The dilemma of interaction design and faceless interaction.

Just saw this article about some new Apple patent. It is interesting how it moves toward a situation of new interactive modes, and particularly interaction without an interface. This is something that Lars-Erik Janlert and I have written about and discussed in some detail in a recent article.

Janlert, L-E., & Stolterman, E. (forthcoming). Faceless Interaction - a conceptual examination of the notion of interface: past, present and future. In the journal Human-Computer Interaction.

In the article we present a historical overview of how the interface has been understood over time. We also discuss some issues that interaction design is facing today, such as shrinking devices (less space for an interface) but increasing functionality (more this to do). We examine different ways this dilemma is handled today. And we specifically examine the idea of getting rid of the interface (as in the Apple patent above). We also discuss new issues such as cluttering which will become the next big interaction problem.


This is the abstract from the article

"In the middle of the present struggle to keep interaction complexity in check as artifact complexity continues to rise and the technical possibilities to interact multiply, the notion of interface is scrutinized. First, a limited number of previous interpretations or thought styles of the notion are identified and discussed. This serves as a framework for an analysis of the current situation with regard to complexity, control, and interaction, leading to a realization of the crucial role of surface in contemporary understanding of interaction. The potential of faceless interaction, interaction that transcends traditional reliance on surfaces, is then examined and discussed, liberating possibilities as well as complicating effects and dangers are pointed out, ending with a sketch of a possibly emerging new thought style."

The future of the smartphone

As we all know it is not easy to predict the future. It is so difficult so it sometimes becomes almost depressing. In this short article with the lead designers Matias Duarte (Google) and Gentry Underwood (Dropbox) are supposed to speculate about the future of the smartphone. They do that by mostly examining the problems with where we are now. It is difficult to see any grand visions or even optimism in their speculations.  They both see the future of the smartphone in its ability to live in an ecology of devices and not as a radical change of the smartphone itself.

It is interesting to see how these two influential designers are discussing the problem of modern smartphones very much in a way that resonates with Albert Borgmann's theory about the "device paradigm". The designers are, in the same way as Borgmann, concerned that the everywhere presence of screens distance us from the "real" reality and Underwood ends by saying "I hope as we push these screens forward, we do it with an attention to what makes life meaningful." This relates to the notion of focal practices by Borgmann.

The short article is a fascinating read. Is this the forefront of the field? Is this the visionary thinking? I find the article to be inspiring in the sense that it is refreshing to see Borgmann's philosophy being present in this type of context, at the same time I find it a bit sad that there are no bold ideas how to deal with the problems that they recognize. The solutions seem to be more of the same unfortunately.



[This challenge of device ecologies is something that I have worked on in different ways and is published:

Janlert, L-E., & Stolterman, E. (forthcoming). Faceless Interaction - a conceptual examination of the notion of interface: past, present and future. In Human-Computer Interaction.

Stolterman, E. , Jung, H., Ryan, W., and Siegel, M. A. (2013) Device Landscapes: A New Challenge to Interaction Design and HCI Research. Archives of Design Research, 26(2), 7-33.]

Amazon Echo and Faceless Interaction

Amazon is presenting a new device called Echo. It is a voice controlled device that makes it possible to play music, ask questions (Siri style), create shopping lists, set alarms, etc. It is supposed to have a

sophisticated microphone system that can recognize commands even when playing music. You can place it anywhere in a room and control it with your voice. You can check out the video link found on this page.

I find this really interesting. It is a step towards what Lars-Erik Janlert and I call "faceless interaction" in our article "Faceless Interaction - a conceptual examination of the notion of interface: past, present and future".

This type of faceless interaction, that is, interactivity without a "real" interface (defined in the article), is becoming more common and the issues we discuss in the article, for instance, interaction clutter becomes more prominent. When we have not just one but many faceless interactions in our environment, new challenges become apparent to interaction designers.

The Anatomy of Prototypes

In preparation of a lecture on Monday I had to re-read an article that I wrote together with Youn-Kyoung Lim and Josh Tenenberg called "The Anatomy of Prototypes: Prototypes as Filters, Prototypes as Manifestations of Design Ideas".

I don't think I have read the whole article in a few years which is always an exciting  and a bit nervous experience. Anyway, this time I was pleasantly surprised. I really find this article to be interesting and still useful. Unfortunately I have not done any more work on this topic since we wrote this article but after having read it now, I think I  have to.

I am more convinced than ever that what our field needs are analytical tools that makes it possible to investigate specific entities in a structured way. In this article we propose an anatomy of prototypes that supports such investigations of one of the most important entities in our field--the prototype.

It would be great if we could develop similar "anatomies" for other entities in our field. The 'power' of anatomies (or frameworks) is that they (if done well)  provide clear definitions that support examinations, categorizations and understanding without being prescriptive. The anatomy of prototypes that we provide in our article is a conceptual tool for the analysis and description of every possible prototype without saying anything at all how to design prototypes or what constitute a good prototype (except in a very abstract but principled and precise way).

Anyway, good to return to "old" texts and to discover that they still can be valuable and not outdated.

Faceless Interaction - a conceptual examination of the notion of interface: past, present and future

Now the article by Lars-Erik Janlert and me is published on the Human-Computer Interaction Journals website. I am very happy to see this article published!


Janlert, L-E., & Stolterman, E. (2014). Faceless Interaction - a conceptual examination of the notion of interface: past, present and future. In Human-Computer Interaction. 

Abstract

In the middle of the present struggle to keep interaction complexity in check as artifact complexity continues to rise and the technical possibilities to interact multiply, the notion of interface is scrutinized. First, a limited number of previous interpretations or thought styles of the notion are identified and discussed. This serves as a framework for an analysis of the current situation with regard to complexity, control, and interaction, leading to a realization of the crucial role of surface in contemporary understanding of interaction. The potential of faceless interaction, interaction that transcends traditional reliance on surfaces, is then examined and discussed, liberating possibilities as well as complicating effects and dangers are pointed out, ending with a sketch of a possibly emerging new thought style.

Device Landscapes—A New Challenge to Interaction Design and HCI Research

Together with the PhD students Heekyoung Jung and Will Ryan, and my colleague Marty Siegel, I have for some time been working on the idea of device or artifact landscapes (ecologies). We have changed our vocabulary several times trying to capture the nature of relationships between interactive artifacts.  We have published a few papers on this research earlier and now a more overall journal article is to be published in a new Korean design research journal.

Stolterman, E. , Jung, H., Ryan, W., and Siegel, M. A. (2013) Device Landscapes: A New Challenge to Interaction Design and HCI Research. Archives of Design Research, 26(2), 7-33

You can find the article here
http://www.aodr.org/

Below is a brief summary of the article:

Device Landscapes—A New Challenge to Interaction Design and HCI Research

Erik Stolterman, Heekyoung Jung, Will Ryan, Martin A. Siegel  

Background
The number of interactive digital artifacts is growing surrounding personal lives, and individuals have an increasing need to describe, analyze, and interpret what it means to own, use, and live with a large number of interactive artifacts. It becomes critical from a design perspective to better understand the relational aspects among multiple artifacts beyond the use of individual ones. In this article, we examine the nature of networks of interactive artifacts and the way people understand and handle these networks. We introduce the concept of device landscapes as a conceptual tool for the analysis and examination of personal networks of interactive artifacts.

Methods
We describe previous work and discuss the theoretical underpinnings supporting our studies. In particular, we compare and contrast our concept of device landscape to other models of multi-artifact systems with an emphasis on the bottom-up perspective in which landscapes are created by users instead of a perspective given by designers. Also, we summarize and interpret several studies we have completed—including personal inventory study, mapping study, survey, and interview to examine how people perceive and manage their personal device landscapes. Based on our findings we propose a conceptual framework aimed at supporting research on these device landscapes.
 
Results
From our studies we found that people perceive device landscapes in many different ways and develop their own strategies to manage multiple interactive artifacts, mostly digital devices in use. By investigating high-level patterns from device maps and verbal descriptions, properties and aspects of interactive artifacts are defined to describe the concept of device landscapes.

Conclusion
We also discuss how these personal networks—namely, device landscapes—present new challenges and implications to the interaction design and HCI research community by comparing it to the perspectives of ubiquitous and pervasive computing environments.

[If you are interested in reading the whole article, send me an email.]

Interface tile designs--evolution or fashion

I guess you have already realized that one of the most popular interface design styles today is tile design. The examples are many, Pinterest (maybe where it started), Windows 8, USA today, etc. Even "older" designs are changing their design to become more tile like. Ebay is trying to look like Pinterest.

The tile design has an immediate appeal. It is clear, structured, appears to be highly organized and of course, is in many cases visually appealing. We have over the years seen many "styles" come and go, usually they have been seen as evolutions of the interface--new paradigms. GUI is seen as superior to command based interaction for instance and not as a style or fashion. Touch and gesture is seen as developments away from traditional keyboard interactions--not as a fashion. But is tile interfaces the next step in the evolution of interfaces or is it only a style, a fashion? And if so, does it matter?

My own very personal and unscientific analysis of tile interfaces has led me to the conclusion that the positive aspects I mentioned above does not come without problems. The dominating visual aspect of tiles seems to make it difficult to create distinctions between different types of content and also between differences in importance (apart from size). It also seems to be difficult to create a supporting browsing structure that does not "force" the user to inspect all tiles in the same way and with the same effort. I have to admit that I have not done enough examinations of this to be able to argue for any of these observations, but I am sure that they could use some study.

If tile design is less an overall evolution and improvement of the interface and more of a fashion, it does not mean that is necessary bad or less valuable. Styles and fashion are common in every area where it is difficult to make serious developments on the fundamental qualities of an artifact, for instance, clothes. New styles and fashions can be seen as ways to keep things from becoming boring and repetitive. And that is maybe what the tile design paradigm is all about.

I would like to hear what others think about this. Maybe interaction design, at least some aspects of it like traditional screen design, is at  a stage where style and fashion will become even more important and truly new interaction paradigms will be less common.

Personally, I am already a bit tired of tile designed interfaces. They do not work well for me. USA Today is a good example where I do not see any positive improvements when it comes to the overall user experience. But, I may be wrong.

Searching for definitions of "interactivity"

I have for a while been working on a paper about the notion of interactivity. It has been great fun but also quite challenging. First of all, doing some search of literature it is clear that even though interactivity is a core concept in my field of human-computer interaction  few have tried to define it carefully. I have started my examination by using a simple definition from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. In the dictionary two definitions are mentioned:
“ 1. mutually or reciprocally active, and 
2: involving the actions or input of a user; especially: of, relating to, or being a two-way electronic communication system (as a telephone, cable television, or a computer) that involves a user's orders (as for information or merchandise) or responses (as to a poll)”

This is a fairly good definition but for the purpose of HCI is can be developed in many ways, and that is what I am trying to do. For instance, it is clear to me that the notion of agency needs to be included, maybe also the concept of predictability. Anyway, at the moment I am trying to find already existing definitions. If you have any suggestions of well developed definitions of interactivity, please let me know.

Some notes on ACM Interactions and the CHI community

As some of you may know, together with Ron Wakkary, I have been the Editor-in-Chief now for the ACM Interactions magazine for more than two years. It has been a great experience in so many ways. We have tried to give newcomers to the field, from both academia and industry, an opportunity to share their experiences, knowledge and insights, while also bring in the most distinguished names in the field to share their expertise. ACM has also been instrumental in developing a new website for the magazine, that is now slowly becoming a core part of Interactions.

After having worked with Interactions for a while, it is clear to me that there is need for this form intermediary type of publication between research publications and trade journals. First of all, Interactions is not peer reviewed. This means we can publish new perspectives and ideas that would be almost impossible to get published in traditional conferences and journals. If you take a look at ACM Interactions over time, it is clear that many new "trends" were published much earlier in Interactions than anywhere else. It is also important to a field that has a major focus on professional development to get input from professionals and the industry.

Of course, this double purpose means that a magazine such as ACM Interactions suffers in other ways. For instance, researchers do not necessarily see it worth the trouble to publish in the magazine since it does not "count" as a scientific publication. At the same time professionals may still find the magazine too academic and not enough in resonance with and relevant to their professional reality.

My personal belief is that HCI as an academic discipline and as manifested in the major conferences (CHI, DIS, NordiCHI, etc) has taken on the purpose and goal to improve practice and use. This means that HCI has a strong focus on professional development, building knowledge and tools for practitioners for design and for understanding use. (This is of course not the only purpose that a field like HCI can adopt, more about that somewhere else.) The SIGCHI community is a blended community of researchers and professionals. Such a blended community is unique and something that very few other academic disciplines have. This focus on professional development makes it crucial to have venues where knowledge about practice can flow both ways, from academia to practice and from practice to academia.

To me, ACM Interactions is today a venue that subscribe to that purpose and does fairly good. It can be done much better and we are trying to move in that direction. For instance, it is crucial to have the best thinkers in the field write about their ideas in a way that makes it accessible to any researcher and practitioner in the field. It is also crucial to have professionals to write about their experiences in a way that points to under-researched areas and that present insights that can only emerge from being fully engaged in practice over time, which is something that researcher are not able to do.

All these different goals and conditions make it s difficult to make a magazine like ACM Interactions successful. It is all about balancing conflicting desires and needs from many stakeholders (as any design project). The key is to design something that does not become a dull compromise but raises above the conflicting interests and add value to all stakeholders.

[As a foot note I want to mention a few things about Interactions:
-- We are seeing a steady and increasing flow of submissions. Even though Interactions is not peer reviewed, the acceptance rate is going down.
-- We are still not sure that we are covering the whole breadth of HCI and are strongly inviting those who feel that Interactions does not cover their aspect of HCI to submit to us.
-- We are always looking for professionals that want to contribute to the discussion about the field to submit.
-- We also do want Interactions to be a place for discussion and debate, so we welcome comments and feedback on existing articles.]