Transforming Grounds

Here is the first couple of pages from our book " Things that keep us busy - the elements of interaction " by Janlert and Stolterman. 1. The things that keep us busy Despite strong misgivings, private eye Eddie Valiant eventually ventures into the city of Toontown (in Who framed Roger Rabbit, 1988). It is a truly nerve-racking experience: everything is throbbing with life, nervously responsive to his every move, incessantly calling for his attention—not just the usual toon animals, but plants, cars, buildings, everyday things like the elevator button—even the bullets in his toon revolver are alive.  Everything is on speed as it were, Tourettic, incessantly making faces, quipping, jesting, collectively whipping up the environment into a bedlam of interactions. Toontown, the viewer soon realizes, is a madhouse where you would not maintain your sanity for long. Is this our future? Even though there are early examples of amazing constructions and machines with interactive

One of the things I "preach" in my class on Design Theory is that everyone who designs act based on some kind of design philosophy. It may be explicit or implicit, but it is there. A design philosophy influences how you think about design, its role, its purpose, how to do it, etc. I push my students to do four things. First, to examine and reveal their own (existing) design philosophy, to make it as explicit as possible, in an honest way (usually they do not think they have one). Secondly, to critically examine their own design philosophy, what it means, its consequences for practices, its strengths, and weaknesses, etc. And then thirdly, to reflect on if their existing philosophy is what they want. What are they missing, what do they want to emphasize, and what do they see as their future strength as a designer. And finally, to reflect on how they can change and develop their design philosophy in a desired direction. I think this article about how Logitc h has chan

Is it possible to define interaction and interactivity? And is it possible to measure it in some way? My colleague Lars-Erik Janlert and I have developed some concepts and definitions that we believe can help us answer these questions. In our article (that you can download here) Lars-Erik Janlert & Erik Stolterman (2017) The Meaning of Interactivity—Some Proposals for Definitions and Measures, Human–Computer Interaction, 32:3, 103-138, DOI: 10.1080/07370024.2016.1226139 we present our work. [Even though this article is recently published, some of the materials in the article has been reworked and further developed in our new book. "Things that keep us busy -- the elements of interaction" (MIT Press, 2017).  ] What I like about this work is that we take the question "what is interaction" seriously and in detail try to define it, or at least frame it, in a way that makes sense and also makes it usable. I know that the way we do it s