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Cinco Lentes: Rumo a uma toolkit para Design de Interação

Original: Five Lenses: Towards a Toolkit for Interaction Design

Autor: Thomas Erickson 

Tradução: 

The Roving Tribes of Interaction Design

This volume is concerned with establishing foundations for interaction design. "Foundations" strikes me as an ambitious metaphor, suggesting, as it does, a solid base upon which a single, unified edifice will be erected. And, following the metaphor a step further, it assumes the existence of a stable, well organized community with a shared set of values that is ready to embark upon a such construction project.

I don't believe these assumptions hold up. To me, the state of interaction design feels more primitive. Rather than being an organized community, interaction design feels closer to being composed of a number of roving tribes who occasionally enounter one another, warily engage, and, finding the engagements stimulating, remain open to other encounters.

If this is the case, how do we make progress? I suggest that rather than trying to construct a unified, coherent account of interaction design, we would do better to take a more syncretic approach, gathering appropriate concepts and exploring their interplay without, however, insisting on resolving their tensions and contradictions.

In this essay I explore these issues. I begin with a definition, and illustrate my approach to partitioning the terrain of interaction design using five conceptual "lenses." In so doing, I cover most of what I see as the theoretical roots of interaction design. I then turn to the role of theory in interaction design, and suggest that a good way to begin is to assemble a toolkit of concepts for interaction design that consists of appropriately sized theoretical constructs.

Interaction Design

I define interaction design quite broadly:

Interaction design has to do with the design of any artifact, be it an object, system, or environment, whose primary aim is to support either an interaction of a person with the artifact, or an interaction among people that is mediated by the artifact.

O Design de Interação está relacionado com o design de qualquer artefato, seja ele um objeto, um sistema ou um ambiente cujo objetivo primário é suportar tanto uma interação de uma pessoa com o artefato quanto uma interação entre pessoas que é mediada pelo artefato 

Although some see interaction design as particularly concerned with digital systems--either computer systems or artifacts with embedded computational capabilities--I see no reason to exclude humbler artifacts. The forces that shape our interactions, from perceptual and motor processes such as seeing and touching, to social and cultural phenomena such as imitation and fashion, are agnostic with respect to whether an artifact contains digital components.  Indeed, much of what we understand about the design of non-digital artifacts--whether it be how to make a switch with a satisfying 'click,' or how clothing functions as a means of expressing identity--are applicable, as well, to digital systems. Finally, as computer systems become increasingly embedded in our artifacts and environments, and even the most mundane objects are tagged and tracked by digital systems, our ability to discriminate between the digital and the non-digital will fade, even should we wish to maintain it.

The Terrain of Interaction Design

Figure 1 shows a series of chess games in Washington Square, in New York City. In the foreground we see a chessboard, the players rapt in concentration. To one side of the board a few captured black pieces are gathered together; to the other is a pair of chess clocks that meter out the players' allotted minutes. Farther back we see other chess games, each with its circle of spectators. Still farther back we see passers by, most of whom are oblivious to what is going on, but a few of whom may be drawn into the circle of spectators, and then, perhaps, into playing a game or two themselves. And in the far background we discern trees and buildings, and see that the games are taking place outdoors in a city square.

To me, this picture represents, in miniature, the terrain of interaction design. As such, I'll use it to describe how I go about making sense of interaction. As a designer, I'm continually confronted with new sites and situations, and for each site I need to come up with a way to see it, to analyze it, to design for it, and to understand the consequences of what I have designed. I find that I work best when I orient to the site or situation in which the interaction takes place; for me the site comes first, and the conceptual framework and methods and tools come later. As a designer, my principal challenge is to make sure that I don't get too fixated on a single aspect of the situation, that I don't get trapped in a particular perspective or approach. Rather than find a single conceptual framework that fits the situation, instead my aim is to stay grounded in the concrete reality of the site, and to bring a range of conceptual lenses to bear on it.

Five Lenses

So let us return to the picture in Figure 1. We will walk through the image, taking a look through each of the set of lenses that I bring to bear on the sites with which I engage as a designer.

Mind

I begin, perhaps as a consequence of my early training, with the mind, envisioning the game in purely cognitive terms. Playing chess, viewed through this lens, involves a cycle of perception, cognition and action. This is the domain of cognitive psychologists, such as Donald Norman (1986), and is concerned with issues such as how people might go about learning chess, what sorts of errors they might make while doing so, how players develop strategies, why people find games of this sort engaging, and so on. This is the lens most often deployed by interaction designers versed in human-computer interaction, and is of critical import in the design of screen-based applications.

Proxemics

Moving on, we deploy a new lens, shifting our focus from minds to bodies and the ways in which we use our bodies to interact with one another. In the picture we see a number of bodies: the player in the left foreground, his face rapt in concentration as he gazes at the board; the spectator in the right foreground, gazing at the game, his posture suggesting that he has settled down to watch for a while. In the next game back, a player is reaching to move a piece, after which he will quickly slap the chess clock to stop his time and start his opponent's; that game, too, has spectators, though they seem less intent on the game and more interested in talking with one another. This is the domain of ethnomethodologists such as Adam Kendon (1990), sociologists such as Erving Goffman (1963), and anthropologists such as Edward Hall (1983), who focus on the role of expression, posture, gaze, gesture and timing in interactions within small groups. This lens is important for those concerned with designing material artifacts--especially large artifacts such as control panels, rooms and buildings--as well as those designing digital systems which support mediated (i.e. disembodied) interaction.

Artifacts

Next we shift our view to the artifacts in the picture. We see a chessboard arrayed with white and black pieces; off to one side we see a cluster of captured black pieces, and off to the other a pair of chess clocks. These artifacts play a variety of roles, interacting with the views from other lenses. One role of artifacts, that Norman explores in Things that Make Us Smart (1993), is to ease the cognitive load: the board and the pattern of pieces on it serve to preserve the state of the game, enabling players to focus on planning their next moves. Another role of artifacts is their status as objects that are manipulated by the participants. While the manipulation of chess pieces is a relatively simple matter, ethnomethodologists like David Sudnow demonstrate that the ways in which people physically interact with objects is incredibly subtle. In his book, Ways of the Hand, Sudnow (2001) gives an exquisitely detailed account of the process of learning improvise jazz on the piano, and the ways in which his hands (not his mind) learned to traverse the keys.  A third role of artifacts is depicted by Ed Hutchins in Cognition in the Wild (1995), in which he explores the view that cognition is not just a property of minds, but can be seen as a global property of systems of people and artifacts. A fourth role of artifacts is a social one, in that the pair of clocks substitute for a human time keeper. This view is explored by Bruno Latour (1992), who eloquently makes the case for a sociology of artifacts, suggesting that it is artifacts which stabilize and extend human interaction patterns. This lens--with the glimpses it gives of artifacts and their varied roles--is important for those who design material artifacts, as well as for those who aim to replace material objects with digital 'equivalents.'

The Social

Now we move to a level of analysis that is not grounded in anything that can be explicitly seen in our picture. The social lens examines relationships, both among people and between people and objects, and tries to take notice of the norms and rules that underlie them. Thus, in our picture, we see not just people, but people who stand in relationship to one another--players, spectators, passersby--and who are obeying rules as a consequence. Of course, the game of chess has a set of rules associated with it, but of more interest are the unwritten rules being adhered to. Thus, one chess player does not shout at the other as he ponders his move (something which is permissible in games like baseball), nor does he, after capturing a piece, toss it into the dirt beneath the table. There is an unarticulated notion of "proper" behavior in play, and one that, furthermore, extends beyond the game. Thus, the onlookers watch quietly and refrain from offering advice (again, unlike some other games), and one, standing nearby, appears to be waiting his turn to take on the winner, thus participating in an unarticulated but mutually understood notion of turn-taking. This is the realm of social psychology, sociology (Goffman, 1963), ethnomethodology (Heath & Luff, 2000) and anthropology (Whyte, 1988). This lens is essential to any interaction designer wishing to reflect upon ways in which a newly designed artifact may disrupt situations in which it is introduced, or the ways in which--as with a web-based chess game--the digital equivalent of a face to face interaction may have very different social effects.

The Ecological

The last lens I'll discuss gives, by far, the broadest view. It is the view of the interaction as it is situated in its larger context. Here we look not just at the chess game and its audience, but at its temporal and spatial location. Temporally, these chess games are a fixture, recurring nearly every day in the same location-- outdoors in a public square. By virtue of its location, passersby, on their ways to other places, become aware of the game and, over time, notice that it is a recurring event. Perhaps, another day, when on less urgent business, one passerby may pause to watch and even to play, thus helping the game, as an on-going event, to sustain and extend itself. Even if the game fails to interest most passersby, it still contributes to the liveliness and interest of the urban space. This lens, looking at the ways small interactions like the chess game flourish (or not) in the context of other interactions, is exemplified by the work of urbanists like Jane Jacobs (1961), urban designers like Kevin Lynch (Banerjee & Southworth, 1990), architects like Christopher Alexander (Alexander et al., 1977), and anthropologists like William Whyte (1988). This lens is crucial for the interaction designer who creates artifacts for use in public places, and who desires to create self-sustaining interactive systems.

About the Lenses

I do not wish to argue that these are the five and only five lenses of use to interaction designers; others may wish to suggest additional lenses, or to partition things up differently. The main point is that there are multiple perspectives from which interaction designers can analyze the sites or situations with which they are confronted, and that designers will fare best when they are able to pick up one lens, then another, and then a third. It is the ability to fluidly shift perspective that is, in my opinion, of most value to interaction designers.

The Role of Theory

Now I'd like to turn to the question of the role of theory in interaction design. As I've said, I think its too soon to try to create a unified theory or framework for interaction design; instead, I suggest that a more productive way to proceed is to syncretically assemble a toolkit of theoretical constructs and methods, such that for any of my five lenses (or other lenses to be suggested), there are a number of theoretical constructs and methods that might be brought into play.

Choosing Theories

In my opinion, the key question is how to select theories, etc., that are likely to be useful. I believe the problem is one of scale. It is not clear what the proper scale of theoretical construct is, and often we err by seizing on apparently useful concepts without sufficiently understanding their contexts. As an example, consider the notion of "affordance." Affordance, a concept developed by ecological psychologist J. J. Gibson (1979), is now commonly misused in interaction design. As initially defined, it was a relational concept, denoting the possibility of an interaction between an organism with particular characteristics and an artifact with particular characteristics.  Gibson developed a sophisticated argument--drawing on a number of concepts ranging from "affordance" to "agent" to "ecology"--that organisms perceive their environment in terms of affordances. "Affordance," as Gibson used it, has little to do with its popular use in interaction design as a visible indication that something can be done (visibility has nothing to do with affordances), nor does it make any sense to talk about an artifact affording something without also specifying the sort of entity to which the affordance applies. The problem is that "affordance" has been plucked out of the theoretical framework which gave it its power and nuance, and used in isolation has become a bit of jargon with little value.

At the same time, we need to be cautious about adopting full-fledged theories from other disciplines. The reason is that theories play multiple roles. At its most basic level, a theory is a useful simplification, a mechanism for imposing a framework on the blooming buzzing confusion that is reality. To the extent that its basic components are understandable and memorable, theories serve as common frameworks, lingua franca that allow insiders and outsiders to speak to one another using a common language and shared concepts. Thus biological concepts such as "disease," "bacteria," "virus," "germ," "infection," "antiseptic," and "antibiotic" provide both specialists and layfolk with a common ground through which they can understand and discuss basic medical issues. However, theories play other roles within a discipline. In particular, a theory can serve as a framework for debate within a discipline and, as a consequence, over time the theory is articulated and refined in response to the debate resulting in a more complex theory, or possibly multiple versions of the theory.

These two roles of theory stand in tension to one another: the utility of a theory for promoting debate and further articulation of itself within a field may actually interfere with its utility in communicating beyond the field. The requirements for promoting articulation within a field involve supporting the creation of distinctions and nuances that can serve as the ground upon positions can be established, whereas the requirements for communicating beyond a field require the ability to depict the conceptual framework in a few bold and broad strokes of the brush. While the ability of a framework to support the finely detailed nuance is not necessarily at odds with the ability to also serve as a simplifying framework, it often is.

What this boils down to is that we need to think carefully about the theoretical constructs we choose to use in interaction design. We need constructs that are neither so large that they bring along all the analytical baggage developed in response to internal disciplinary debate, but not so small that they lose the ability to provide a useful framework for dealing with complexity that makes them useful in the first place. In short, we need a conceptual middle ground, a repertoire of theoretical constructs that are larger than "affordance" or "breakdown" or "flow", and that are smaller than "activity theory" or "distributed cognition" or "ethnomethodology".

Towards a Conceptual Toolkit

What sort of theories and methods belong in a 'toolkit' for interaction designers? What is the right size or scale of a theory or method? How do we go about finding them?

One possibility is that we need to take theories developed by other disciplines and simplify them for our purposes, pruning away the complexity generated for internal disciplinary purposes. This is something along the lines that Don Norman has suggested in his proposal for an applied discipline of cognitive engineering (Norman, 1986). Perhaps, just as cognitive engineering could serve as tool when applying the "Mind" lens, other theories might simplified for use with other lenses. Another candiate--an area of Economics known as mechanism design that examines the ways in which systems of incentives are designed to shape large scale group behavior -- is discussed by Picci (this volume).

Another possibility is that interaction designers might, by drawing on the work of multiple disciplines, develop design-oriented theories that are targeted at particular areas of interaction design. Such design theories would span several lenses, but by virtue of being targeted at a particular design domain, would retain some simplicity. For example, over the last several years, my colleagues and I have been developing the construct of social translucence, which is a design approach to designing of systems that support human-human collaboration (Erickson & Kellogg, 2003). Similarly, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (2004), have made an impressive attempt to develop a theory of game design, drawing from a wide range of disciplines.

A third possibility is that a more radical form of simplification is needed: elsewhere I've proposed that adapting the notion of pattern languages from architecture (Alexander et al., 1977) might provide a way of creating a lingua franca for interaction design (Erickson, 2000a, 2000b) that would foster communication amongst the diverse constituencies which make it up.

Concluding Remarks

I began this essay by objecting to the synthetic program of trying to create a unified and coherent foundation for interaction design. Rather than an organized field with the shared values necessary for such a project, interaction design feels much closer to a confederation of nomadic tribes who occasionally come together. Instead of joining together to construct foundations, we would be better advised to procede syncretically by sharing our tools--i.e. theories, concepts and techniques--and trying to apply them in our own territories. When we encounter one another again, by virtue of our attempts to use some of the same tools for different ends, we'll have a bit more common ground, and a new set of experiences to share.

References

Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., Jacobson, M., Fiksdahl-King, I., & Angel, S. A. (1977).  A pattern language. New York: Oxford University Press.

Banerjee, T. & Southworth, M. (Eds.). (1990). City sense and city design: Writings and projects of Kevin Lynch. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Erickson, T. (2000a). Towards a pattern language for interaction design. In P. Luff, J. Hindmarsh & C. Heath (Eds.), Workplace studies: Recovering work practice and informing systems design (pp. 252Á261). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Erickson, T. (2000b). Lingua francas for design: Sacred places and pattern languages. In D. Boyarski & W. A. Kellogg (Eds.), Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (pp. 357Á368). New York: ACM Press.

Erickson, T. & Kellogg, W. A. (2003). Social translucence: Using minimalist visualizations of social activity to support collective interaction. In K. H‡‡k, D. Benyon, & A. Munro (Eds.), Designing information spaces: The social navigation approach (pp. 17Á42). London: Springer-Verlag.

Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organization of gatherings. New York: Macmillan.

Hall, E. T. (1983). The dance of life: The other dimensions of time. New York: Anchor Books.

Heath, C. & Luff, P. (2000). Technology in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Jacobs J. (1961). The death and life of great American cities. New York: Random House.

Kendon, A. (1990). Conducting interaction: Patterns of behavior in focused encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Latour, B. (1992). Where are the missing masses: The sociology of a few mundane objects. In W. E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology / building society: Studies in sociotechnical change (pp. 225Á258). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Norman, D. A. (1986). Cognitive engineering. In D. A. Norman and S. W. Draper (Eds.), User centered system design: New perspectives on human-computer interaction (pp. 31Á61). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Norman, D. A. (1993). Things that make us smart: Defending human attributes in the age of the machine. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Sudnow, D. (2001). Ways of the hand: A rewritten account. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Whyte, W. H.  (1988). City: Return to the center. New York: Anchor Books.

Biography

Thomas Erickson practices interaction design and research at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center in New York, to whence he telecommutes from his home in Minneapolis. His current work involves studying and designing systems for supporting computer mediated communication (CMC) in groups and organizations, and his principle aim is to create systems that can mesh with the social processes that govern our daily communication practices. Erickson's approach to systems design is shaped by methods developed in HCI, and theories and representational techniques drawn from architecture and urban design. His theoretical and analytical approaches are drawn primarily from rhetoric and sociology. In addition to CMC, research interests include virtual communities, pattern languages, genre theory and interaction design. Over the last two decades Erickson has published about fifty refereed papers, and has been involved in the design of over a dozen systems ranging from advanced research prototypes to commercial products). Prior to joining IBM Research in 1997, he spent nine years at Apple Research, five years at startup called Software Products International, and before that five years studying Cognitive Psychology at University California, San Diego

Fundamentos do Design de Interação

de David Malouf em 23 de Agosto de 2007

artigo original traduzido por Gonçalo B Ferraz

 

De certa forma, produtos, serviços, e sistemas precisam responder à estímulos criados pelos seres humanos. Essas respostas precisam ser significativas, claras e, de várias maneiras, estimular respostas persuasivas e semi-previsíveis. Elas precisam ter um comportamento.

Somehow, products, services, and systems need to respond to stimuli created by human beings. Those responses need to be meaningful, clearly communicated, and, in many ways, provoke a persuasive and semi-predictable response. They need to behave.

 

Esta definição básica do Design de Interação (DxI) ilustra a linha de raciocínio das definições dos estimados designers Dan Saffer e Robert Reimann bem como da Associação de Design de Interação. É importante notar também que o Design de Interação é diferente das outras disciplinas de design. Não é Arquitetura de Informação, nem Desenho Industrial, nem Design da Experiência do Usuário (UX). Também não é Design de Interface do Usuário. Design de Interação não é sobre a forma ou a estrutura; é mais efêmero: é mais sobre "por que" e "quando" do que "o que" e "como".

This basic definition of Interaction Design (IxD) illustrates the common threads between definitions crafted by esteemed designers Dan Saffer1 and Robert Reimann2 as well as the Interaction Design Association3.
It’s also important to note that Interaction Design is distinct from the other design disciplines. It’s not Information Architecture, Industrial Design, or even User Experience Design. It also isn’t user interface design. Interaction design is not about form or even structure, but is more ephemeral—about why and when rather than about what and how.

 

Para qualquer disciplina de design avançar é necessário que se tenha o que é conhecido como fundamentos ou elementos. A criação de tal semântica favorece:

For any design discipline to advance, it needs to form what are known as foundations or elements. The creation of such semantics encourages:

 

* a melhor comunicação entre interagentes
* a criação de um senso estético
* a melhores ferramentas educacionais
* a exploração

* better communication amongst peers
* creation of a sense of aesthetic
* better education tools
* exploration

 

Há outras razões mas, por agora, estas parecem o suficiente para uma discussão sobre fundamentos.
There are other reasons, but for now these seem sufficient for a discussion about foundations.

 

O que são Fundamentos?

What Are Foundations?

"Fundamentos" me chamaram a atenção, primeiramente, quando estava me preparando para o Mestrado em Desenho Industrial do Instituto Pratt no Brooklyn, Nova Iorque. O programa foi montado por Roweena Reed Kostellow baseado na sua filosofia educacional por fundamentos (como detalhado no livro Elements of Design de Gail Greet Hannah).

“Foundations” first came to my attention while preparing for Masters of Industrial Design program at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. The program was built by Roweena Reed Kostellow based on her educational philosophy of foundations (as detailed in the book Elements of Design by Gail Greet Hannah4).

 

Para Kostellow havia seis elementos fundamentais do Desenho Industrial: linha, luminância e cor, espaço, volume, espaço negativo, e textura. Misturar e experimentar estes elementos era o coração do projeto na disciplina de formas 3D. Os estudantes do Pratt exploravam estes fundamentos durante um ano em sala. Eles exploravam limites e discutiam relações enquanto criticavam projetos abstratos e reais.

To Kostellow there were six elements that made up the foundations of Industrial Design: line, luminance & color, space, volume, negative space, and texture. Mixing and experimenting with these was at the heart of designing in the 3D form discipline. Students at Pratt explored these foundations in a year’s worth of studio classes. They would press boundaries and discuss relationships while critiquing abstract and real projects.

 

Eu não sou a única pessoa que pensou sobre esse assunto porém eu proponho que pensemos de maneira diferente. O Dan Saffer, por exemplo, no seu livro Designing for Interactions, tem um capítulo ótimo no qual ele nomeia os Elementos do Design de Interação: Tempo, Movimento, Espaço, Aparência, e Textura e Som. Os elementos, segundo Dan, concentram-se no que eu chamaria de formas que carregam interações, mas, para mim, eles não são a forma de uma interação, talvez com exceção do Tempo.

I’m not the only person ever to think about this issue though I propose that we think about it differently. Dan Saffer, for example, in his book, “Designing for Interactions”[5] has a great chapter on what he calls the Elements of Interaction Design: Time, Motion, Space, Appearance, and Texture & Sound. Dan’s elements concentrate on what I would call the forms that carry interactions, but to me they are not the form of an interaction, except maybe time.

 

Se há, de fato, fundamentos do Design de Interação, eles precisam ser completamente externos à forma e, então, não possuir qualquer atributo físico.
If there are indeed foundations of Interaction Design, they need to be abstracted from form completely and thus not have physical attributes at all.

 

************** um minuto pro comercial ************

 

Foundations of Interaction Design

 

Time

“Time” makes interaction design different from the other disciplines of user experience (UX). It is the wrapper of our experience of an interaction and must live over time.

But Time is not a single foundation in Interaction Design. There are too many interrelated facets of time to be manipulated. And as we all learned Time is relative; it is fungible; and exists on many axis all at the same moment. Let us consider three time related foundations of Interaction Design:

 

Pace

Interaction design is the creation of a narrative—one that changes with each individual experience with it, but still within constraints. For example, if I’m using an email client, I’m not going to turn on a stove burner during the process of writing an email.

Narratives have pacing. We experience that most clearly when we watch a movie. A great movie will have you coming out of a theater having never looked at your watch. Pace is also a part of interaction design, but in some cases a good experience may have you looking at your watch—hopefully not out of boredom, but because you need to know the current time so you can complete the goals of the interaction.

The way I think of pace in interaction design often correlates to how much can I do with any given moment. And not just how much can I do, but how much I have to do before moving to the next moment. For example, I can have a single really long form where all of my checkout information is presented in one presentation when I’m buying something, or I can separate different components of the checkout process into more discreet moments.

While it might take the same length of time to complete either experience because the number of form fields is the same, the experience of the pacing of these designs is quite different. Further, it has been argued that one long form is more efficient, and conversely that separating a form into chunks is more manageable. Maybe that means that the total positive experience needs to consider other things beyond efficiency for its own sake.

 

Reaction

A simpler way that we design for time in interaction design is “reaction time.” How long does it take for the system to produce a reaction to an event? We’ve all seen our cursor change to an hourglass or the proverbial progress bars as we wait for the system to do what we asked, but there are other reaction time considerations.
Actions done in real time (synchronous) have a level of relationship to the moment, while actions that seem to happen in a black box and come back later (asynchronous) lack that relationship. However, because some systems take time, we need to be cognizant of how we communicate these different types of reactions.

 

Context

Every major foundation element like time should probably have a “context” sub-element. What this means is that there is always something about the human being in the interaction that would change the course of the design itself. In the case of “time,” we cannot design any application without understanding and exploring the meaning of how much time a human will be spending in direct contact with the system.

How much time we spend with an application and how long we are in relationship to it inform our designs and also participate in the experience we create.

Alan Cooper & Robert Reimann in About Face 2.06 speak about the context of time as the concept of “posture.” There are four postures:


* Sovereign – an application that takes our full attention.
* Transient – applications in the periphery of our attention that call us for short moments.
* Daemonic – alerting systems
* Parasitic – support interaction mode for both sovereign and transient applications.

Metaphor

Metaphor is a literary device which uses one well-understood object or concept to represent with qualification another concept which would be much more difficult to explain otherwise. The virtual nature of computers requires that we bring tangible metaphors to bear to help people understand the vagueness of it all. What type and how many metaphors we use directly impact the quality and emotional connection we have for a product.

A favorite metaphor is the trash can or recycle-bin (pick your OS). The idea your files are in waiting in some virtual “bin” or “can” so that if you were mistaken you can dig through the trash(Ick!) and recover them is ingenious. Of course, you can always “empty” it, making whatever was inside irrecoverable. The metaphor works well for most people mainly because of its preciseness and flexibility with the real. In thinking about the qualities of the metaphors for a bin/can between Mac OS and Windows, one might wonder if the nature of a trash can’s “dirtiness” makes it less likely that we will dig files out than recover files from the recycle-bin.

All metaphors break down at some point; where these metaphors break is how we get things into them. We still use the term “delete” to express how we add something to that bin or can. We don’t delete things into our real trash cans, do we? Despite the break down of the metaphor (and every computer metaphor does break down at some point), it still is tangible enough for us to grasp.

But sometimes metaphors go too far. They require a chasm wider than our ability to imagination. The literal desktop seems to make sense and has been tried in the past. If I have a blotter, a file cabinet, an inbox, a calendar, etc. laid out quite beautifully on my screen, I can call my objects files, use a notepad, keep my messages in an inbox, and keep appointments on a calendar, right?

But metaphors appear to succeed best when they are imprecise and the user has to fill in the gaps from their own understanding. Thus, we have an adaptation of that desktop metaphor on our computers today.
The interaction designer needs to strike this balance, cautiously using the metaphors of their predecessors and building on top of them, so long as the original (maybe convention-setting) metaphor can withstand the new direction.

 

Abstraction

Working in tandem with metaphor, Abstraction relates more to the physical and mental activity that is necessary for an interaction to take place. I first started thinking about abstraction after reading an article by Jonas Lowgren7 on what he has termed “Pliability.” After reading the article and using the term a few times in talks and discussions, it occurred to me that Jonas was really speaking about how abstracted an interface is from the response of the product.

By most accounts almost everything on a PC is pretty abstracted because you have two primary interface points for input—mouse and keyboard. Some people have placed their monitor inside of some sort of touch device lowering the level of abstraction for some types of interactions, mainly drawing. Still, most of us type, point, click, and move the mouse around on the screen.

Let us focus on “mousing”. We are looking at a monitor where there is a cursor (an icon) we were taught is related to the mouse. Without looking at that mouse (usually) we move it and in whatever direction we move the mouse, the icon on the screen (usually an arrow) moves. Well, sorta. Right and left seem to work, but moving a mouse away from us moves the cursor up and moving it towards us moves the cursor down playing on the metaphor of perspective possibly.

Then when we get the icon over a target, we click a button on the mouse. This is a strong level of abstraction. The mouse, monitor, and CPU work in unison to create a series of effects that communicate to the connection between the three devices. But the connection is very very abstract and must be learned.

Even in moused behaviors there are different levels of abstraction as well. My favorite comparison is between Google Maps and MapQuest. What makes Google Maps a success is that by mousing down and moving my arm I can change the focused area of the map. It has a very quick reaction time (see above), but the type of motion—moving my arm as if moving a piece of paper in my focused line of sight—is much less abstracted than in MapQuest, which is to simply click on the border or on the map (assuming the correct mode is set). Now one might say that the click is easier (a less complex set of behaviors), but this is more abstracted, arguably less engaging, and definitely less accurate. This makes Google Maps (and copycats) a much more pleasing and effective interaction.

Systems are both becoming highly complex and highly integrated into our lives. Many systems are losing abstraction completely, and not always for the better, while complexity is increasing abstraction of information. This is why everyone is so fascinated with touch-screens of late. They quickly reduce the level of abstraction for interacting with a computer device.

Other new and popular technologies will create challenges for the next wave of interact designers.. The expanding world of spatial gestures, RFID, and other near-field communications technologies create interaction experiences basically increase abstraction without any device to interface with directly. For these, we have not found similarly effective metaphors to guide the user’s understanding of the abstraction as we have for the mouse.

 

Negative space

All good design disciplines have a form of negative space. In Architecture and Industrial Design, it is the hollowness or the space between solids. In Graphic Design, it is “white space” what is left without color, line, or form—literally the white part of the paper to be printed on. Sound design uses silence, and lighting design looks at darkness.

So what is the negative of interaction?

There are many places where you can “lack” something, or, more accurately, there are many layers. Are we only talking about the product action? What about our action? What about the space in between either entity’s action?

Pause – So clearly a moment in time where no action is taking place by anything that is part of the interaction experience. Often in interaction design we try to fill these gaps, but maybe these gaps are useful.

Cessation of thought – What if doing nothing created a reaction from the system? Well, one student thought this up with BrainBall (http://w3.tii.se/en/index.asp?page=more&id=4) at Sweden’s Interaction Institute (http://w3.tii.se/en/). As you think less, the ball moves more.

Inactivity – Doing nothing, or the product doing nothing in reaction to an action may be a negative occurrence. This differs from pause, but in this case inactivity is the reaction to activity as opposed to just a cessation of activity.

Well, whatever the negative space of interaction design is, it isn’t.

 

Intersection in Interaction

Unlike form-creating design disciplines, interaction design is very intricate in that it requires other design disciplines in order to communicate its whole. For that reason, interaction design is more akin to choreography8 or film making than music or costume making. The foundational elements above only belong to interaction design, or are re-defined to be explicitly for interaction design.

For example, the use of color is an aesthetic tool and a functional tool that can enhance or detract from communication of core interaction styles. Language or semiotics as tools for communicating through another discipline called narrative or story telling also come together and make for a better interaction experience. Further, for many experiences, information architecture is required for the preparation and arrangement of information before the interaction can be created.

As Dan Saffer points out (see above), motion, sound, appearance, texture, and sound all make up the form and are used to create patterns of time, abstraction and metaphor.

It is the interaction designer’s attempt to manipulate these four foundations that separates the practice from industrial design, architecture, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, information architecture, and communication design.

In the end, interaction design is the choreography and orchestration of these form-based design disciplines to create that holistic narrative between human(s) and the products and systems around us.

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Human Computer Interaction in Science Fiction Movies

Autor: Michael Schmitz
Link original: http://w5.cs.uni-sb.de/~butz/teaching/ie-ss03/papers/HCIinSF/
Tradução: YASODARA CÓRDOVA
e-mail : yasodara.cordova@gmail.com
msn: yaso@pop.com.br

Abstract

Science Fiction movies have been a source for speculation about the future of technology and human computer interaction. This paper presents a survey of different kinds of interaction designs in movies during the past decades and relates the techniques of the films to existing technologies and prototypes where possible. The interactions will be categorized with respect to their domain of real-life applications and also evaluated in regard to results of current research in human computer interaction.

1. Introduction

As one can conclude from the term science-fiction movie, these films have a background of an advanced, fictional technology that is normally set in the future. Most of these movies have in common that they expose their own vision of the future, with new technologies commonly being the most noticeable change in these hypothetical worlds. Besides visions about all kinds of scientific areas, the given context of this work concentrates particularly on computer interfaces.

As a part of the seminar "Intelligent Spaces" approaches of mainstream science fiction motion pictures are extracted and analysed regarding their references in real-life human computer interaction (HCI) designs. Similarities to ongoing researches will be outlined - especially to those, which are presented by other talks of this seminar that have already taken place. To be able to draw comparisons to reality it is often necessary to view the ideas and visions of a movie on a relatively abstract level.
At first some key factors that determine or influence the design of HCI in movies will be discussed. Starting from this viewpoint numerous examples from selected movies will be observed. Due to the limitation of the material that was at hand, we cannot claim to provide a complete overview of all movies, but the available selection should suffice and allow a representative inspection of the movie scene.
We will start with a review of movies that do not show any concepts at all or merely adapt common everyday techniques of that time. The second and main part introduces visionary interaction design, divided into different areas of interaction technologies, followed by a brief view at a couple of satiric movie scenes and the conclusions of this work in the end.

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2. Factors that influence interaction design in movies

Before we observe the selected cut-outs, we will examine in short the key factors that contribute to the resulting interaction techniques. We should keep those in mind for later evaluation in order to have a better understanding of the (esp. historical) context of a movie.

The probably most important aspect is the availability of special effects technologies - including the budget of a production to use those. Some movies that will be shown are made at a time where digital editing was not yet existent, whereas other recent motion pictures (e.g. Star Wars Episode II) don’t even contain a single scene without computerized backgrounds or animations. Moreover the commercial success of the movie industry increased a lot during the past 10 years, such that higher budgets became more and more feasible.
Current trends in IT research and products have of course as well an impact on the movie, since this will probably be the director’s background where his ideas will evolve from. That’s where the directors (or his advisors) creativity comes into place. Given that technical realisations of technologies in movies don’t have to be explained or justified, the director benefits from an almost unlimited degree of freedom - compared to researchers or designers of the ‘real’ world.
We also have to consider the importance of the interaction technique or the device itself for the movie as a whole. The technology could be totally unimportant or play an important role for the plot (so called “plot device”), but most of the times technology is found inbetween and has to support the overall authenticity of the vision of a future world.

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3. Movies without concepts

In this section we will review a couple of movies in chronological order that lack any concepts of HCI or that just adapted common technology of that time without new ideas beyond them.
“Metropolis” being the oldest science-fiction movie is a silent film from 1927 created by Fritz Lang in Germany and became a classic piece, which influences movies and music videos throughout the decades that followed. The written dialogues are shown between the scenes, while a piano that plays during performances in public cinemas is the only thing that you will hear. It tells a story about a magnificent futuristic city, which is maintained by workers enslaved underground.
As at this time the digital age hasn’t begun in no aspect, as well the vision of the future in this movie appears very mechanical.

 

The selected scene shows a worker that operates a device by adjusting huge levers on a clock-like machine whenever a light flashes up, indicating the direction to which the lever has to show. The conceptual fault here is that the controls of the machine are exactly the opposite of a human-centered design, since user has to work for the device to make it run.
“Raumschiff Orion” from 1966 is a german TV Series that was very popular (audience rating of 41%) and still is now: a re-edited movie-length version will be out on alternative cinemas in Germany by the end of this month. The 7 episodes were produced during 6 weeks, such that it had to be improvised a lot, which also shows in the design of the spaceships controls. You can see faucets installed as levers or even a flat iron, which became one of the most remembered feature of this series.

Another scene shows an engineer programming the on-board computer: He is holding a punch card in one hand and typing on a small keyboard with the other hand.

 

Punch-cards were still used at that time for computer in- and output, which explains the appearance of it, but using them by reading and typing in what is encoded or “written” on them is even a step back from the original intended usage.
Two scenes from “Battlestar Galactica” are chosen as examples for a science fiction movie that simply adapted common interfaces of that time. You see the starfighter controls that consists of a joystick and the motherships interiors that show tv screens, phones and a keyboard built into the desk.

A more recent example is “Password Swordfish” from 2001, where a professional hacker is hired by a terrorist organisation to do some jobs for them. A programming environment was prepared, which consists of 6 flatscreen monitors of common size put together and probably supposed to be used as an enhanced display.

 

 

The actual programming of the virus takes place with a graphical 3D interface.

As the whole movie primarily intends to achieve a fancy and cool look, also the technical area exposes a very superficial attitude without attempts to develop an underlying concept.

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4. Visionary movies

In this section we will discuss movies that had their own ideas and visions of human computer interaction or at least used technologies that were not more than prototypes so far.
It can be observed that there are at least two general ways to approach interactions: Some have a clean, idealised design that looks very smooth and error free whereas others introduce flaws and drawbacks to add realism.
The movie clips of this chapter are categorized according to their area of real-life applications and research:
4.1 “Neuro” Technology:
Technologies that connect to brains are introduced here.
4.2 Identification:
Electronical identification of individuals
4.3 Displays:
Various kinds of displays as an output medium
4.4 Speech:
This includes speech synthesis and recognition and also intelligent assistants / avatars as specialised subgroup.
4.5 other I/O technologies:
All technologies that are more specialised and that were difficult to categorize according to the fields above, for example gesture recognition or tangible user interfaces.

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4.1 Neuro technology

Although this field does not concern the HCI research community and it also doesn’t seem realistic from our point of view now, we wanted to include this part, since we still have interaction between humans and computers in a literal sense.
The first example is taken from “Johnny Mnemonic”, a cyberpunk movie with Keanu Reeves playing an agent whose specialty is delivering sensitive data using his brain as a storage device. The scene shows the transfer of the data over a wire that is connected by plugging it into a socket under his ear.

Strangely enough, he also wears a head-mounted display during this procedure.
In “The Matrix” Keanu Reeves again got a role where his brain is interfaced to connect to a computer. As with all other humans in the envisioned future of that movie a computer controls his consciousness by accessing his brain physically through the backside of his head.

He will get disconnected in the first scene and reconnects in the second one to be able to interact with the computer program, the so called matrix.

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4.2 Identification

Electronic identification is introduced in almost all cases in order to be exploited at a later time in the movie. Identification techniques are furthermore also used to track individuals during their everyday life, in such cases the privacy / security issues are the main aspects that the directors try to bring in into their work.
Five scenes are chosen to represent their technology:

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4.2.1
People in the “Logan’s Run” future live in a perfect, harmonic society, which only purpose is enjoyment. The drawback is that people have to be killed at an age of 30, which happens during a ceremony that everybody attends. To avoid panic or revolts among those who are supposed to die, everybody is told that they will be reborn instantly.

As shown in the clip, every child will get a diamond-like implant into their palm at the day of their birth, which allows to track and identify the person, display their life-stage by its colour.

4.2.2
“Gattaca” uses DNA analysis to identify individuals; a drop of blood is taken by a machine and analyzed directly by the same machine.

The choice of this identification technique most probably originates from the main theme of the movie, which is the genetic determination of human beings. Individuals are defined by their genetic patterns, which can be chosen by the parents to alter one ‘s fate. DNA analysis and identification was invented in 1985 and became a tool in crime fighting. A database is already maintained in some countries [1] and assuming that the costs can be reduced and the procedure of analysis speed up, this vision is not too far-fetched. But it is not necessary to take blood of the object, any part of the body would suffice any might be more convenient, for instance hairs or saliva.

4.2.3
Automated palm-print identification systems are already commercially available from several companies, most often used for crime fighting too. [2] Such a system is shown in “Bourne Identity”, where the main character has to access his safe in a Swiss bank.

You normally have to place your hand on a device that can scan your palm in high resolution, but in this film scene a common (possibly touch) screen was used to obtain the palm-print, giving an immediate visual response to the user. This scenario looks more sophisticated and high-tech with this extra feature, accepting the loss of realism, which is not too obvious at first sight anyway.

4.2.4
“Alien IV” uses a identification technique that is not being researched and probably never will, because it is very doubtful if sufficient physiological data can be extracted from its medium: The breath ID. Apparently the odor of a person’s breath is analyzed to grant or deny access to certain areas of the ship.

This idea seems to be an attempt of the director to find a new and unique element for his movie.

4.2.5
Another very popular biometric identification technology are the retinal and iris scan. Either the blood vessel patterns of the retina or the pattern of flecks on the iris can be used to uniquely identify individuals. The object doesn’t necessarily have to interact w