The Dark Side of Interaction Design

Citeseer

There is little discussion about power within Interaction Design field. To call attention to this issue, we present a model for discussing conflicts that arises at the human-artifact interface. We argue that artifacts support human behavior by providing adaptations, but these adaptations can expand or restrict human actions. Human action cannot be fully controlled by artifact adaptation because humans have power over their agency: they can readapt the artifact or not use it at all. Many times, interaction designers try to impose structures upon human action by shaping coercive environments where people are punished if they do things the “wrong way” and by hiding or not providing options for changing artifact adaptations. Interaction design mediates human agency and power, but if it does not provide choices for action, there is no room for ethics: people act based on conditions, not on considerations of what should be done.

CHI'08 extended abstracts on Human …, 2008

Though interaction designers critique interfaces as a regular part of their research and practice, the field of HCI lacks a proper discipline of interaction criticism. By interaction criticism we mean rigorous, evidence-based interpretive analysis that explicates relationships among elements of an interface and the meanings, affects, moods, and intuitions they produce in the people that interact with them; the immediate goal of this analysis is the generation of innovative design insights. We summarize existing work offering promising directions in interaction criticism to build a case for a proper discipline. We then propose a framework for the discipline, relating each of its parts to recent HCI research.

2003

In recent years, information and communication technology has taken on whole new meanings in Western society and everyday life: from productivity tools for industry and administration, to everyday household activities, major entertainment sectors, new modes of communication and cohabitation, digitally enhanced pervasive infrastructures and more. In this situation, interaction design is emerging as a new and challenging design discipline. It has a design-oriented focus on human interaction and communication mediated by digital ...

2005

This paper focuses on the elements required for developing an interaction design framework based on Media Philosophy. For this purpose it is needed to deconstruct the presuppositions of HCI design. Following this the author suggests a re-definition of design, knowing, that design funnels the functioning code, that supplies the society with values and goals, but most importantly, that creates relations, which bring us emotions and experiences. The author argues, that by discerning the most important values it is possible to develop an effective and meaningful design method, so as to bring into the interaction an added value. It is also argued, that the current idea of desktop computers is non-functional for most of the intended purposes. It is therefore suggested to make the computer invisible in our life-world. However, this presupposes making the purpose of the computer readily visible, e.g. hiding the computer in the shapes of things of daily use. This paper is based on the works of humanistic thinkers as well as practitioners from the interaction design domain to allow for a broader theoretical reflection not only of the way how computer devices operate, but above all how they act in a human environment.

Intended audience:

This is a lecture delivered as part of a workshop I led at the annual graduate conference of the Cultural Studies program at Queen's University, Canada in March 2015. It gives an overview of critical interface studies, and argues that the problematic of user-friendly design lies in its near-complete representational obfuscation or repression of data and, more generally, of instrumental function. It then examines the Tor Browser and Bitcoin--much lauded tools of resistance in cyberspace--to demonstrate how the user-friendly problematic extends to so-called tactics of resistance and limits them. The lecture concludes by arguing that software art like the deconstructed operating system installation 'Windows 93' (www.windows93.net) better enunciates effective resistance to cyberspace by radically exposing and questioning its aesthetic parameters.

Design Management Journal (Former Series), 1997

Recently I sat on a national committee to evaluate HCI research funding. As part of that process, we discussed past successes and current challenges for HCI. It's a good time to be thinking about these issues; HCI is no longer a minority interest. We have major conferences, active journals, practitioners, and degrees. HCI skills are in demand at the world's leading technology companies. The success of design oriented companies like Apple means that everyone understands the importance of interfaces. But what are these are external indicators of success based on? What have we achieved, what do we know, and why are others interested in what we do? Where should we go from here? I first outline three successes, transformative technology, the importance of experience and user--centric methods, but argue that we now need to move beyond these to taking a more principled approach to what we do. One unquestionable success is the development of transformative technology. The most obvious example here is the Graphical User Interface (GUI). GUIs completely altered the way we interact with computers, changing them from the tools of a few hardcore programmers to a technology used by billions of people. This success extends beyond the specific technologies of windows, bitmapped screens and mice that facilitated the emergence of personal computing. Instead, the emergence of a set of design principles, WYSIWYG, laid the foundations for repeated, equally radical changes. Later developments such as the web were dependent on underlying technologies such as HTML and search, but they could never have achieved mass penetration without effective GUIs based on WYSIWYG principles. Ditto for smartphones. The fundamental ways that we interact with smartphones follow old-school design principles (give or take a finger gesture or two). Just because WYSIWYG is old and established doesn't negate its utility. I return to the critical role of design principles later.

… Conference of the …, 2010

Australasian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, 2014

In this paper we consider HCI's role in technology interventions for health and well-being. Three projects carried out by the authors are analysed by appropriating the idea of a value chain to chart a causal history from proximal effects generated in early episodes of design through to distal health and well-being outcomes. Responding to recent arguments that favour bounding HCI's contribution to local patterns of use, we propose an unbounded view of HCI that addresses an extended value chain of influence. We discuss a view of HCI methods as mobilising this value chain perspective in multidisciplinary collaborations through its emphasis on early prototyping and naturalistic studies of use.

In response to market needs, researchers and designers in Interaction Design are experimenting new ways of enabling user participation in information systems development. However, the same conceptualization of the participant as a user already reduces his possibility of participation. The user are not capable of designing, so there is a need for experts that can translate their needs into design definitions. Even though participatory design exercises involving users are being promoted, the goal is not to autonomize participants to their own new technology development, but instead to generate user representations in order to improve targeting new products. It´s an abstract inclusion and concrete exclusion, that legitimates technological dependence of a particular social group. Participatory Design as in the scandinavian tradition proposes that this perverse logic should be questioned in the design process, with the goal of generating alternatives that really promote participant´s social development. This participatory approach can lead Interaction Design beyond the microstructures of interaction: interfaces, technics, tasks and other intrinsic details that don´t comprehend the cultural density of the process.

interactions, 2010

The themes of this tutorial are: practice, creativity, reflection, worth, experience, balance, integration, and generosity (worth-focused BIG design). The tutorial combines and integrates high level perspectives on design (creative, engineering, innovative worth focus, usage and contexts foci). These themes are addressed via short lectures and extensive group exercises across the day. By attending this tutorial, you will gain knowledge of disciplinary differences between creative, technical and human perspectives on interactive software (in particular, understand the roles of reflection in creative practices) strategies for applying and integrating diverse perspectives within a dynamic development process (in particular, creative and worth-focused perspectives) By attending this tutorial, you will also become able to: relate research on creative and technological opportunities to research on human usage and innovation contexts for a given context, motivate, choose, adapt, configure, complete, combine, apply and adapt different approaches in order to systematically balance and evaluate design choices for interactive systems dynamically plan a balanced and integrated Lean Interaction Design process

Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group on Design: Open 24/7 - OZCHI '09, 2009

In the public sector (particularly in the UK in light of recent reforms i.e. the Local Government Act 2000, etc.) a greater degree of accountability and public involvement or intervention has become the norm in public infrastructure projects, partially under the rubric of "stakeholder engagement". This paper seeks to discuss public involvement in a law-enforcement technology (Isis), which operates on a covert basis in the detection and prevention of child abuse activities across a number of social networking facilities. Our contribution to the development of Isis is to perform an ethics centered consultation process with stakeholders who will contribute to the design and deployment of the end software package. To that end, we have sought to develop a "Modified Participatory Design" approach, utilizing the knowledge gained from the HCI community with regards to more traditional design projects and adapting this body of work to questions of ethics, privacy, corporate and civic responsibility, monitoring and awareness issues, etc. in an effort to create a fluid and agile communication process between stakeholders and designers, thus taking account of the ethical issues around Isis as design occurs.