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

Cinco Princípios para o Design

Joshua Porter

Tecnologia Serve aos Humanos

Por muitas vezes as pessoas culpam-se pelas deficiências da tecnologia. Quando seus computadores falham, eles dizem "Eu devo ter feito algo estúpido". Se um site é mal concebido, eles dizem "Eu devo ser estúpido". "Eu não posso encontrá-lo ". Eles poderão até mesmo recorrer a um livro para iniciantes para saber como fazer.

Isto é horrível! As pessoas nunca deveriam sentir-se fracassadas quando usam tecnologia. Como consumidor, o usuário tem sempre razão. Se o software falha, é culpa do desenvolvedor do software.  Se alguém não consegue encontrar alguma coisa num site, a culpa é do webdesigner. Isto não significa que o desenvolvedor deva sentir vergonha... eles deveriam ver isto como uma oportunidade de aprender. A grande diferença entre bons e maus designers é como eles tratam com as pessoas que lutam contra seu design.

Tecnologia serve aos humanos. Os humanos não servem à tecnologia.

Design não é Arte

Arte é sobre expressão pessoal. É sobre a vida, as emoções, os pensamentos e idéias do artista. Importa muito pouco o que os observadores fazem, suas atividades não são necessárias, apenas a sua apreciação. A prática da arte não precisa deles. É uma atividade necessária para o artista, e o artista sozinho. and the artist alone.

Design, por outro lado, é usar. O designer precisa de alguém para usar (não só apreciar) o que eles criam. Design não serve o seu objetivo sem pessoas para utilizá-lo. Design ajuda a solucionar os problemas humanos. Os maiores elogios que podemos colocar em um design não é que ele é lindo, como fazemos na Arte, mas como é well-used (fácil de utilizar ou funcional).

Diferentemente de Arte, Design é sempre contextual. Isto importa quando um desenho foi criado por causa do contexto da sua utilização: qual o problema ele tem que resolver? E pra quem? Em que momento? É por isso que o design é tão relacionado com a concepção tecnológica, pois tecnologia muda tão rapidamente, baseada em nossos designs. Um design que foi desenvolvido há dez anos atrás não deve ser levado em consideraração hoje.A história é littered with (confusa com) designs maravilhosos que não são mais necessários.

Grande Arte, por outro lado, é sempre em grande estilo. Apreciamos Davi de Michelangelo's, embora pudéssemos recriar um milhão deles, porque foi a labuta e expressão de um único homem. Isso nunca vai se apagar. Grande Design é dependente da idade em que é feito e qual o problema que se destina a resolver.Mas não arte. Arte é atemporal.

O teste decisivo. Quando as pessoas apreciam a Arte, elas dizem "Eu gosto disso". Quando as pessoas apreciam Design, que dizem "Isso funciona bem". Isto não é por acaso. Bom Design é algo que funciona bem.

A experiência pertence ao usuário.

Os designers não criam experiências, eles criam artefatos para experimentar. Esta distinção sutil faz toda a diferença, uma vez que coloca o designer a serviço do usuário, e não o inverso. Isto não exclui a inovação, mas não impede um designer salte além  do que é aceito como estado-da-arte. Isso significa que a experiência de um design não acontece apenas porque o designer diz que faz, isso acontece quando um usuário realmente relata isso.

A derradeira experiência é algo que acontece nos usuários, e é deles. They own it (Eles apropriam-se dela)

fonte: http://bokardo.com/archives/five-principles-to-design-by/

tradução: Marcos Paulo Chelest

Fundamentos do Design de Interação

Artigo original (em inglês): Foundations of Interaction Design
Autor: Associação de Design de Interação (IxDA).
Tradução: Gonçalo B Ferraz e Rodrigo Gonzatto.

 

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:

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

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

• 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?

"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.

Fundamentos of Interaction Design

Tempo

"Tempo" faz o Design de Interação ser diferente das outras disciplinas de Experiência do Usuário (UX). É o embrulho [wrapper] de nossa experiência de uma interação e deve viver ao longo do tempo.

Mas Tempo não é o único fundamento no Design de Interação. Existem muitas facetas do tempo, interelacionadas, para serem manipuladas. E todos nós aprendemos que Tempo é relativo; é fungível [fungible]; e existe em muitos eixo todos no mesmo momento. Vamos considerar três fundamentos do esign de Interação relacionados com o Tempo:

“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:

Ritmo

Design de Interação é a criação de uma narrativa -- que muda com cada experiência individual com ela, mas mantém restrições. Por exemplo, se eu estou usando um cliente de e-mail, eu não estou indo ligar a boca de um fogão durante o processo de escrever um e-mail.

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.

Narrativa spossuem ritmo. Nós entendemos isso mais claramento quando assistimos a um filme. Um grande filme irá fazer você sair do cinema sem ter olhado para seu relógio. Ritmo também é parte do Design de Interação, mas em alguns casos uma boa experiência fará você olhar para seu relógio -- esperamos que não seja por tédio, mas porque você preciso saber a hora atual para completar os objetivos da interação.

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.

O modo como eu penso ritmo no design de interação muitas vezes está relacionado com o quanto eu posso fazer com cum dado momento. E não apenas quanto eu posso fazer, mas o quanto eu posso fazer depois de me mover para o próximo momento. Por exemplo, eu posso ter um único e extenso formulário onde todas minhas informações checadas [checkout] estão presentes em uma apresentação quando estou comprando algo, ou eu posso separar diferentes componentes do processo de chegagem em momentos mais discretos.

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.

Embora pode tomar o mesmo espaço de tempo para completar cada experiência por causa do número de campos do formulário ser o mesmo, a esperiência do ritmo desses designs é completamente diferente. Além do mais, foi argumentado que um formulário extenso é muito mais eficiente e, inversamente, que seprar formulários em pedaços é mais administrável.

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.

Reação

A maineira mais simples que nós projetamos para o tempo no design de interação é "tempo de reação". Quando tempo leva para que o sistema produza uma reação para um evento? Nós todos já vimos o cursor mudar para uma ampubleta ou uma proverbial [proverbial] barra de progresso enquanto esperamos que o sistema faça o que pedimos, mas não há outras consideramos para o tempo de reação.
Ações realizadas em tempo real (em sincronia) possuem um nível de relacionamento com o momento, enquanto ações que parecem acontecer em uma caixa preta e vindas algum tempo depois (sem sincronia) acaba com este relacionamento. De qualquer maneira, por alguns sistemas levarem tempo, nós temos de estar cientes do modo como comunicamos estes diferentes tipos de reações.

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.

 

Contexto

Todas as principais [major] elementos fundamentais como o time deveria provavelmente ter um sub-elemento "contexto".  O que isto significa é que sempre existe algo sobre o ser humano na interação que iria mudar o curso do próprio design. No caso do "tempo", nós não podemos projetar uma aplicação sem entender e explorar o significado de quanto tempo um humano irá gastar em contato direto com o sistema.

A quantidade de tempo que gastamos com uma aplicação e o quanto nós estamos em relacionamento com ela, informa aos nossos projetos e também participa na experiência que criamos.

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.

Metáfora

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.

Abstração

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.

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 [dot] cordova [em] gmail [dot] com
msn: yaso [em] pop [dot] com [dot] 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 with a device, it right now works up to a distance that depends on the used video system, but alignment of the eye is still required. [3] Such systems are now gaining acceptance in many areas, and in our imaginative future as described in “Minority Report” they will be installed on public places like subway stations, which would enable the systems owner to track basically everybody and build a history of his or her activities.

It is not required anymore that people would interact with a device, just passing by would suffice. This vision strongly addresses the privacy issue as mentioned above.

 

4.3 Displays

Displays have the advantage for moviemakers that they are inherently visual, in a sense that they are something you have to look at when you use it and hence the audience watching the movie will see it as well, whenever it is used. It is much easier to use and show new ideas for technologies like displays than for instance a new CPU.
“Total Recall” introduces an ambient display embedded in a wall that can be used as a regular screen (a TV here) when needed or just display a picture of a scenery and emerge with the users environment whenever it is not in use.

 

The display consists of 3 parts, which at first sight reminds of the DynaWall concept that is part of the i-Land project of the Fraunhofer-IPSI institute as introduced to us by Sohail Iqbal. [4] The DynaWall provides an interaction space for CSCW, so the similarity between this project and the screens in this movie scene are quite superficial and merely of a visual kind.
The next example is taken from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (STTNG), a TV Series that was launched in 1988. You will notice 3 kinds of devices/displays of different size throughout the series:
· The Tricorder, a small and handy device that looks very similar to a PDA, equipped with many sensors and used for outdoor analysis.
· A tablet PC that is used at the machine deck and sick bay: a very thin device, with the shape of a piece of paper
· Wall screens almost everywhere on a ship, used to display data for multiple users
The selected scene shows the usage of a tablet PC together with a wall screen at sick bay. The doctor seems to transfer data from the tablet PC that she is holding to the wall screen using a light pen.

The reality is probably that she is holding a piece of plastic together with a small flashlight.
At exactly the same time, a project about ubiquitous computing was started at Xerox Parc where devices were as well categorized into 3 kinds: The tabs, pads and boards. [5]

Tabs are very small and personal and can provide context information about the user that is wearing it. Pads are supposed to be a mixture of a sheet of paper and a laptop, lying around on tables and used spontaneously by any user. Boards are big screens on tables or at walls that especially support collaborative work. The coincidence that this project and the series started at the same time is quite surprising, but it is not clear if one has inspired the other one or if this is only a coincidence, since this classification of devices is quite intuitive and straightforward.
Another variation is taken from “The Matrix: Reloaded”, from a scene where the ship Nebuchadnezzar docked to Zion, the base of the humans. The operators of the base station’s terminal are surrounded by a transparent display with touch-screen and apparently using it by common drag and drop operations – the scene is unfortunately very short and details are unclear.

But you can see that additional information can be seen behind the actual screen layer. In this case, the approaching ship is visible, such that for instance its distance is extra information within the users peripheral perception, which can be obtained when necessary.
A different method to display 3D data is used in a cut-out of “X-Men”, where a mission briefing is conducted with a “physical” display on a big table.

The technology is not explained, the surface seems to consist of small metallic cubes that are formed to the shape of the displayed objects by raising them to the appropriate level. We have seen an approach to display 3 dimensional images physically in Tim Schwartz’s talk on “Table Top Spatially Augmented Reality” [6], where physical structures are augmented by projections.
Holographic displays are very popular among directors and occur frequently and some of them will be introduced here:
In “Forbidden Planet” from 1956 the so-called “thought analyzer”, a device inherited from the planets former inhabitants, displays a 3 dimensional image.

Personal Computers were certainly not yet commonly known at that time, so not even a single 2D display appears in that movie, simple indicator lights were used for computer output except this device.
Also “The Matrix” got one example for a holographic device, it is attached to the Nebuchadnezzar’s controls and displays monochrome but 3 dimensional images.

“Minority Report” shows a holographic projection that we have already seen in Amir Wasim’s introduction to the “Office of the Future” [7], it is interesting to see that they also included a flaw here with distortions at the edge of the images, particularly when you turn around the object.

Another short scene here shortly shows another holographic projection in a virtual reality chamber that can be rented for pleasure and relaxation.

Very similar is the Holo-Deck from STTNG, that is able to materialize substance, enabling you to interact with it.

This is a typical Star Trek technology with its perfect and idealized realisation, very impressive and visual but with a very simplified view on scientific explanations. The so-called Holo-Cube from the latest Star Trek Series “Star Trek Enterprise” underlines this characteristic: It is a small cube brought by a time traveller from year 3000 that is able to fill your surroundings with a projection. In this case in order to display connections of different time lines.

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4.4 Speech

Speech recognition and synthesis appears very frequently, especially for robots - in recent as well as in old movies. The advantage of speech is its intuitiveness for control commands and to perceive information. Besides that it is very easy to realize this for the director, no special effects are needed, just actors imitating the dialog with the computer. In almost all movies the speech interface is conversational and intuitive, the difficulties especially of speech recognition and evaluation are never considered.
The most popular example is probably the main computer of the USS Enterprise, the spaceship of STTNG. The computer handles all kind of requests and replies to all commands with an acoustic signal, to indicate the receipt of the request. MIT used this sound in their Intelligent Room project, when they designed the speech interface to the environment. Requests must be preceded by "Computer?" to which the computer will reply with that particular sound, such that a user knows that the system is in a state to receive and elaborate spoken commands. We've seen an example application in Ralf Jung's speech about this project.
The STTNG main computer serves in another episode as an indoor navigation system, leading Riker to his colleague Data. The system assists him in a multi-modal fashion with a spoken way description and additional arrows on his way.

 

Multi-modal navigation systems have been have researched by various institutes, like the PDA-based IRREAL project by DFKI [8], where resource adaptivity was the focus of research.
The first implicit artificial intelligence in a movie was the HAL9000 computer in Stanley Kubrick's classic "2001 - Space Odyssey". A computer that was in charge of a spaceship was sent out for exploration purposes, until some of the crew members noticed its abnormal behaviour. Two of them locked themselves in a small shuttle within the ships bay, such that they are acoustically isolated and able to discuss the situation without HAL9000's knowledge. But they were not aware that the computer still had visual contact, seeing their faces.

It could interpret their lip movements and understand their conversation, with the consequence that he started killing the crew one by one to prevent his shutdown.
The idea of computers and machines being aware of themselves was also picked up by John Carpenter in his low-budget production "Dark Star" and extended such that other parts of the ship also had their own identity. Here interacting with them was more like interacting with human colleagues. The selected scenes show the bomb on board of the ship, which was ordered to detonate after a specific time. Unfortunately a malfunction caused it to be stuck in its bay, but it refused to cancel the previous order to explode. One of the crewmembers tried to involve the bomb into a meta-physical dialogue to convince it not to follow these orders.

The last example of speech technology includes an intelligent assistant that serves as a library guide, taken from the 2002 remake of "Time Machine". The main character travels into the 22nd century and encounters this avatar on his search for more information about time travelling. Personal guides for museums or exhibitions are not new and exist as prototypes and also as commercial solutions. They are mostly PDA based and sometimes support kiosks - stationary machines with more resources from which the user can retrieve information of higher quality. The PEACH project by DFKI, an Italian research institute and the Eyeled company is one example for this work. Here it is also possible for the avatar to migrate from the PDA to a kiosk or the other way round [9]. In "Time Machine” multiple transparent, man-size displays are everywhere in the library, such that the computer character (the intelligent assistant) can follow and assist the user everywhere in the building. The avatar displays different kinds of (2D) information on the screens and also interacts with the environment that is visible through the displays.

So for the user in this case the environment becomes an augmented reality, overlaid by the avatar's reactions like pointing to a book.

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4.5 Other I/O technologies

More specialized I/O technologies will be discussed in this chapter. This includes virtual or augmented reality, gesture recognition or other multi-modal mechanisms that could not been assigned to any of the preceding categories.
A typical VR setup with a head-mounted display and data gloves is used in one scene of "Johnny Mnemonic". The agent played by Keanu Reeves is using it to retrieve information from the internet while he browses through an abstract 3D world, manipulating various objects to access sites.

 

Most of the interactions are not explained and obviously don't make much sense in this context, but one metaphor looks interesting that is when a new session is started by a gesture that looks like opening a book. Another scene from the same movie has gesture recognition for controlling the mimics of a computer animation. A green grid, which strongly reminds of the calibration image of a beamer, is projected onto the hand, indicating a visual recognition.

As implemented in the movie it wouldn't be possible to determine the hands movements using the alignment to the grid pattern, it wouldn't even make much sense to do so in this context. But for the scene it was necessary to show that the face is not the person itself, but just an animation that is controlled by someone else.
More motion tracking has been found in “Total Recall”, when the female main character practices her tennis serve with a holographic projection explaining and demonstrating the correct movements. She tried to imitate the virtual trainer and visual (projection blinks in red) and spoken feedback confirms matching movements.

This idea wouldn’t be difficult to realize, except that 3 dimensional images without head-mounted displays using air as the medium doesn’t work yet. But the users motions could be tracked efficiently by for instance embedding sensors that provide 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) into both wrist-belts or with a camera.
Our next sample techniques come from the British film version of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy” from 1981. The clip introduces the Babel-fish translator, which is a fish that will translate all languages such that you will be able to understand them, by plugging it into your ear.

Here the device/fish is actually supposed to contain all the technology, but for us it would be conceptually more interesting if the fish would be an object in an intelligent space, triggering a function of the system (a translation service) when it is placed into the ear. This would provide an intuitive usage, but it is another question if it is desirable at all to put anything into your ear when you want to activate it.
The concept of virtually overlaying everyday objects with functions is picked up by “The Matrix” too: When Neo was offered two pills, he could decide to stay in the matrix or leave it.

This means in the context of the matrix as a computer program that the pills represent a choice similar to buttons. The metaphor of swallowing a pill as a trigger does automatically raise the users attention to this choice due to the inhibition threshold of taking pills, which underlines the importance of the decision in this scene. The same idea of augmented everyday objects is further used with landline and mobile phones. Stationary phones can represent exit and entry points to the matrix and are used by picking up the phone receiver or putting it down.

Mobile phones are used for communication between people within the matrix and those outside. This approach has the advantage for the director that he can visualize communication between the two ‘worlds’ clearly and unambiguously for the audience without further explanation.
Our last part of this chapter is dedicated to Spielberg’s “Minority Report”, which is the most important movie for this topic. The production designer Alex McDowell, who was basically responsible for the ‘look’ of the production, started his work with a tour through MIT’s media lab, where he could see various demos about gesture recognition projects or the kitchen of the future, getting an impression on the state of current research in this field. His aim was that the audience will be able recognize the movie's future and relate to it, he wanted it to be a consumer-based society, very market-driven, that took today's technological trends to their logical conclusion. On this tour he had the opportunity to talk with John Underkoffler, a gesture expert who was then hired as a consultant for this film. Also Jaron Lanier, known to be the founder of the term “Virtual Reality” was hired, he was briefly introduced by Atif Altaf on his talk about Tele-Immersion. Together with other consultants a so-called ‘Think Tank’ was formed, where these researchers brainstormed and developed their ideas about the future in 2048. The result of these efforts can be seen in various techniques that occur in the movie and remind of ongoing or past projects from MIT or other institutes.
A typical tangible user interface (TUI) very similar to the Marble Answering Machine by Bishop that is now already 10 years old was used to represent offenders and victims to the system. Their names are engraved into wooden marbles, which then can be placed onto slots to achieve information about them.

The Marble Answering Machine is actually a common answering machine that is enhanced with a TUI that represents incoming messages. [10] Placing them to different slots will play the message or dial the callers number, Christian Schmitz mentioned it in his talk about “Tangible bits”.
The principle of a market-oriented future is primarily demonstrated by the immersive and personalized advertisements that the main character encounters during the movie: In one scene he steps out of the subway and different commercials welcome him by his name and compete for his attention. Identification is done by retinal scan at the subways exit as described before.

Another scene shows him entering a clothes shop and again he is recognized by an intelligent shopping assistant that asked if he is pleased with what he bought before. His shopping behavior was stored and used to make conclusions for further recommendations.

Such kind of personalized shopping guides do exist on several websites (for example amazon.com) that make similar suggestions to buyers when they enter their website according to shopping behaviors of customers that bought the same products. Identification is very easy, since you have to log in to process orders and also cookies can be stored for this task. In real-life identification is sometimes done via customer ID cards that are processed when the client pays, but not (yet) when they enter the shop.
The most apparent human computer interface in this movie is the transparent screen with the gesture interface that is used to browse through the memories or visions of the so-called Pre-Cogs.

The user wears gloves with 3 reflective fingertips to achieve 6 DOF of hand movements, which is used for some carefully designed gesture metaphors to manipulate data and its layout on the screen. Beside the usual drag and drop functions you can distinguish actions like cleaning the screen, which looks like a sweep with both hands emptying your desk. Or the zoom function, activated by holding both hands in front of you with their palm side facing to you, the left hand representing the object such that you can zoom in by approaching it with the other hand. One scene also integrates the flaw that the system does not always recognize if you try to interact with it or doing something else with your hands, it happened when someone else came in and wants to shake hands - this movement accidentally caused an object on the screen to be misplaced.

The transparency of the big screen is not only useful for the high-tech look but it also enables the director to show his actors when they operate the device, such that they actually have the chance to act during these scenes, which are very important parts of the plot.
You can also see in one scene how data about a person is transported from one screen to another by small glass tiles that look very similar to Jun Rekimoto’s DataTiles as seen in Rupali Mukherjee’s talk.

Persons are virtually connected to a data tile on one (small) screen and then it is physically taken to the main screen and connected there to use the data associated with it.
Another example of technology that is being researched is the liquid ink. Seen once with a newspaper that changes the displayed (animated and colored) articles and again when the box of cornflakes plays a multimedia clip on the box itself.

The box is shaken several times, obviously in order to turn the animation off. A comparable product at present is the e-ink device that is meant for e-book applications [11], This paper-like display is able to change its contents, which until now is only able to show black and white images.

<<

5. Satiric movie scenes

Some movie scenes that we found are not particularly important for this work but still worth to be presented here, because they reflect on interaction techniques in a satiric and very entertaining way. The first one is taken from “Start Trek IV” when Spock and Scotty are on earth and supposed to use a 20th century personal computer. Scotty tried to talk to it as he is used to do on the Enterprise and of course failed. He was then advised to use the mouse, which he did – assuming that it is used as a microphone.

 

The second scene is from “Galaxy Quest” a science-fiction parody in which a group of actors of a science-fiction series is abducted by an alien race that is watching the series and mistaking them for real heroes. A copy of the (fictional) starship is made and the ‘crew’ is forced to use it to help them. A difficult task for the actors, who only pretended to control the spaceship until then.

 

The third and last one is a short part of an episode of the cartoon series “Futurama”: The scene shows a group of people talking about a person called “Fry” and the computer listened and assisted by downloading a movie about this person and opening the owners calendar on Friday and ordering some french fries.

<<

6. Conclusions

We have seen that only more recent movies show attempts to design their HCI more carefully. Especially “Minority Report” was a major source of interesting material, because of its extensive scientific research and its thorough preparation. Others try to adapt technologies that were already available and improve them, but concepts of HCI research are normally not addressed. The main reason might be that HCI is still a relatively young research area and slowly becoming more popular during the past decade. Another reason could also be that human centred, pervasive or ubiquitous computing could look very inconspicuous, whereas high-tech in movies should preferably appear more spectacular.
Old movies sometimes inspired contemporary research, but mostly only in implementation details in order to acknowledge classic popular movies. More recent movies also have the advantage that special effects technology is continuously advancing and also the budgets of main stream productions such the possibilities of directors increase as well.
In most movies we could observe a tendency towards conversational speech as an interface and 3 dimensional displays that work without head-mounted devices. Both of it is relatively easy to realize by filmmakers and a straightforward improvement of current technology, not from a technical but from an imaginative point of view.
Identification technologies are also often made a topic of discussion, but with a much higher impact on sociological aspects than on interaction design.

<<

References:

[1] Nogala, Detlef: Der ‘genetische Fingerabdruck’ http://www.cilip.de/ausgabe/61/dna.htm

[2] http://www.printrakinternational.com/omnitrak.htm
http://www.necsolutions-am.com/idsolutions/products/palmprint_product.cfm

[3] Publications by John Daugman: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/jgd1000/

[4] The DynaWall: http://www.ipsi.fhg.de/ambiente/english/projekte/projekte/dynawall.html

[5] Ubiquitous computing, „tabs“, „pads“ and „boards“: http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/UbiHome.html

[6] Table-Top Spatially-Augmented Reality: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~raskar/Tabletop/

[7] The Office of the Future Project: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~raskar/Office/

[8] The IRREAL scenario: http://w5.cs.uni-sb.de/irreal/

[9] PEACH publications by M. Kruppa: http://w5.cs.uni-sb.de/~mkruppa/rp.html

[10] Marble Answering Machine mentioned in: Gillian Crampton Smith, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. I.D., May/June 1995, pp. 60-65

[11] E Ink corporation: http://www.eink.com

 

Movie References:

Metropolis (1927, Germany) directed by Fritz Lang

Raumschiff Orion (1966, West Germany) directed by Rolf Honold

Battlestar Galactica (1978, USA) created by Glen A. Larson

Password Swordfish (2001, USA) directed by D. Sena

Johnny Mnemonic (1995, USA/Canada) directed by Robert Longo

The Matrix (1999, USA) directed by the Wachowski Brothers

Logan’s Run (1976, USA) directed by Michael Anderson

Gattaca (1997, USA) directed by Andrew Niccol

Alien 4 (1997, USA) Jean-Perre Jeunet

The Bourne Identity (2002, USA/Germany) directed by Doug Liman

Minority Report (2002, USA) directed by Steven Spielberg

Total Recall (1990, USA) directed by Paul Verhoeven

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987, USA) created by Gene Roddenberry

The Matrix Reloaded (2003, USA) directed by the Wachowski Brothers

X-Men (2002, USA) directed by Brian Singer

Forbidden Planet (1956, USA) directed by Fred M. Wilcox

Star Trek Enterprise (2001, USA) created by Rick Berman

2001 – A Space Odyssey (1978, USA) directed by Stanley Kubrick

Dark Star (1974, USA) directed by John Carpenter

Time Machine (2002, USA) directed by Simon Wells

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981, UK) directed by Alan Bell

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986, USA) directed by Leonard Nimoy

Galaxy Quest (1999, USA) directed by Dean Parisot

Futurama (1999 – 2003) by Matt Groening

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Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful

 

Traduçaõ: | ANGÉLICA DE FÁTIMA |

e-mail (msn) : angelicafsjorge [em] gmail [dot] com

skype : angelik_bra

 

Design centrado ao usuário considerado prejudicial

Por Donald Norman

(...)

A versão final foi publicada em Interactions, 12.4 (Julho + Agosto, 2005). PP. 14-19.

Obs.: Por favor veja também o esclarecimento para esse artigo: HCD harmful? A Clarification.

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La macdonalización de las interfaces (1). Las reglas áureas de la página web: 80/20, Carlos Scolari

Autor: Carlos Scolari
Link original: http://www.modernclicks.net/intdsgn_scolari2.html
Tradução: Carlos André Gonçalves
e-mail/msn: cal_wd [em] hotmail [dot] com

"La macdonalización de las interfaces (1). Las reglas áureas de la página web: 80/20"
Carlos Scolari

En un artículo anterior ("Los Usos de Nielsen - Para una crítica de la ideología de la usabilidad") esbozamos una lectura crítica de la llamada "usabilidad". En este trabajo -el primero de una serie dedicada a este polifacético argumento- nos interesa profundizar esa crítica. Para poder desarrollarla desmontaremos algunos de los principios básicos de esta (pseudo?) disciplina científica y proyectual con el objetivo de evidenciar sus puntos débiles y reconocer las ventajas/límites de su aplicación a las interfaces del web. A modo de síntesis, podemos decir que con esta serie de artículos apuntamos a deconstruir un pensamiento proyectual hoy por hoy hegemónico en la comunidad de digital designers.

La usabilidad era hasta hace unos pocos años un concepto que circulaba sólo en los documentos y ponencias de los investigadores de la Human-Computer Interaction. En los años '90 el concepto abandonó los laboratorios y se instaló entre los proyectistas digitales. En poco tiempo la necesidad de construir "sitios usables" ha entrado con prepotencia en el imaginario de todos los web designers.

Qué se entiende por "usabilidad"? Por un lado, la usabilidad se presenta como una filosofía de la proyectación que se expresa en principios o "guidelines" que alientan un tipo de diseño centrado en el usuario y en la actividad que éste debe desarrollar frente a la pantalla interactiva ("user-centered design"). Por otro, la usabilidad delimita un campo de investigación -también conocido como "usability engineering"- desarrollado sobre todo a partir de los años '80 con el objetivo de estudiar las interfaces del software. En esa época proliferaron los trabajos donde, por ejemplo, se investigaba la usabilidad de los programas de word-processing o de los sistemas operativos.

En la década siguiente la difusión acelerada de la red digital -y las necesidades comunicativas de la new economy- hicieron que los investigadores extendieran sus análisis a la usabilidad de las interfaces de la web. En estos estudios de la web usability confluyen diferentes metodologías de trabajo, desde el análisis cuantitativo de la interacción (Cúanto tarda un usuario en encontrar un dato dentro de un sitio? Cuántas veces debe cliquear para obtener la información que busca?) hasta enfoques cualitativos más cercanos a la tradición sociológica o etnográfica (por ejemplo las entrevistas o los focus group).La relación contenidos/dispositivos de navegación

Pero sin dudas el punto fuerte de la usabilidad son los principios o "guidelines" elaborados a partir de esas investigaciones de laboratorio. En este artículo analizaremos uno de los primeros axiomas propuestos por Jakob Nielsen en su clásico "DESIGNING WEB USABILITY" (2000). Según Nielsen en una página web la relación espacial entre contenidos/dispositivos de navegación debería ser de 80/20. Dicho en otras palabras: los pulsantes, íconos y otros elementos interactivos no deberían superar el 20% de la superficie total de la página, dejando de esa manera el mayor espacio posible a los contenidos.

Ante todo debemos decir que el principio del 80/20, como muchos otros axiomas propuestos por los apóstoles de la usabilidad, dificilmente puede considerarse de validez universal. Su aplicación puede variar según la tipología del sitio. Por ejemplo la página de apertura de un portal dedica más del 80% de su superficie a los dispositivos de navegación. Obviamente Jakob Nielsen no puede dejar de reconocer que en ciertas circunstancias -por ejemplo en una home-page- la cantidad de espacio dedicado a los dispositivos de navegación pueden superar el 20 % de la superficie.

Sin embargo los límites de este principio proyectual se encuentran en su mismo origen. En este tipo de axioma surge con toda su fuerza la matriz original de las primeras investigaciones sobre la usabilidad: si bien en un software se puede identificar claramente un área de interacción (las barras de instrumentos, el menu superior, las paletas, etc.) y un área de contenidos (o zona de trabajo), en una página web esta distinción cada día se diluye un poco más. En la red digital la diferencia entre "dispositivos de navegación" y "contenido" tiende a desaparecer: por ejemplo en un buscador los "links" -o sea, los dispositivos que permiten la navegación hacia otros sitios- son el "contenido" del sitio.
Pero también en otras tipologías de sitios esta distinción tiende a diluirse: si en las primeras generaciones de páginas web las zonas dedicadas a la navegación y los contenidos (figurativos y textuales) estaban bastante bien definidas, el uso creciente de tecnologías de interacción avanzada -como Flash- permite crear contenidos interactivos que reenvían a otros contenidos interactivos. Los sitios más avanzados tienden a evitar los grandes bloques de texto (que pueden ser descargados directamente del servidor en formato PDF) y privilegian una experiencia multimedial donde las unidades (mínimas) de contenido forman parte del juego interactivo.

Esto no significa que el principio del 80/20 no sea de utilidad para el proyectista digital. Por ejemplo lo podemos aplicar con buenos resultados en los sitios "tradicionales", en los cuales prevalece una marcada distinción entre dispositivos de navegación/contenidos y la visualización de la información se acerca a la lógica de las publicaciones impresas que a las reglas del mundo digital. Un sitio con alto contenido comunicativo (como las versiones on-line de los diarios o las revistas digitales), donde el contenido se presenta bajo forma de grandes bloques textuales, debe reducir al mínimo los dispositivos gráficos de navegación en favor de la información. En éste y otros casos el principio del 80/20 puede ser de utilidad. Sin embargo, conviene repetirlo, la tendencia de la red está llevando hacia nuevas formas de visualización y organización de la información que tienden a diluir la diferencia entre "dispositivo de navegación" y "contenido".Las "divinas proporciones" de la página impresa

La referencia a las publicaciones impresas no fue casual. Entre los siglos XIV-XV, unos cuantos años antes de la invención de la imprenta, se desarrollaron en Europa nuevos modelos de compaginación de los libros manuscritos. Las nuevas formas de distribución del texto en la página -que a diferencia de los atiborrados códigos medievales privilegiaban los márgenes vacíos y una buena aireación de la página- fueron adoptadas por los primeros tipógrafos. Estos "principios áureos" basados en la "divina proporción" daban al impresor precisas indicaciones y fórmulas para calcular la relación entre texto/espacio blanco.

Los "principios áureos" se consolidaron en los siglos siguientes hasta transformarse en una regla estandard para la compaginación de los libros. Cinco siglos más tarde de su creación la producción de libros sigue respetando en gran medida estos principios. Sin embargo, cada vez que se trata de sorprender al lector o de proponer nuevas formas de visualizar la información, los gráficos violan los "principios áureos" para proponer nuevos códigos visuales. Muchas de estas violaciones a la "divina proporción" se han transformado a su vez en reglas establecidas y aceptadas por la comunidad de diseñadores gráficos.

Las páginas que componen la red digital no son ajenas a esta dinámica: los apóstoles de la usabilidad proponen un paquete de "principios áureos" para la proyectación digital que, en su opinión, deberían transformarse en las reglas estandard para la construcción de los sitios. La iniciativa merece todo nuestro respeto, pero no podemos dejar de señalar un hecho fundamental: si bien Internet ha quemado etapas en pocos años -en una década se pasó de las primitivas páginas con fondo gris a la explosión multimedial de las animaciones interactivas en Flash- nada hace pensar que esta evolución haya llegado a su fin. En este contexto: qué sentido tiene fijar reglas estrictas de composición en un medio todavía en plena ebullición? Para qué sirve establecer una precisa relación entre contenido/dispositivos de navegación que al día siguiente puede queda desplazada por la innovación tecnológica?

Los límites a la proyectación
La relación 80/20 entre contenido y dispositivos de navegación impone al diseñador una fuerte limitación proyectual. Este principio -una regla que, como todos los axiomas propuestos por los apóstoles de la usabilidad, apunta a estandarizar el universo digital- se suma a otros para constituir un programa de homogeneización de las interfaces digitales.

Repetimos una idea ya presentada en el artículo anterior: la red digital no es instrumento de producción (software) sino un ambiente de comunicación e interacción. Internet es usada cada vez más para comunicar, para jugar o para compartir con otros usuarios experiencias de tipo comunitario o estético. El estudio de la usabilidad de un sitio puede ser de utilidad en una primera fase de análisis, pero resulta evidente que, para entender realmente lo que pasa de frente a la pantalla interactiva, hay que apoyarse en otros modelos y teorías. De la misma manera, si reducimos la proyectación digital a la aplicación de una serie de principios homogeneizadores, el mundo de las interfaces sufrirá un proceso de progresiva macdonalización.

Por otro lado, si pensamos a la red digital como un ámbito de interacción donde es fundamental diferenciarse de los demás para ganar visibilidad, la violación de ciertas reglas se transforma en la principal herramienta en manos del proyectista.

O Cego Liderando Cegos

Autor: Andy Rutledge

Título original: The Blind Leading the Blind

Tradução por: Luis Felipe dos Santos, Frederick van Amstel, Gonçalo Ferraz e Rodrigo Gonzatto

 

Pattie Maes' talk at the recent TED Conference provides a chilling reminder of how careless people can be and how easy it is to mislead sheeple. I’m a huge fan of most of what I’ve seen come from TED, but Pattie’s presentation demonstrates a measure of irresponsibility, misrepresented facts, and shallow thinking seldom witnessed outside of a politician’s stump speech. In her TED talk Dr. Maes makes it very clear that computer scientists shouldn’t pretend to be actual scientists. In fact the “science” she represents here violates, um, science …and common sense, for that matter.

A palestra de Pattie Maes na Conferência TED fornece uma lembrete arrepiante do quão descuidadas as pessoas podem ser e como é fácil enganar ovelhas. Eu sou um grande fã da maioria do que vi do TED, mas a apresentação de Pattie demonstra uma tanto de irresponsabilidade, fatos mal interpretados, e um pensamento superficial raramente testemunhado fora de um discurso político. Na sua palestra do TED, a Dra. Maes deixa bem claro que os cientistas da computação não devem se considerar verdadeiros cientistas. De fato, a "ciência" que ela representa viola, hum, a ciência... e o senso-comum, no caso.

What is just as disappointing is the fact that this video presentation is being highly touted all over the web, especially within the design community. Dr. Maes’ presentation is being referred to as “brilliant” and “game-changing". ”This demonstrates that there are a lot of incredibly gullible and thoughtless people out there, eager to consume information without having once even slightly considered the contents. Either that or there are a lot of very stupid sheeple in our community. I prefer to think that it is laziness, not stupidity, which accounts for this.

O que é desapontante é o fato do vídeo desta apresentação estar atraindo uma grande atenção por toda a web, especialmente dentro da comunidade de Design. A apresentação da Dra. Maes vem sendo tratada como "brilhante" e "mudança de rumos". Isso demonstra que há muita gente inacreditavelmente crédula e pouco crítica aí afora, ávidas por consumir informação sem sequer ligeiramente considerar os conteúdos. Ou isso ou há muita maria-vai-com-as-outras burra em nossa comunidade. Eu prefiro pensar que isso se deve simplesmente à preguiça que à burrice.

It would be good at this point if you were to watch her presentation (if you’ve not already) before continuing with this article. There is much in her presentation that must be challenged, but one of my primary objections and perhaps her most glaring error comes in this passage early in her presentation:

Seria bom, neste ponto, que você assistisse à apresentação dela (se ainda não o fez) antes de continuar com este artigo. Muito do que ela apresenta deve ser contestado, mas uma de minhas principais objeções, e talvez seu erro mais notório, está na passagem logo no começo da apresentação:  

“… And so my research group at the Media Lab has been developing a series of inventions to give us access to this information in an easy way without requiring that the user changes any of their behavior.” 

"... E então meu grupo de pesquisa na Media Lab tem desenvolvido uma série de invenções que nos dá acesso a esta informação de maneira fácil, sem necessitar que o usuário modifique em nada seu comportamento".  

Unbelievable. Dr. Maes is either regrettably naïve, irresponsibly careless, or she’s deliberately trying to mislead her listeners. In fact, one could scarcely conceive of any greater change in behavior than what her technology imposes upon people in some of the contexts that she has presented here (and many others, besides).

Inacreditável. A Dra. Maes é lamentavelmente ingênua, irresponsávelmente descuidada, ou está deliberadamente tentando enganar seus ouvintes. Na verdade, alguém dificilmente conseguiria conceber uma mudança maior de comportamento do que a sua tecnologia impõe para as pessoas em alguns contextos por ela apresentados aqui (e muitos outros, aliás).

I am not suggesting that what she and her group are working on is entirely problematic, or that the technology is entirely corrupt or corrupting, or even that she is deliberately trying to misrepresent science. Much of this technology is quite fascinating, creative, useful, and could provide a springboard toward much innovation. Benefits aside, I take issue with much of how she suggests it should be used and with the erroneously expressed results and implied benefits found in those experiences.

Não estou sugerindo que o que ela e seu grupo estão pesquisando seja totalmente problemático, ou que esta tecnologia seja totalmente corrupta ou curruptora (?), ou ainda que ela esteja deliberadamente tentando deturpar a ciência. Muito desta tecnologia é fascinante, criativa, útil e poderia ser um trampolim para muita inovação. Benefícios a parte, o que eu questiono é como ele sugere que isto deveria ser usado e com os resultados e benefícios implícitos, errôneamente expressados, encontrados nessas esperiências. 

To put it plainly, some (but not all) of what she’s suggesting in her presentation is incredibly dehumanizing and crippling technology. It works to turn people into unthinking, unaware, disengaged beings relying on often contextually inappropriate data generated by unknown, unfathomable, often distracted and ill-intended people. She’s suggesting that it is somehow a societal advance to allow ourselves to be effectively blinded, to disengage our incredibly rich, deep, and complex sensory capabilities, and have our decision making based on remote, unaccountable data … and that this constitutes no change in our behavior.

Para ser direto, algo (mas não tudo) do que ela está sugerindo em sua apresentação é uma tecnologia incrivelmente desumanizante, que nos deixaria aleijados. Funciona transformando pessoas em seres desengajados, sem pensamento, sem noção, dependendo de dados contextuais frequentemente inadequados gerados por pessoas desconhecidas, distraídas ou até mesmo mal-intencionadas. Ela está sugerindo que é um avanço social permitir que nós mesmos sejamos efetivamente cegos, perdendo nossa incrivelmente rica, profunda e complexa habilidade sensorial, sendo obrigados a tomar decisões baseadas em dados remotos, irresponsáveis... e que isso não causaria nenhuma mudança em nosso comportamento.

Now for you designers reading this, let me make clear that all of what Dr. Maes is talking about and all of what I’m talking about hereis related strongly to design. In order to design for human beings you must know quite a lot about human beings; their general tendencies and capabilities, their physiology, psychology, sociology, as well as human history and evolution. You’ve got to understand human society and how it was built, why it was built …and how what we’ve built differs from or is similar to the rest of nature, and why.

Agora, para vocês, designers, que estão lendo isto, permitam-me deixar claro que tudo sobre o que a Dra. Maes está falando e tudo o que eu estou falando aqui é fortemente relacionado ao Design. Para projetar para seres humanos, você deve saber um bom tanto sobre seres humanos; suas tendências comuns e capacidades, sua fisilogia, psicologia, sociologia, bem como História e evolução da humanidade. Você precisa entender a sociedade humana e como ela foi construída, por que ela foi construída... e como aquilo que construímos difere ou é similar ao resto da natureza, e por quê.

My points here will dwell largely on the fact that Dr. Maes has apparently no grasp of these things yet she and her “research group” aim to design and recommend technology to us that ignores human capability and worksto corrupt vital components of the human experience. Some of her suggesteduses of this technology do not advance the human race, but retard andcripple it. This is a cautionary tale.

Minha questão aqui permanecerá, em grande parte, no fato de que aparentemente a Dra. Maes não compreendeu essas coisas mesmo que ela e seu "grupo de pesquisa" tenham como objetivo projetar e indicar-nos tecnologias que ignoram as capacidades humanas e trabalham corrompendo componentes vitais da experiência humana. Algumas de suas sugestões de uso dessa tecnologia não adiantam a raça humana, mas retardam e aleijam-na. Isto é um aviso de cuidado.

The mysterious and elusive 6th sense

O misterioso e ilusório 6o sentido 

Dr. Maes begins her presentation with this passage that might seem innocuous… if you are oblivious to the capabilities of human beings and how we acquire and process information about the world around us:

A Dra. Maes inicia sua apresentação com uma passagem que pode parecer inofensiva... se você esqueceu das capacidades dos seres humanos e como captamos e processamos informações do mundo ao nosso redor: 

“I’ve been intrigued by this question of whether we could evolve or develop a 6th sense; a sense that would give us seamless access and easy access to meta-information or information that may exist somewhere that may be relevant to help us make the right decision about whatever it is that we are coming across. And some of you may argue, ‘well, don’t today’s cell phones do that already?’ But I would say no”.  

"Eu ando intrigada com essa questão de se poderíamos evoluir ou desenvolver um 6o sentido; um sentido que nos desse acesso fácil e direto à metainformação ou à informações que talvez existam em algum lugar e que possam ser relevantes para que tomemos a decisão correta sobre algo que estejamos passando. Alguns de vocês poderiam questionar, "Bem, mas os celulares de hoje já não fazem isso?", mas eu diria que não.  

Wait, cell phones do that?? She goes on to talk about meeting someone, pointing out that you don’t typically stop to Google them on your phone before deciding how to interact with them. She also mentions standing in the grocery aisle, pointing out that we don’t typically in that situation go to a website for information on which of the toilet paper brands is the most ecologically friendly, to “…help us make optimal decisions about what to do next and what actions to take.”

Espere, celulares fazem o quê?? Ela segue adiante para falar sobre conhecer alguém, observando que você normalmente não pára para Googleá-los no seu telefone antes de decidir como interagir com esta pessoa. Ela também menciona que, num corredor de mercado, não costumamos acessar um site para buscar informação sobre qual papel higiênico é mais ecologicamente amigável, para "nos ajudar a tomar decisões ideais sobre o que fazer em seguida e quais ações tomar".

She makes these observations about what we don’t typically do in certainsituations with the suggestion that these behaviors are due to somevacancy in the information that is available to us; a suggestion thatis patently false. The reason we don’t start accessing digital devicesto help us to decide how to proceed in those situations is not because it’s too encumbering or impolite, but because most of us are not irretrievablystupid. Perhaps someone should point out to Dr. Maes that we alreadyhave this “6th sense” that she was wondering about earlier. And it’sfar more robust and trustworthy than her shallow and misguided technologicalplacebo. We human beings gain, interpret, evaluate, and act upon farmore than what our five senses would seem to grant us from sensoryinput, and that comes from the world around us when we pay attention to the world around us. We don’t need the Borg Collective to substitute for and direct our perception because we already possess what we need.

Ela faz estas observações sobre o que nós tipicamente fazemos em certas situações sugerindo que este comportamento é devido a um tipo de lacuna na informação que está disponível para nós; uma sugestão que é patentemente falsa. A razão porque nós não acessamos dispositivos digitais para ajudar-nos a decidir como proceder em tais situações não é por ser muito oneroso ou grosseiro, mas por que a maioria de nós não é irrecuperavelmente estúpido. Talvez alguém deveria dizer à Dra. Maes que já temos esse "sexto sentido" que ela estava pesquisando anteriormente, e é muito mais robusto e confiável do que seus placebos tecnológicos superficiais e desorientados. Nós seres humanos adquirimos, interpretamos, avaliamos e agimos sobre muito mais do que nossos cinco sentidos poderiam nos oferecer de estímulos e isto vem do mundo quando nós prestamos atenção ao mundo que está ao nosso redor. Nós não precisamos dessa consciência coletiva (Borg Collective) para substituir e direcionar nossa percepção por que já possuímos o que precisamos. 

Meeting someone is a very human experience and that experience is fed by an unfathomable volume of data from senses we inherently possess. What’s more, we’re very good at interpreting that data and making decisions based on our perceptions. Almost all of that decision making process is unconscious, based on what many might call our “gut feelings”. We’re analyzing pheromones, we’re monitoring skin color and texture changes,we’re taking into account eye motion and pupil condition, we’re examining almost imperceptible physical movements, facial expressions, body carriage,voice tone and timbre, and much, much more. We’re taking into accountthese very same clues from those around us in the context of the meeting.Yes, we know within seconds an incredibly large volume of facts abouta person we’ve just met, and this information is far more reliablethan what a “word cloud” (from the video) or anything like it can convey.

Encontrar alguém é uma experiência humana muito legítima e esta experiência é alimentada por um número inescrutável de dados pelos sentidos que nós inerentemente possuímos. Ainda mais, nós somos muito bons em interpretar estes dados e fazer decisões baseados em nossas percepções. Quase tudo que decidimos é inconsciente, baseado no que muitos poderiam chamar de "visceral". Estamos analisando feromônios, monitorando a cor da pele e mudanças de textura, estamos levando em consideração o movimento dos olhos e as condições da pupila, examinando movimentos físicos quase imperceptíveis, expressões faciais, linguagem corporal, tom de voz e timbre, e muito, muito mais. Estamos levando em consideração as mesmas evidências nas pessoas com quem nos encontramos. E, sim, nós sabemos, em segundos, um grande volume de fatos sobre aquela pessoa que acabamos de encontrar e esta informação é muito mais confiável do que uma "nuvem de palavras" (como no vídeo) ou qualquer coisa que ela possa comunicar. 

What’s more, I am not my word cloud and neither is anyone else his or her word cloud. Anyone relying or paying attention to this meta-information is missing the actually relevant information and his actual senses are disengaged by reliance on this technological “sensory” input. There is a real human being standing in front of you; this is not a virtual experience! Acting as suggested in Dr. Maes’ video is irresponsible and highly dangerous behavior. Where does someone’s word cloud come from? Do you know the people who generated it? Can you reliably trust those people? No, you don’t and you can’t. It is irresponsible to make decisions based on that data rather than actually relevant information that you already have the capacity to access.

E mais, eu não sou minha nuvem de etiquetas e nem ninguém mais é sua nuvem de etiquetas. Qualquer um que confie ou dê atenção à essas metainformações está perdendo as informações relevantes e seus sentidos estão à deriva pela dependência desse input "sensorial" tecnológico. Há um ser humano real na sua frente; isto não é uma experiência virtual! Atuar como é sugerido no vídeo da Dra. Maes é um comportamento irresponsável e muito perigoso. De onde vem a nuvem de etiquetas de alguém? Você conhece as pessoas que a geraram? Você pode confiar de verdade nessas pessoas? Não, você não confia e nem pode. É irresponsável fazer decisões baseando-se nesses dados e não nas informações relevantes que você tem capacidade de acessar.

Yes, this imposed data is not perceived in addition to our othersenses. In fact much of what civilization offers us or imposes upon us already works to interfere with our highly evolved and accurate senses when dealing with other humans, but her technology as used inthe contexts suggested by Dr. Maes would almost wholly circumvent our perception and divorce us from our senses. We would become, quite literally, senseless and nonsensical.

Sim, este dado imposto não é percebido em conjunto a nossos outros sentidos. Na verdade, muito do que a civilização nos oferece ou nos impõe já trabalha para interferir em nossos sentidos altamente precisos e evoluídos quando estamos lidando com outros humanos, mas sua tecnologia, como utilizada dentro dos contextos sugeridos pela Dra. Maes, poderia praticamente desaparecer com nossa percepção e nos divorciar de nossos sentidos. Nos tornaríamos, literalmente, insensíveis e desorientados.

It is simple fact that when presented with heavy-handed, contextually incongruent data our behavior, our motor function, our perceptions,our relevant skills, and our ability to reason breaks down momentarily to varying degrees. These are the systems and abilities that allow us to be high-functioning organisms and help to differentiate us from, say, cattle or self-obsessed 14-year-old girls.

É simples o fato de que quando nos são apresentados dados grosseiros, contextualmente incompatíveis, nosso comportamento, funções motoras, percepções, habilidades relevantes e nossa capacidade de raciocinar caem, momentaneamente, vários graus. Esses são os sistemas e capacidades que nos permitem ser organismos altamente funcionais e ajudam a nos diferenciar de, digamos, gado ou garotas auto-obsessivas de 14 anos.

For instance, most of us have the capacity to learn to be excellentautomobile drivers, despite the fact that driving a car is a ridiculously complex operation requiring continual multi-sensor input of a huge volume, information organization, interpretation, evaluation, complexchoices, and deliberate actions. Given a modest amount of time (a fewshort years), most of us can drive with almost psychic skills. We can tell when someone is going to change lanes even before they activate their turn-signal. We can quickly perceive a host of traffic situation sat once and unconsciously dismiss the non-threatening ones. We can monitor half a dozen other vehicles around us and respond instantly as, often before, one of them deviates from their predicted path. We can merge, we can negotiate narrow toll lanes at high speed, we can safely and surely turn while avoiding a ball rolling out into the street without spilling our coffee while yelling an admonishment to children on the side of the road. But, add a cell phone to the mix and all ofthis changes.

Por exemplo, muitos de nós têm a capacidade de aprender a ser exelentes motoristas, apesar do fato de que dirigir um automóvel é uma operação extremamente complexa que requer continuamente grandes volumes de inputs multi-sensoriais, organização da informação, interpretação, avaliação, decisões complexas e ações deliberadas. Depois de uma modesta quantidade de tempo (alguns poucos anos), a maioria de nós pode dirigir sem qualquer habilidade física. Podemos prever quando alguem irá trocar de faixa antes mesmo da pessoa acionar a seta do carro. Podemos perceber rapidamente uma série de situações de tráfego a primeira vista e inconscientemente rejeitar as que não forem arriscadas. Podemos monitorar meia dúzia de veículos ao nosso redor e reagir instantaneamente, geralmente antes, quando um deles sair do trajeto previsto. Podemos mesclar, dividir vias estreitas em alta velocidade, podemos desviar com segurança quando uma bola, se derrubar nosso café, enquanto proferimos "elogios" às crianças na calçada. Mas, adicione um celular à mistura e tudo isso muda.

With the addition of a cell phone—an incongruous instrument for feedingus incongruous data—our driving performance suffers in every conceivable way. In fact, when talking or listening on a cell phone while driving in a straight line with no traffic conditions, most people will continually move slightly out of and back into their own lane. We’re talking about trying to simply drive in a straight line here, folks. Add more significant traffic conditions and diminished performance is even more clearly demonstrated. This is just one example of how intrusions of data diminish our abilities.

Ao adicionarmos um telefone celular — um instrumento incompatível para nos alimentar com dados incompatíveis — nosso desempenho ao dirigir diminui em todos os aspectos imagináveis. De fato, ao falar ao celular enquanto se dirige em linha reta, sem problemas de tráfego, a maioria das pessoas irá sair levemente e voltar à sua faixa. Estamos falando sobre simplesmente tentar manter-se dirigindo em linha reta, meus amigos. Adicione problemas mais significativos de tráfego e a redução de desempenho será ainda mais evidente. Este é apenas um exemplo de como dados intrusivos podem diminuir nossas capacidades.

So when Dr. Maes suggests that if tangential, incongruous data is foist upon us (or sprayed upon their shirt, as her video shows) when meeting someone, the suggestion that this experience and our perception is somehow enhanced and that we’re better able to cope with the task of deciding how to proceed is both generally ludicrous and scientifically vacuous. She is irresponsible to make this suggestion and it rightly brings into question all of her other suggestions.

Assim, quando a Dra. Maes sugere que se dados periféricos ou incompatíveis nos são colocados (ou borrifados sobre a camiseta, como mostra o vídeo) quando encontramos alguém, a sugestão de que essa experiência e nossa percepção é, de alguma forma, aumentada e que seríamos mais hábeis em encarar a tarefa de decidir como proceder é tanto ridícula quanto cientificamente vazia. Ela é irresponsável em sugerir isso e põe em questão todas as suas outras sugestões.

As for things like how to choose the most ecologically respectful brand of toilet paper, this too is something that we already know. We don’t need this technology to help us. We know this because these sorts of concerns are driven by personal values, and we have personal values and we work to satisfy our life’s needs with respect to these values because our lives and reputations depend upon us fulfilling these sorts of responsibilities.

Quanto a coisas como escolher a marca de papel higiênico ecologicamente mais correta, também é algo que nós já sabemos. Não precisamos que a tecnologia nos ajude. Sabemos disso porque esse tipo de preocupação é dirigida por valores pessoais, e temos valores pessoais, e trabalhamos para satisfazer nossas necessidades considerando esses valores, porque nossas vidas e reputação dependem de cumprirmos esse tipo de responsabilidade.

Buying toilet paper (or any other consumable) is not something we might encounter once or twice in a lifetime, requiring information we’ve up-to-then neglected. Shopping for the things we need is something we likely do once or twice a month every month for our entire adult lives. If you’ve not been motivated to research brands to ensure you’re buying the right ones to suit your values by now, this information clearly has no place in your life. Here, Dr. Maes’ premise, and any other like it, is vacuous.

Comprar papel higiênico (ou qualquer outro produto) não é algo acontece uma ou duas vezes na vida, exigindo informações que temos negligenciado até o momento. Compras coisas que precisamos é algo que fazemos uma ou duas vezes por mês, a cada mês, por toda a vida adulta. Se até agora você não se motivou à pesquisar as marcas para garantir que comprará algo que atenda aos seus valores, essa informação obviamente não tem lugar na sua vida. Aqui, a premissa da Dra. Maes, e qualquer outra similar, é falsa.

In conclusion

Concluindo 

Disengagement from the world around us in favor of shallow, largely irrelevant “meta-information” does not make us more effective decisions makers. It makes us data drones; it weakens us in immeasurable ways and builds our dependency on an infinitely more flimsy and less-reliable informational source than that which we already possess.

Deslidar-se do mundo ao nosso redor em favor de "metainformações" superficiais e alta irrelevância não nos faz tomadores de decisões mais efetivos. Isso nos torna fantoches (drones) dos dados; nos enfrequece de maneiras imensuráveis e constrói nossa dependência em uma fonte infinitamente mais frágil e menos confiável do que aquela que já possuímos.

Now, I’m sure that it is not Dr. Maes’ intention to work to disenfranchise us from our powerful innate senses in an effort to weaken us, diminish our life experience, incapacitate us, and lead us into error. But intentions have no relevance in consequential matters and I’m not taking her to task for the quality of her intentions. Rather I’m bringing into question her judgment, her attention to detail, even her very qualifications. All are clearly suspect.

Agora, estou certo de que não é a intenção da Dra. Maes trabalhar para nos privar de nossos poderosos sentidos inatos para nos enfrequecer, diminuir nossas experiências de vida, nos incapacitar, e orientar-nos ao erro. Mas intenções não tem qualquer importância nas suas consequências, e eu não estou colocando suas intenções à prova. Mas coloco em questão seu julgamento, sua atenção aos detalhes, e mesmo suas qualificações. Tudo é claramente suspeito.

But mostly I’m suggesting that all of us would do well to actually consider what is presented to us. Look more deeply than the surface, work to see past the mesmerizing demonstrations. Look beyond the implied majesty of the lone figure illuminated on the dark stage. Hearpast the intelligent-sounding foreign accent. Do not be cowed by terms like “media lab” and “research group.” I ask that you not adopt the disengaged, senseless experience that Dr. Maes technology would have you assume. Take responsibility for your life and don’t be led down a path by someone you don’t know merely because they have “Dr.” as the prefix to their name.

Mas na maior parte estou sugerindo que todos nós faríamos bem em considerar o que realmente nos é apresentado. Olhe mais profundamente do que a superfície, procure ver além das demonstrações hipnotizantes. Olhe além da majestade implícita na figura solitária iluminada no palco escuro. Ouça além da inteligente sonoridade do sotaque estrangeiro. Não se deixe intimidar por termos como "Media Lab" e "grupo de pesquisa." Peço que você não adote a tecnologia alienante, de experiências sem sentido, que a Dra. Maes quer que você assuma. Assuma a responsabilidade por sua vida e não seja conduzido em um caminho por alguém que você não conhece, apenas porque eles têm o "Dr." como o prefixo do seu nome.

You already possess a capacity far greater than that which technology can offer you. Technology seldom offers enhancement of proximal, immediate sensory experience, as replacement is almost always the bargain. Be highly suspect of anyone who tells you otherwise. And if you don’t understand these things, educate yourself so that you do. It is no exaggeration to suggest that your life depends on it.

Você já possui uma capacidade muito maior do que a tecnologia pode lhe oferecer. A tecnologia raramente oferece melhora nas experiências sensoriais imediatas e proximais, como a troca é quase sempre a barganha. Suspeite demais de qualquer um que lhe diga o contrário. Se você não entende dessas coisas, eduque-se para entender. Não é exagero sugerir que sua vida depende disso.

 

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The Five Competencies of User Experience Design

Beatriz Palmeiro
biapalmeiro [em] gmail [dot] com 

The Five Competencies of User Experience Design

By Steve Psomas

Published: November 5, 2007

Throughout my career as a user experience designer, I have continually asked myself three questions:

• What should my deliverables be?
• Will my deliverables provide clarity to me and their audience?
• Where do my deliverables and other efforts fit within the spectrum of UX design?

I have found that, if I do not answer these questions prior to creating a deliverable, my churn rate increases and deadlines slip.

When attempting to answer the third question, I use a framework I discovered early in my career: The Five Competencies of User Experience Design. This framework comprises the competencies a UX professional or team requires. The following sections describe these five competencies, outline some questions each competency must answer, and show the groundwork and deliverables for which each competency is responsible.

Information Architecture

When wearing the information architect hat, your job is designing a user interface (UI) structure that satisfies the corporate business strategy, product strategy, and user experience strategy and accommodates all use cases and product requirements. Information architecture addresses questions such as:

• What are users’ primary goals, and how can they achieve them using the application?
• How do users get from place to place?
• What rules exist that users have to work around?
• How are product features and components branded?
• What is the optimal scope of the application’s feature set?
• How do the UI roadmap and product roadmap position the application in its vertical market?
• How should I enable users to create and store multiple objects?
• What is the application’s search mechanism?

Through laying the groundwork and producing the deliverables shown in the sidebar, information architecture provides the foundation for the other competencies.

Interaction Design

With increasing pressure to create rich user experiences, the interaction designer bears the greatest load and is responsible for conceptual design, which requires exposure to the latest UI patterns and components. In laying the groundwork for and producing the deliverables listed in the sidebar, the interaction designer dives deepest into the minutia of page elements, presentation, and page flow.

Questions the interaction designer must address include:

• What layout pattern would work best?
• Which features and information are of higher importance, and how do I draw users’ attention to them?
• How should I incorporate the user feedback I am getting from user research, user surveys, and formative and summative usability testing?
• What behaviors occur on dragging and dropping, on mouse over, and so on?
• How can I communicate the strengths of a feature or application?
• How can I satisfy users’ primary needs and support the tasks that let them achieve their goals?
• How can I draw on users’ intuition to get them to the next step?
• How can I ensure users are aware they’re performing a subtask that’s part of a greater task they’ve started?
• How can I use the UI components that are available to me—such as grids, tabs, and panels?
• How can I maintain consistency throughout the application?

The emergence of rich application experiences has increased the workload for interaction designers. What, in a traditional Web design process, we once specified as page-by-page state changes, we now achieve through a UI-component-by-UI component, multi-state specification often expressed as a matrix. At present, no single methodology that efficiently enables the documenting of rich application designs has emerged as the standard in the UX design community.

On the plus side, the focus of specifications has shifted. Remember when interaction designers had to specify a UI component, then give the specification to the engineers to go build it? Now designers can just pick a pre-built component that the engineers can configure.

Usability Engineering

At my company, I am the sole user experience designer, and I have observed that, when shifting into usability engineering, it is beneficial to completely remove myself from the other four competencies, for three reasons:

• Doing so immediately places me in the mindset of the user.
• It favorably affects my ability to maintain neutrality when conducting usability tests.
• It gives me perspective on design churn.

Shifting into a user mindset helps me both when laying the groundwork for usability testing and when creating the pre-test and post-test deliverables shown in the sidebar. It is essential when conducting usability test sessions, evaluating the findings of a usability test, and making design recommendations.

I’ve also observed that the moment my usability engineering hat comes off, I dive right into another design iteration, fueled by the abundance of newly gathered knowledge about usage patterns.

Visual Design

Visual design communicates your brand. That’s why everyone has an opinion about it. But it also communicates interactivity, information structures, workflows, and relationships between the elements and components on a screen, making it an essential aspect of UX design for applications—whether for the desktop, the Web, or mobile devices.

What people often overlook is that, for every type of user interface element the interaction designer specifies, the visual designer must design a widget or devise a corresponding style. And the visual designer must consistently apply these styles to every instance of each element throughout the application.

However, in this era of rich application frameworks, if the interaction designer has selected page elements from a reasonably stylish UI component library, the visual designer can concentrate more on branding and navigation.

Prototype Engineering

Prior to the advent of rich user experiences, it was unusual for an engineer—a coder—to be part of a UX team. In fact, product development and product management might have resisted an engineer’s working on the UX team, considering engineering and design mutually exclusive. But with new rich UI component libraries emerging weekly, and the separation of the UI, or presentation, layer from the application logic and database layers in the code, both UX and engineering see having a prototyper on the UX team as advantageous to the overall product team.

Ideally, an interaction designer and prototype engineer work closely together to deliver prototypes of concept models for testing by the usability engineer. The findings of usability test sessions determine the designer’s next course of action—either iterate the design of the feature based on test results or move on to the next feature.

Prototyping offers a huge opportunity for increasing process efficiency. When done well, it can alleviate uncertainty about design intentions, clarify functionality, and reduce the need for documentation. It also provides a working, though perhaps limited, representation of the application, so everyone on the product team can evaluate what’s working well in the user interface and where gaps or issues still exist.

Why Are These Five Competencies Important?

For a UX team, these five competencies can provide clarity about the domain of each team member. And if you, like me, are the only UX designer in your organization, they may be even more important. The following sections describe some ways you can put this UX design framework to use.

Framing Your Strengths and Weaknesses

“You can use this framework to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses as a UX professional and figure out where you can provide the most value on a UX team.”

You can use this framework to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses as a UX professional and figure out where you can provide the most value on a UX team.

For example, on a scale of 1-7, I’m pretty good at information architecture and usability engineering, so I’d rate both of these skills a 6. I’m about a 5 at interaction design, but we’re all still learning a tremendous amount about interaction design these days. I’m better than average at visual design, but don’t have formal training in it, so I’m about a 4. And I consider myself an expert at HTML/CSS and was once pretty good at JavaScript, but now I need higher-fidelity prototyping, so I’d put myself at a 4 as a prototype engineer. So, my greatest strengths are information architecture, usability testing, and interaction design.

How about you?

Characterizing and Prioritizing Your Workload

What exactly do others on your product team need from you? A mockup? A wireframe? An image? A spreadsheet? Each of these deliverables requires you to put one of these five UX hats on. When I know ahead of time what creating a deliverable requires, in terms of my analytical and creative effort, I can either devote myself fully to the task or, if necessary, change the task priority.

Scoping the Deliverables for Projects

“If you’ve defined a task well, you already have a good sense of how much effort and time it will take.”

Scoping is about letting others on your team know how long it might take for you to produce a deliverable. If you’ve defined a task well, you already have a good sense of how much effort and time it will take. For instance, if I am asked to wireframe a new feature, I know I’ll have to do some discovery first, which will require extra time. If my task is skinning a user interface module, as you saw from my strengths and weaknesses, I can do the visual design, but it might take me a bit longer to get it right than it would a visual design expert.

Establishing Dependencies

In completing an interaction design task, my decisions are usually rooted in some information architecture work I’ve already done. Or did I? If I didn’t, I’ll need to go back and do it. Likewise, when you’re going to take the time to prototype something, you want to be pretty sure about the interaction design first.

Hiring Resources

Knowing your team’s strengths and weaknesses as well as your design needs, where would it make sense to bring on a new hire? It wouldn’t hurt to have candidates rate themselves on the five competencies so you can assess how a candidate fits your needs.

Regaining Perspective

“Our industry is at a crossroads, scrambling to adjust to the demand for richness in Web applications.”

If you, like me, are deep into making design decisions day after day, you might at times become disoriented and need to realign your thinking about the appropriateness and purpose of the task at hand. It’s important that we come up for air once in a while, not only in the midst of creating our deliverables, but also when managing our time and our team’s expectations.

Our industry is at a crossroads, scrambling to adjust to the demand for richness in Web applications. Design principles, processes, tools, and resources are changing, too. So, now we need to clarify the value of UX design and the competencies it offers to the greater product development process.

A Interface Curiosa: Um Manifesto de Design em Favor do Brincar

Então você quer ser um designer de interação

por Robert Reimann
Fonte: http://tinyurl.com/32ajsd
Traduzido por: Filipe Torres
Revisão: Érico Fileno

Nós recebemos inúmeros e-mails de estudantes e profissionais de usabilidade perguntando como se tornar um designer de interação e qual a base necessária para quem deseja entrar na área. Quais são os melhores programas de design de interação? Quais as habilidades e a experiência necessárias no mercado? O quê, exatamente, faz um designer de interação no dia-a-dia?

Seguir carreira acadêmica

A primeira coisa a ter em mente é que o design de interação é uma disciplina nova que ainda em definição no ambiente acadêmico. Existem poucas instituições no mundo oferecendo cursos de graduação específicos em "design de interação", e mesmo que seus currículos partilhem semelhanças, de maneira alguma estão padronizados (o que pode muito bem ser uma boa coisa). A maioria destes e de outros cursos de graduação "relacionados a computadores", de "Interação homem-computador" ou "novos meios" surgem tanto das escolas de arte quanto de departamentos técnicos (freqüentemente os departamentos de arquitetura ou ciência da computação) em grandes instituições, e cada qual traz sua própria história, perspectiva e preconceitos em sua abordagem de ensino.

Não existe acordo na comunidade acadêmica (embora isto, felizmente, esteja começando a mudar) sobre quais elementos fundamentais um currículo de design de interação deve ter, ou qual a abordagem de ensino deste currículo. Escolas de arte tendem a abordar o design de interação como um meio de expressão ou marca pessoal ao invés de uma abordagem de soluções na definição de produtos e problemas de usabilidade; departamentos técnicos tendem a ensinar design de interação a partir da perspectiva da exploraração e implementação de tecnologias ao invés de descobrir e focar em propósitos humanos. Cursos que enfatizam técnicas de IHC tendem a concentrar em teoria cognitiva e pesquisas com usuários, com menos ênfase em métodos e práticas de design (ex.: o processo do design). Muitos cursos de design ainda focam nas ferramentas em vez dos métodos, mas isto também está mudando.

De que forma o design de interação é diferente?

É fácil entender a confusão, já que o design de interação, enquanto disciplina, apropria-se das teorias e das técnicas do design tradicional, psicologia e outras disciplinas técnicas. Ele é uma síntese, afinal — porém mais do que uma soma de todas estas partes, tem seus próprios métodos e práticas. É também, muito mais, uma técnica de design, com uma abordagem diferente das técnicas científica e de engenharia. Numa tentativa de esclarecer isto, ofereço as seguintes definições para design de interação.

Design de Interação é uma disciplina do design dedicada a:

• Definir o comportamento de ferramentas, ambientes e sistemas (ex.: produtos).

... e, conseqüentemente, interessada em:

• Definir a forma de produtos em relação à seu comportamento e uso;
• Antecipar como o uso de produtos irá mediar as relações humanas e afetar a compreensão humana;
• Explorar o diálogo entre produtos, pessoas e contextos (físicos, culturais e históricos).

Design de Interação também é uma perspectiva que aborda o design de produtos de várias maneiras:

• De um entendimento de como e porque as pessoas desejam usá-los;
• Como apoio aos usuários e seus objetivos;
• Como conjunto, e não como um simples monte de ferramentas e atributos;
• Olhando para o futuro - vendo as coisas como elas deveriam ser e não como elas estão agora.

Dadas estas definições, designers de interação devem:

• Estudar sobre novas áreas rapidamente;
• Resolver problemas de maneira analítica e criativa;
• Estar aptos a visualizar e simplificar sistemas complexos;
• Identificar-se com os usuários, suas necessidades e aspirações;
• Entender o poder e as limitações das pessoas e da tecnologia;
• Compartilhar a paixão de tornar o mundo um lugar melhor através de soluções éticas, propositivas, práticas e elegantes.

Muitas instituições acadêmicas com cursos novos ou estabelecidos de design de interação e IHC estão começando a entender o design de interação e as qualidades e conhecimentos necessários aos designers de interação. Algumas das mais avançadas instituições são:

• Carnegie Mellon University
• Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology
• North Carolina State University
• University of Art and Design Helsinki
• Virginia Commonwealth University
  
  

Outros caminhos

Mas será que você realmente precisa de um mestrado ou doutorado para praticar design de interação? Existem vantagens da prática combinada com outros cursos (em artes, negócios, humanas e ciências), obviamente. Mas algumas coisas, como em qualquer disciplina, não são facilmente ensinadas. Identificação com usuários e habilidade para conceituar soluções funcionais (e então refiná-las) são habilidades difíceis de ensinar. Na Cooper, procuramos por pessoas com estes talentos, sem levar em consideração a sua educação formal. Alguns vêm com formação de design tradicional (industrial e gráfico), mas a maioria tem uma educação eclética em humanas, tecnologia, ou ambos. Muitos tiveram experiência significativa em organizações de desenvolvimento de software, trabalhando como escritores técnicos, gerentes de projeto, suporte técnico ou ao cliente, e até mesmo programadores, onde eles criaram projetos de interação sem se preocuparem realmente se os usuários estavam sendo bem ou mal servidos pela tecnologia.

Se você está considerando o design de interação como uma possível mudança de carreira, aqui estão algumas coisas para se ter em mente:

• Designers raramente programam — se você está ligado à programação, toda a força pra você: o mundo precisa de mais programadores sensíveis ao design. No entanto, a menos que você tenha completo controle sobre seus projetos, você fará pouca diferença para seus usuários tentando projetar e programar ao mesmo tempo — é um conflito de interesses. Assim, se você não tem estômago para pensar em abandonar a programação, design de interação pode não ser para você.

• Pesquisa em usabilidade é tremendamente importante, mas não é design. A pesquisa identifica problemas mas não sugere soluções (exceto no nível mais detalhado). Você prefere antever e refinar soluções amplas e detalhadas ou fica mais à vontade extraindo fatos de uma situação conhecida? Se você optou pela segunda, então a usabilidade pode ser o melhor foco para seus interesses.

• Disposição é importante. Os melhores designers de interação que conheço são interessados em tudo e desejam (até mesmo precisam) aprofundar-se em territórios desconhecidos para aprender e absorver. Eles também se interessam muito pelas pessoas enquanto indivíduos e na condição humana em geral.

• Todo designer precisa de conhecimentos básicos; designers de interação devem estar aptos a desenhar ou escrever bem (fazer as duas coisas é raro e valioso) e precisam se comunicar de maneira excelente tanto com colegas quanto com clientes. A habilidade mais difícil de adquirir é esta combinação de percepção criativa e pensamento analítico, que é a marca do grande designer de interação.

Se algo aqui toca você, talvez você seja um designer de interação em formação. Boa sorte no seu caminho!

Sobre o autor

Robert Reimann é o antigo Diretor de P&D em Design na Cooper e agora gerencia o time de design em experiência do usuário na Bose.

O que é Design de Interação

Artigo original (em inglês): What is Interaction Design
Autor: Associação de Design de Interação (IxDA).
Tradução: Gonçalo B Ferraz e Rodrigo Gonzatto. 
Revisão: Frederick van Amstel e Érico Fileno

Design de Interação (IxD, em inglês) é o ramo do Design da Experiência do Usuário (UX, em inglês) que estuda o relacionamento entre as pessoas e os artefatos interativos que elas usam. Enquanto o Design de Interação tem uma firme fundamentação teórica, prática e metodológica no tradicional desenvolvimento de interface do usuário, seu foco está na definição de complexos diálogos que ocorrem entre as pessoas e seus artefatos interativos dos mais variados tipos - de computadores e dispositivos móveis até artefatos comuns.

Designers de Interação esforçam-se para criar artefatos e serviços úteis e usáveis. Seguindo os princípios fundamentais do design centrado no usuário (UCD, em inglês), a prática do Design de Interação é baseada na compreensão dos usuários reais - seus objetivos, tarefas, experiências, necessidades e desejos. Aproximando design com a perspectiva centrada no usuário, embora procurando equilibrar as necessidades dos usuários com os objetivos empresariais e as capacidades tecnológicas, designers de interação oferecem soluções para os complexos desafios do design, definindo novos produtos e serviços interativos.

O sucesso dos produtos no mercado depende do design de alta qualidade, envolvendo experiências interativas. O bom Design de Interação:

• Comunica com eficácia a interatividade e funcionalidade de um sistema;
• Define comportamentos que comunicam um sistema de respostas para interações do usuário;
• Revela, simultaneamente, fluxos de trabalho simples e complexos;
• Informa os usuários sobre mudanças no sistema;
• Previne erros do usuário;

Embora designers interação muitas vezes trabalham em estreita colaboração com especialistas em design visual, arquitetura da informação, design de produto, pesquisa de usuários ou de usabilidade, e possam até mesmo fornecer alguns destes serviços, o seu foco principal é a definição da interatividade.

A disciplina de Design de Interação produz produtos e serviços que satisfazem necessidades específicas do usuário, objetivos empresariais e limitações técnicas. Designers de interação avançam sua disciplina através da exploração inovadora dos paradigmas do design e oportunidades tecnológicas. A medida que as capacidades dos artefatos interativos evoluem e sua complexidade aumenta, os praticantes da disciplina de Design de Interação irão desempenhar um papel cada vez mais importante no sentido de garantir que a tecnologia esteja a serviço das necessidades das pessoas.

Em resumo, Design de Interação define:

• A estrutura e o comportamento dos produtos e serviços interativos;
• As interações do usuário com estes produtos e serviços;

Os usos de Nielsen. Para uma crítica da ideologia da usabilidade

Autor: Carlos Scolari
Link original: http://www.modernclicks.net/intdsgn_scolari1.html
Tradução: Carlos André Gonçalves
e-mail/msn: candre [dot] cuca [em] gmail [dot] com
Traduzido em: Fev/2008

Reduzir a efetividade de um site à sua “usabilidade” – sobretudo se a compreendemos em termos puramente quantitativos – pode chegar a ser um erro muito mais grave do que não respeitar alguns dos princípios sagrados estabelecidos por Jakob Nielsen em seu clássico "Designing Web Usability" (2000).

Onde está o botão?
Recordemos um pouco de história. As primeiras pesquisas sobre a usabilidade dos dispositivos de interação não nasceram no campo da informática, mas sim, em um setor distante das interfaces digitais. As cabines de pilotagem dos grandes aviões. Esses trabalhos pioneiros desenvolveram metodologias e modelos teóricos para tratar e explicar os “incompreensíveis” comportamentos dos pilotos, sobretudo durante as situações de emergência. Quantas vidas poderiam ter sido salvas se o botão estivesse em um lugar acessível? Quantos acidentes poderiam ter sidos evitados se o indicador de altitude estivesse um pouco mais legível? Quanto dinheiro poderia ter sido economizado pelas grandes companhias se a seqüência de comandos para desligar uma turbina incendiada fosse coerente?

Os estudos de usabilidade de softwares – que se desenvolveram especialmente nos anos 80 – traduziram uma boa parte dos modelos e metodologias desde o quadro de comandos dos jumbos até as telas interativas. Os objetivos destas pesquisas eram aperfeiçoar a utilização de um software, evitando que o operador divagasse pela interface realizando operações inúteis ou perdendo tempo tentando entender algum comando inexplicável. Um estudo de usabilidade se ocupava, por exemplo, de identificar seqüências de interação inutilmente grandes e incoerentes, ou evitar becos sem saída que obrigavam o operador a revisar seus passos. A solução desses pequenos e aparentemente insignificantes problemas, multiplicada por milhares de empregados (por exemplo, em um call-center telefônico ou em uma grande corporação com milhares de terminais), poderia levar uma empresa a economizar milhões de dólares.

Essa tradição dos estudos sobre usabilidade, que se inspira em uma metodologia de análises quantitativas e cronométricas - puro taylorismo digital – dificilmente pode se aplicar à web. A rede não é somente um instrumento de produção, é também um ambiente de inteiração e comunicação. Por um lado, se o software mantém ainda uma ligação remota com a realidade das cabines de pilotagem, a Rede digital assume e constituí uma dimensão totalmente diferente.
Ninguém navega dentro de um cockpit nem se submerge dentro de um software. Os programas de informática estão para a cabine de um piloto como a Internet está para todo o sistema aeroportuário mundial.

No entanto, definir a Rede como um ambiente de interação e comunicação não basta. Se existe uma realidade comum que os atravessa, nem todos os sites são iguais ou podem ser pesquisados aplicando as mesmas metodologias de análises. Em certos casos os princípios de usabilidade de Jakob Nielsen são “usáveis” e deveriam orientar toda a produção de um site: por exemplo, nos catálogos online com milhares de produtos ou em sites que oferecerem grandes quantidades de informação (buscadores e portais). Quando o usuário busca dados específicos ou deve mover-se entre grandes massas de informação, os conselhos de Nielsen são importantes e merecem ser escutados.

Mas não podemos esquecer que nem todos os navegantes da Rede buscam informação ou produtos durante todo o tempo. A Rede é usada, cada vez mais, para comunicar, para jogar ou para compartilhar com outros usuários experiências do tipo sociais. Para projetar espaços que permitam uma participação ativa dos usuários nesses processos, os princípios de usabilidade não bastam. As metodologias de análises tradicionais, aplicadas na avaliação desses tipos de experiências, demonstram todos os seus limites.

Arquitetura da interação
Vejamos a questão em termos arquitetônicos. Tal como o entende Nielsen – e aplicada uma metáfora espacial frente a um universo discursivo digital – a usabilidade se reduz a uma espécie de “superação das barreiras arquitetônicas”: um site usual é aquele que facilita a sua navegação e nos permite chegar rapidamente à informação que buscamos. O site ideal de Nielsen seria construído somente com palavras. Nada de imagens e nem animações: a tecnologia Flash, como escreveu Nielsen em sua coluna Alertbox, é errada em 99%. O máximo da usabilidade, sempre segundo Nielsen, se alcança quando a relação entre superfície dedicada à navegação e superfície dedicada ao conteúdo é de 20/80.

No entanto, se um edifício não oferecer barreiras arquitetônicas, não significa que será uma construção bem projetada ou que será coerente do ponto de vista comunicativo. As rampas para as cadeiras de rodas ou os banheiros para deficientes não são suficientes para garantir uma experiência interativa total. Pensemos em um centro comercial: é evidente que as rampas para deficientes ou os elevadores contribuem para a criação de um espaço facilmente “navegável”. Mas há algo mais.

Um centro comercial pode apresentar uma estrutura sem barreiras para a circulação, mas ser totalmente incoerente ou contraditório do ponto de vista de sua comunicação. Um ambiente bem projetado, por exemplo, deve propor boas historias (compreendidas como percursos espaciais) que conectem entre si os diferentes lugares que o compõe. Voltemos a nosso centro comercial: a distribuição dos espaços em núcleos temáticos – como as “praças de alimentação” ou as áreas dedicadas para descanso – são fundamentais do ponto de vista da função do espaço.

Vamos nos deter em alguns dos locais que compõe nosso centro comercial. Que diferença existe entre uma loja da Benneton ou da The Body Shop, e outros negócios que vendem roupas ou cosméticos ecológicos? A inexistência de barreiras arquitetônicas? A facilidade de circulação interna? Ou uma concepção global da comunicação que aponta para a criação de um pequeno mundo (Eco, 1990) que envolve o cliente com um universo de valores (multiculturalidade e igualitarismo no caso da Benetton, ecologia e reciclagem da The Body Shop)?

Como se refletem estes elementos na Rede digital? Vejamos um exemplo gritante. Há alguns anos uma companhia aérea americana, cuja campanha publicitária girava em torno do conceito de “liberdade”, criou um site em que a página se abria com um formulário – por certo, bem projetado segundo os princípios da usabilidade – que o usuário devia preencher para poder entrar no site. Para participar de uma experiência imersiva – como deveria acontecer na Rede – não basta criar sites usuais: deve-se projetar em termos globais, pensando não apenas na facilidade das microinterações, mas considerando a experiência interativa total. Um site, repetimos novamente, pode ser muito usual, mas estar totalmente em contradição com a imagem que a empresa ou a instituição pretende construir.
Poderia inclusive dizer que um site, diferentemente de outros canais tradicionais, não é somente outro meio para construir a imagem da marca: um site é branding.

Flash: às vezes bom, às vezes mal
Retomemos a questão das animações em Flash. É conhecida a advertência de Jakob Nielsen ao uso deste programa de animação. Se levássemos em conta Nielsen, a Rede seria um lugar muito mais usual, mas seria mais feio e triste. Se seguíssemos as regras de inovação tecnológica, a Rede terminaria sendo um grande espetáculo de fogos de artifício... em câmera lenta.

Com o Flash está acontecendo o mesmo que aconteceu com a tecnologia VRML há alguns anos: todos os sites parecem obrigados a introduzi-lo. Se em 1997-98 os sites mais avançados deviam incorporar ambientes tridimensionais – por exemplo as universidade americanas apresentavam seus campus usando tecnologia VRML em vez de utilizar um bom mapa bidimensional – hoje a solução para todos os problemas de comunicação passaria aparentemente pelo Flash.

Não é a primeira vez que uma tecnologia impõe um padrão estético aos desenvolvedores e projetistas. De certa forma se repete uma história conhecida: assim como a gráfica complexa e estratificada que David Siegel propunha em seu clássico “Web Killer Sites” (1996) era filha dos níveis de Photoshop, e a linguagem VRML impôs os ambientes tridimensionais na Rede, a mania por animações deriva diretamente das possibilidades que oferece o programa da Macromedia.

Resulta em uma experiência interessante abrir um livro de desenho de webs de alguns anos e visitar novamente esses sites que então eram considerados a vanguarda da projeção digital. (alguns pelo estilo gráfico avançado, outros pela presença de ambientes de interação em formato VRML, etc.): os que não desapareceram foram convertidos em portais estilo Yahoo!. Se há cinco anos seguia-se a moda Siegel, hoje todos são discípulos do estilo Nielsen.

Em tempo: às vezes as animações realizadas com Flash se demonstram indispensáveis para a criação de um ambiente de comunicação dinâmico ou de um pequeno mundo de interações (um exemplo interessante está em Look and Feel).
Em outros casos, o uso indiscriminado deste programa não apenas limita a interação – fazendo enojar o profeta dinamarquês – mas, além disso, desorienta o usuário, guiando-o há uma função de espaço incoerente com os objetivos de comunicação do site. Um exemplo evidente de utilização do Flash puramente para impressionar são as splash-screen animadas, simples páginas de apresentação que – na maior parte dos casos – não agregam nenhum tipo de informação nem enriquecem a experiência interativa do usuário.

Além da usabilidade: a dimensão narrativa
Mais acima falamos da necessidade de contar boas histórias – através de uma correta articulação das seqüências interativas e dos núcleos temáticos – para melhorar a função dos espaços virtuais. Também mencionamos a possibilidade de criar pequenos mundos interativos para oferecer ao usuário uma experiência de imersão total e distante das lógicas instrumentais. É evidente que todos esses conceitos nos conduzem ao terreno da narrativa.

As vias onde se cruzam a narrativa e a interatividade são infinitas. As encontramos nos MUD e nos corredores de Doom, reaparecem nas desoladas ilhas de Riven e afloram uma e outra vez em nossa linguagem cotidiana: Por acaso não navegamos na Rede e exploramos um site em busca de informações? O que é a interação com os computadores senão mais um processo que desenvolve temporariamente, no qual um sujeito deve alcançar um objetivo (modificar uma imagem, escrever um texto, trocar mensagens com um colega, vencer um rival, encontrar uma informação na Rede) manipulando um ou vários instrumentos?
Desde essa perspectiva, a interação com os computadores reforça um esquema básico da fábula assim como foi apresentado por Vladimir Propp em 1928 na sua Morfologia Del cuento (1977): o príncipe, para salvar a princesa, deve vencer o dragão usando a espada mágica.

Se pensarmos na interação (não apenas dentro de um videogame ou na web, mas todas as interações, inclusive com os objetos reais) como uma narração, a leitura destes processos de intercâmbio se enriquece com novas perspectivas. Diante de tanta ideologia da usabilidade – que propõe metodologias de pesquisa com inspiração taylorista, exclusivamente quantitativas e de excelentemente cronométricas – talvez tenha chegando o momento de abrir o campo a novos enfoques, mais próximos o da tradição humanística e menos preocupados em medir a performance do usuário diante da tela.

Uma pesquisa embasada em termos narrativos não se preocupa tanto pelos tempos de interação ou pela percentagem da tela dedicada ao conteúdo, e se pergunta, por exemplo, pelo modelo de usuário implícito na interface, os ritmos que a interface impõe à interação ou as oposições que tornam significante um espaço virtual. Vejamos rapidamente algumas destas problemáticas que se localizam no cruzamento entre interação e narrativa:

* Usuário implícito: cada produto comunicacional (texto escrito, programa de televisão, fotografia, um longa metragem, pintura, etc.) contém em seu interior um leitor implícito. Apenas se o leitor real se reconhece nesta figura virtual o intercâmbio comunicacional pode começar. O mesmo acontece nas interfaces digitais: cada site contém uma simulação (ou várias) de usuário. Não está dito que esta simulação de usuário coincida com o usuário potencial do site; é quase normal encontrar sites dedicados “ao grande público” que exige competências de navegação que se encontram apenas nos usuários profissionais com vários anos de experiência.

* Projetista implícito: cada interface contém, além disso, um projetista implícito. Esta simulação do projetista – que não coincide com o projetista real da interface – é o sujeito “que fala” dentro do ambiente de interação. Como vimos, muitas empresas ou instituições “falam coisas” em suas campanhas de publicidade que terminam sendo traduzidas de forma errada quando passam a um ambiente interativo. Muitas vezes a interface, como no caso da companhia aérea, através de uma interação errada termina absorvendo os valores contrários que a instituição ou empresa tenta construir.

* Ritmo (espaços de passagem/espaços de permanência): a gestão dos tempos de interação é fundamental para a criação das seqüências interativas e a função dos espaços virtuais. Certos sites devem ser projetados para ser um lugar de rápida passagem (por exemplo, os buscadores), outros devem tratar de segurar os visitantes oferecendo a maior quantidade de serviços e informações personalizadas possíveis (por exemplo, os portais). Esta mesma dinâmica entre lugares de passagem e lugares de permanência se repete dentro de um mesmo site: a página principal quando bem projetada, é um lugar de passagem que conduz a outras páginas ou ambientes onde o usuário poderá ficar mais tempo (lugares de permanência).

* Espaços abertos/espaços fechados: esta tensão entre espaços abertos (a entrada de um site ou de um portal), no qual qualquer navegante pode entrar, e espaços fechados (por exemplo, as páginas nas quais o acesso se dá apenas com uma senha) ocupam um lugar central no enfoque narrativo da interação. Esta problemática surge de maneira evidente nos sites dedicados ao comércio eletrônico: como fazer para que um usuário experimente a sensação de haver entrado em um lugar seguro, onde deverá deixar seus dados pessoais e o número de seu cartão de crédito fora de olhares indiscretos?
Em muitos sites este espaço é quase imperceptível; em outros, projetados com uma maior atenção ao imaginário espacial, se cria um ambiente ou zona de transição que coloca em evidência a diferença entre o espaço aberto (público) e o espaço fechado (privado).

* Mundos narrativos: se analisarmos as experiência de interação como se fossem narrações, podem-se estabelecer interessantes comparações entre os mundos narrativos online e os imaginários de marca. Com o surgimento dos meios digitais os mundos narrativos não se constroem exclusivamente por meio de elementos cromáticos (o logotipo), um conjunto de imagens (as fotografias de Olivero Toscani) o uso de certo tipo de madeira (a madeira verde do The Body Shop ou o plástico do mundo dos relógios Swatch): em um ambiente digital a interação constitui um dos elementos fundamentais do conjunto de comunicação.

A articulação de todos esses componentes termina por gerar um mundo narrativo, que por sua vez segue encarnando uma série de valores. Como já vimos, uma empresa ou instituição pode construir sua imagem nos meios de comunicação de uma forma e desvirtuar essa mesma imagem na sua apresentação online. A situação ideal é aquela onde, além das características de cada suporte, se cria uma continuidade entre todos os espaços simbólicos.

* Construção de novas gramáticas de interação: nos últimos anos tem se insistido muito na necessidade de construir sites fáceis de usar. Os profetas da usabilidade extrema normalmente esquecem que a dificuldade no uso de um dispositivo pode ser parte de uma experiência interativa global, um convite à exploração desse espaço e ao descobrimento de sua gramática de interação. Essa é a lógica que rege os melhores videogames labirínticos, como Myst ou Riven; se trata de lugares virtuais onde o usuário deve descobrir a interface e reconstruir a gramática que rege os processos de interação. Os projetistas de sites deveriam recuperar esta e outras experiências que se encontram na antípoda da ideologia da usabilidade.

Por que falamos de uma ideologia da usabilidade? Além de todos os discursos dedicados ao foco no usuário (user-centered design), os profetas da usabilidade terminam projetando interfaces para um único usuário implícito: se trata de um navegante esquizofrênico, sempre apressado e com pouco tempo à disposição. A Rede – repetimos mais uma vez – não é um instrumento de produção, mas um ambiente de comunicação e interação. A internet é cada vez mais usada para comunicar, para jogar ou para compartilhar com outros usuários experiências comunitárias. O estudo quantitativo e cronométrico pode ser de utilidade em uma primeira fase de análises, mas torna-se evidente que, para entender realmente o que se passa na frente das telas interativas, há que se apoiar em outros modelos e teorias.


Bibliografia

Eco, Umberto
Los límites de la interpretación, Editorial Lumen, Barcelona, 1992
(ed. orig. "I limiti dell'interpretazione", Bompiani, Milán, 1990)

Nielsen, Jakob
"Usabilidad. Diseño de sitios Web", Prentice Hall, 2000 (ed. orig. "Designing Web Usability", New Riders, Indianápolis, 2000

Propp, Vladimir
"Morfología del cuento", Fundamentos, Madrid, 1977

* Uma primeira versão deste artigo foi publicas no site Interlink Headline News
Número 2216 de 23 de Fevereiro de 2001

http://www.ilhn.com.ar

Uma Definição de Design de Interação

 

de Dan Saffer em 21 de Julho de 2004

Artigo original traduzido por Gonçalo B Ferraz

No mês passado, comecei uma discussão na lista de designers de interação que parecia interminável até que se transformou em outra discussão sobre a definição de design de interação. Daí pensei que: já que era proibido discutir isso na lista, eu poderia colocar meus pensamentos aqui mesmo, de maneira coerente, e oferecer minha definição para o Design de Interação.

Design de Interação é a arte de facilitar ou fomentar interações entre humanos (ou seus agentes), mediadas por artefatos. Por interações eu quero dizer comunicação, tanto um-a-um (uma ligação telefônica comum), um-a-muitos (como os blogs), quanto muitos-a-muitos (a bolsa de valores). Os artefatos criados por designers de interação podem ser digitais ou analógicos, físicos ou abstratos ou alguma combinação disso.

Design de Interação se preocupa com o comportamento desses produtos, como eles funcionam. Muito do tempo do designer de interação será usado na definição desses comportamentos, mas o designer não deve esquecer que o objetivo é facilitar a interação entre humanos. Para mim, não é sobre a interação com o artefato (isso é projeto de produto) ou a interação com um computador (isso é interação ser-humano-computador). Estamos tratando de conexões entre humanos.

Desde que comportamentos e meios estão em contante mudança, a disciplina de Design de Interação não deve alinhar-se com nenhum deles em particular. O aparecimento de dispositivos digitais e da Internet criou uma demanda ainda maior para a disciplina e muitas, muitas oportunidades para designers de interação, mas não é o único lugar para nossos talentos; situações analógicas podem utilizar nossos talentos também: a criação de coisas como fluxos de trabalho ou sistema de uso. Quanto mais a Internet e os dispositivos digitais se tornam onipresentes, o design de interação estará mais ligado à quase todos os aspectos de nossas vidas.

Se a razão do nosso existir focar no comportamento dos produtos, acho que estaremos trocando o bolo pela cereja. Talvez eu seja um idealista, mas certamente eu espero que o Design de Interação seja mais do que a otimização do comportamento de máquinas. Para mim, é muito mais que isso: é fazer com que as coisas sejam aprazíveis ao uso, que sejam emocionantes. É sobre não só se perguntar como aquilo funciona, mas se perguntar o por que: será que isso precisa existir?; será que isso influenciará a vida das pessoas positivamente?

Quando chegarmos lá, passado o tempo da resposta-quase-automática do encontrar-os-objetivos-do-usuário, o objetivo maior, mais abrangente do Design de Interação será o de criar coisas que façam a vida das pessoas melhor, que nos façam mais conectados uns com os outros.