John Kolko – Thoughts on Interaction Design

Summary

This lovely treatise strikes a compelling balance between meditative handbook, practitioner’s guide (to navigating practitioners’ political spaces), and manifesto. It is decidedly not, nor does it attempt to be, a quick reference toolkit for aspiring or currently practicing Interaction Designers. There are no lists of techniques, no screenshots, no sample code, and no step-by-step procedures. In this way, the book is actually rather refreshing (this coming from an academic, admittedly).

While it’s not a deeply researched book, it is nevertheless an expediently researched one, which seems quite adept at citing the “canonical” work in the fields that inform Interaction Design. The book is actually committed to carefully presenting and advocating for design and usability methodologies such as Contextual Inquiry, the creation of personas, think-aloud protocols, and visualization procedures such as concept  maps and process flow diagrams. This discussion of process is not a pedantic digression to highlight Kolko’s education (he has a degree in HCI from Carnegie Melon). In fact, it highlights the indispensability of methodology in light of the philosophical fact that “the creation of an experience is, most likely, impossible in and of itself” (83). Although pure experience cannot be generated, what Interaction Designers CAN create is a “structure in which an experience takes place” (83). Therein lies the necessity of understanding processes for understanding who the users are, what their needs are, and the social and physical context in which products are used.

The book is refreshing in its call to arms for designers to become “thinkers” as opposed to (mere) “doers.” The conduit for this move from designer as instrumental to designer as “strategist” (86) is a more situated understanding of communication and of the exigence for design work in the Conceptual Age [1]. Kolko and the others he includes in the book as supporting voices for the vision of Interaction Designer that the book sketches, believes that design is rhetoric. Not rhetoricAL, but rhetoric: “Design is rhetoric. It is the act of communicating an idea to a particular audience, generally using a particular medium” (136). Moreover, he explicitly characterizes the designer as “persuader” when he writes, “A product does not only speak but in fact attempts to convince…A pursuit of argument can be viewed as an attempt to shape one’s attitude. Design is to communicate, and this communication is not a monologue. It is a dialogue of persuasion, and argument, and learning” (100). This is, in fact, a mantra that runs throughout the book: Design is a bi-directional dialogue between user-as-participant and product. In this view, Interaction Designers are humanists who are fundamentally concerned with creating structures for experiences which are “not merely stylish, attention-grabbing ephemera but vital form[s] of discourse augmenting…the cultural (and experiential landscape in which we live and thrive” (114).

The ‘Poetic Interaction’ Framework

One of the most fascinating (albeit underdeveloped) parts of the book is Kolko’s “poetic” model of interaction. He writes, “An interaction occurs in the conceptual space between a person and an object. It is at once physical, cognitive, and social. A poetic interaction is one that resonates immediately but yet continues to inform later—it is one that causes reflection, and one that relies heavily on a state of emotional awareness. Additionally, a poetic interaction is one that is nearly always subtle, yet mindful” (104). Kolko claims that what amount to the ‘common requisites’ of poetic interaction are “honesty, mindfulness, and a vivid and refined attention to sensory detail” (105). He devotes but 4 pages to the entirety of this fascinating idea of poetic interaction.

The Need for Interpellation Techniques

While the characteristics intuitively make sense, and certainly appeal to the right-brain aptitudes Interaction Designers hold dear, they unfortunately lack both construct validity and explanatory power. Perhaps if more attention were given to the framework it would stand sturdier, but as it is quickly presented, it leaves much to the methodological and instrumental imagination (indeed, even the philosophical imagination). Thus, while the presentation of this ‘thoughtful’ framework does allow Kolko to keep his promise to steer clear of heuristics, it nevertheless hangs in the balance as a tantalizing glimpse of what Interaction Designers aim for, with no clear guidance on how to achieve this decidedly NOT low-hanging fruit. To me, this is presents a hugely rich and, now, at least partially articulated need for the interpellation work I am doing, for it will, I hope, pick up where this part of Kolko’s book leaves off, and empower designers with some specific techniques for just the sort of persuasive communication Kolko and his cohorts call for.

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[1] Kolko, who cites Pink, very much believes that designers need the “right-brain aptitudes” which characterize the Conceptual Age skills of value. In a world which is increasingly commodifying technology by outsourcing it, designers must be responsible for more than just the “plastics” of a product,  or else they are in danger of losing their jobs.

Nathan Shedroff – Experience Design

Summary

Shedroff’s main point in this book is that great experiences are both deliberate and designable, provided designers know the underlying principles and learn the practical tools (2).

Like Jakob Nielsen and Edward Tufte, Shedroff values a “clutter” free interface (91). Yet, the book is almost schizophrenic in this regard, as its attempt to perform an experiential book design is often distracting from the reading process itself thanks to the busy background images and often difficult-to-read text (p 92-93 & 96 are good examples of this).

Nonetheless, the book retains relevance for its prescient views of audience (on the Internet, they are active participants, not passive viewers) and the idea that experience is a central aspect of iterative, user-centered design. One quote that I found particularly relevant for interpellative design was: “Great designs communicate first and are beautiful second” (278). Since we are amidst a web design culture which is as in love with rich media as early web design was with scrolling marquees and animated gifs, it is often easy to be taken in by a site’s play with these media. And this is quite alright, until you realize that you’re more taken with the play than the purpose, and that the two are not working in concert to create a meaningful experience.

Points of Critique

Narrative

Shedroff believes narrative and stories are “one-way” experiences (84), which is not the case. Yet here again Shedroff appears to contradict himself when he references MUDs & MOOs as perfect examples of interactive narrative (152).

Usability

Shedroff writes, “Interface design is concerned with the effectiveness and usability of a software interface but this should also extend to the usefulness and purpose of the product too” (109). The ‘extension’ suggests that usability cannot speak to the “usefulness and purpose of the product.” This is also not the case. Usability testing methods can be employed in the service of implementing the very experiential techniques Shedroff discusses. So at the very least the two must work together. At the most, they are one in the same.

Although he concedes that “usability applies to all experiences on some level (110, emphasis mine), he goes on to argue that “usability is sometimes used to squash innovation or to enforce the status quo” (110). However, a few paragraphs later he apparently contradicts this when he says, “Usability (or a concern for ‘ease of use’) is often the starting point of innovative design” (110). The reason for this is that considering usability allows designers to view the interface from the audiences’ point of view, which can often “open up the possibilities to create more satisfying experiences” (110). So, usability is presented as a sort of double-edge sword: if one relies on patterns, which are borne from usability research, to the exclusion of all else, the interface might end up staid. On the other hand, if user research is capitalized on, and designers are allowed to explore potentialities, usability testing could help iron out kinks to create a truly dynamic, interesting, and functional interface.

Joseph Pine & James Gilmore – The Experience Economy

Summary

The subtitle of this book says it all: “Goods and services are no longer enough.” Pine and Gilmore’s central assertion is that in an economic environment in which it is increasingly difficult to stand out amid all the choices, companies that market experiences as their product are more likely to succeed than companies which rely solely on the sale of goods and/or services. Experiences are distinct from both goods and services because they leverage these things to create something new for the customer. Pine and Gilmore say, “The newly identified offering of experiences occurs whenever a company intentionally uses services as the stage and goods as props to engage an individual” (11). The new economic offering in an Experience Economy is a personal-feeling, memorable event which has enough initial appeal that the consumer is willing to pay the price of admission to partake.

This book remains prescient today (an astonishing 10 years after its initial publication) because the claims the authors make and the examples they use are more often than not still major points of reference whenever we think of what constitutes a “great experience.” Walt Disney World, the Rainforest Café, Harley Davidson, and venues that specialize in kids’ birthday parties are all referenced throughout the book as successful business endeavors which have capitalized on the sale of holistic experiences (In reference to Harley, for example, the authors drive the case home by noting, “How many other company logos do you find tattooed on users’ bodies?” (18).)

The book ends by projecting that the next economic shift will be from marketing memorable experiences to enabling transformations. Pine and Gilmore argue, “In the nascent Transformation Economy, the customer is the product and the transformation is an aid in changing the traits of the individual who buys it” (205).

Richard Lanham – The Economics of Attention

Summary

Lanham’s main thesis in this book is that we are living not in an information economy (a ‘marketplace of ideas,’ as it is often called in business circles), but rather in an attention economy. That is, the resource that is most scare in today’s society is attention, for, attention is the resource needed to sift through the mind-boggling exabytes of readily available information. Not only that, but attention is the resource needed to shape otherwise raw data into useful and usable information . For Lanham, the shift from an information economy—characterized by “stuff” or substance—to an attention economy—characterized by “fluff” or style—means that stuff and fluff have undergone a “figure/ground shift” (6). This means that style is now a more important commodity than substance. To be clear, both are necessary ingredients for communication in any media; however, it is now the case that style (read: aesthetics) is now more needed than ever in order to capture people’s attention.

Practically, the book is partially devoted to carving a space for multimodal composition in the academy. Lanham believes any theory of electronic composition will necessarily merge the two ways of living and of communicating (the rhetorical and the substantial) so that we are taught to read for style and substance—so that we look at texts and through them—so that meaning is multiplied and attention maximized. Unfortunately, the book does not provide any practical techniques that might help composition teachers realize this end. Like Greg Ulmer’s Teletheory, parts of Lanham’s book (particularly the chapter called “Barbie and the Teacher of Righteousness”) perform its own edicts, but provide no tips for how that performance might be replicated.

My Question

Richard Lanham argues that we are living in an “attention economy.” This essentially means that it is now more difficult than ever to capture people’s attention amidst the mind-boggling amount of information that is so easily accessible thanks to the Internet. Web designers can readily relate to this thesis insomuch as they are familiar with the competition for “eyeballs” that characterizes the field. In fact, Lanham’s thesis has verifiable resonance across disciplines; without a shift from information to attention as commodity to be vied for, it is perhaps true that usability alone would still be enough. Yet, the popularity and “stickiness” of movements such as Emotional Design and User-Experience Design prove that there is more to information than the utility (substance) of it. However, since there has not really been a consideration of the movement from usability to UXD, there is the potential for the implications of this shift to be taken for granted – i.e. Emotional Design might come to be seen as a “phase” rather than a common requisite for designing in the Conceptual Age.

Synthesizing across as many readings as possible, explain in detail why usability alone is no longer enough. For example, you might begin by considering the relationships between attention-getting, aesthetics (and aesthetic capital), and style.

Robert Cialdini – Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Summary

This book is a response to two main research questions, which the author succinctly lays out in the Introduction:

1. “What are the factors that cause one person to say yes to another person?”
2. “Which techniques most effectively use these factors to bring about such compliance?” (xvi)

To answer these questions, Cialdini employed a methodology of participant observation coupled with a thorough examination of empirical research from the fields of sociology and psychology. He actually immersed himself in the work of successful “compliance professionals—sales operators, fund-raisers, recruiters, advertisers”—in order to see first-hand which tactics these people used to achieve their ends (xii). When direct observation was not possible, he uses real-world examples of compliance and reverse engineers them in order to show where their power is derived from.[1] From this body of research, Cialdini concludes that the “tactics that compliance practitioners employ to produce yes…fall within six basic categories. Each of these categories is governed by a fundamental psychological principle that directs human behavior and, in so doing, gives the tactics their power” (xiii). The principles are as follows:

• Consistency & Commitment – “Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment” (37).
• Reciprocation – “we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us” (17). This principle’s cultural roots run especially deep. Cialdini traces it to “the social pressures surrounding the gift-giving process in human culture,” which have famously been articulated by anthropologist Marcel Mauss (31).
• Social proof – sellers “don’t have to convince us directly that the product is good, they need only say that many others think so, which seems proof enough” (117).
• Authority – Stanley Milgram’s obedience study is the poster child for this principle: “’It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths of the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of this study” (215). “Information from a recognized authority can provide us a valuable shortcut for deciding how to act in a situation” (218).
• Liking – we are more likely to comply with the requests of someone whom we like. Factors that influence liking include: physical attractiveness (171), similarity (173), compliments (174), contact & cooperation (176).
• Scarcity – “Opportunities seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited” (238).

The characteristic that all of these principles hold in common is that they can be exploited as automatic responses on the part of audiences (Cialdini calls these “click, whirr” responses because they resemble a pre-recorded tape clicking into place and playing without any conscious thought given to the content or outcome (5)). The fact that they are automatic is due to their pervasiveness in our culture.[2]

My Question

Louis Althusser is famously known as a Marxist thinker. Because he coined the term ‘interpellation’ for use in the social sciences, it is thus laden with the weight of his ethos. Accordingly, some would argue that his notion of interpellation is fundamentally a passive one, one which strips individuals of power and instead ascribes all decision-making (i.e. role-assigning) authority to the potent hegemonic forces that comprise the Ideological State Apparatus. However, this view neglects the ambiguous, jarring, and even humanitarian qualities that can constitute some interpellative experiences and events.

Synthesizing across authors, make a case for interpellation as an active, conscious, and fundamentally positive happening.

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[1] For example, he traces the common activity of parents returning to toy stores after Christmas to purchase a previously sold out item for their kids to the Commitment and Consistency principle: because a parent made an implicit promise to either herself or her child that the toy would be purchased, not following through with that commitment would produce feelings of dissonance. Thus, to avoid this, the parent finds herself at the toy store, even despite the fact that other toys were bought in lieu of the sold out one. From a marketing perspective, Cialdini claims that stores will often undersupply items that have been heavily publicized in order to capitalize on parents’ consistency and commitment drives and thereby ensure that sales will remain steady even after the Christmas holiday rush.

[2] Though it’s beyond the purview of the book, I’d venture to say there’s a neurological component to many of the principles Cialdini describes. For example, there could very well be a biological basis for why we tend to trust people who’re more attractive than others and who’re better dressed than average (the Authority principle).

Stephen Denning – Squirrel Inc.

Summary

Squirrel Inc. is a classic metanarrative: it tells a story about the importance and power of stories and storytelling in professional organizations. As such, it effectively performs the edicts it preaches about “which kind of story makes sense in which context and why” (xvi).” We follow the characters (all of whom are squirrels) through their quest to change their company’s strategic directions and manage their operating methods. All the while, we’re entertained with dialogue and conflict, but are also given helpful and practical sidebars which laconically spell out the storytelling tactics we’re supposed to be gleaning from the experience of reading them in action. Some examples of these tips as they apply to telling a “springboard story” (a story to spark change) are:

Step 1: “Be clear about what change you’re trying to make” (9).
Step 2: “Think of an incident, a story, where the change has already happened” (10).
Step 3: “Tell the story from the point of view of a single protagonist who is typical of the potential audience” (10).

“Anchor the listeners’ imagination initially in reality. And then they’ll follow that story into the future” (15).

Squirrel Inc. is an important book because of its attempt to legitimize narrative as a highly effective communication method in corporate settings. If we’re not convinced of this by the theoretical epitaphs which begin each chapter, then there’s the undeniable fact that the story of Squirrel Inc. itself is entertaining. The experiential power of the book itself thus makes a convincing case for the power of stories to capture attention, to communicate values and identities, and the need to constantly reinvent and open conceptual spaces to keep things fresh.

My Question

Daniel Pink, Heath & Heath, and Denning all explicitly invoke narrative as a key characteristic or trait of the conceptual age. Pink calls story “the essence of persuasion.” Heath & Heath maintain that stories catalyze people into action and make abstractions come alive. Denning claims that “storytelling is our very nature.”

What connections can you make between narrative and interpellation? Does interpellative design always involve narrative, or is narrative a sub-category of something more essential?

Chip Heath & Dan Heath – Made to Stick

Summary

Brothers Chip and Dan Heath set out to answer the question of what makes ideas “sticky”[1] (memorable + actionable) in this engaging book. Although they don’t go into any depth about their methodology, the brothers essentially did a content analysis of things they considered to be sticky (e.g. proverbs, Chicken Soup for the Soul), and extrapolated 6 traits that all seemed to share. The SUCCES “checklist” thus emerges as a tool people can use to evaluate the stickiness of ideas. In addition to being an analytic assessment tool, the SUCCES list also works as an inventional aid – when crafting messages in any media for any context, authors can turn to the list to ensure that they are, for example, using the right kind of story for their purposes, and that they are not falling victim to the two biggest sticky idea villains: “The Curse of Knowledge”[2] and “burying the lead.” Heath & Heath sum up the core of their book like this: “There are two steps in making your ideas sticky – Step 1 is to find the core, and Step 2 is to translate the core using the SUCCES checklist” (28).

Although their methodology for generating the list is severely flawed (i.e. they had no external raters to verify the traits, and the sources from which they drew “sticky” ideas were not exhaustive, nor were they necessarily valid – as they basically admitted with the CSFTS books), and the implication is that these traits are absolute (without being formulaic (15)), the book itself sticks. Why? In perhaps the most compelling example of SUCCES’s power, the brothers themselves employ each of the techniques throughout the book. Made to Stick is full of interesting stories, unexpected statements (e.g. use an “antiauthority” to establish authority (137)), communication maxims, and wit & intelligence. It’s a practical page-turner that’s brimming with concrete examples which drive the (very little) abstract content home.

Notes on the SUCCES list:

• Simplicity – an idea stripped to its core (16).
• Unexpectedness – “The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern (64). Schema violation.
• Concreteness – explanations in terms of human action and sensory information (16).
• Credibility – Allow people to test ideas for themselves (i.e. a “testable credential” (157)). Use props (i.e. create an experience) to make statistics come alive.
• Emotions – “for people to take action, they have to care (168)
• Stories – make ideas actionable (16). “Story’s power is twofold: It provides simulation (knowledge about how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act) (206).

My Takeaways

-       Method = taxonomy; factor analysis

-       Acronym as organizing strategy (must create acronym from interpellation mechanisms)

-       Using lots of stories and examples to maintain interest and make concepts accessible

-       Using the strategies themselves as often as possible when writing

-       Striving for the “Communication Framework” as an ending:

Heath and Heath’s way (246): For an idea to stick, for it to be useful and lasting, it’s got to make the audience:

1. Pay attention (UNEXPECTED)
2. Understand and remember it (CONCRETE)
3. Agree / Believe (CREDIBLE)
4. Care (EMOTIONAL)
5. Be able to act on it (STORY)

My translation: For an interface to be interpellative, for it to hail / persuade audiences into adopting certain subject positions, it’s got to do [x. x=technique] by being [y. y=interpellation trait ].

My Question

1. It’s Saturday morning, and you’re on your way to a college football game with your parents and friends. After an hour of driving, you stop at the Welcome Center on the state line and are pleased to run into some of your parents friends who haven’t seen you in a while. As you’re on your way to the restroom, one of them turns to you and says, with a smile on her face and a gleam of genuine interest in her eyes, “Your mom tells me you’re working on your dissertation. What are you writing about?”

What’s your “elevator speech”? Does it pass Heath and Heath’s SUCCES test for a sticky idea?

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1.   “By ‘stick’ we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact – they change your audiences’ opinions and behavior” (8).

2.   Heath & Heath define the Curse of Knowledge as follows: “Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it…And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind” (20).

“If a message can’t be used to make predictions or decisions, it is without value, no matter how accurate or comprehensive it is…Accuracy to the point of uselessness is a symptom of the Curse of Knowledge” (56-57).

Brenda Laurel – Computers as Theatre

Summary

As early as the beginning of the 1990s, Brenda Laurel hit on the idea that usability alone would not suffice when it came to the design of successful applications. She therefore articulated a theory of interaction which leveraged her knowledge of theatre with her experience in HCI. “The real issue,” she claims, is “How can people participate as agents within representational contexts? Actors know a lot about that, and so do children playing make-believe.” Laurel brings the resources of theatre, film, and narrative “to the fore and [begins] to use them in the design of interactive systems” (21).

Using Aristotle’s Poetics as a basis for dramatic theory, she explains how concepts such as catharsis, engagement, and agency manifest in digital (i.e. “representational”) contexts. She adds to the conversation by bringing in the rich vocabulary of theatre, which she convincingly points out is strikingly similar to HCI. Although her examples are now badly dated, her concepts and theoretical framework remain relevant for those interested in multidisciplinary ways to think and talk about usability and UXD.

Laurel’s project can be nicely summed up as follows: “Even in task-oriented applications, there is more to the experience than getting something done in the real world, and this is the heart of the dramatic theory of human-computer interaction. Our focus is not primarily on how to accomplish real-world objectives but rather how to accomplish them in a way that is both pleasing and amenable to artistic formulation—that is, in a way in which the designer may shape our experience so that it is enjoyable, invigorating, and whole” (120).

Quotes & Ideas Pertaining to Interface Design and UX

A Definition of UXD
“Designing human-computer experience isn’t about building a better desktop. It’s about creating imaginary worlds that have a special relationship to reality—worlds in which we can extend, amplify, and enrich our own capacities to think, feel, and act” (33).

My Questions

1. Usability and UXD literature tends to indicate that mental models and metaphors are used to anticipate and support user tasks and behavior (Laurel, Norman, Nielsen, Young). The literature also makes it clear that proper use of mental models and metaphors makes for a useful and usable interface. However, it is less obvious how (or if) mental models are discussed / employed for emotional purposes. The same is true for metaphors, which are also discussed in terms of supporting interaction. Laurel sums it up well when she says, “The theory is that, if the interface presents representations of real-world objects [e.g. a ‘folder’ on a ‘desktop’], people will naturally know what to do with them” (128). This is true, for the most part. Yet, it is also true that people often know how they are supposed to feel and, more importantly, what role(s) they are expected to play in a representational context. However, current discussions of mental models and metaphor in interface design have shed no light on how or why this is the case.

Are ‘emotional mental models’ being leveraged in web design? If so, how? And to what end(s)? Is the work on “emotional design” (Norman, Coates) basically articulating what emotional mental models are and how they might be employed?

2. Brenda Laurel argues that “human-computer activities [are] more like plays than stories” (94). In fact, articulating a theory of “dramatic” (i.e. theatrical) HCI is the main project of her book. She explains that the 3 key differences between plays and stories have to do with the Aristotelian concepts of “enactment,” “intensification,” and “unity of action versus episodic structure” (94-95). Beginning with a discussion of these elements, then moving on to incorporate other writers who argue for the importance of narrative, turn Laurel on her head and explain why UXD is more like a story than a play.

Enactment – “the stuff of narrative is description, while the stuff of drama is action” (94)

Intensification – “incidents are selected, arranged, and represented, in general, so as to intensify emotion and condense time. Narrative forms generally employ the reverse process, extensification, where incidents may be reported from a number of perspectives and in ways that expand or explode time” (94)

Unity of action versus episodic structure – “narrative tends to be more episodic; that is, incidents are more likely to be quasi-independent and connected thematically rather than causally to the whole” (95)
3. Brenda Laurel conceptualized ‘engagement’ as something similar to the ‘willing suspension of disbelief.’ She says it is “the state of mind we must attain in order to enjoy a representation of an action” (113). She goes on, “Engagement is what happens when we are able to give ourselves over to a representational action, comfortably and unambiguously. It involves a kind of complicity. We agree to think and feel in terms of both the content and conventions of a mimetic context. In return, we gain a plethora of new possibilities for action and a kind of emotional guarantee. One reason why people are amenable to constraints is the desire to gain these benefits” (115). How is interpellation similar to and different from engagement? What is the “emotional guarantee” Laurel mentions?

Fundamental to Laurel’s idea of engagement is that “the representation is all there is” (116). Can the same be true for interpellation in online environments? What does Shedroff say? Krug? Is interpellation non-representational?

Bill Buxton – Sketching User Experiences

Summary

Buxton argues that we are experiencing a shift from “object-centered to experience-centered” design (10). He explains, “It is not the physical entity or what is in the box (the material product) that is the true outcome of design. Rather, it is the behavioral, experiential, and emotional responses that come about as a result of its existence and its use in the real world” (10). This shift requires us to think of technologies as “social entities” which have the flexibility to respond in multiple ways, depending on how people appropriate them.[1] Buxton calls his approach “design for the wild” and says that “understanding how to take the larger ecological, contextual, and experiential aspects of ‘the wild’ [i.e. the use-context in all its richness]…may well provide the means to break out of the status quo” (38).

Buxton’s contributions in this book are twofold. First, he articulates the need for a “holistic approach to experience-based design” (71) which essentially leverages the bridging capital that is latent in all interdisciplinary teams. Buxton makes the claim that design teams should be composed of people with different backgrounds and histories because all can bring valuable, complimentary skills to bear in the creation of new products (230)[2] – and it is toward the creation of new things that Buxton pushes, because he convincingly points out that the “n+1” model of simply putting out successive releases of the same product is unsustainable in the long run.

The second major contribution Buxton makes lies in his strides toward establishing design as a professional discipline. He pointedly disagrees with Don Norman’s contention that “everyone is a designer,” and instead argues that if everyone was a designer, then movements like Participatory Design in Scandinavia would not need to be presided over by a professional. If design is really so simple, the lay people could do it on their own (102-03).

In terms of seeing a holistic design process come to fruition in the creation of a new product, Buxton suggests that various forms of sketching are effective means to that end. Like the technologies that come as a result of design, “sketches [too] are social things” (153). He goes beyond simply advocating the creation of low-fidelity paper prototypes (though he lauds these), and argues that in order to effectively design an experience, that experience must first be sketched. He gives several methods and examples of such experience-sketching, including the Wizard of Oz technique in which a convincing prototype is put in place, but the functionality is “faked” to such a degree that the user is unaware that s/he is not actually interacting with the real product (239-40). Buxton also explains that sketches can be arranged and annotated in order to tell experiential stories. Here, he explicitly invokes Denning and the immersive tradition of storytelling. He says that the fundamental actions stories promote – “invite, suggest, and question” “discovery” and “play” – are also the desired outcomes and actions that experiential and interactive sketching elicits (262). That is, both stories and sketches allow for a “discursive element” that are a key part of the holistic design process (262).

Although he invokes it superficially, Buxton invokes “Le Bricolage” in order to showcase examples of how functional prototypes can be built with found or otherwise readily available materials (253-59).[3]

Quotes & Ideas Pertaining to Interface Design and UX

“Interaction is about roles and their changing relationships” (264).

“’Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But, of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. To design something really well, you have to ‘get it.’ You have to really grok [understand] what it’s about’” – Steve Jobs (309).

Design and pathos: “Technologies need to be thought of as social beings, and in a social context” (32).

Design is more robust than “styling and usability” (77).

“The role of design is to get the right design. The role of usability engineering is to get the design right” (389).

“Despite the technocratic and materialistic bias of our culture, it is ultimately experiences that we are designing, not things” (127).

My Questions

1.  How is the process of creating an interpellative design similar to and different from creating an experience-based design?

2.  How are “designing for the wild” and storytelling related to the notion of habitus and the building of social (and aesthetic?) capital?

3.  How does interpellative design leverage pathos?

4.  From a Baudrillardian perspective, what makes sketching seductive?

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This is Shirky’s fundamental assertion as well: that the relationship between humans and technologies they employ is recursive – we are shaped just as much as we shape.

Yet, for Shirky, the emphasis is on how otherwise mundane, ubiquitous  technologies take on the power to shape how we socialize with others (how we commune, communicate, and co-create, e.g.) when used for certain kairotic, user-determined purposes . For Buxton, on the other hand, technologies are social because they are collaboratively and interdisciplinarily constructed. His focus, in other words, is on how the inventional aspects of technology should be more social than they currently are. The reason for this returns us to the shift from object- to experience-centered design: designs are not used in a vacuum; therefore, they should not be designed in one.

Essentially, Shirky balances treatment of promise-tool-bargain. Buxton hones in on the tool. Buxton says, “My thesis [is] that in order to design a tool, we must make our best efforts to understand the larger social and physical context within which it is intended to function” (37).

I like the image of “silos” (92) that Buxton uses to explain the homogenous status quo of design teams. Bridging capital essentially destabilizes silos by introducing heterogeneity, and this allows creativity to blossom.

Not sure if more can be done with bricolage vis-à-vis Derrida, Deleuze & Guttari.

Clay Shirky – Here Comes Everybody

Summary

The phrase that pops up repeatedly throughout this book is “more is different.” Shirky’s aim is to demonstrate, through detailed examples, that once technologies become ubiquitous and mundane, they can become tools of revolutionary social behavior. I don’t use ‘revolutionary’ here in one sense only. Shirky provides instances of how Twitter was used to organize flash mobs in protest, and he explains how websites, emails, and blogs were employed by a fired-up group of air passengers in support of the Passenger’s Bill of Rights. Yet, ‘revolutionary’ also means ‘novel’ – ‘different.’ Shirky claims we are in the midst of a “fundamental shift. We now have communication tools that are flexible enough to match our social capabilities, and we are witnessing the rise of new ways of coordinating action that take advantage of that change” (20). One of the reasons we have witnessed technology at work in key social situations (another example Shirky offers is the group Voice of the Faithful, which formed in protest of the Catholic Church’s handling of pedophile priests) is because “forming groups has gotten a lot easier” (18) thanks to the ubiquitous use of now mundane technologies like email, blogs, and Twitter.

Additionally, thanks to the low costs associated with using these technologies, the most successful group-forming entities on the Web are such not because of their power to dictate the particulars of group formation, but rather because they act as a gathering spot for coordination among the users themselves. That is, users rather than the company (or host site), entirely control whether a group will form and what its rules will be. More and more, we are witnessing the power of such self-synchronized groups to enact real change in the world. This is part of the fundamental shift in group behavior that mundane technologies coupled with the right promise and the right set of boundaries makes possible.

In this new technologically mediated social environment, people’s roles are constantly in flux, and identity is a function of the capability of whatever tools are available to appropriate. This is the result of the “mass amateurization” movement which blogs, wikis, and podcasts have largely made possible. Shirky writes, “Amateur production, the result of all this new capability, means that the category of ‘consumer’ is now a temporary behavior rather than a permanent identity” (108). However, it is wrong to assume that huge numbers of people are now contributing huge amounts of meaningful content to social media systems. On the contrary, Shirky is careful to point out that all social media behavior is described by roughly similar Power Law Distributions – this curve, which slopes sharply downward from left to right like a playground slide, illustrates that a few people contribute most of the substantive content, while the remaining masses pop in to make small, infrequent contributions. This pattern of unequal participation is repeated all over the Web, from Flickr to Wikipedia. The distribution also tells us that within a small system with few participants, attention can be tightly focused, and conversation can happen among all. Whereas in a larger system, a single or small group of users broadcast content that other users see, but no conversation can happen among all members of the community because the connections are too many.

Quotes & Ideas Pertaining to Interface Design and UX

General

“On the Web…the arrows of attention are all potentially reciprocal; anyone can point to anyone else, regardless of geography, infrastructure, or other limits” (90).

“Every webpage is a latent community. Each page collects the attention of people interested in its contents, and those people might well be interested in conversing with one another, too” (102).

“The internet augments real world social life rather than providing an alternative to it. Instead of becoming a separate cyberspace, our electronic networks are becoming deeply embedded in real life” (196).

“Everywher we look, social media makes creativity not just possible but desirable” (311).

“The future belongs to those who take the present for granted” (319).

Promise, tool, bargain (PTB)

Definition: “The promise is the basic ‘why’ for anyone to join or contribute to a group. The tool helps with the ‘how’ [of coordination]…And the bargain sets the rules of the road” (260).

Social Capital

Shirky cites Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone to base his explanation of social capital.

Definition:

• “that mysterious but critical set of characteristics of functioning communities” (192); “a set of norms that facilitate cooperation within or among groups” (193).
• Participation is “the vehicle for creating and sustaining social capital” (193);
• “that store of behaviors and norms in any large group that lets its members support one another” (222).

Examples:

• “When your neighbor walks your dog while you are ill, or the guy behind the counter trusts you to pay him next time, social capital is at work” (192).
• “The person who teaches learns twice, the persona who answers questions gets an improved reputation in the community, and the overall pattern of distributed and delayed payback—if I take care of you now, someone will take care of me later—is a very practical way of creating…social capital” (258).

“Essential conundrum”: “inclusion implies exclusion” (202). Was it K. Burke who talked about congregation by segregation?

Power of: “One reason the phrase ‘social capital’ is so evocative is that it connotes an increase in power, analogous to financial capital” (222)

“Individuals in groups with more social capital…are better off on a large number of metrics, from health and happiness to earning potential, than those in groups with less social capital. Societies characterized by a high store of social capital overall do better than societies with low social capital on a similarly wide range of measurements, from crime rate to the costs of doing business to economic growth” (192).

Types of:

• Bonding capital: “an increase in the depth of connections and trust within a relatively homogenous group” (222)
• Bridging capital: “an increase in connections among relatively heterogeneous groups” (222)
• Connection to Ronald Burt: Among other things, bridging capital is the force underlying the argument for transdisciplinarity. In “The Social Origins of Good Ideas,” Ronald Burt found that “the highest percentage of good ideas came from people whose contacts were outside their own department.” In other words, “Bridging predicted good ideas; lack of bridging predicted bad ones” (230-31).[2]
• Example: “an increase in bridging capital would increase the number of people you’d lend [your money] to; an increase in bonding capital would increase the amount of money you’d lend to people already on the list” (222).
• “Bonding capital tends to be more exclusive and bridging capital more inclusive. In Small World networks, bonding tends to happen within the clusters, while bridging happens between clusters” (224).
• Application: “The [Howard] Dean [presidential] campaign was great at doing everything a campaign can do with bonding capital—gathering ardent supporters and raising millions in funds—but getting people to vote for the candidate required bridging capital, reaching out to people outside the charmed inner circle” (224). Thus, the failure of Dean’s presidential bid is effectively the story of a failed bid for bridging capital.

My Questions

1. How is Shirky’s idea of “social capital” different from Ronald Burt’s, Althusser’s and Bourdieu’s? How does social capital as a mechanism drive interpellation into the realm of the aesthetic (i.e. Design)?

2. How can Pink’s 6 right-brain aptitudes and Heath & Heath’s SUCCES model be leveraged to find the right mix of Shirky’s “promise, tool, bargain”?

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1.  Through an analysis of the promises offered in some of the book’s examples of group action, Shirky notes that what makes a good promise is a “balanced” message; something that sounds “just right”; an idea that’s “modest but interesting.” To me, these sounded like Aristotle’s Golden Mean might have some play in terms of better understanding what makes an interpellative promise.

Come to think of it, bridging capital seems to be a huge underlying current in Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method. There, he calls for the democratization of science – the inclusion of the “uninitiated” into the discourse. Similarly, Bruno Latour in Science in Action notes that many scientific discoveries and ‘a ha!’ moments emerge from a scientist discussing work with non-scientists. Bridging capital might also be latent in Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I need some quotes here to substantiate all this, but what I’m trying to say is that I see the importance of bridging capital pretty powerfully demonstrated through these writers in the history of science.