"Changing Things--the future of objects in a digital world" by Redström & Wiltse

I just got in the mail a copy of the new book "Changing Things--the future of objects in a digital world" by my colleagues and friends Johan Redström and Heather Wiltse. I am so excited about this book we are presented with some new exciting concepts and a theoretical approach that has been missing. Anyone who is working on Internet-of-Things and our new connected reality will find grounded and fundamental support in this book.
book. It is one of the first books that explore how 'things' are radically changing with the digital transformation and how that effects are ways of thinking about things. It is obvious that a 'thing' is no longer a dead object that only has relevance in a particular location and time. Digital things are connected, they are part of every other thing, they make up an ever ongoing dynamic reality that presents new conceptual and philosophical challenges. How can we or should we think about things? In this

Designing and its measure-of-success

One of the aspects of designing that is not enough reflected upon is the notion of 'measure-of-success'. When we evaluate a design as good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate or adequate, we do that by employing some form of measuring and evaluating (I use 'measuring' as a very broad and inclusive activity). There are many forms of measure-of-success. They can a broad scope, they can be complex or simple, intuitive or well-defined, they can be recognized by many or by one.

The most personal and maybe least defined measure-of-success is if you like it, without any further explications of what "like it" is based on when it comes to qualities, variables, impact, etc. The opposite to that is probably the measure-of-success as established in most sciences, that is, a well-defined approach that has to be satisfied in all its details where the process has to show that it lives up to the explicit requirements of the scientific method.  Scientific results are expected to be the outcome of transparent processes that we can trace and inspect.

Interestingly enough, if a scientific process does live up to the requirements, we are not able to deny the outcome as a scientific result, no matter what we think about it. The measure-of-success "like it" does not apply.

Other traditions have other relationships with measuring. For instance, in art, there is little, if any, expectations that the artistic process has to be done in any specific way. No one cares if it is possible to trace and inspect the process. This does not mean that the measure-of-success is less complicated in art. Those who approach art only as a matter of "like it" are commonly seen as not knowing art and not having the needed sensibility of recognizing or 'measuring' art.

Another aspect in art is that one of the most determining factors in measuring success is the artist, the person. In science, of course, the person cannot be part of the measuring of success.

Without going too far on these similarities and differences, what does this mean for design? Well, in many situations designing is measured by the application of the measure-of-success from other traditions, typically science or art. Of course, we also see designing measured by the measure-of-success from the tradition of business. As someone who teaches designing, I am often struck by how difficult the measure-of-success in designing is to students. They become confused since they often try to combine several measures and try to make sense out of it. This is extraordinarily difficult since the existing measure-of-success in other traditions are not easy to combine, actually in many cases they are irreconcilable. It is impossible to combine them.

It is important to realize that it is not the case that a tradition or approach, such as designing, has a given measure-of-success that has to be used. It is definitely possible to use for instance a scientific approach to create something that is measured as a piece of art, or an artistic approach while expecting the result to be measured as a knowledge contribution. This is an exciting realization. I believe that often when we see highly creative outcomes it is when someone uses one tradition with the purpose to create something to be evaluated with the measure-of -uccess from another tradition. Of course, anyone who tries this has to be prepared of the harsh critique that will follow, unless the relationship between the process and the measure-of-success is made perfectly clear.

Designing means creating something yet-not-existing. It is a powerful approach and tradition. If a designer want to be successful, they have to be clear about their own measure-of-success and also be able to communicate that to those who will be evaluating the design. So, for each design project the questions are: what is the purpose and intention, what is the design desiderata, and how does that translate into a measure-of-success, and how can that measure-of-success be explained and communicated.

"It depends"

When I teach design theory or interaction design I often get questions about what is "good" or "better" when it comes to design. After a while, my students realize that the answer they get from me is never anything else than "it depends".

There are no universally "good" or "bad" qualities when it comes to any designed product or system. The only way to evaluate quality is in relation to purpose. And the purpose is dependent on the particular situation, time, stakeholders, users, decisionmakers, technology, resources, etc. A specific quality that may be seen as crucially good in one situation, may in another situation be an obvious bad quality. So, good design is only relevant in relation to purpose. It depends...

However, we can of course as designers and critics discuss what in general may be good qualities. This means that we are leaving the domain of design and moving into the domain of some sort of science where we try to establish universal qualities and their universal relevance. We will look for qualities that go across the particulars and move into the universals.

To determine what is good quality in a particular case and what can, in some sense, be understood as universally good are two completely separate and distinct activities. The students' question about what is "better" is often a consequence of them mixing these activities up. They are hoping to find answers about the particular based on what is universally true. Such hope is easy to understand since it would, if it was possible, release them from their own responsibility of making real design judgments. But it is a futile hope...

A Blind Spot of HCI Research

The HCI research community is engaged with how people interact with digital artifacts and systems. However, looking at the present focus of HCI research, this engagement does not cover all areas of interaction. There are areas of HCI that does not really receive any attention from HCI researchers. We might distinguish between two forms of interaction, 'forced' and 'voluntary'. The voluntary form of interaction is what HCI research commonly is focused on, that is, interaction that is a result of people choosing to interact with a system for their personal reasons. Forced interaction usually takes place in workplaces where people have to use whatever system the organization is using.

It is possible to see 'forced' interaction as a 'blind spot' in HCI research. Forced interaction includes, for instance, systems that people use to manage their everyday work, scheduling, tracking, of activities and processes. Administrators and others working in scheduling, accounting, logistics, resource handling, in areas of healthcare, education, banking, insurance, transportation, etc.

We commonly hear stories from people working in organizations about bad interaction and systems not designed for users. Of course, you can argue that a lot of HCI research is basic research (new technologies, new forms of interaction, etc) that over time will change these systems to the better. And the shift to user-oriented design and user experience have made a difference, but it is far from enough. Even with the best intentions, the interaction design that is behind these kinds of everyday systems require other competencies,  knowledge, and approaches.

One key aspect of these kinds of systems is that the user does not choose the system. They have to use it. It has nothing to do with their motivation. And the user is not in any way involved in any development work or has any influence on the system. The user is neither able to influence how to use the system.

How can and should HCI research approach this huge problem? What kind of research is needed?

"Critical Theory and Interaction Design"

A wonderful book was just published.

Jeff Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell, and Mark Blythe had the idea of creating a 'reader' on critical theory and how it relates to interaction design. They invited a  group of great people to pick a critical theory text and to write a commentary of it.

I am honored to be part of this and I selected my favorite critical theory thinker Herbert Marcuse. The book is a wonderful collection of great texts and insightful commentaries.

See below for a description and more info.

A must read for any PhD student in HCI and interaction design.

Reference:

Bardzell, J., Bardzell, S., & Blythe, M. (Eds). (2018). Critical Theory and Interaction Design.
MIT Press.

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Critical Theory and Interaction Design

Classic texts by thinkers from Althusser to Žižek alongside essays by leaders in interaction design and HCI show the relevance of critical theory to interaction design.

Why should interaction designers read critical theory? Critical theory is proving unexpectedly relevant to media and technology studies. The editors of this volume argue that reading critical theory―understood in the broadest sense, including but not limited to the Frankfurt School―can help designers do what they want to do; can teach wisdom itself; can provoke; and can introduce new ways of seeing. They illustrate their argument by presenting classic texts by thinkers in critical theory from Althusser to Žižek alongside essays in which leaders in interaction design and HCI describe the influence of the text on their work. For example, one contributor considers the relevance Umberto Eco's “Openness, Information, Communication” to digital content; another reads Walter Benjamin's “The Author as Producer” in terms of interface designers; and another reflects on the implications of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble for interaction design. The editors offer a substantive introduction that traces the various strands of critical theory.

Taken together, the essays show how critical theory and interaction design can inform each other, and how interaction design, drawing on critical theory, might contribute to our deepest needs for connection, competency, self-esteem, and wellbeing.

Contributors
Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell, Olav W. Bertelsen, Alan F. Blackwell, Mark Blythe, Kirsten Boehner, John Bowers, Gilbert Cockton, Carl DiSalvo, Paul Dourish, Melanie Feinberg, Beki Grinter, Hrönn Brynjarsdóttir Holmer, Jofish Kaye, Ann Light, John McCarthy, Søren Bro Pold, Phoebe Sengers, Erik Stolterman, Kaiton Williams., Peter Wright

Classic texts
Louis Althusser, Aristotle, Roland Barthes, Seyla Benhabib, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Arthur Danto, Terry Eagleton, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, Wolfgang Iser, Alan Kaprow, Søren Kierkegaard, Bruno Latour, Herbert Marcuse, Edward Said, James C. Scott, Slavoj Žižek

Today's reading

I have started to 'force' myself to read one paper each morning at work. So far so good. I post a mini comment on the page "Today's Reading" here on my blog. We'll see how many days I will be able to do this.

Interesting McKinsey study reveals what every business should to know about design

The consulting firm McKinsey has studied 300 companies and based on the results they argue what successful companies need to do when it comes to design. To someone who has worked with this issue for decades, the results are not surprising. But they are encouraging. A summary can found in this article in FastCompany.


The study ends with presenting four areas that increased revenue and total returns the most:

"1. Tracking design’s impact as a metric just as rigorously as you would track cost and revenue. McKinsey cited one gaming company that tracked how a small usability tweak to its home page increased sales by 25%.

2. Putting users first by actually talking to them. This helps to think outside of a standard user experience. One hotel that McKinsey underlined presented visitors with souvenir rubber ducks embossed with an image of the host city–with the encouragement to collect more rubber ducks from the hotel’s other locations. The initiative improved retention 3% over time.

3. Embedding designers in cross-functional teams and incentivizing top design talent. McKinsey pointed to Spotify as an example because the company gives its designers autonomy within a diverse environment–unlike a consumer packaged goods company, which was bleeding designers because they had to spend time making slide decks look pretty for the marketing team.

4. Encouraging research, early-stage prototyping, and iterating. Just because a product or service is launched doesn’t mean the design work ends. One cruise ship company that McKinsey highlighted spoke with passengers, assessed which activities were most popular by looking at payment data, and analyzed security feeds with machine learning algorithms to find inefficiencies in a ship’s layouts–all in the name of improving user experience over time." (see the article)