an" experience might be highly uncomfortable but still leading to intended results. Dewey makes it clear that we have to distinguish between the purpose (intention) of designing something to lead to "an" experience and the nature of the experience itself. His analysis also covers issues around what determines people's experiences, by bringing in aspects such as competence, background, and culture. He makes it clear that a carefully designed artifact by a thoughtful designer requires the same kind of carefulness when it comes to the perceiving and appreciation on the behalf of the "user". These are only a few aspects to be found in this great text.

Dewey also addresses the role of the designer versus the user, even though he is not using those concepts. He argues for prototyping (again not with that word), and he covers so many aspects of design and use that I think the text should be a core reading for any designer and maybe the only needed one. IT is also fascinating to see how much of Donald Schon's ideas are already present here. Schon did his PhD dissertation on Dewey and it is obvious how Dewey inspired Schon. That is why anyone who appreciates the work of Schon, should also read Dewey.

Interaction Design Philosophy & Interaction-Design.org

2011-12-14T17:19:00.000-05:00

One of the most ambitious sources of (open) scholarship in the field of HCI and interaction design is today found at Interaction-Design.org. This site is filled with content from some of the most distinguished researchers and designers in the field. I just got an email from interaction-design.org about their newest addition to the encyclopedia. It is an article called Philosophy of Interaction and the Interactive User Experience. The article is written by Dag Svanaes and has substantial comments from Don Norman and Eva Hornecker. Svanaes is ambitious in his approach to reveal the philosophy of the field. This is highly recommendable even for those who might not agree with his analysis. We definitely need more texts like this in the field. Many more.

It is great that we do have interaction-design.org as a source of quality materials that is also free to anyone interested. The site also includes a great calendar of conferences and deadlines and bibliographies of many researchers in the field. Mads Soegaard who is the Editor-in-Chief for this endeavor is doing a great job.

Book note: Donald Schön "Technology and Change"

2011-11-02T15:36:00.001-04:00

In my quest to read (or re-read) all the books by Donald Schön I am at the moment re-reading his "Technology and Change--The New Heraclitus", published in 1967. I really liked this book when I first read it many years ago, but in a way I think it resonates even more with our present time. It is both possible and easy to read this book as a strong argument for what is today called "design thinking".

Schön builds the whole reasoning in the book around how humans relate to stability and change. Parmenides and Heraclitus are presented as advocates of two archetypal ways of understanding reality in relation to change. Parmenides represents the view where "stability was the only reality; being was continuous, changeless, one; change, in the form of creation or passing away, was inherently contradictory and therefore illusory". On the other hand, Heraclitus saw change as "the only reality" and to whom stability was illusory.

Schön makes the case that society still hangs on to an understanding that is basically Permenidian, even though such a view do not fit with the radical and constantly ongoing technological development that defines our society (and did already in 1967). To cope with such an environment, innovation becomes a core activity and road ahead. Schön writes something that could be written today "Creativity, for the scientist, engineer and marketing man, and generalship in innovation for the manager, now rank with such traditional corporate virtues as loyalty, steadfastness and financial shrewdness. Increasingly, performance in the corporation has to do, in one way or another, with invention and innovation".

In the book Schön dissects what he sees as the dominating understanding of innovation which he calls the "rational view" based on a Parmenidian understanding of reality. He then presents an alternative and Heraclitus inspired view of change, hence the title of the book. It is fascinating to see how in this early book he already have a "theory" of change that later becomes the foundation of his more known work on reflective practice.

Maybe the least known and also most exciting part of the book is when Schön develops what he sees as an ethic of change. In this part of the book he is not as clear as he usually is, which I see as a sign that these ideas are work in progress. Strangely enough, this work on ethics in relation to change and design is something he never really came back to, maybe with an exception of the last chapter in "The Stable State" and in some way in his "Frame Reflection". This is definitely worth some more studies....

Ok, that is it for now....and to repeat myself from some earlier posts. To read Schön is highly recommended. His ideas are extraordinary grounded in solid philosophical reasoning while also based on his professional practice in industry. When a book about technology and change from 1967 feel fresh and exciting to read it is a sign that it contain some great and timeless ideas!

Book note: "Design Research Through Practice-from the lab, field and showroom"

2011-10-19T12:39:00.000-04:00

I often complain in this blog about the lack of books in the field of design thinking and research. I know that many would not agree with me since they would argue that new books about design are published all the time. That might be true, but at the same time very few of these new books contribute to an overall understanding of design, even though they can be both interesting and useful on a more concrete and practical level.

A new book that tries to do both is the book "Design Research Through Practice-from the lab, field and showroom" by Ilpo Koskinen, John Zimmerman, Thomas Binder, Johan Redström, and Stephan Wensveen. The authors have taken on the task of putting together knowledge that take "a bird's eye perspective" on the growing academic design research field, while at the same time being useful in the practical teaching of design at a more advanced level, and to add some understanding about the scientific method in relation to design. This is a very ambitious goal or goals.

With such ambitious goals it is difficult to fully succeed. To be both theoretically informed, rooted in practice, and relevant to both research and practice is challenging. I admire the project and find it highly inspirational. I find that overall the authors have been able to do what they set out to do, even though I find the book to also have some issues. The book answers to some extent to the purpose that the authors mention. It is highly practical and it does relate and ground the text, concepts, and suggestions in research. However, it is also the case that many things are very briefly introduced, defined and explained. Many sections are so short that when reading them it feels as if you only got the abstract. At the same time, the book covers many different aspects of design research.

The authors introduces many highly valuable ideas, concepts and techniques that are all clearly based on practical experience and they situate them in a larger context. They discuss the value of lab and field research and they introduce the notion of the showroom, all as valuable tools in constructive design research.

Overall, I find the book to be valuable, especially for MS and PhD students who are engaged in some kind of design research. The authors offer good arguments and support for using methods and techniques that are not necessarily common and accepted in more traditional research but are useful for design research.

The need for theoretical and philosophical books on design as a "big" thing and the passing of Kees Overbeeke and Steve Jobs

2011-10-10T12:19:00.002-04:00

I have earlier written on this blog on topics similar to this post. The reason for writing about it again is my four latest blogposts. They are all about books that approach design as a "big" thing. These books examine design as something at the same level as science and art and of the same importance. There are of course many books out there about design and that has the word design in the title, but so many of them are about some specific approach, skill, competence, or tool. This is all good and well but in times when design is seen as the approach that will save business, a much deeper understanding is needed. And we do not have enough books at that level. We need many more. Write one.

When Steve jobs was asked about what design is and what his "obsession" about quality was all about, he answered something that supports the idea that we need more books that can provide a language and an understanding. Steve Jobs answered "“We don’t have good language to talk about this kind of thing,”

and he continued

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together. ... That is the furthest thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started. This is what customers pay us for — to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We’re supposed to be really good at this. That doesn’t mean we don’t listen to customers, but it’s hard for them to tell you what they want when they’ve never seen anything remotely like it.” [my italics]

Jobs gives a condense and distinct definition of what design is all about in this quote. To me, this is an extremely brief theoretical and philosophical formulation of design at the level we need to see more of.

My post is also triggered by the passing of Kees Overbeeke. Kees was one of the most influential thinkers when it comes to design as a "big" thing. He did see design as an alternative approach to change in its broadest sense. He did not hesitate to take on big questions and topics, such as "fun", emotion, or aesthetics. He did inspire many and we will miss his insights. He did write about his thinking but unfortuntely what could have become his major book presenting his understanding of design in its deepest and broadest way will never be written. And this at a time when we really need books from thinkers like Overbeeke.

New MIT Press Book series on Design Thinking/Design Theory

2011-10-05T09:18:00.000-04:00

For quite some time, my colleague and friend Ken Friedman and I have worked as Book Series Editors for a new book series with MIT Press. The book series is called Design Thinking/Design Theory. This is an exciting project. Ken and I have read many proposals and discussed many ideas for books from prospective authors. It has been fascinating to see what authors want to write about and how different the notion of design can be approached. Many are willing to propose a book, but few have what it takes to actually finish a manuscript.

So, today I got the first published book in the series in my mail. It is a highly interesting book by Thomas Binder, Giorgio De Michelis, Pelle Ehn, Giulio Jacucci, Per Linde and Ina Wagner. The title is Design Things.

More books in the series are on their way. If you have a book idea that would fit this series, let me know.

How to define design

2011-10-02T11:45:00.000-04:00

I have mentioned here before that all signs are telling us that our reality is becoming more complex. While we humans spend more and more time making our reality into something that resembles or fulfills our dreams, it becomes more connected, more intertwined, more complex. The question is if this new reality, this complex mess, is easier to understand and to design for than the old "natural" and "simple" environment.

It is clear that complexity is quickly becoming the new research front in many disciplines. Complexity is the new challenge. It seems to emerge anywhere and all the time. There are of course also many ideas on how to approach complexity in a way that can "tame" it and make it manageable, maybe even possible to manipulate and work with (for a good discussion of the "nature" of complexity see Donald Norman "Living with complexity"). This is all good and well as long as the purpose is to study, describe, and maybe predict the structure and behavior of complex "things". But when it comes to design, complexity has a different meaning and practical consequences and has to be dealt with in a different way.

In the article "The Nature of Design Practice and Implications for Interaction Design Research" I argue that there is distinct difference between what is commonly seen as complexity in a scientific way and what can be labeled design complexity. I also develop the argument that we make a huge mistake if we try to solve design complexity by applying the methods used in science. In the article I show why a design approach is needed when we attempt to design for and within complex systems.

One reason why a scientific approach does not work when it comes to design complexity is that by reducing a problem at hand to something possible to deal with, with the general principles of the scientific approach, we will not reach a rich enough understanding of the whole "system" from a design perspective. There is no possibility to be comprehensive in design or science, which of course mean that we always will deal with some unpredictability. The more we try to handle complexity by making it "tame", contained, or less complex the more we might end up designing based on an understanding of reality that is way too simplistic.

Design is always about the whole, it always involves all possible aspects of reality. It can never be reduced or limited in order to be more precise or "correct". A designerly approach to complexity is therefore very different from the scientific. This insight seems to lead to many definitions of design where design is described as the opposite to the scientific approach, that is, what it is not. This is why we can find so many definitions of design that defines a design approach as not rational, logic, and linear. This is very unfortunate. Design is rational. Design has a logic. Design is linear. That is not the difference. The difference is that design has a different rationality, a different logic and linearity. To advocate design should instead be done in a positive sense, that is, what it is. In the article mentioned above, I make some attempts at doing that.

I is definitely possible to define the logic of design and the rationality of design. It is also possible to define what validity and rigor means when it comes to a design approach. Any designer knows that you have to be rigorous in your approach. More work needs to be done to formulate design as a rigorous, logic and rational approach.

Book Note: Donald Schon "Beyond the Stable State"

2011-09-29T08:16:00.000-04:00

In 1971 Donald Schon published his book "Beyond the Stable State". Schon has since then been recognized as an impressive thinker in many different disciplines. His fame and reputation are based on some amazing books that still are read and frequently referenced. However, the "Stable State" is usually not among them. Recently I had the pleasure of re-reading some parts of the it.

As often when you go back to something you read a long time ago, you are intrigued by other parts of the text, other ideas stand out. Ideas that you do not remember being in the book. I must admit that "Beyond the Stable State" is one of the books that has had the most influence on me over the years. To me, the message condensed in the title is enough, and is an example of a great idea.

Anyway, in re-reading parts of the book I realized that the last chapter contains a description of a form of research methodology or learning strategy that is resonating with my own thinking. The notions of "existential knowledge" and "projective models" are absolutely fascinating. Schon provides a clear and wonderful explanation of how to understand "case" studies, especially when the reason is to prepare for action. Schon's theory on how to approach "social change" is absolutely perfect for any professional working in any kind of design. Read the last chapter!

Manuscript of 2nd Edition of the Design Way sent

2011-09-14T07:47:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Harold Nelson and I sent the final manuscript of the 2nd Edition of "The Design Way" to MIT Press. The book has gone through quite a lot of changes. Every chapter is edited and refined. Two chapter are fully re-written. One chapter is gone and two new chapters have been added. Hopefully these changes have improved the book... Anyhow it feels good to have sent it. It was a lot of work. The book will not be out until sometime late next year, it is a long production process. It also feels great that this time the book will be published by a wonderful publisher, which will mean that the book will be available in a completely different way and also to much lower cost.

Studying Interaction Designers and their methods

2011-09-09T08:55:00.001-04:00

A few days ago, Marty Siegel and I got the final message that our NSF proposal has been approved and that the 3 year project is good to go. The project is called "Design Methods--how they are understood, selected and used by practitioners".

The project is based on the assumption that any work devoted to the development and creation of new design methods (which we define in the broadest possible sense, everything from pen & paper to theories) has to be grounded in a deep understanding of design practice.

If you are doing research on design practice and the use of tools and methods, I would be happy to hear from you.

If you are a practitioner that has ideas, reflections, and thoughts about this topic, you can write to me.

More on this later...

Organizational Design Competence II

2011-09-03T15:39:00.001-04:00

We are getting some great feedback on our Organizational Design Competence (ODC). We even get some nice comments on our ODC website which is still quite small, but it will soon grow. ODC is now on Facebook too, which might be a good way to keep in touch if you are interested.

If you have comments, questions, or want to inquire about collaborations about education or consulting, just let us know.

Organizational Design Competence

2011-08-30T18:10:00.000-04:00

Today Harold Nelson and I announced ODC (Organizational Design Competence) which is our new business aimed at supporting individuals, teams, and organizations to develop their design competence.

This is how we state who we are and what we do.

"Our mission is to act as a catalyst in organizations becoming design competent. Our team of design consultants and educators consists of international leaders in the design field with many years of experience working with diverse types of organizations, including business and government, at nearly every scale of enterprise. Our approach is to first gain an understanding of an organization's strengths in design competence and blockages to being design competent. We assist in transforming existing organizations into design competent organizations by establishing a design culture among the leadership and staff of the organization and enhancing their ability to apply a comprehensive design approach, which includes design thinking, design practice, professional development and development of design expertise."

If you are interested or have questions, just let me know.

Speculative Realism

2011-08-22T14:56:00.000-04:00

Ok, I have decided to explore the philosophical movement that today is known as speculative realism. I have earlier read some works in that school of thought and was particularly fascinated by the writings of Graham Harman, especially in his book "The Prince of Networks". Harman is seen as one of the core figures in this new movements. So, on my desk are now

"Towards Speculative Realism--Essays and Lectures" by Graham Harman
"The Speculative Turn--Continental Materialism and Realism" edited by Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman
"After Finitude" by Quentin Meillassoux

I am really looking forward to get into these books and especially to see how this new thinking resonates with design philosophy. I will hopefully be back with some reviews...

Since this philosophical movement has a clear relationship with Bruno Latour I have also a new book from him. It is "On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods". Quite intriguing title...

Scientists as designers...

2011-08-16T07:34:00.000-04:00

IN an excellent post on the Advanced Design Institute blog, my colleague and friend Harold Nelson explains the relationship between design and science and how it is possible to see scientists today as 'design critiques'. This is an intriguing observation that deserves some reflection. Another point in his blog is that we see a lot of cross-over today where scientists acts as designers without taking on the responsibility.

The Death of Design Thinking...

2011-07-18T10:48:00.001-04:00

Lately there have been some writers arguing that "design thinking" is over, maybe even dead. For instance, Bruce Nussbaum recently wrote "The decade of Design Thinking is ending and I, for one, am moving on to another conceptual framework: Creative Intelligence, or CQ". Helen Walters discusses this position in her column and makes some interesting observations. As someone who has been dealing with design theory for about 30 years, it is both amusing and sad to see the way the question of the status of design thinking is being approached. The intellectual development around design as a special human approach to inquiry and action has been around much longer than the "last decade" and is a deep and profound attempt to understand a particular kind of human activity that for a long time was not appropriately understood.

Looking back through history it is obvious that some human approaches, such as art and science, have attracted centuries of intellectual interest. People have tried to grasp what they are, what their purpose is, what they can deliver, what they can't deliver, when they are appropriate, and how they relate to each other. To me "design" is a human approach to intentional change at the same level of importance and stature as art and science.

Over the last 40 years we have come a long way in developing an understanding of design as an approach in its own right. But it is still a new project and we are only taking the first steps. There are serious questions still to explore, for instance, why was design not recognized as an approach worthy of intellectual investigation until recently? What are some of the best ways to define design, how can it best be taught, what are the philosophical foundations best suited to explain design, how does design relate to art and science, etc?

It is however not, as many state, difficult to define design. At least, it is not more difficult than defining what science or art is. As we all know, there is no precise and generally agreed upon definition of either of them, but that does not really make anyone argue that neither of them exist or that it is not important to continue to study them, trying to understand them, and of course to improve them.

However, if we take on a highly simplistic view of design--if we see it as a management "tool", a straightforward recipe to reach innovative new products, or a way of "thinking" that will drastically improve our capacities in certain ways-- then it will of course lead to failure. But if we see design as an always present human approach aimed at the creation of the not-yet-existing then the challenge and its potential contribution becomes different in size and scope.

In the last 30 years there have been a tremendous change in the understanding of design. We have seen educations, professions, and ideas of competence change. There is a slowly growing understanding of design that has real consequences in real human activities and projects. These consequences can of course be seen as a result of a "fad" that will soon go away and be replaced by something else (like Nussbaum's attempt to launch CQ). But this is not what is going on. What we are witnessing is a broad and deep, but slow, recognition of the fact that there is a form of human approach to intentional change that is not appropriately captured by our more developed traditions. And as humans, we need to find ways to talk about what that is. We need a language and we can't just borrow that from other traditions. Design is not a form of art, not a form of science, and not a form of management. Design is not applied art, not applied science, and not the same as business practice. It is not the same as invention or creativity in general. Design is not a simple change in practical step-by-step procedures or the use of particular tools. Design is the activity we humans engage in when we are not satisfied with our reality and we decide to intentionally change it. It is an approach that deals with overwhelming complexity, that rely on judgment as its logic, and that is focused on the creation of the ultimate particular.

Design as an approach or as a form of "thinking" is not dead. At the same time, it is not yet alive as a fully developed intellectual and philosophical tradition. A lot of people are doing a great job today trying to develop such an understanding, but it will probably take another century to reach a situation where design as an approach is recognized at the same level and in the same intellectual and intuitive sense as art and science.

Why email is not stealing time from real work.....

2011-06-29T11:55:00.000-04:00

Lately there have been a lot of critique against email and also a lot of ideas on how to improve email. For instance, the idea from the company Shortmail.com about a new form of really short emails. And the idea of an "email charter" by the famous internet thinker Chris Anderson, or "Work smart: conquering your email inbox" by Gina Trapani at Fastcompany.

The assumption, or fact, behind that all these attempts is that the number of emails are increasing and take up way too much of our working time. Email is seen as a "time-suck". The conclusion for most is that we need to reduce the number of emails, or make them shorter, or easier to work with, so we do not have to spend so much time with our emails.

Even though all this sounds rational and sound, I am not sure that the basic premise is correct. I agree that the number of emails have been increasing, but I am also quite sure that reading and answering emails today is not necessary time wasted or time taken away from "real" work. To "work" with your emails is in most cases real work, it is not something else than work. When I work with my inbox, I do real work. A very small number of the emails I "work" with are not important at all (apart form some occasional spam) or are not about something that is a genuine part of my work.

So, an increasing number of emails is not necessary the same as work distraction.

There are of course some consequences of reducing the use of email. First of all, we could have to go back to a system where meetings and close geographical location is a requirement for "work". But that will not be accepted of course. So many things of what I do when I am "working" is considered to be normal and required for someone in my position, and is not possible to do without email.

We can of course use other technologies for communication, such as social media and other commonly used technologies. However, many of these new technologies are not specifically designed for asynchronous communication that leave a clear trail and a creates a record and is not very useable for ongoing professional communication, which probably is why email completely dominates among professionals. Email offers a functionality that is hard to replace.

Anyway, enough of this. I truly find email to be an extraordinary tool for "work" (and I am consciously using the word "work" here instead of "communication"). Of course, this does not mean that email can not be improved, for instance, the world would be better if we all followed the proposed rules in the "email charter" but that is another issue.

BOOK COMMENT: NIgel Cross "Design Thinking"

2011-05-20T11:12:00.001-04:00

Nigel Cross has for a long time been one of the most prominent researchers of design. He has a background as an architect and industrial designer but has mostly been doing research on and about design. His notion "designerly knowing" has had a great impact and influenced many design thinkers. He has also been instrumental in fostering international design research institutions, such as the DRS. He is also the Editor in Chief of the influential journal "Design Studies".

His new book "Design Thinking" is just out, ironically at the same time as Bruce Nussbaum has claimed that design thinking is dead. Over the last few years there has been an enormous interest in "design thinking" especially in some parts of the business and management community. Design thinking has been seen as an approach to innovation that can radically change business as usual and that can transform organizations to be able to act and respond quickly to new demands and challenges in a creative and designerly way. As always when an approach gets this kind of attention it also rather quickly becomes a fad, it loses it richness. Many over-simplified interpretations are spread by those who see the new approach more as a business or consulting opportunity than a substantial new philosophically sound and knowledge-based approach. Anyway, the people and especially researchers who for many years have studied design as a distinct approach for thinking and action are of course still working and producing new insights and knowledge that are far from being simplistic or a fad.

In this new book Cross is bringing together a lot of the existing research, solid research, that has been done on how designers think and act. This research is not just individuals reflecting on design based on their own subjective experiences but produced by people who have conducted serious studies of designers in interview studies, experiments, case studies, observations, etc. Cross goes through a lot of this research and shows how the findings from many of them have led to similar results and can be seen as providing the base for a more overall comprehensive and coherent understanding of design.

The book is an excellent summary of good design research in the field. And Cross does a good job in identifying some common patterns from the individual studies he draws upon. The book is highly valuable for anyone who is interested in design thinking and who wants to know more than just some over simplistic journalistic versions found in popular business settings and in magazines. Cross also provides a good source of references to the actual research he references.

At the same time I have some problems with the book. These problems do not at all reduce the value of the book for what it is, but should probably more be seen as a wishlist from me for what it could also be.

My issues about the book comes from the perspective of someone who has a very similar understanding of design as Cross and is also doing research on the nature of design. To me, the book is unfortunately very short and each aspect of design thinking is treated briefly and not in the rich and developed way that I think is needed for it to leave a substantial contribution to the field. To me the book does not really provide any new theoretical or conceptual understandings of design that extends the sources that Cross uses. The conceptual structure of the book and the writing is also more textbook like than offering any conceptual or theoretical framework of how to understand design. This also means that there is nor really any argumentation going on in the book where opposing views and interpretations of design is examined. The text becomes quite neutral and reporting. Even though the book must be seen as primarily reporting on empirical studies of design thinking, I do miss references to more theoretical and compositional attempts to understand design thinking, such as the fairly recent books by Krippendorff, Dorst and Lawson, Nelson and Stolterman, and others.

However, even with these critical comments I am really happy that this book is out. This is one of the first books that takes on design thinking based on research knowledge and studies (even if this is to some extent also done in Lawson & Dorst). This focus on empirical studies of design sets the book apart from many other similar books that to a higher extent try to promote or sell design thinking as a (simple) approach to innovation and change built on an over simplistic understanding of design thinking. Cross shows clearly that design thinking, and to act in a designerly way, is a highly complex process that has it own rich logic and rationality that requires training and a developed understanding of the design process itself. Design thinking is not an approach that anyone can just decide to pick and use, it is not a simple prescriptive program for innovative thinking. Instead it is a complex and rich approach that requires theoretical and reflective thinking and also intense practice and training of skills and competencies. Designerly thinking is as specific, particular, and demanding as scientific thinking and Cross shows some of that complexity and richness in the book.

I think anyone who is engaged in design of any kind should read this book. The book will help us all to make a good argument when design thinking is challenged and questioned or even stated as being "dead".

BOOK COMMENT: Richard J. Bernstein "The Pragmatic Turn"

2011-05-16T15:54:00.000-04:00

The philosophical tradition that I have always found most appealing and suitable for the kind of work I do is pragmatism. This philosophical theme has been around for about 150 years and include famous thinkers as Charles S. Pierce, William James, John Dewey, and George H. Mead, on to present days representatives such as Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam. Of these thinkers, Dewey and Rorty are the ones that has captured my attention over the years.

In a new book, Richard Bernstein goes through the history of pragmatism, how it emerged, who was involved, how pragmatism is related to more traditional schools of thought such as the analytical tradition and the continental. Bernstein is himself an important contributor to pragmatism and has influenced many, especially with his book "Beyond Objectivism and Relativism"(1983), a book that influenced me a lot when it was published. I read it with great interest and learned a lot.

The new book "The Pragmatic Turn" is interesting and full of exciting exmainations of how philosophers have influenced each other over time and how pragmatism can be seen as closely related to other schools of though, and individuals such as Wittgenstein. especially the first chapters are interesting and of course the last chapter that focuses on Rorty. However, overall I found the book a bit disappointing. It did not really give any deeper insights into pragmatism, even though the historical perspective do bring some new understanding to its role and place in the history of philosophy. But I did not really find the book to help me to further develop my understanding of pragmatism. It is more rewarding to read the main thinkers own texts, especially Dewey and Rorty.

Pragmatism is maybe the most suitable philosophical -ism for design theory. It would be great if someone would like to write a book on how pragmatism and design are related and how pragmatism can support and strengthen design theory. The best attempt so far is of course the works by Donald Schon who was himself a trained philosopher and who wrote his dissertation on John Dewey. The ideas and theory of Schon is therefore a good example of how pragmatism can lead to great design thinking.

CHI 2011, the field, development, grand challenge, and the need for more books

2011-05-13T13:46:00.001-04:00

Back from this years CHI conference. This time in Vancouver. Bigger than ever before. Amazingly well organized for a conference of this size.

CHI is changing. It is not easy to really understand what the changes are when you are at the conference, but compared with just a few years ago it is easier to see that there is a difference. The conference is broader, more diverse. I had the chance to go to several sessions and it is exciting to see that not only is the diversity growing but I also found the quality in general to be better than usual.

One clear change to me is a new interest in theory. I was very pleased to see a design theory session filling two large rooms, and so did the more theoretical design methods session. I hope that this is a sign that the field is getting more eager to find ways to synthesize findings and results from all the studies, experiments, and designs projects.

A field of this size need people who can bring things together, who can conceptualize, theorize on a level of abstractness that covers the whole field or at least larger parts of the field. To me this also means a strong need for more books. The field produces a lot of books already, but they are mostly textbooks or focused on a particular issue, method, or technology. This is of course fine an also needed, but we do need more general books that in more philosophical terms can help us all to find ways to think about the field, what we are really doing, what we should do, and what we should strive for. For this to happen, we need many more theoretical investigations into the core and foundation of the field. This is of course not done by one person in one book. This can only be achieved if many thinkers in the field in their own way contribute their view of the field. A field can only develop when there are a certain amount of friction between different and diverse sets of theoretical views.

At the moment it seems as one way of coming up with conceptual maps of the field is by looking at the sessions at CHI. I met people at CHI who count sessions in different areas and compare to earlier years as a way to determine if and how the field has changed, even though the session design is not a result of any deeper reflection of the field or the content of the papers. However, counting of sessions is one way of developing an understanding of a changing field. It would though be more valuable to have a spectrum of different interpretations of the field by people who take on the task to create overall theoretical understandings of what is going on.

So, to repeat what I always argue for, we need more books. We need books that allow for broad philosophical and theoretical descriptions and interpretations of what HCI and interaction design is all about. Books that deal with the major issues of how a field like this can stay current, make a contribution to society and be relevant. I don't only see this as something needed from within the field, it is also something that I truly believe is lacking in the society at large. Since interactions between humans and digital technology will continue to grow and will without a doubt influence every corner of our society and peoples everyday lives, our field should be able to contribute some grand ideas and grand theories based on the perspective and the knowledge that we have developed over the last thirty years. The interactive society at large would welcome theories about what is going on, where it is going, if we as a field took that larger challenge in a serious way. I do not see any other field taking on this challenge....

Book review: "Smart things" by Mike Kuniavsky

2011-02-05T11:18:00.001-05:00

It is obvious that we are entering an era when computation and interaction is becoming ubiquitous and pervasive. Anyone working in HCI, interaction design, user experience design, or whatever it is called, has to deal with challenges that is not only anymore about the layout on a screen. Even though this development is obvious it is still far from recognized and accepted in many corners of academia and industry. This creates a lot of problems since this development has serious consequences when it comes to what are necessary competencies and skill for someone working as a professional in the field.

Kuniavsky has written a book "Smart Things--ubiquitous computing user experience design" that is based on many years of practical experience that has led to insights and reflections that has great value to anyone thinking about interaction design. The book is based on a large number of examinations of particular designs. The creates a good overview of technologies, ideas, and design that have been successful but also many that never really succeeded.

This way of analyzing particular design is an approach that I consider to be highly designerly and exciting. It is also true that this approach is less common in research and academia where knowledge is usually built on studies aimed at drawing generalities from the study of many manifestations of design. There is a distinct difference between examining a particular design as a way of gaining insights and the traditional more scientific approach. The former is actually more similar to the way scholarship has traditionally been done in the humanities.

I very much like the approach taken by Kuniavsky. To examine a design through the eyes of a skilled designer bring forward highly interesting insights that can be appropriate and valuable to other designers if reflected upon in a serious way. It does not necessarily lead to universal truths or principles, but it challenges the readers own design thinking and over time help to prepare for the next design challenge. This is also where the book delivers when it comes to interesting ideas and insights. The breadth of the examples and the reflections that Kuniavsky offers makes it possible for the reader to compare and contrast those reflections with her own thinking. If I have any negative comments on this part of the book it would be that I would have preferred fewer examples and instead even more detailed examinations and reflections on the particular designs. Especially I would have liked to see even more personal reflections.

Kuniavsky also presents some chapters where he discusses, what he calls "frameworks" and he ends the book with some chapters on "techniques". These chapter are all good and it is interesting to see what frameworks and techniques Kuniavsky as a recognized designer actually chooses to present. However, as someone who knows the field these chapters do not really add anything new, they are a bit too short and Kuniavsky does not really analyze and examine the frameworks and techniques in the same interesting way that he does with the design examples. I would have liked a much more personal presentation of the frameworks and techniques, for instance, what is Kuniavsky himself using, and why, and what is his experience of using these tools as a highly skilled designer.

Anyway, the book has a lot of value and I would without hesitation recommend my students to read this book. It is easy to read. It presents a lot of examples of design with Kuniavsky's interesting comments. It does not prescribe, but it can inform and inspire. I agree with Kuniavsky when he writes "Design books are tools that are picked up as needed, scanned, and then put down when billable work calls".

Book comment: Andy Clark “Supersizing the Mind—Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension”

2010-12-06T08:04:00.001-05:00

The book “Supersizing the Mind—Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension” by Andy Clark is a great account for the idea that our thinking and our minds are not only a matter of the brain. Clark is developing the idea of the “extended” mind in contrast to what he calls the “brainbound” idea of thinking. Even though this book is primarily a book on modern cognitive science and its different models and explanations of thinking, it also has a broader interest and also practical consequences.

I am of course reading this book from the perspective of my own interests in interaction design and design theory. Reading the book from such a perspective makes it very easy to be supportive of the major ideas discussed since they make intuitive sense. This is interesting since Clark notes that in cognitive science this proposed theory instead is commonly seen as too radical since it goes against an intuitive understanding of thinking.

The basic argument in the book is that humans do not merely think with their brains, but with their bodies and with their immediate environment, artifacts and systems. And that thinking is not only the abstract cognitive activity but influenced and informed through the “use” of bodily and sensory actions. This is for Clark an important theoretical position and he states it as “I believe that human minds and bodies are essentially open to episodes of deep and transformative restructuring in which new equipment (both physical and “mental”) can become quite literally incorporated into the thinking and acting systems that we identify as our minds and bodies” (p 31). Clark goes through a number of examples on quite detailed level that all lead to and taken together create his larger argument. He discusses robot research, the body, material symbols, the limits of his theory, what the brain becomes with if this view is accepted, and more.

One consequence of the view of thinking that Clark argues for is that thinking and acting becomes circular and a feedback system. Humans develop tools that in turn help them to think in certain ways, which again leads to new tools. He writes “The linguistic scaffoldings that surround us, and that we ourselves create, are both cognition enhancing in their own right and help provide the tools we use to discover and build the myriad of other props and scaffoldings whose cumulative effect is to press minds like ours from the biological flux.” (p 60). Of course, this quote also has some other quite powerful consequences, related to evolution and language. Clark writes “For examples, both educational practices and human-built structures (artifacts) are passed on from generation to generation in ways that dramatically alter the fitness landscape for individual lifetime learning” (p 62).

So, we humans develop artifacts, tools, and systems as a way to “do” or make things change in the “real” physical world but at the same time these tools alter and influence, or maybe more appropriately support our ability to think. Clark again “We thus comes to what is arguably the most radical contemporary take on the potential cognitive role of nonbiological props, aids, and structures: the idea that, under certain conditions, such props and structures might count as proper parts of extended cognitive processes.” (p 68).

Clark goes on discussing some general and philosophical issues and challenges that a theory like this faces, as well as, very detailed and empirically grounded concerns raised from within cognitive science studies. One issue that Clark discusses is that with this view, thinking becomes a spread out activity located partly in the brain and partly somewhere else. From a cognitive science perspective this creates a lot of problems on how to study thinking, it becomes a bit “messy”. Which in terms can be seen as it creates a “high explanatory cost” for anyone who wants to study thinking since it becomes such a complex “system” instead of the neatly coherent and located “brain”. This is however not necessarily an issue for those of us who just want to use this theory as a tool in our own fields.

Reading this book from the perspective of design theory is fascinating and at the same time interestingly not very challenging. The notion of extended thinking is quite accepted in design and is also developed into approaches, methods and techniques used by designers. Designers always collect ideas, use notebooks, sketches, etc. all as a way of thinking, and not as a way of collecting information or knowledge.

We can find this developed more theoretically in the works of for instance Donald Schon who famously wrote about the idea that designers externalize their ideas in sketches and prototypes and that as a consequence the “world speaks back”. He argued that this “conversation” is at the core of any thinking aimed at creating the which does not yet exist, and where there are no logical systems that can prescribe the thinking process, instead it is all about explorative thinking. There are several books on the value of constantly sketching, of saving designs, of having notebooks, of surround yourself with artifacts to create a rich environment that stimulate and becomes part of your thinking, etc. In almost all the cases the argument among design thinkers is that these are “thinking tools” and that it is not possible to think without them. It is clear that these “techniques” are not seen as informational, instead they are seen as part of the thinking process itself.

In the same way, designers are always thinking about the particular, about the artifact, and know that when you design an artifact or system you design tools that will become part of users “thinking”. The focus on objects, artifacts, and systems has probably made this kind of thinking quite natural and intuitive for designers. Clark mentions that for the mainstream cognitive science community his “expanded” perspective might seem too “messy” or “fleshy” (two concepts used by Clark). This bodily, material, physical and artifact centered view is therefore in a way intuitive for designers and easy to accept and understand.

The great value of Clark’s book is that he is making a strong case for a highly important way to think about thinking, which should be of interest to any designer. His argumentation is also based on scientific research which means that he is much more careful with definitions and claims, than people in design areas who make similar claims. So, even the overall message in Clark’s book is less provocative for designers there is a lot to learn from this book.

Book comment: Cass R. Sunstein "Going to extremes--how like minds unite and divide"

2010-12-04T16:30:00.000-05:00

A few years back when I read Cass Sunstein's book "Republic 2.0" I was immediately impressed both by the message and the argumentation. In his most recent book "Going to extremes--how like minds unite and divide" he comes back to the same topic but more grounded and with a broader scope. The topic of this book is the idea of "group polarization". Sunstein defines the phenomenon like this: "When people find themselves in groups of like-minded types, they are especially likely to move to extremes." (p 2). This means that when people meet with other who have similar views they reinforce and strengthen these views, to the point when they may be seen as extreme. This can happen around any topic and Sunstein gives many examples in the book. People may become extreme in their views on politics (something Sunstein uses a lot), health, sports, religion, etc. Sunstein uses the major part of the book to show research that in different ways support this idea. He explores many aspects of the idea and paints a broad and convincing picture of the phenomenon.

The more I read the book the more complex the notion of "group polarization" becomes. Sunstein starts our with more definitional reasoning about how to understand the concept, later he moves on to questions such as if polarization is good or bad, and how or if it is possible to "handle" it. Of course, he also discusses some of the ideas he presented in "Republic 2.0" about internet as a very efficient tool in creating "group polarization", but here he is more balanced in his reasoning and also bring forward and explores "good extremism".

As always, it is a pleasure to read Sunstein. The writing is extraordinary clear and easy to follow. The argumentation is wonderfully straightforward. As you reader you do not have any concerns with not understanding the author. Instead, the clear argumentation really invites the reader to analyze and critique the author.

For anyone who studies groups, communities, organizations, or any other assembly of people, this is a great book. It has implications for anyone thinking about social media and internet usage. However, the book does not makes things easier and it does not give the reader any prescriptions to follow on how to achieve certain group results, but it truly add to a more foundational understanding of group behavior.

Favorite books in Design Theory, Version Deux

2010-12-02T19:39:00.005-05:00

In 2007 I posted a post with the same title as this one. I read this old post today and saw that it is time to update the list. This is how I introduced the list in 2007:

"I had a meeting today with a PhD student from another department and was asked what to read if you want to get into the more theoretical and philosophical aspects of design and that had influenced my work. It was a good exercise and I came at least up with a few books, even though I am sure I have forgotten some that might be even more influential on my thinking."

So, I have kept the old list and added some book that I had forgotten or that have been published since then. Even though I have only picked book that have had serious influence, the list keeps growing. I do not always have the full references but instead some have links.

The list is in no particular order, so here we go:

Lundeqvist, Jerker. (1982?) "Norm och modell" (Norm and Model). in Swedish

This was Jerker's PhD thesis and it really opened the door for me to design theory!

Simon, Herbert. "The Science of the Artificial"

Simon's book is a must in the area.

Schön, Donald. "Educating the Reflective Practitioner"

Maybe the most influential book for me.

Lawson, Bryan. "How Designers Think"

Lawson's book really helped me to form my own understanding of design.

Dunne, Joseph "Back to the Rough Ground"

Probably the best book ever on practical knowledge and judgment.

Krippendorff, Klaus. "The Semantic Turn -- a new foundation for design"

The best contemporary book on design theory.

Lawson, Brian. & Dorst, Kees. "Design Expertise"

A really good introduction to what it means to be good at design.

Pye, David. "The Nature and Aesthetics of Design"

This book was first published in 1969 and is a wonderful book on the relation between craft and design, functionality and aesthetics.

Alexander, Christoffer. "The Timeless Way of Building"

Even though Alexander is more famous for his pattern language work, this is the book that is fundamental.

Borgmann, Albert. "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry"

Of all the readings in philosophy of technology, this is the one that has influenced me the most. A wonderful critique of contemporary design and technology.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience"

Still one of the best and maybe only books in psychology that has direct influence on how to think about design.

Latour, Bruno. "Pandoras Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies"

A book so full of great ideas that it is almost too much. Latour makes the case for reality in a way that makes sense to design theory, it is all about the particular, about here and now.

Marcuse, Herbert. "One-Dimensional Man"

All about the consequences of getting stuck in our understanding of the world, and why we have to critically break out of dominating thought figures.

and finally some self-promotion...

Nelson, Harold & Stolterman, Erik. "The Design Way - Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World"

Well, our book is out of print, but we are working on a 2nd edition that will be published by MIT Press in 2011 (if Harold and I can finish our writing).

Well, I will maybe update and add more later.....

Book comment: Robert Nozick "The Examined Life--philosophical meditations"

2010-12-01T16:49:00.000-05:00

As a philosopher Robert Nozick is mainly known for his 1975 book "Anarchy, State and Utopia" where he develops his arguments within political philosophy. But to me, it is one of his later books that has inspired me, and that is "The Examined Life--philosophical meditations" that came out in 1989.

This book contains about 25 essays that cover highly diverse topics even though they all have to do with how to live a life and the meaning of life. I read this book many years ago and it made a strong impact on me. I have recently started reading it again and realize even more that it has a lot to offer for anyone with an interest in design theory.

The basic theme in the book is the notion of reflection or examination. Nozick writes "examination and reflection are not just about the other components of life: they are added within a life, alongside the rest, and by their presence call for a new overall pattern that alters how each part of life is understood." This idea goes of course back to Aristotle and his famous notion about the "examined life". Nozick's book is an attempt to support such reflections and examinations of life in a way that is less philosophical (or theoretical) and more related to everyday experinces, such as, death, love, aging.

One of the core themes in the book is about value and meaning. Nozick devotes several chapters to the question about how we can know what makes something valuable and meaningful. All his reasoning resonates well with an everyday and intuitive way of thinking. For instance, he writes "Still, when all other things are equal, the more concentrated thought that goes into making something, the more it is shaped, enriched, and laden with significance." (p 14).

I have over the years used two of the chapters in the book in my teaching and also sometimes in my writing and that is the chapters "14. Stances" and "15. Value and Meaning". In our book "The Design Way" we use Nozick's model from chapter 15 as a way to discuss and analyze value and meaning when it comes to things and systems. This is a wonderful chapter and should be read by anyone who is interested in what makes an artifact or system valuable or meaningful. Nozick's analysis is simple, clear, and highly useful.

I know that a lot of people have problems with Nozick due to his early writings and his political views, but I find this book exciting and intriguing, and completely liberated from political philosophy. It has an style, tone, and language that you seldom find in book from professional philosophers. Another favorite example of a similar book in this style is Richard Rorty's "Philosophy and Social Hope". These are not typical philosophy books. They do not require the special and intricate knowledge and language of the professional philosopher, but they still rest on a stable foundation that can only be provided by someone who really knows the topic.

The new reality of interaction design

2010-11-29T22:30:00.000-05:00

Recently we have seen some amazing new technologies entering the scene of interaction design and HCI. First came the Wii, then the iPhone and apps, and now the Kinect. Just in a few years the technology that can make up the interface of artifacts and systems have radically changed. We are moving into an era of highly physical, tangible, and haptic interfaces while at the same time seeing technology that makes the physical and tangible interfaces disappear.

All these new technologies are radically expanding the design space for interaction design. In the "old" days (just a few years back) almost any kind of interaction was all about the screen, keyboard, and mouse interface on a computer and more than often in relation to the web. Now, the same design includes questions about what device to use (desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones, cell phones, cars, buildings, environments, appliances) or maybe develop a new special device manifested in any material, shape, and form, and also choices about what interactivity style to use (touch screen, voice, movements, etc).

This development makes interaction design broader, more complex, more technical, less technical, more physical, less physical, less predictable, etc. As if these more technical aspects are not enough, any interaction design also has to include all possible questions about potential social and collaborative aspects, social media, etc.

All this makes any interaction design a daunting task, and a question of systems. Any designer has to struggle with if the design should be intertwined with other artifacts and systems. Any design of a car today has to be done in relation to the design of other digital artifacts, such as, smart phones and iPods. Any building has to be designed from an interaction perspective in relation to all the interactive artifacts that will be hosted or "living" in the house. At the same time, any small device has to be designed to fit the interactive environment it will move around in.

Interaction design is apparently not getting easier. The degrees of freedom is increasing, and so is the number of design choices. Interaction design is not something anymore that can be approached from just one perspective. It is no longer a question if interaction design is a multidisciplinary activity. Interaction design requires a multidisciplinary competence. Of course, this is not a competence that any individual can possess, it can only be a matter of team work.

But, and here is maybe the point, until now it has been possible to have design teams where each member brought his or her own specific competence to the table but did not really participate in the design process. The engineer only made sure that the final design was feasible, the graphic designer only cared about the visual design, etc. With the increasing complexity, all competences about such aspects as interactivity, visuals, functions, structures, information, content, construction, etc. have to be actively involved in the design process. To make this happen requires that everyone who represents a certain competence has to on a fundamental level understand the design process and know how to work in a designerly way.

I find this development to be fascinating and challenging. It will be quite interesting to see what companies will be able to accept the challenge to develop an understanding of what such a designerly approach requires in a real sense and also able to make it happen. It will also be interesting to see what kind of new educational programs will be developed in answer to this challenge.

BOOK REVIEW: Clay Shirky "Cognitive Surplus -- creativity and generosity in a connected age"

2010-11-28T14:18:00.000-05:00

Clay Shirky's latest book "Cognitive Surplus--creativity and generosity in a connected age" takes on the same topic as his previous books, namely how new technology changes our society when it comes to who has the power to be an information consumer versus a producer. The main claim in the book is that we (the people) have an enormous amount of "cognitive surplus", that is, time that we at the moment are not necessarily using for anything important, so there is a surplus of cognitive "power" that can be harvested. Shirky's prime example of the surplus is the amount of time people spend watching TV. This time is, according to the author, time that could be used for other purposes. The book is mainly a long parade of examples of people who has managed to use the new social technology to do things that only a few decades ago would have been impossible, or only possible for those with power or money. The examples are all exciting even though they are in several cases quite well known.

The book is very easy to read. Straightforward with clear examples and easy to follow reasoning. At the same time, after a while I got a bit bored. The examples became quite similar and they function mostly as confirmations of the overall argument the author is making. Taken together, the examples make a strong case and they are convincing. But, there are some things I would have liked to see more of. For instance, it would have been interesting with some more detailed examples and analysis of failed attempts to use the new technology. It might be difficult to find those examples, but at the same time they could provide us with some other insights. I suspect that most attempts to use the internet in the way described in the book do lead to failures, that is, not to any substantial self-organization or growth in participation or impact.

In relation to that it might be interesting with a historic perspective (since the author contrasts today with before internet). Even during times without the new technology, people were able to organize and influence society, for instance, through community involvements leading to labor unions, religious congregations, ideological parties, etc. So, without technology how was that possible, how could they organize, did they have even more "cognitive surplus" in those days since these attempts probably took much more time and energy than they would today (at least according to the author). I am not sure how well such a historic comparison would work out, but since the author only focuses on successful examples, it might be interesting to see how they are similar or not to historical successful examples.

Another aspect of the phenomenon that I miss in the book is the dark or evil side of the same "revolution". Even though the author touches on that here and there, I was waiting for a more in depth description of some examples. This is not a "tool" that only can be used for good. It can, and has, been used for anti-societal purposes. At least some chapter about that would have been interesting.

Anyhow, overall the book is valuable, especially to those who has not payed that much attention to how internet is changing things but is realizing that something is going on. To those who is more aware of the field and is engaged in the discourse, the book do not really offer that much when it comes to new insights.

Hofstadter, Dennett and the "rough ground"

2010-11-26T12:13:00.001-05:00

I have always been fascinated by philosophy about the mind and about human thinking. A great moment for me was when the book "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter was published in 1979. The book was so different from anything else I had read in philosophy or any other academic field. The writing was so clear! It was direct, challenging, and provocative. Hofstadter took on questions about the mind in a logical and beautiful (!) way. The book made me continue to read other philosophers and particularly Daniel Dennett.

The book "The Mind's I" (1981) by Dennet and Hofstadter had probably an even greater impact on my thinking and I was overwhelmed by the rhetoric, the argumentation, and the logical reasoning. Over the years I have continued to read Dennett, maybe less for the ideas themselves (even though they are interesting) but more for the style, the logic, and the reasoning. I have always strived to be able to argue in a similar fashion in my own works, sadly with little result.

What Dennett and Hofstadter (and others) are so good at, is to reduce the complexity of an issue to a well defined logical question or distinction. They make questions "clean" and clear. They operate with surgical precision. They remove the fluff and the unnecessary, they unfold and make visible what is covered, and reveal what is confused by our intuitive ways of understanding things. They work with logical definitions and mostly with thought experiments. It is a wonderfully skilled exercise in precise definitions and argumentation. At the same time it is salutation to the power of thinking. I was charmed and impressed and enjoyed reading their works. But over the years I have realized that even if my own work to some extent has to do with how people think and also with concepts such as intention and reasoning, I have never used these theories in my work.

I have on my desk the latest of Hofstadter's books "I am a strange loop" from 2007. I have read parts of the book and while reading the last chapter the Epilogue, I realize that the text does not provoke me, challenge me, or intrigue me, in the way I expected. I do find the reading enjoyable. But I find it difficult to care about the "problem" that Hofstadter is struggling with. Why is that? I deliberately added the notion of the "rough ground" in the name of this post. Dealing with design and with creating real thing in the real world, struggling with issues that all have to do with richness, messiness, complexity, all manifested more or less physically in the world of the ultimate particular has influenced my interest to be directed towards ideas and theories about human thinking that addresses that richness. So, while I still find these thinkers (Dennett and Hofstadter) to be exciting on a personal level, I realize that others better serve thinking about the "rough ground".

BOOK REVIEW: Graham Harman "Prince of Networks -- Bruno Latour and Metaphysics"

2010-11-21T14:45:00.002-05:00

As someone who has a lifelong interest in what could serve as a philosophical foundation for design, I have for many years admired the work of Bruno Latour. I have read most of his books and have seen him as one of the most important contemporary philosophers. However, Latour has not received the same recognition from the professional philosophical community. He is by many seen as a sociologist and not as a philosopher.

The book "Prince of Networks -- Bruno Latour and Metaphysics" by Graham Harman makes a great case in presenting the ideas of Bruno Latour as a philosopher and someone who actually contributes to foundational metaphysical questions. Harman's book is basically divided into two parts where the first is a wonderful presentation of Latour's writings and ideas. In the second part Harman elaborates on his own philosophical thinking which of course rests solidly on Latour's, but deviates in some crucial and important regards. I must say that I really enjoyed the first part of the book which is an excellent presentation and explanation of Latour's ideas, while I did not to the same degree enjoyed the second part and that for two reasons. I will briefly comment on those two reasons before I write a bit more about Latour and the first part.

In the second part of the book Harman takes on a point where he deviates from the original ideas of Latour. The particular question is about the notion of 'object' and if objects should be seen as solely existing due to their relations of if they do have some internal or 'real' core. Harman argues that objects have to be seen as having some kind of 'real' core and he develops some arguments for this. I find this whole enterprise to be a mistake and is not a small deviation from Latour, instead I see it a major departure. It is difficult to see why Harman calls 'sensual' objects, which he distinguishes from 'real', as less real in a Latourian sense. It seems to me that Harman gets caught up in the issue of an object's 'real' core to the degree that he falls into the trap of dividing things into real versus made-up, or natural versus human. To me the prime example used by Harman where he writes about the difference between real cats and a made-up "monster x" is a mistake. The "monster x" could have a stronger existence and could even develop internal relations with enough work (as Latour states it) would be put in. It would take this blog post too far to fully develop this argument. Anyhow, the other issue I have with the second apart of the book is that becomes way to limited in scope and approach. Harman gets into highly detailed and internal arguments with other philosophers who subscribe to the same overall philosophy as he. The texts sounds in parts like a reconstruction of a workshop where some like-minded thinkers have really gone wild into their own little field of ideas. So, to someone who is more interested in the larger issues, the second part of the book becomes less exciting.

So, back to Latour. After reading Harman, my respect and understanding of Latour has grown and I realize that there are so many aspects of his philosophy that makes sense from a design theoretical perspective. For instance, Latour's extraordinary strong claim about the "absolute concreteness" of objects or in Latour language "actant" clearly resonates with the notion of the "ultimate particular" that we have developed in our book "The Design Way". Harman summarizes Latour's idea about concreteness like this "Since every actant is entirely concrete, we do not find its reality in some lonely essence or chaste substrate, but always in an absolutely specific place in the work, with completely specific alliances at any given moment" (p 16). This is the reality for a designer. The design does not exist as abstract or universal idea or "thing", the design exists only in a given time and place and is what it is--an absolute particular. Its constitution and quality and existence is a result of its relationships to all other objects and actants.

Another aspect of Latour that makes sense for design is the notion that objects are created by creating alliances, and by building relationships. All this, is for Latour a question of hard work. To make sure that a design will exist and "win" (another Latourian term) is a matter of it will connect to its surrounding objects, which in design terms is all about composition.

All the ideas of Latour that Harman eloquently presents in the first half of the book are possible to incorporate in a philosophy or theory of design. Of course, reading Harman about Latour should be complemented by reading the original, and my two Latour favorites are "We have never been modern" and "Pandora's Hope"-- two wonderful books.

I would really like to write much more about this book and about Latour, but I have to stop. I wish that we could start to see a more serious interest in Latour and his philosophy. The interest that has dominated so far is a quite shallow and uninteresting "use" of his ideas in the form of Actor Network Theory. I find a lot of the work done under the name of ACT to be so far from Latour and so simplified and distorted that it has almost nothing to do with the original ideas. To use Latour's ideas methodologically without a deep understanding of the philosophical foundation leads to serious misunderstandings of the ideas and of their potential applications in daily research endeavors. Instead we could use Latour as a way to support a designerly perspective and to give it a strong philosophical foundation.

"The Dark Side of Creativity", book comment

2010-11-20T17:11:00.001-05:00

One of our PhD students (Samantha, thanks!) pointed me the other day to a new book with the intriguing title "The Dark Side of Creativity". The book is edited by Cropley, D, Cropley, A, Kaufman, J, & Runco, M. and contains 20 chapters on the notion of creativity.

I need to point out that this blog post is not a book review since I have only read the first two chapters plus the last one, so, I will restrict my comments and not review the book as such.

It is obvious that the title of the book is intriguing and inviting for anyone who is dealing with studies of any kind of creative human activities, which for me of course is design. The editors make the observation that creativity is in our society seen as a completely positive "thing", in some quarters almost revered in religious terms. This fact is in itself enough for a book that in serious fashion takes on the potential "dark side" of creativity. This is also the reason for the book according to the editors.

It was interesting to see how the discussion (in the few chapters I have so far read) relates to the notion of "The Evil of Design" that I and Harold Nelson develop in our book "The Design Way". It seems, in the chapters I have read and in our own writings, that an examination of creativity as an activity in itself, leads to the understanding that creativity is a quite simple cognitive "tool" that can be used for any purpose. To cope with this one has to bring in intention as a central concept in the analysis. This is also the reason why Harold and I did not discuss creativity in our book. Instead we focused on intention and judgment which are the two concepts that do have a direct and concrete impact on the potential good or evil of a human intervention in the world.

Anyway, the book do ask some good questions and I had to reflect on how I define and think about creativity. For anyone who has any kind of interest in creativity this book opens up some unusual perspectives and is also written by people who has a expertise and experience in studying creativity.

The Design Way, 2nd Edition

2010-11-20T15:37:00.000-05:00

Some of you may know about the book "The Design Way -- Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World" that I wrote with my good friend and colleague Harold Nelson. Well, we have since it was published in 2003 struggled with our publisher who has been unusually difficult to work with. So, we are at the moment working on a 2nd Edition of the book. We also have a contract with MIT Press for the new edition, which will make things so much better. Now we just have to make sure that Harold and I will be able to develop the new version, if so, it may be published in 2011. A couple of new chapters, some parts removed, and some changes. Looking forward....

"Back to the rough ground" by Joseph Dunne

2010-10-04T23:56:00.000-04:00

After many years, I have gone back and started to re-read the book "Back to the rough ground--practical judgment and the lure of technique" by Joseph Dunne. I first read this wonderful book when it came out in 1993 and it immediately became one of my favorite books overall. It is therefore exiting and interesting to go back and read it again. Not surprisingly, I see other aspects of the text now and I understand it much better (I think). At the same time I wonder how much of what I have thought are my own ideas actually comes from my reading of Dunne. To be honest, I also find the book now to be less overwhelming and intimidating than I remember it even to the degree that I now can find arguments and sections where I can see potential improvements. Anyhow, the book is a wonder of detailed argumentation and analysis.

What is still the most amazing aspect of the book is the fact that the reason Dunne wrote the book was that he was trying to "solve" a concrete practical problem and he ended up having to conduct severe philosophical examinations in order to find a solution. The problem he worked on can simply be stated as Dunne does in the Preface "My purpose of this book is precisely to 'open up for inquiry' about practitioner's knowledge and to look for adequate conceptual resources to 'describe' it" (p. xv). Dunne is trying to find a way to understand practical knowledge and does that by grounding his analysis in two of Aristotle's types of knowledge, namely "techne" and "phronesis". However, Dunne is not satisfied just by going back to Artistotle, he also conducts "conversations" with five more contemporary philosophers, namely John Henry newman, R. G. Collingwood (who has always been my favorite philosopher), Hannah Arendt, Hans-George Gadamer, and Jurgen Habermas. This is not a group of everyday ordinary thinkers--they require some serious examinations and that is also what Dunne does. Well, I have only started my reading and did not intend to write about the book right now, maybe I will come back later on and write more.

Just another note. I am convinced that anyone who has serious ambitions to understand practice and practical knowledge in any professional field should read this book, or at least parts of it. I think the book is even more timely and needed now than when it was first published. Dunne offers a solid philosophical foundation on the notion of practical knowledge that in many ways resonates with contemporary design theory. More to come....

Malcolm Gladwell article in The New Yorker

2010-10-03T16:17:00.000-04:00

In the October issue of the New Yorker there is an article called "Small Change, why the revolution will not be tweeted" by Malcolm Gladwell. I found this article to have all the typical good Gladwell qualities such as an interesting topic, a bit counter intuitive and also challenging mainstream ideas. In the article Gladwell makes an interesting argument about social networks and their potential power to support or produce societal change. Gladwell makes the case that serious and real societal change can only be done through activism that is a different sort than what happens in social networks. He makes the case by contrasting "weak ties" with "strong ties" when it comes to relationships and friendships. He also contrast the "network" with the "hierarchy". The overall argument is that for real activism to happen the preconditions are the presence of strong ties and hierarchy, while social networks only provide weak ties and networks. I am quite sure that this article will produce a lot of discussions and I can see a lot of defenders of social network jumping on Gladwell's arguments. However, his argumentation is clear and straightforward and fact based so it will be difficult to find convincing counter arguments. I highly recommend the article.

Book comment: Paul Virilio "The Original Accident"

2010-09-27T21:21:00.000-04:00

I have for many years liked the ideas of Paul Virilio. He is a fascinating and highly challenging thinker. Unfortunately his writings are quite complex and sometimes erratic. I am at the moment trying to read his "The Original Accident" published in English in 2007. I am intentionally writing "trying to read" since it does take work and effort without any promise of success in increased understanding.

Virilio is highly self centered and seems quite uninterested in others ideas and theories. Anyway, the basic idea in his writings is that "speed" is a dangerous power in our society. This is such a simple and powerful idea. Based on the idea of speed he also argues that every technology carries its own inherent accident or even distaster. He writes that the accident is "an invention in the sense of uncovering what was hidden, just waiting to happen". The airplane has the crash built in, the nuclear power plant has a Chernobyl accident built in, etc. The accident is "integral" to the technology itself. He argues that in our society we (especially researchers and engineers) o not put enough energy into uncovering the integral disasters in technology. He blames "the poor progress of 'scientific' knowledge" (p. 7).

He also addresses information technology. He is a brilliant thinker while at the same time obscure. For instance, this is how he explains what globalization leads to when supported by new technology. "If interactivity is to information what radioactivity is toe energy -- a contamination and disintegrating capability -- then the integral accident in time causes conflicts in the socius and its intelligibility to accumulate, making the whole world opaque little by little." (p. 53). Well, there you go, interpret that!

Anyway, still, Virilio is fascinating and has ideas that are intriguing and well worth the struggle....

Design theory and rationality

2010-09-26T23:13:00.000-04:00

In my class on design theory we read some of the more influential design thinkers for the last decades. Tonight I read an article that I will talk about tomorrow. I did use this paper last year too, but did not read it carefully. Tonight I did--and what a great paper. The author is Armand Hatchuel and the article is "Towards Design Theory and Expandable Rationality: The Unfinished Program of Herbert Simon" ( Journal of Management and Governance Volume 5, Numbers 3-4, 260-273, DOI: 10.1023/A:1014044305704).

Hatchuel analyzes the work of Simon especially his notion of "bounded rationality". Hatchuel discusses the problematic issues with Simon's approach and makes a wonderful argument where he shows that Simon is "stuck" in a problem solving paradigm where "design" is seen as a special case of problem solving, while in fact it is the opposite. Hatchuel develops this arguement in an elegant way and presents his own notion of "expandable rationality" which opens up for a nice definition of design as an approach with its own rationality. Looking forward to class tomorrow when we get a chance to discuss this paper. Anyone who is interested in what makes design unique in relation to problem-solving should read this paper.

Book review: "Designing Things" by Prasad Boradkar

2010-07-12T17:07:00.000-04:00

It is always nice to find a new book with an intriguing title that resonates with ones own interests. That happened when I recently found the book "Designing Things - A critical introduction to the culture of objects" by Prasad Boradkar.

This is one book in a growing stream of writings focused on 'things', objects, and artifacts. There seems to be an increasing interest in the material world and especially in the world that consists of designed objects. There exists of course a long history of research and studies with the 'thing' in focus, but never with the same intensity and richness as right now.

Boradkar has written a book that takes this growing interest in material things as a starting point. The book is presented as providing a 'map of the rapidly changing field of design studies'. Boradkar does indeed present a 'map'. Even though there is an underlying theoretical perspective that the author favors, most of the book, with its different chapters, presents a large number of perspectives of 'things' and existing theories and approaches common within each of these.

Boradkar sets out to give an overview of how 'things' have been theorized over time. For instance, he presents a section called 'A brief history of the philosophy of things'. In about twelve pages he goes through the history from 'Thales to Verbeek'. I find the selection of thinkers to be appropriate and relevant and also in line with my own thinking, however the section is so short that it becomes more a brief abstract. I think that it will be quite difficult to understand and to get something out of this overview for those who are not already knowledgeable of this literature.

After this first chapter, 'Theorizing Things' which is a nice overview, Boradkar continues with eight chapters each devoted to one particular aspect of things. These aspects are: values, labor, production, aesthetics, needs, consumption and sustainability, objects as signs, and obsession of possession. In each of these chapters the author presents the most common theories, ideas, and work that have been done over time when it comes to that particular aspect of 'things'.

Even though I was quite excited to find the book, I have to admit that I am a bit disappointed. I was expecting some kind of critical analysis, a developed philosophical perspective, but the book does not provide any of that. It is instead a 'map' as it is presented as. Even though the author in the introduction does take a stand and positions himslef in a broader philosophical landscape (as a thinker within the general philosophy of Latour, Harman, and Verbeek) the the rest of the book is more a textbook that presents a large number of theories, models, frameworks, and ideas in a way that is quite introductory and without any serious critical analysis.

It is obvious that the author has not intended to present any emerging larger argument concerning the nature of philosophy of 'things' that would find a place in any existing discourse. When reading the book the author becomes more and more invisible the longer I read. In the introduction and first chapter there are attemtps at making a case, at pursuing and developing an argument, but this gets lost in the rest of the book and a textbook language takes over.

Anyhow, apart from not being a philosophical contribution, the book can probably be quite valuable for anyone who is interested in how to think and analyze 'things' and do not know where to begin. The different chapters might help in finding out what aspect of 'thing'-studies might be of personal interest. The chapters also give the reader a good starting point when it comes to what to read. It is obvious that the author has a good knowledge of a large landscape of ideas and theories related to the 'culture of objects'.

The DRS 2010 Conference

2010-07-11T14:01:00.000-04:00

Back home after the DRS 2010 conference in Montreal. I had a good time these and the conference went well, except for the really hot weather. I had the opportunity to listen to some really interesting papers, participate in some great discussions, and also meet old and new friends.

I found the quality of the papers to be better than ever before in the DRS conference history. This is a good development and I hope it will continue. However, there were some interesting discussions on the future of the conference and what its purpose is in relation to all the new design conferences that are within different disciplines. What can a general design conference deliver that the more focused ones can't. I think there is a possibility to make the conference into the top general design conference that is not connected to any particular design discipline. But this also makes it important that the conference and the papers takes on the challenge to be non-disciplinary and general in a sense that makes them interesting to anyone in any design field. I hope this is what will happen, but I am not sure it will....

New writings...

2010-07-03T04:58:00.000-04:00

Lately two articles that I (together with some colleagues) have been working on for quite some time have been published. Here are the references and the abstracts:

Janlert, L. and Stolterman, E. 2010. Complex interaction. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 17, 2 (May. 2010), 1-32. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1746259.1746262 (http://tochi.acm.org/)

An almost explosive growth of complexity puts pressure on people in their everyday doings. Digital artifacts and systems are at the core of this development. How should we handle complexity aspects when designing new interactive devices and systems&quest; In this article we begin an analysis of interaction complexity. We portray different views of complexity; we explore not only negative aspects of complexity, but also positive, making a case for the existence of benign complexity. We argue that complex interaction is not necessarily bad, but designers need a deeper understanding of interaction complexity and need to treat it in a more intentional and thoughtful way. We examine interaction complexity as it relates to different loci of complexity: internal, external, and mediated complexity. Our purpose with these analytical exercises is to pave the way for design that is informed by a more focused and precise understanding of interaction complexity.

Stolterman, E. & Wiberg, M. (2010). Concept-Driven Interaction Design Research. Human Computer Interaction, 25(2), 95-118. doi:10.1080/07370020903586696
(http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g923096832)

In this article, we explore a concept-driven approach to interaction design research with a specific focus on theoretical advancements. We introduce this approach as a complementary approach to more traditional, and well-known, user-centered interaction design approaches. A concept-driven approach aims at manifesting theoretical concepts in concrete designs. A good concept design is both conceptually and historically grounded, bearing signs of the intended theoretical considerations. In the area of humanñcomputer interaction and interaction design research, this approach has been quite popular but not necessarily explicitly recognized and developed as a proper research methodology. In this article, we demonstrate how a concept-driven approach can coexist, and be integrated with, common user-centered approaches to interaction design through the development of a model that makes explicit the existing cycle of prototyping, theory development, and user studies. We also present a set of basic principles that could constitute a foundation for concept driven interaction research, and we have considered and described the methodological implications given these principles. For the field of interaction design research we find this as an important point of departure for taking the next step toward the construction and verification of theoretical constructs that can help inform and guide future design research projects on novel interaction technologies.

If you are interested in these articles and can't get them, you can email me.

Book review: "Vibrant Matter" by Jane Bennett

2010-05-11T09:45:00.001-04:00

Through history humans have debated how to understand and relate to their surrounding reality. We have all heard about societies that believed that every object and thing has a soul. Today this is commonly seen as a primitive and outdated view. The dominating modern view is instead that reality consists of the human, spiritual, world of life, and on the other side the dead, material, world of matter. This division of living things from dead things is highly influential in the way humans think and act on their world.

However, in modern philosophy there is a new trend that is bringing the importance of objects and matter back into our focus. In a new book by Jane Bennett "Vibrant Matter-- a political ecology of things" one such position is presented. Bennett claims that her ambition is to develop a positive ontology of 'matter as vibrant', and to dismantle the divisions between the binaries life/matter, human/animal, organic/inorganic, and to do this with the purpose of strengthening a political analysis that better can account for the contribution of "non-human actants".

The overall topic and the political aspects of Bennett's work is on environmental sustainability. Her claim is that we need a new understanding of our environments, of our material "things", if we will be able to find strategies for sustainability that are 'sustainable'. She writes that if we are able to find a relationship to 'things' that are built on another understanding of their nature it "might augment the motivational energy needed to move selves from the endorsement of ethical principles to the actual practice of behavior". With this she means that we need new incentives, a new motivation, that can give us the energy to engage effectively in behaviors that are positive for the environment. The argument is that it is not enough to understand intellectually that our behavior needs to change, we need to have ethical reasons for actually doing it. And if 'things' are seen as co-actants in our world, we will start to see our world differently and start acting differently.

Of course, this is a difficult argument to make and it feeds into all kinds of 'new age' ideas of living matter, spiritual thinking, energy forces, etc. Bennett does make a great case though and builds her argumentation on a solid philosophical foundation. It is not a surprise that Bruno Latour is one of her major references even though her approach differs in many and important ways from the philosophy of Latour. However, it is clear that Bennett falls into the new trend where Latour is a major thinker together with others such as Graham Harman, Peter Paul Verbeek, and what by some has been called an Object Oriented Ontology.

Overall, I am attracted by the ideas Bennett presents. They lead to new ways of thinking about things and artifacts, and for those of us who are used to think about embodied interaction, user experience, etc. many of the ideas are not that far fetched. I am curios to see how this and similar new philosophical attempts will be translated into more concrete activities and approaches relevant for design. This new evolution of ideas concerned with the status of 'things' and of the material world is highly interesting and with Bennett's work we have another example of why we need it and how it could be used. I am convinced that we will see many more examples of this philosophical development in the near future. And I am curious to see how it will influence the world of design which is a natural arena for such ideas.

Book review: "Everyday Engineering" edited by Dominique Vinck

2010-05-05T21:56:00.001-04:00

Ok, time for another book review. This time it is "Everyday Engineering -- An Ethnography of Design and Innovation" edited by Dominique Vinck (MIT Press). First of all, I find the study of practice to be one of the most exciting forms of research in design. So, this book has a promising title and the introduction also lives up to my expectations--it does aim at studying and describing practice without being prescriptive.

The book is written by a group of French engineering researchers and sociologists. The idea of the book is wonderful, it sets out to explore the complexity of 'real' engineering practice in relation to the 'simplistic' form of understanding that dominates engineering education and textbook based prescriptive models and methods.

The book also delivers, at least here and there, and is an interesting read. For instance, I liked the first chapter about the experience of a young and newly graduated engineer in his first job at CERN. The story is quite well told and shows how the young engineer slowly starts to understand that the complexity of his task is not an inherent quality of the engineering task itself but a consequence of social and organizational aspect, and in the end all about communication. There are also some other chapters that in a similar way reveals a kind of practice complexity that is not a result of the engineering task but of the surrounding situational organizational environment.

However, overall the chapters do not deliver what I had hoped for. The approach is fine, the purpose is great, the assumptions are also reasonable and interesting, but I find the overall analysis to be a bit repetitive and the theoretical reasoning is not as insightful as I hoped for. Each chapter ends with an 'operational summary' that mostly takes the form of ethnographic findings, that is, statements and descriptions of interesting observations grounded in the case that the chapter has examined. But, these summaries do not elevate from the level of observations and I really miss any form of theorizing that could have lead to some emerging theoretical framing and formulations, to explanations and statements of more general scope. This unfortunately means that what I get out of the book is less intersting and useful than it could have been. But the book and its chapters do have value (and for some I guess even a lot of value) as a repository of stories describing the complex everyday reality of engineering.

Book Review: "The Design of Business" by Roger Martin

2010-05-02T16:02:00.001-04:00

One of the most interesting and surprising developments in design and particularly design thinking has happened at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Few if any other business schools have payed any attention to design as a potential philosophy of inquiry and action suitable for management. The Dean at the Rotman School is Roger Martin who has been instrumental and the force behind this development. Being a professor of strategic management he has pushed the school to adopt design thinking as a major approach when it comes to business strategy and management. He has earlier developed some of his ideas in the book "The Opposable Mind" (2007, and is now continuing to formulate his thoughts and approach in his new book "The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage".

This is a book whose audience is primarily people in the world of business and who do not know design thinking but might have heard the buzz. It is quite interesting to see how Martin takes on the challenge to introduce design thinking in a world dominated by other and strong traditional forms of thinking. Martin does a good job by introducing design thinking as a way to move business from the reliance on what he calls "reliability" to the realm of "validity". He also introduces his "funnel of knowledge" which is a simple model describing how humans approach a problem and transforms a situation into reliable actions.

I think the book might be of value to those in business who are interested in this new thing "design thinking", but for people who are knowledgeable of design, design thinking, design theory and design research, the book does not really add anything new, which is fine since that is not the purpose. The purpose is to reach those who are involved in traditional business and management approaches and theories, and for that purpose the book probably does well.

For anyone who is alsready into design thinking, the book is very easy to read and gives some interesting and good cases of how to go about when bringing design thinking into large and traditional companies. This aspect of the book is also of great use for already accomplished design thinkers since they might not be aware of the existing and sometime contradictory ways of doing things dominating the corporate world. It can help designers to be more aware of the existing culture, to understand why that culture don't understand or easily can accept a design approach, etc.

Overall, I see this book as a sign of a change going on in the traditional business world. I am quite sure Martin and his school will be followed by many. I am sure that management will adopt design thinking as one possible and valid approach to change among others. We should all be thankful to the work done by Martin to push for this and for his work in making this happen.

Book review: "Change by Design" by Tim Brown

2010-05-01T14:22:00.002-04:00

Tim Brown is the CEO and President of the famous design company IDEO. In his new book "Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation" Brown explains his own view on the notion of design thinking. Brown has a long and successful experience as a designer and has many great stories to tell to support his claims about the benefits and nature of design thinking.

As we all know, design and especially design thinking has received extraordinary attention these last few years. It seems as if design thinking is seen as the solution for almost anything from modern product design, the new field of service design, organizational design, etc. Design thinking is in Brown's new book defined as the way to think as a designer but he also describes what that means when it comes to the process and activities.

I really like this book. For people who have heard about design thinking and do not really know what it is, I think this book is a great first introduction. It is easy to read, ideas are illustrated with great stories from real cases. For people who already have a good understanding of design thinking, the book does not really offer anything new and it does not really go into any particular aspect of design thinking in depth. Brown is aware of this and he writes that if you already understand design thinking maybe the mind map he offers is the only thing you need to understand his perspective. Even though I found this to be true, the real design stories he offers are valuable also to those who already "get it".

Even though I really like this book and it is obvious that Tim Brown has a deep understanding of design and design thinking, as a design researcher I would really like to see him go much deeper into some (or one) aspects of design. Maybe just focus on one of the aspects he covers in the book and see what he can do with that particular aspect if he devotes time and energy and focus to it. I would expect to see some really interesting thoughts and probably theoretically interesting ideas emerging. That would of course not necessarily be of interest to the broader audience but would appeal to graduate students in design, design researchers, and advanced practitioners. There is a need for that kind of more precise and in-depth analysis. However, I am also happy with what Brown is actually doing, which is to spread a good understanding of design thinking amidst all the present hype and popular writings that are unfortunately not always based on a solid understanding of design.

Things take time....the history of Apple tablets

2010-03-29T10:28:00.000-04:00

This is a nice little story about one part of the history behind the Apple iPad. It is important to see what has been done, why it did not happen earlier, etc. A lot can be learned....

Designerly Tools

2010-03-28T16:37:00.000-04:00

Last week I was invited to the 6th Student Interaction Design and Research Conference, this year at the Umeå Design Institute. It was a great event and I had the chance to do both a workshop on "Design Judgment -- how to become a good designer" and a keynote presentation on "Designerly Tools". The students, from several design schools in Europe, were great, they asked good questions and participated in the discussion.

I also had the pleasure of listening to Heather Martin from the design company "Smart Design" (the Barcelona office). She gave a great presentation on the nature of design.

My presentation on designerly tools is based on a couple of studies that I have done with some students were we have interviewed professional interaction designers about what tools they use in their design process, and particulaly how they make their choice of tool and why. We define tools quite broad, anything that a designer can use in the process (pen, whiteboard, software, etc. but also any kind of method, technique, theory, approach, etc). It is interesting to see how and why designers do select their tools and it was clear that the students did recognize the results and I think they confirmed our findings, at least if based on their nodding and smiling :-)

It is also clear that how designers select tools is an important aspect of the design approach that has not been enough studied and I think our results are therefore really interesting for both researchers and practitioners in the field.

Web content curation--are journalism coming back?

2010-03-21T06:53:00.000-04:00

We all experience the overwhelming flood of information on the net. Social media has not necessarily made the task of being informed easier. Even among experts and the people at the forefront of the new media this problem is recognized. As a potential solution the notion of curation is discussed as a idea that refers to the act of collecting, refining, and presenting information in a way that can be trusted. Sounds like traditional journalism to me.

For instance, at this panel description at the SXSW conference recently: "With all the stuff we weed through online, good filters are crucial. Who's best-suited to determine what's best, curators or the crowd? People have their religion about one or the other, however this panel will focus on the overlap, the grey areas and how curating and crowd-sourcing enrich each other."

I believe we need large broad public well-developed arenas (by professional journalists) where important societal issues are described, reported, and discussed and I still find the book Republic.com by Sunstein to be one of the most important, challenging, and valuable contributions to this debate. Why not go back and read it again....

Upset by Bad Design or Inspired by Good Design

2010-03-15T15:21:00.000-04:00

A lot of design writings are based in the "mantra" that the world is filled by bad and terrible designs and we need to change that. I do not like that approach to design. To me it often (not always) implies that good design is both possible and almost easy to do. Good design is possible, I agree with that, but design is far from easy. The world is not filled by bad designs because people do not care or do not try. There are bad designs all around us because good design is difficult. I am much more fascinated by the fact that, despite the difficulty of design, good designs can also be found all round. It is amazing how often good designers are able to come up with designs that defy the complexity and difficulty of the challenge at hand. So, let us be inspired by good designs and let them prove to us that amazing design is possible. Even in the most restricted design situation, the design space is (relatively) infinite. Within this space there are opportunities and risks to come up with a bad or good design. Great designers are those who surprises us all with a wonderful design when we thought the situation did not lend it self to any possible good designs.

The Toyota Problem, Interaction and Complexity

2010-02-10T21:08:00.000-05:00

I guess everybody has heard about the Toyota car problem. This is a terrible situation for Toyota, of course. At the same it also exposes some interesting interaction issues. Without knowing anything about what has really happened and how much Toyota really knows, I think this is a kind of situation we might see more of in the future.

When artifact complexity increases as a consequence of growing features "need", new problems emerge. The blend of mechanical/physical material with digital material seems to be part of the Toyota problem. A spokesperson said something about "not being able to locate the problem". A modern car is highly complex and is an example of an system where parts "collaborate" in a highly intricate way. So, is the gas pedal issue a mechanical problem or a digital problem. According to an (TV) expert, Toyota is hoping and praying that it is a mechanical issue, since it will be possible to locate and hopefully add or remove some mechanical parts. If it is a digital issue then "locating" becomes increasingly difficult. Maybe the problem only happens with a highly improbable occurrence of combination of system states, mechanical as well as digital. It might actually be an untraceable problem. And it might be impossible to test. No usability testing, no matter how comprehensive, might catch or isolate the problem. However, every day millions of drivers round the world conduct a full scale usability experiment, in rare situations with drastic consequences.

As a coincidence, my colleague Lars-Erik Janlert and I, will have an article in the ACM ToCHI in a few months where we explore interaction complexity and actually use the brake system in a car as a core example. I can't see any simple solutions or obvious things to learn from the Toyota case. Well, there might be one solution...design systems that have reduced complexity so they are possible to comprehensibly test.

In our article we discuss how less system complexity usually lead to increased interactivity complexity. For instance, ABS brakes move control from the driver to the system, since the brakes almost becomes an on/off digital button while the mechanical brakes relies on the exact (analog) pressure from the drivers foot. So, there is a design choice---safety in form of brakes that can adjust to the surface or safety in form of a brake system that is less complex? That is where we are today with many of our artifacts.

As a side note, I wonder how often old cars had mechanical problems that led to serious accidents? Maybe the problem is not that today's cars are less safe, of course they are not, but that the acceptance of malfunction is being reduced to a ridiculous low level.

Journal of Information Architecture

2009-12-27T09:04:00.000-05:00

There are many academic journals around and new ones are emerging all the time. One quite new that seems to have quite interesting content to anyone in HCI and interaction design is the Journal of Information Architecture. All the content seems to be free online, at least the current issue is.

It is also interesting to see how the field of HCI, interaction design, information architecture, experience design, are all blending into something new. Even product design and "real" architecture is part of the mix. All this is of course a natural reflection of the technological development where physical material is combined and infused with digital material and all products become a new form of artifacts that needs to be designed as a whole.

And since it is that time of year. Happy New Year!

Milton Glaser

2009-11-25T08:12:00.002-05:00

My son Adam showed my this short video about the famous graphic designer Milton Glaser. Just watch it. Nothing more to say.

"GOMS: Get out of our head and in situ"

2009-11-24T16:25:00.002-05:00

This is link to a great video made by two of our wonderful HCId students. Thanks Nina and Anna!!

2nd annual HCI CONNECT at IU

2009-11-17T19:55:00.001-05:00

[I am posting this on behalf of our program]

Is your organization looking to recruit high-quality User Experience Designers?

Did you know that the School of Informatics and Computing at IU has one of the top Master’s degree programs in the nation in Human-Computer Interaction Design?

Please consider joining us for the 2nd annual HCI CONNECT.

How do we describe this event: It’s a ‘day of interaction,’ or a ‘chance to experience talent,’ or a ‘relational on-ramp’ with some of the top students in the field. Visit www.hcidconnect.com for details, registration info, and pictures of last years event.

Who is Invited

User Experience Design Managers and Team Members - each organization may bring up to 3 people (We highly encourage attendance of HCI-Design Alumni)

All the graduate students and faculty in the HCI-Design Program (About 75 students)

Event Details

January 21 & 22, 2010

21st: 7:00-9:00 pm: HCI Faculty, Student, and Employer Reception

22nd: 9:00 am - 3:00 pm: CONNECTing students and faculty through interaction, discussion, and brief employer presentations

Employer Cost & Benefits

$500 per organization includes:

· Resume Book of all students in attendance
· Portfolio Reference Guide - which provides links to almost all HCI Grad student online portfolios
· Extensive discussion time with students and faculty
· Opportunity to share your design team dynamics, culture, and process.
· Hors d'oeuvres and drinks with faculty
· Lunch for up to 3 on Friday

Registration Process

There are two steps in the registration process.

(1)Make sure you are an employer user in Informatics Career Link, our online connection system (see below)
(2)Register for CONNECT thru Career Link.

· To do both of these steps, visit: iuinformaticscareers.com
· Once you are a user in Career Link, log-in and click on the 'career fair/events' tab.
· Then Click on the CONNECT 2010 event link to register.

You will receive confirmation of registration, including more details about the event following registration.

We look forward to your attendance.

Very Best,
Jeremy

jeremy podany . director of career services

indiana university . school of informatics and computing

Design Thinking Readings

2009-11-03T07:57:00.006-05:00

I was recently asked by a friend if I could make a short list of good readings on design thinking. I tried and here it is. This is a first attempt. The criteria for choosing a text has been if the reading has meant a lot to me. I have also picked texts that are not for the moment but are useful for many years (more or less timeless). So, this is a list of design thinking readings that I constantly use and go back to (I have probably forgotten some really important ones :-)

Alexander, C. (1979). The Timeless Way of Building. Oxford University Press.

Buchanan, R. Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. In The Idea of Design. V. Margolin and R. Buchanan (eds). MIT Press, 1995, 3-20.

Buxton, B. (2007) Sketching User Experience – getting the design right and the right design. Morgan Kaufman.

Cross, N. (2007). Designerly Ways of Knowing. Birkhauser, Basel.

Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Books.

Dorst, C. H. (2003). Understanding Design. Amsterdam: BIS Publisher.

Dunne, J. (1993). Back to the Rough Ground: ‘Phronesis’ and ‘Techné’ in Modern Philosophy and in Aristotle. Notre Dame, IN. University of Notre Dame Press.

Frayling, C. Research in Art and Design. Royal College of Art Research Papers, 1, 1 (1993), 1-5.

Heskett, J. (2002). Design – A Very Short Introduction. Oxford. Oxford Press.

Janlert, L-E. & Stolterman, E. (1997). The character of things. in Design Studies, Vol 18, No 3, July (1997), 297-314.

Krippendorff, K. (2006) The Semantic Turn – A New Foundation for Design. CRC Press.

Lawson, B. (2005). How designers think – the design process demystified. Architectural Press.

Lawson, B. and Dorst, K. (2009). Design Expertise. Architectural Press.

Nelson, H. & Stolterman, E. (2003). The Design Way -- Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World. Educational Technology Publications. New Jersey.

Pye, D. (1969) The Nature and Aesthetics of Design. Cambium Press; Reprint edition (July 1995)

Rittel, H, W. & Webber, M. M. (1974). Dilemmas in General Theory of Planning. in Design Research and Methods, 8 (No. 1): 31-39.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. New York, NY. Basic Books.

Schön, D. A. (1987) Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Simon, H. A. (1996). The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Stolterman, E. The Nature of Design Practice and Implications for Interaction Design Research. in International Journal of Design, 2, 1 (2008), 55-65.

Good Interaction Design Magazine web sites

2009-10-29T09:10:00.004-04:00

I have followed a thread on the IxD list about good places on the web to read about interaction design. I collected the suggestions so here is a list. These sites are more like magazines, that is, they are not just personal blogs. On the list they were asking for sites for interaction design that had the same status as CORE77 for product design, that is, well designed sites with a lot of good content. If you have more good links, please let me know.

Johnny Holland Magazine
Design Observer
Konigi
A List Apart
The UX Bookmark
Cone Tree
Smashing Magazine
Boxes & Arrows
UXmatters
UX Magazine
ACM Interactions Magazine

Design and Sketching

2009-10-25T03:47:00.002-04:00

Anyone doing design knows the importance of sketching. Sketching is in design the tool for thinking. Most designers sketch all the time in different ways and forms. In a short blog post, Spencer Nugent describes the levels of sketching. The levels are related to different purposes and lead to different forms of sketches. This post is an example of what I believe needs to be done much more in design which is to develop a language that makes it possible to talk about what designers do and how they do it and how they use their tools. It is so easy to talk about sketching as one activity which in design is far from what it is. Sketching is a concept that covers a huge amount of activities. Sketching is, in this case, on paper and by pen, but today we also have sketching-in-hardware and other forms of sketching. Bill Buxton, Bill Verplank and others have argued strongly for the place of sketching in design, and theoreticians like Donald Schön and other have argued convincingly that sketching is truly a form of thinking and not a result of thinking. In design there is still a need for more detailed accounts on the nature of sketching, the activities of sketching, the forms and types, the outcomes, etc.

As an educator in a graduate interaction design program I know that many of our students are almost scared of sketching, especially those who have not any sketching training in their earlier education. These students are in many cases blinded and paralyzed by the wonderful finished sketches they have seen from professional visual designers (like the level 4 and 5 sketches in the blog post mentioned above). I think that a language around sketching and its purpose and "levels" would help students to be more courageous and experiment more and they start to practice their own sketching ability at level 1 or maybe even level 0 without being afraid of not being able of doing a level 5 sketch.

Evolution of interactive technology (again) and Buxton

2009-10-23T07:57:00.003-04:00

In todays technology climate it is easy to believe that everything you have not seen before is also something “new”. This is understandable since it is quite difficult to know the background history of every technological solution and design and even more difficult to know how contemporary applications of that technology have evolved over time.

Bill Buxton writes about this issue in a short but very good article in BusinessWeek. He makes the case that “touch technology” is not the solution to every interaction design problem. In his effort to show this, he conducts a very simple but excellent design critique of four different watches that all to some degree uses touch technology. He shows how details matter in design. He also shows quite convincingly that touch technology is not in itself a good thing but has to be designed into a compositional whole to provide a good user experience.

Buxton also discusses the notion of technology development and reminds us all that touch technology has been around since the early 80s and that the designs we see today loaded with touch technology is not necessarily inventions or radical innovations, but clever (or not so clever) designs where this technology have been designerly used in new products.

This is a great little article that every interaction designer should read!!

Book review: "Dangerous Games" by MacMillan

2009-10-22T03:15:00.004-04:00

I am almost finished reading the book "Dangerous Games - The Uses and Abuses of History" by the historian Margaret MacMillan. This is not a book about interaction design or HCI or technology, but it is definitely a book on design, and in this case, the design of history.

MacMillan shows the importance of history in todays society, for instance as a "tool" designed to deliver comfort, identity, or nationalism. MacMillan really makes a strong case with numerous examples on how history can be misused and be a dangerous tool in the hands of those who want to control our present and future. It is fascinating to see MacMillan's examples of how history is, and has been, designed to serve certain particular purposes. The real historian has a different responsibility, according to MacMillan, and that is to simply explain what actually happened, when it happened and to present some explanations of why. This is a delicate task and requires a professional competence.

It is also exciting to read about the need for a constant re-design of our history. MacMillan shows convincingly how that is needed, not as a consequence of earlier "bad" history, but as a way for us to re-position the past in relation to the present and the future (this actually relates to my previous post on "The Evolution of What is Easy to Use").

Overall, this is a wonderful book, and even if it is not about my own professional fields, I found many interesting connections and it helps me to think about the history of relationship between technology and humans and how that history is constructed in order to predict and substantiate design actions of the future.

The Evolution of What Is Easy to Use

2009-10-21T11:35:00.003-04:00

Today I found this short blog post by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (thanks to odannyboy who linked to it on twitter). I really liked the post. The author makes a good argument for the dynamic and complex reality of what we consider to be "ease of use" or "user-friendliness". Pang points out that what makes a thing easy to use is not something given and stable over time. The example he uses is the development of the computer mouse. This realization also reveals that the methods and approaches used to measure usability and ease of use can also quickly become outdated. This means that neither what we consider to be correct design solutions, important design qualities, or our measurements of these qualities, or our methods to design such qualities can be fully captured, understood, and prescribed (at least not for any substantial time period). The reality of design becomes, again and to no surprise, more dynamic, more complex, and never predictable :-)

Tim Brown at TED -- and the future of design thinking

2009-10-17T02:41:00.004-04:00

Tim Brown who is the CEO of IDEO gave a talk at the TED2009 conference. The talk is about 16 minutes and Brown makes the case that designers should think big instead of small. Brown does have a solid and good understanding of design and designerly thinking. However, when I listed to him I realized some things I had not thought about. Before I discuss them I need to say that I really appreciate the basic message of Brown's presentation and agree with him. So, my discussion below is less about his talk as much as a comment on the field of design.

It is obvious that Brown comes from a design tradition that is usually described as the art & design school tradition, that is, it is the understanding and process of design as it is taught within traditional design fields, such as product and industrial design, interior design, fashion design, etc. Even though he comes from this tradition, Brown is joking about it by calling the people within this tradition as the "priesthood" of design.

Brown is proposing that we should move towards "design thinking". I have no problem with that, I truly support that idea. But what I don't really like with the presentation is that Brown makes this proposition as if it is something new and something that has not been understood until now. This is not at all the case.

The notion of design (or designerly) thinking has been around for a long time, and the ideas and ways of understanding design that Brown proposes have for quite some time been developed in an elaborate and robust way by such thinkers as Nigel Cross, Donald Schön, Bryan Lawson, Kees Dorst, Klaus Krippendorff, Harold Nelson, and others. The systemic perspective of design, that Brown also mentions, has also been developed by for instance C. West Churchman and Harold Nelson.

It is also the case that the ideas on participative design that Brown mentions as a new development have been around for quite some time. The basic philosophy and methodology of participatory design was explicitly developed in Scandinavia in the 70s and has grown since then and the international Participatory Design Conference has been around for several decades. Most of the ideas and issues that Brown mentions around participation have been developed both pragmatically and theoretically over the years, but not, however, by people from belonging to the "priesthood" of design.

My point is not to critique Brown in particular, instead I see this as a sign of something more interesting. The developments of design thinking that I mentioned above have almost all been done within fields not traditionally identified as design disciplines, and not part of the "priesthood". For most of the design thinkers I mentioned above, design has never been about "decorations" or "small design" (with Browns vocabulary). The theoretical development when it comes to design thinking is today moving faster than ever. There are more people involved, coming from more diverse disciplines (many not traditionally seen as design) making great contributions to, not only the understanding of design, but to the practice of design.

So, it is not within the traditional design disciplines that we can see the most interesting theoretical and practical advancements of design today. It is neither in highly "disciplinary" academic fields, that is, fields that are protective of the way they do things, and feel threatened by the development of design. The most interesting advancements of design seems to happen in highly transdisciplinary fields, that is, fields that work on real world problems that are overwhelmingly complex and messy. In these fields the design thinking approach, as Brown describes it, is the only possible way to successful intentional change.

The view of design thinking that Brown describes and advocates is the way to go. The good thing is that there are a lot of work already done when it comes to formulating such an approach, both theoretically and practically. But, even better, there is a lot of work remaining :-)

Book review: "Design Expertise" by Lawson and Dorst

2009-10-13T17:42:00.003-04:00

A couple of days ago I got the copy I had ordered of the book "Design Expertise" by Bryan Lawson and Kees Dorst. I have so far only quickly read (skimmed) through the book, but it is obvious that this is one of the best introductions to design theory out there. The authors presents design as a journey. They discuss design from different perspectives, starting out with their notion on how to understand design. They discuss design expertise, how to start your journey to become a designer, what it means to be a professional designer, and how to educate designers.

The theory of design that the authors presents is stable and rests firmly on a deep understanding of design as a basic human activity, and even mroe as a professional activity. Even though the book has architecture as its primary field of design when it comes to examples, the authors do a good job in being open and broad, which means that the book can be read by anyone interested in how to understand design no matter what field.

The book is not a ordinary textbook but at the same time not a fundamental research book. It is in between. For someone who has a good understanding of design and is knowledgeable with many of the original sources the book still offers an integrated understanding of design that is well needed in the field.

After this first read, I have nothing to complain about, however, I will go back and read some parts in more detail, and I will hopefully come back to this preliminary review.

(Of course, I am quite disappointed that the two books on design that I consider to the best so far are not referenced. That is Klaus Krippendorff's "The Semantic Turn - a new foundation for design" and my own "The Design Way" with Harold Nelson :-)

Design Research and the 'coolness' factor

2009-10-11T11:15:00.007-04:00

Lately I have been engaged in some different forms of evaluations of interaction design research. I have read papers, watched videos and demonstrations. All these forms of research outcomes have their own merits and issues. One thing that I have reflected upon is when I read, watch or experienced these contributions is that I have experienced some problems with something I would call the "coolness" factor.

Many contributions present some design research outcomes that have qualities that make me react think: "that is pretty cool!". The problem with this reaction is that it also triggers a sense of suspicion, and I keep asking myself "am I seduced by some superficial 'coolness' factor or does this outcome really represent some more substantial contribution?"

There has been some interesting scholarly work on what signifies "interesting" research results as a contrast to "uninteresting" research, and some people talk about the "wow" factor. I am usually in favor or research that surprises me and challenges my intuition and preconceived ideas. But is that what 'coolness' is about? Or is 'coolness' something else? Is it only a reaction to surface qualities now connected to any deeper and significant core qualities?

The strength of a real and substantial knowledge contribution can be seen as a combination of how "new" and "surprising" it is, and what the implications are (both in terms of revisions of earlier established knowledge and in terms of how it brings earlier unrelated knowledge together), but also how stable and influential it will be over time. I think it is in relation to the last measure, stability and ability to influence over time, where contributions with a high score or 'coolness' feels suspicious. I have over the years had experiences where the contributions have had immediate impact on me have shown not to be influential over time, while the ones that constantly over time influence the field and my thinking were never really 'cool'. I think research contributions in this case resembles experiences in other field where an immediate and direct positive impression is not necessary followed by a sustained recognition over time (I think we often experience that in music, art, or food). Simple and direct positive impressions quickly feels old, kitschy, and without substance, while those experiences we have to work hard with over time develops into something of deeper importance.

So, when I see really cool new forms of interactions, new digital artifacts and designs, I am of course impressed, while I at the same time becomes suspicious that it is only the immediate coolness that I am recognizing. At the same time, there might also be a value of highly cool new designs, even though they might not be long lived. They can function as openers and challengers of our minds and imagination. They can create new design spaces that we have not seen before, even if they are not intended to do so or even if we forget them quickly.

Well, I think the field of HCI and interaction design is in a period where we do not know how to handle the 'coolness' factor. Quite often we do see examples where the designs are so 'cool' that we conclude them more as art pieces than research. It seems as if when we do that, we are more comfortable with a high degree of 'coolness' and we can examine the design as an inspirational piece instead of knowledge contribution. I would like to hear others ideas on this...

(When I think about it, I have done some work on this. In an article that soon will be published by me and my colleague Mikael Wiberg (in the HCI Journal) we discuss how the design of artifacts can be a possible and successful way of expanding theory development in HCI. We do not necessary discuss the 'cool' factor but we get close....)

Dropbox

2009-10-09T10:41:00.003-04:00

I just have to write a few lines about the application Dropbox. It is amazing how much this extremely simple application has changed my everyday life. I am constantly moving between a number of computers and have always struggled with keeping my computers as similar as possible when it comes to all the material I am working on. I used to email myself, use servers to save stuff, etc. With Dropbox all that is gone! Conceptually Dropbox is a simple design. From a use perspective it is also very simple. I find this to be an excellent example of a particular type of designed artifacts and a close examination and design critique of Dropbox would be fun to read. Anyhow, this design makes my days easier!

The Complexity of the Particular

2009-09-15T04:12:00.004-04:00

While preparing for my teaching I am doing some reading and some thinking. I have this reoccurring idea that I know is not new to me but it keeps coming back, and that is the idea of the complexity of the particular. In our book "The Design Way" we use the concept of the "ultimate particular" when we discuss the nature of design. We write:

"The outcome of a specific design process, such as a car, a curriculum, or an organizational structure, is an ultimate particular. It is something unique. It is not the universal car, the universal organizational structure, or curriculum. We are creating a particular, which, when taken together with other particulars, makes up the whole of our experienced reality."

we also give some examples of this:

"Distinctions between what is true (e.g., universal or general) and what is real (e.g., particular, full particular and ultimate particular) can be made in the following ways. A painting by Cézanne is real; the atomic weight of copper is true. An experience is real; a scientific observation is true. An organization is real; a proven fact is true. An individual’s perspective is real; a predictable event is true."

This is to some extent obvious and most people would probably say it is so obvious that it is not even important. However, when we understand and accept that design is about creating particulars, we also create a philosophical foundation that have extraordinary consequences for how it is possible to understand the design process.

Even though this idea of the ultimate particular has been with me for many years, it continues to excite me. And I am constantly surprised by the fact that it is so difficult to grasp the idea. Why is it so difficult? And why is it so difficult to see that complexity is not to found in abstractions and descriptions of the world but in the actuality of an ultimate particular. One single design manifests infinite complexity. Each design has in itself or reflects all possible aspects of reality. It is so easy to reduce the complexity of particulars by making simple judgments where only certain aspects of the design is noticed. So, richness and complexity is inherent in any design, while so frequently absent in simplistic and reductive descriptions and abstractions of the same designs. This understanding of designs as particulars also explains why a single design (a building, a car, a pen, a pair of shoes, etc) can evoke all our senses and make us speechless and overwhelmed. It is because that particular design has an infinite richness that resonates with our own overall experience of the world. Enough for now....

A brief book review

2009-08-26T22:26:00.003-04:00

I have for some time had on my desk the book "Design -- history, theory and practice of product design" by Bernhard E. Burdek. I have planned to read it since it seems to give a great overview of design history. So, now I have tried. Unfortunately, I found that the book is far from good. The structure is confusing, the theoretical discussion is quite shallow and without any rationale behind the way the content is presented. It jumps back and forth through history. It is illustrated with many images of products that is quite difficult to relate to the text and does not add anything extra to the content. So, overall it is not a book worth buying or reading. Sorry ....

Design, details and craft

2009-08-12T02:52:00.002-04:00

Today I found this little video from Peter Belanger who has documented the process behind the design and creation of a cover of the magazine MacWorld. It is a fun and highly interesting video. It shows the high level of craft and detailing that goes into one cover and especially the photo. This is a reminder for all of us who have problems with doing things fast (and sloppy).

Take a look: http://www.peterbelanger.com/posts/36-cover-creation

UXmatters

2009-07-22T12:23:00.003-04:00

I have not written much lately which is of course a result of the fact that it is summer and I try to relax from work. However, today I found the UXmatters web site. I am not sure if I have seen it before, but I found some really interesting writings there. So, this short post is only a promotion of the UXmatters site at http://www.uxmatters.com/index.php

HCI online resources

2009-06-14T04:10:00.004-04:00

Yesterday while looking for some HCI readings, I found a site called PhilPapers (http://philpapers.org/). It is a new resource for publications in philosophy. I really liked what I saw. It is a thoughtfully structured and designed site and it has a wonderful coverage of philosophical publications. It seems also to be quite easy to use (even though I did not try much). I would like to see something like this in HCI. There is no HCI resource site out there today. One of the reasons is of course that to create something like PhilPapers takes a lot of work and maintanance. PhilPapers just got a substantial grant to continue to build and develop the site.

There are of course some attempts in HCI out there. The most known is probably the HCIB managed by Gary Perlman. Degraaf is also doing a good job with his HCI Index. While looking for more resources I also found a number of web sites that since a few years are no longer being updated, but they all started out with good intentions and ambitions.

However, none of these attemtps can be compared to PhilPapers. It would be great for students and researchers to have a great resource site. I will wait for it.....or maybe there is something out there that I don't know about.

Limits of Interaction (Patti Maes & Andy Rutledge)

2009-04-20T03:44:00.004-04:00

I have earlier written about the "cost of interaction" and on that theme I want to recommend you to watch this video from the TED conference by Pattie Maes, maybe some of you have seen this before, it is quite fun and interesting. The demonstration really does, what I also have recently written about, open new design spaces.

When you have watched it, you can read this highly critical review of Maes' demonstration by Andy Rutledge. He argues that Maes' "demonstrates a measure of irresponsibility, misrepresented facts, and shallow thinking".

The demonstration itself and the review taken together shows us what we will see much more of in the future since the imagination among designers and the development of technology seems infinite. It is inevitable that with such a development, questions will be asked. How interactive do we want our environment to be? In what ways can interactivity that helps me be intrusive for others? Who has the resposibility when it comes to our future interactive environment? What is the responsibility when designers excell in "exploring potential design spaces"?

Watch, read, and think...

Interactive Innovations and Design Spaces II

2009-04-17T09:52:00.002-04:00

In my last post with the same title as this one, I discussed how new technology and new ideas opens up new design spaces. Today a student of mine, Sarah Reeder, tweeted about another example of new technology that also leads to new explorations when it comes to interaction design. And as Sarah wrote in her tweet, "flexible OLED displays excite me". I could not agree more!

Interactive Innovations and Design Spaces

2009-04-03T03:11:00.006-04:00

Quite often I am surprised by some new form of interactive artifact, with a technology, form, or function that I have not been able to forsee or imagine. For instance, today I saw the Moixa Sphere. It is not the thing in itself, even though the Sphere is fascinating, that is the most interesting aspect of this new artifact, instead it is that when I see the Sphere, I can imagine a whole new space of possible interactive artifacts, functions, uses, etc. The design space increases.

But, even though I am easily fascinated by new technology, when I see these new innovations my reaction is usually the same. I am surprised and fascinated by the technology and the new design space, but quite disappointed with the function or application that is used to introduce the technology. This is a consequence of the fact that the innovative design is technology driven and not neccesarily human centered. But, what I have learned over the years is that the worst mistake is to dismiss a new innovation as useless based on the application instead of focusing on the potential design space that the technology is opening up. To be able to see and imagine new potential design spaces is a crucial skill of being a good interaction designer! So, what design space do you see when you look at the Moixa Sphere?

The Cost of Interaction

2009-04-01T11:17:00.002-04:00

It is obvious that a growing number of things and environments are becoming increasingly interactive. This means that we as humans in these environments have to interact with these things in a more sophisticated and deliberate way. At the same time we know that any interaction, or interactive session, requires some time, effort, and attention. This means that there is a cost of interaction. A really simple exmaple of this is when I am looking for something on the web, and I find a page but in order to get the stuff I am looking for I have to interact and to create an account etc. Of course, the purpose is that with an account I can get more and better service, but it comes with a cost of interaction, and in many situations I judge to cost to be too high and leave the page (even though the "cost" was only to write my email and straightforward info).

Is the overall interaction cost increasing since our things and environments are increasingly becoming and requiring interaction? Is there a limit to how much we want to "pay". When and why do we chose non-interactive alternatives? When do we look for interaction and when do we find interaction unacceptable?

Well, it is possible to ask many interesting questions around the notion of the cost of interaction, and I predict that this will soon become a very important aspect for all forms of interaction design!

"The Three Paradigms of HCI"

2009-03-24T11:40:00.006-04:00

I recently found the paper "The Three Paradigms of HCI" by Steve Harrison, Phoebe Sengers, and Deborah Tatar from CHI 2007. Strangely enough I have not seen this paper before, which is too bad. I very much like the basic idea of the paper and the way they describe three paradigms of HCI. I like it because they make definitions, categorize things, creates a conceptual map, that is, they theorize about theory in HCI. Something that needs to be done much more! And they do it in a way that makes me want to discuss the paradigms further and to continue to develop the ideas . These are signs of a good paper. There are of course arguments that I don't agree with, but that just makes the paper even more valuable :-) Find it and read it!!

Thanks to Kevin here is a l ink to the paper!

Good Design

2009-03-20T08:25:00.002-04:00

The latest issue of the magazine "Metropolis" has the theme "What is good design?" with many interesting interveiws and articles. It is interesting to see what the aspects of good design they have chosen discuss, some of them are: sustainable, accessible, functional, well made, emotionally enduring, beautiful, etc. There are some essays (for instance by Bruce Sterling) and some interviews (among other of Don Norman). I have not read it all, but it looks good.

Reading news for confirmation

2009-03-19T05:01:00.004-04:00

We are all experiencing a new world of news were we on our own, or within our communities, search for news using new interactive techologies. We are no longer fed news by some institution (commercial or public). Interactivity makes this "search and find" not only a possibility but a prefered way of getting news. It is fast, easy, and we get only the stuff we alreay know we are looking for and from sources we already trust and like. News becomes a personal confirmation system. I was reminded about this discussion by an article in an article in the New York Times today.

This is a case of a technological development where the technological development, experienced as positive small steps ahead, are seen as great and promising, but where we one day we may be asking ourselves "how did we end up here".

One of the most thoughtful books I have read about the relation between the new world of communities and news and information, is Cass Sunstein's book "the republic.com" and the new edition ("the republic.com 2.0"). Usually I am not pessimistic when it comes to technology, but when it comes to the topic of news, how news will be formed and delivered in the future, how we will "use" news, I am actually quite pessimistic. I am not sure that community technology is moving us in a good direction, but I hope I am wrong.

What theory in HCI is about II

2009-03-12T04:52:00.002-04:00

My last post led to a number of really good comments and they are all helping me to sort this out. This is what I wrote in the last post

"I need to know what are the (common) categories of theories in HCI. So, this is where I need some help. I have decided that the categories should be based on what the theory is about, that is, defined by its object of study."

I also suggested three categories and have now received several proposals for other categories. First of all, to understand how I think about this, what I wrote above, that I want to "defined by its object of study" is important. There are several other ways of categorizing theories, for instance Jodi suggested that they could be categorized based on their "matureness", and Tanykim suggested that theories can be categorized along a dimension of micro-macro, or objective-subjective. These are all interesting suggestions and would probably lead to interesting and useful results, but I would like to stay with my criteria that theories can be defined by its object of study.

Shveta suggested a new category that has to do with how design relates to business and management. This is a good suggestion, but for me it is a sub-category to the design process category.

Bala suggested design history as a possible object of study, and I think that is a great suggestion, however, I think design theories of this kind can be categorized as falling within the existing categories. I suspect most of them are about the design process and lead to inspiration for designers. So, I think this is another sub-category.

Xythian suggested research as an object of study, and I think that might be a real one. Theories in HCI that are about HCI research (methods, approaches, etc) has probably a distinct enough object of study.

So, for now I have four distinct categories of theories in HCI. The four are:

The first category contains theories that has (human computer) interaction as the object of study, that is, theories that say something about the interaction between humans and interactive artifacts.

The second category of theories are those that have the design process as a core object of study.

The third category contains theories that address how interactivity and interactive technology changes society and environments, that is, theories that have the relation technology--society as the object of study.

The fourth category contains theories that have the HCI research process itself as an object of study.

I am still not sure how valuable this exploration is. I know that there are some other attemtps out there, for instance, John Carrolls edited a book in 2003 with the title "HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Towards a Multidisciplinary Science". In this book there are about 14 theories presented, they all fall into the three categories of design process, interaction, and research.

Looking at these theories, it is also clear that it is possible to see these three categories as being sub-categories of each other. For instance, theories about interaction can be used to inform the design process. At the same time it is clear in Carrolls book that the selection of theories about interaction are overwhelmingly focused on the human side. Most theories are about how humans think and act. There are no theories about interactive technologies.

I think that a "map" of kinds of theories in HCI, based on what their object of study is, can help us to explore and exmine our field, and also help us to see where a lot of effort is already made and where we have big gaps.

Again I invite you to comment on this.......

I can also let you know that I will soon expand this categorization of HCI theories with a couple of more criteria, apart from "object of study" :-)

What theory in HCI is about

2009-03-11T06:16:00.003-04:00

I am developing a theory of interaction (!). In the process of doing that, I am trying to categorize my theory. To do that I need to know what are the (common) categories of theories in HCI. So, this is where I need some help. I have decided that the categories should be based on what the theory is about, that is, defined by its object of study. As a first draft, it is possible to distinguish three kinds of theories with three distinct objects of study.

The first category are theories that has human computer interaction as the object of study, that is, theories that say something about the interaction between humans and interactive artifacts.

The second kind of theories are those that have the design process as a core object of study. Based on intuitive statistics (!) I think this is where we find the major part of theories in the field.

The third kind are theories that address how interaction and interactive technology changes society and environments, that is, theories that have the relation technology--society as the object of study.

So, what else? Any ideas?

Tangible interaction -- Siftables

2009-02-23T11:01:00.002-05:00

Well, if you have not seen this yet, take a look at the Siftables. I am always skeptical to presentations like this, but despite the worth of this particular solution and technology, I think this proves that, with some good design, it will be possible to find infinite applications where tangible interactions are suitable and superior.

I am looking forward to what good designers can do with this and similar technologies in the years to come. Advanced technology does not always lead to complex interaction!

iPhone again...and how to understand it...

2009-02-20T09:53:00.003-05:00

I read today an interesting post on a blog that discussed the design of the iPhone in relation to other phones and especially the relation or difference between seeing a cell phone as a device or as a platform. I think this discussion is of interest to anyone designing interaction and digital artifacts.

Buxton and basic research

2009-02-04T17:55:00.002-05:00

Bill Buxton writes in a recent issue of BusinessWeek about "The Price of Forgoing Basic Research". His major argument is that return on investment is actually higher on basic research than on applied research, "the return on investment goes down as the R&D budget shifts from basic to applied research". He finishes with writing "..academics should get back to long-term work". Interesting ideas.....I agree..

Rapid Expert Design

2009-01-29T16:27:00.002-05:00

Lately there has been (and still is) an ongoing discussion on the IxD discussion list about the notion of "Rapid Expert Design". The discussion is about definitions and meanings and the debate is between those who argue that RED is something new and those who says it is the same old thing but in new clothes. It is quite interesting since the discussion and the arguments reveal some deep philosophical core assumptions about the nature of the design process and design competence. These assumptions are of course not revelaed in an intentional way but are visible in the way the arguments are structured and lined up. For instance, it is possible to see the old debate between the importance of the designer in relation to the importance of the method, and of course, some really deep asumptions about the very nature of design. Interesting readings!

Relation between concept design and visual design

2009-01-28T03:13:00.003-05:00

In their patent application for the iPhone, it is interesting to see the sketch from Apple that shows the interface. It is very clear that it is the iPhone as we know it, even though it is a very simple sketch without any efforts made to make the appearance aestheticlly pleasing. For interaction designers there is a lesson to be learned here about the relationships between ideas and manifestations, between sketches and final designs. Almost anyone could have made this sketch of the iPhone with the purpose to portray the ideas. This is comforting for those of you who are afraid that you do not have enough visual skills. If you can do this, you can then get help from someone to make this into a full and beautiful deisgn.

HCI and Aesthetics

2009-01-20T02:44:00.002-05:00

Again I want to point to a blog post by my colleague Jeff Bardzell. He has done an excellent analysis of the latest issue of ToCHI (Transaction of Computer Human Interaction), considered to be a top journal in the field. This is a special issue on aesthetics and Jeff has examine what sources these researchers have used when they deal with the notion of aesthetics. Very interesting!

[Re]Searching the Digital Bauhaus

2009-01-14T08:20:00.003-05:00

I was happy to find the book "[Re]Searching the Digital Bauhaus" today in my mail. The book is edited by Binder, T., Löwgren, J. & Malmborg, L. and published on Springer in their HCI Series. The book is put together as a dedication to my dear friend Pelle Ehn on his 60th birthday and his work in design and interaction research. I am happy to be the author of a chapter myself, in the company with many highly distinguished colleagues. The content seems very interesting and I am looking forward reading all the other contributions.

What User Experience is NOT

2009-01-11T06:09:00.004-05:00

I found this good note on "10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design" by Whitney Hess. I like the points she is making about what "user experience" is not.

The Year of Interaction!

2009-01-10T04:02:00.003-05:00

So, we are at the beginning of a new year. I just read a list of dominating trends in information technology development. There was nothing really new on the list. I guess we all understand and can see that the "cloud" takes care of storage, that we are moving into the era of "streaming" instead of downloading, and that we will have internet connection everywhere and all the time.

With these trends, the rest is all about interaction! With ever present access and with streaming data and information, use becomes all a question of how will we interact with this world of bits.

So, my prediction of when it comes to the future of computing (not unique in any way) is that most of what we see as traditional computing issues (computation, storage, access, etc) are moved into the background and becomes invisible infrastructure and services. For the individual user, these services will not be interesting since they will be always there. For the individual, it will be vene more about the "thing" or the artifact that is the window into the infrastructure/services, that is, the interaction. Everything will be about interaction design, not just this year but every year from now on!!!

Becoming Physical --Blended Competence

2009-01-08T03:13:00.004-05:00

Around this time of year it is easy to find people trying to predict the new year or a longer future. Everywhere I read about the future of interaction, the same theme reappears. We are moving into the era of "natural user interaction". In most cases this means that the traditional mouse and keyboard is replaced by touch, haptic, sensors, etc. Interaction becomes physical.

This is of course not a new trend, but just over the last couple of years we have seen it being manifested in real products on a mass market scale. I have written many times on this blog about this new blended reality, the challenge of dealing with a new form of "material" (the physical/digital compound).

But even if this is not a new trend, it means many things for anyone involved in interaction design. Maybe the most important one is the realization that there is nothing anymore that is either purely physical or digital products. This is a realization that deeply influences how we think about competence. What does a designer of interaction need to understand in this new world. It is clear that to design interaction involves knowledge and understanding of both the physical aspects of a product as well as the digital.

Ok, I have to go in the middle of this post...maybe I will come back to this later...or someone else can add to it :-)

Design Thinking in 10 to 20 years

2008-11-26T02:29:00.003-05:00

In my class yesterday we discussed the future of design, interaction design and HCI. I asked the students about their view about the future for the discipline, profession and for research in the field of interaction design. Then they asked me about my predictions. Of course, I had predictions but here I will only mention one.

For quite some years I have predicted that the growing interest in design, design thinking, and design research and education will have a profound influence on the fundamental structure and organization of disciplines, schools, and universities. I think it is already possible to see this. When we bring in design thinking as a major component in a field, suddenly it is possible to see simlarities with disciplines that was not there before. We have already seen some new d-schools, for instance at Stanford. Even though these initiatives have not been successful yet, my prediction is that they will.

We might in some years see new academic constellations where we have design oriented "disciplines" from all parts of the traditional university structure coming together. We might as a first step see "old" units change their profile and become more designerly, like Ryerson Business School in Toronto who, as a school, has decided to transform the whole school into a design oriented school. Traditional art and design schools are also changing and opening up and inviting new disciplines, there are traditional technical disciplines that join forces with other design oriented disciplines in new unseen designerly "technical" schools.

Within 10 to 20 years we will see some universities changing their structure based on the notions of natural sciences, social sciences and humanities as the major components. As a part of that structure there will also be a design component (maybe design sciences even though I do not like that name). I am looking forward to this radical change of university organization.

Grand Challenge for HCI: Growing Ecologies of Interactive Artifacts

2008-11-23T08:54:00.003-05:00

In a study from the Pew Institute we get numbers on things we all have suspected: people have problems setting up their new technological artifacts. The study shows that:

"Some 48% of technology users usually need help from others to set up new devices or to show them how they function. Many tech users encounter problems with their cell phones, internet connections, and other gadgets. This, in turn, often leads to impatience and frustration as they try to get them fixed."

There are other interesting numbers in this report, numbers that should make all interaction designers around the world embarrassed. Numbers that show that there are a lot of angry and tired “users” out there. This is a sign of something we could label as a Grand Challenge for HCI and interaction design.

There are of course several explanations to this growing problem. One is that technological things are getting more complex. There is a desire from producers to cover many and diverse contexts, therefore they make the artifacts possible to adapt and tailor to specific and particular contextual and user needs and constraints. Even if this is made in an attempt to make artifacts more user oriented, it seems to lead to long and complex set up procedures that cause a lot a problems for users. Another explanation is that we are entering the age of artifacts networks. An individual user lives today with a large number of artifacts that all can or need to be coordinated and to communicate.

I am leading a research group where we study how people create, organize, strategize and think about their own personal interactive artifact networks. We are doing this by approaching the networks as “ecologies of artifacts” which gives a lot of metaphorical ideas around how artifacts are part of an ecology, how they compete for attention and survival. It is an environment of such complexity that it can (has to) be seen and understood as a “living” environment. We have lately published some papers on this and also designed and built an ecology of artifacts mapping tool.

This is fascinating research, not dealt with in traditional HCI. We are moving into a world where a growing number of things around us are becoming interactive. When all these things communicate and collaborate the complexity grows infinitely. We need new theories and approaches on how to udnerstand these environments and how to design artifacts that "fit" into these ecologies. If we could do that better, we would reduce the "set up" time and effort which would make people less stressed. My prediction is however that we are at the moment moving in the opposite direction. Interactive artifacts are not designed for the ecology of artifacts and hense causing enormous problems for people who try to create their own ecology of artifacts in their own personal way.

A Design Research Map

2008-11-17T03:43:00.003-05:00

In the latest issue of ACM Interactions there is an interesting article by Liz Sanders called "An Evolving Map of Design Practice and Design Research". Sanders exmines the status of design research, which I think she sees as the research done by design practitioners as a way to support the design process (even though I am not sure if that is a correct understanding). Sanders has created a "map" where she places design research approaches in relation to each other around two major dimensions: "design-led" versus "research-led" and "expert mindset" versus participatory mindset". I always find maps that lay out a conceptual or intellectual landscape intriguing and useful as tools for reflection. That is also the case here. Sanders map is useful and challenging. It is useful in the sense that it does work as an intellectual tool for reflection, both on an individual level and on a discipline level.

Any map becomes makes us think about definitions, both about what constitutes the landscape but also the "locations" on the map. Since eveything on amap is placed in relation to what is defined as foundational dimensions that make up the space, these dimension become crucial and of course vulnerable for criticism.

The dimensions that Sanders build on work quite well, and do establish an exciting landscape, but they are also possible to further analyze and critique. For instance, I am not sure what is meant by a "resarch-led" perspective. I think Sanders means that this perspective is something that is inherited from "real" research. Maybe this can be seen as how "scientific" the approaches are, for instance "ethnography" is on the map the most "research-led" approach, while the least "scientific" is the "generative". This is an interesting dimension, but is at the same time problematic. What is it that determines something as a "research-led" approach. I could for instance argue that "critical design" with its roots in critical theory is quite "scientific" or research based (however, from the humanities and not the sciences). So, where to place things is a quite difficult and delicate task.

One of the obvious problems, which is not in the map, is the difference between (i) the theoretical foundations of an approach or method, (ii) what the intended purpose of it is by those who created it, (iii) how it is commonly understood by those who use it, and (iv) how it is actually used in practice (this list can be made longer of course). These questions address especially the dimension "expert" versus "participatory" on the map. For instance, I think it is possible to use an approach that is defined as "expert mindset" in a participatory way and vice versa (I have seen participatory approaches being used without any real understading of, or will to create, participation :-)

Another aspect is to what extent the use of approaches are based on their use in practice or if they are based on what is done and written about by academic researchers in the field. There is a unfortunate confusion in our field between what practictitioners do and what is done by researchers. There is often a distinct difference in the way an approach is used in practice and when it is used by researchers. The same approach can therefore, depending on how it is understood and used, end up almost anywhere on the map.

I am not arguing that the map is not useful or necessary wrong, on the contrary, I think my discussion above shows the value of a map like this. It does force us to think about our definitions and our way of describing what is done in practice and in research. I am looking forward to more "maps" since I see this as level of theorizing that concerns our understanding of the whole field. This is what constitutes an academic field, makes i visible and an entity, and therefore also possible to approach, debate, and critique.

The broader responsibility of HCI research

2008-11-16T05:59:00.003-05:00

Lately my mind has been occupied with the question of the purpose and responsibility of HCI research. Why do we reserch, for whom do we do it, what do we expect to ackomplish, and is it important? These are not new questions for me, I have dealt with them all through my career. And I am of course not the only one challenged by these issues. Today, I decided to write something about this topic on my blog and then realized that I have, together with my colleague Anna Croon Fors, already written about this in an article called "Critical HCI Research – A Research Position Proposal" (link to a pdf version). I think we make a quite good case in the first parts of the paper where we discuss the "big" question and its ramifications. In the second part of the paper we try to fomulate a position that would lead to research that we see important. I think the first part can (and should) be read by anyone doing HCI research (!), while the second part might be more difficult and challenging. I am quite happy to link to this paper since I find the first part to be crucial and highly important to our field.

What is a legitimate argument in HCI research?

2008-11-08T06:15:00.003-05:00

In these times of CHI reviews (something that many HCI researchers are involved in) I have to point to a post by my colleague Jeff Bardzell. Quite often in these reviews, reviewers use different arguments to make their case. Not seldom using different types of arguments. In his post Jeff explores what is seen as accepted or not-accepted arguments in HCI research. The post is based on one of his recent review expriences of a CHI paper where different views on "rigor" clashed. This post is highly informative and interesting. HCI researchers around the world: read and reflect....

Theory Informing Design

2008-11-03T20:27:00.002-05:00

As I am preparing class for tomorrow I am once again reading Yvonne Rogers chapter on "New Theoretical Approaches for Human-Computer Interaction". And as usual when I read this text I realize how well it serves the purpose of initiating and establishing a discussion on the role of theory in interaction design practice. Rogers manages both to analyze existing theoretical attempts and to present some empirical material on how much, if at all, these theories are used by practicing designers. She also comes up with some ideas on why this is the case and also presents some suggestions on how to improve the situation.

In the same class I also use my own paper "The Nature of Design Practice and Implications for Interaction Design Practice" in International Journal of Design. This paper is to a large extent based on the chapter by Rogers. The main argument is that design research aimed at improving design practice has to be grounded in a deep understanding of the nature of design practice. Underlying this is a critique of most theory development as being not enough interested in practice. Instead these attempts are based on intellectual developments grounded in an idealized understanding of design.

I find this to be an intriguing topic that is not enough recognized in HCI research. There is a need for a more developed understanding of the role of theory, different forms of theories, theories for different purposes, practical theories, etc.

More theorizing!!

Design Judgment

2008-10-27T08:03:00.002-04:00

Since I have not been very productive here lately I can at least link to others who are. My colleague Jeff Bardzell has written a great post on his class blog on the distinctions between "opinion" and "judgment". I really like this post.

The notion of judgment is crucial to anyone who tries to understand design. What I am seeing in interaction design is a growing interest in the activity and meaning of "criticism". Hopefully this will also lead to a deeper appreciation and examination of "judgment".

I truly believe that an intellectual and reflective understanding of the two notions criticism and judgment is at the very core of being a good design thinker and design practitioner.

Back on Twitter

2008-10-01T14:29:00.002-04:00

OK, after a few weeks without Twitter I decided to sign on again. It was in so many ways an interesting experience. It was fascinating how my thoughts changed over time, especially for the first week or two. I thought this would be an interesting experiment, now I know it was. I learned things about Twitter, about being in touch, and about myself. Maybe later I will write about it. If you have the courage to do the same thing :-) you should!

Donald Schön

2008-09-22T11:59:00.003-04:00

Again I am going to teach about the work of Donald Schön and this time I found a transcript of one of his talks from 1987. It is a great text and here Schön presents his core ideas in a short, clear, and enjoyable way.

"The Craftsman"

2008-08-27T16:50:00.002-04:00

I just got the new book by Richard Sennett called "The Craftsman" today. I have only read a few pages but I am already convinced that this is an essential book for anyone who thinks about the role and place for skilled practices and craftsmanship. I will continue to read and maybe write a review later on.

Criticism and Design (again)

2008-08-23T06:20:00.004-04:00

Again my colleague Jeff Bardzell has written a great piece on the relationship between critique and design. There is no way to talk about design without talking about criticism. Design is about the creation of particulars and particulars have to be evaluated (critiqued) for their own sake, in relation to its qualities and how those qualities relate to context, use, and intention. Anyhow, I am sure this interest in criticism in HCI and interaction design (still in its infancy) will not only foster a new understanding of the role of criticism but also strengthen the understanding of design and its fundamental ontological and epistemological status. Looking forward to an exciting development of the field....

Concept designs and real designs

2008-08-13T03:11:00.002-04:00

The argument in a recent blog post by Kontra is that real designers don't focus on concept designs (in the meaning of future possible designs, like concept cars). He also discusses why many large companies, such as Microsoft and Motorola, are great at producing amazing concepts designs but less good at producing innovative real designs, while Apple is the opposite -- that is, they do not focus on (public) concept designs but produce many innovative real designs. Without having thought much about this, I am willing to agree with Kontra. He makes a good argument. But, there might be other examples that would make me disagree, anyone?

Leaving FaceBook

2008-08-12T04:44:00.001-04:00

OK, since I just stopped using Twitter, I have also deactivated my FaceBook account :-) I will basically only use LinkedIn now. Is this a bad move?

No more Twitter

2008-08-12T03:45:00.002-04:00

That's it. I just deleted my Twitter account. No more Twittering. It has been a great experience and I have learned a lot, and I have at several occasions realized new aspects of what this type of application can do and provide. But, for now, it is time to leave, maybe I will rejoin later, who knows.

Software Commodification & Zoho

2008-08-07T15:50:00.003-04:00

It seems as if we are entering the time when everyday basic applications (email, wordprocessing, spreadsheet, presentation tools, conference tools, wikis, etc) are rapidly becoming commodities. Not just in the sense that they are ubiquitous and commonly usd, but in the way they are produced and sold. Zoho is company who is apparently doing this. They don't strive for uniqueness or innovativeness necessarily, instead they focus on the production process, the time to market of new features, and all as cheap as possible. Maybe they are the Wal-Mart of everyday applications. Here is an interesting article comparing Zoho with Microsoft and Google. At the same time the open source movement is also producing the same commodities even "cheaper", like OpenOffice. Maybe we will soon not care who made our applications except for the connoisseurs! Regular people will just buy the cheapest application or service out there, since they basically all do the same thing in bascially the same way. My concern is that maybe everyday applications are becoming commodities too early. Maybe this leaves us with no new radical designs when it comes to the applications we use the most and depend on the most..or...?

The Anatomy of Prototypes

2008-08-07T10:31:00.003-04:00

Protoyping is something that is nowadays an everyday activity in our field. Interaction designers do it all the time. But even if this is the case, prototypes are not well understood, except for the quite crude low-fidelity versus high-fidelity dimension. Together with two colleagues I have just published a paper with the title "The Anatomy of Prototypes: Prototypes as Filters, Prototypes as Manifestations of Design Ideas" in the ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interation. (You can dowload a pdf-version here.)

In this article we develop a thorough understanding of prototypes, how they can be described and how a designer should/could think about prototypes in rational way. For instance, we present (i) the fundamental prototyping principle, (ii) the economic principle of prototyping, and (iii) an anatomy of prototypes.

Hope you like it!