Design & Interaction with your environment capabilities are now larger than ever

examples of design interaction in practice + Tufte's viewpoint on the digital nature, PowerPoint is evil + prosumerism

Sensory Engagement & the Haptic

'Designers have also matured beyond the first moments of irresistible and immoderate enthusiasm for the new mediums, and learned to control their touch and to wear technology, instead of letting technology wear them.'

Paola Antonelli

‘Digital By Design’, forward p9, 2008

"In the future, display technology will move towards being an interactive window on the digital world, where the display will know who and where the user is, present content that is context aware, and allow natural interactions with the display surface."

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/about/feature/nui.aspx

ESSAY

Information in an electronic space is often malleable and non-linear. Identify and discuss the issues of authorship that this raises for both the designer and the user. Use a selection of relevant practice and theory in your answer

W13623168 - OLUFEMI GARBER

Information only has value if it can first be understood, and early data visualization attempts such as Playfair’s and Nightingale’s used a scientific approach to communicate the new systems that had been created. Seemingly metaphysical, it used linear formats to communicate quotidian values such as time, space and value. The issues in transmission meant that many users had to develop new skills in order to be able to discern the interaction between the x-y axis as new concepts on scale and user interaction became fundamental to their usability and readership. How a text is read has been an issue that linguists and Semioticans alike have approached in their search; to anchor, distribute, control textual structures since the Structuralist 19th century with teachings from Saussure who saw that communication structures and their development by human beings was a constant attempt to “ articulate their world”. Otto Neurath’s Isotype applied a scientific approach to design that allowed the user to extract information from a 2dimensional environment that was later supported by models such as Shannon and Weaver’s who saw communication as a linear process with the intention of passing information from source ‘a’ to recipient ‘b’. This idea predicated on the notion that meaning is authored before reception which was presented in their jointly published A Mathematical Theory of Communication (1948) is somewhat outdated in this era of electronic data gathering, transference and code where the ability to search for information through hypertext and browser based information has led to new design solutions in order to fulfill modern demands. That model represented a time when user interaction was still limited largely to a 2dimensional interface, printed matter being the dominant medium. Isotype has since been criticized for it’s use of culturally based stereotypes and therein lays its limitations, posing the question can communication transcend geographical borders? A deconstructuralist understanding was a study more concerned with the internal structures of how communication achieves it purpose through paying attention to how a text is read due in large part to the “ Changing Notion of Audience” where the user began to create content as there now was more impetus on the designer to respond to new structures and ways to obtain information as the “consumer became a user and the distinction between products and information was blurred.”

The change in behavior can best highlighted perhaps in the development of hypertext/html. Often overlooked in today’s use of more advanced communication mechanisms, yet still a fundamental tool used in the understanding and navigation of browser based interaction. Marshall McLuhan who foresaw the nature of the World Wide Web, which is now the biggest information network and store, 30 years before its inception, is famous for coining the phrase, “the medium is the message”. Perhaps he was aware that as advancements are made in the world of technology, that the scope for communication techniques would become more diverse with the proliferation of portals and development of cloud based software that allows for remix and collaboration. McLuhan theories in the 1960’s & 70’s came from a time and place where there was “a strong movement to apply scientific method to design ”. This is due to the development and use of interaction design which understands that in order to achieve a high level of usability it must principally be “concerned with designing contexts of living where desires as well as needs must be satisfied. ” Whilst design or mark making in an electronic space may seem infinite, it isn’t. It is limited to the servers and processes that it takes to keep it running. Therefore it is important that we first understand that this space is shaped in the mind before it can be made physical and it is in turned shaped by the users. That is to say that whilst a bricklayer may lay the foundation, our treatment of that environment will dictate its future and this correlates to Saussure’s understanding that we have a fundamental yearn to understand our social context. This gives we the user tremendous power as we continually shape our individual and collective worlds. Our political and socio-economic structure dictates that as it is shaped in the mind, therefore created before the bricklayer lays the foundation or the programmer writes the code then it is can be deemed a product with an author/owner. We now communicate over great distances, in real time allowing for collaboration. It is commonplace for studios and graphic teams to consist of multi-disciplined skilled individuals. Secondly like any environment of limited quantity, a market can be derived from this and values placed that can drive growth, inspiration and innovation. As innovation cannot exist in a vacuum, but is limited to the technology of the time, people will continually search for new ways to create and design the world we live in and how we communicate through it. This is not a marketing or copyright essay but the crossovers with other areas of design and business have helped to determine, define, and influence the ever-expanding world of graphic design - it’s evolution in this electronic time and often plays a role when discussing the issue concerned with moving into this digital space. Copyright & Copyleft based factions have taken these issues to a legal level to outline the meaning of the author and their rights in this time.

There presently is a preference and demand for a technologically “real” experience that allows for users to feel connected and this has led to new technologies being developed. Namely “ HCI (Human Computer Interaction) emerged, mostly in the 1960’s, to fill the lack of techniques and tools available suitable for designing the digital world”. The technological developments meant that the scope for design had expanded and the door was opened to a new kind of engineer and architect to begin to transform the way we interact with our environments. As designers were now designing for a more collaborative world where the designer and the user both had a say in the outcome. NUI (Natural User Interface) is concerned with the space around the user and is arguably the progression of an idea, interested with seamless user based ergonomics and this is somewhat suggested in both the names of these fields of research and development. “Human” and “Natural” both suggest that the creators are concerned with the “reality” element of the experience. Applications such as Wikitude, now brings the digital and physical realms ever closer. This augmented reality culture is now a growth market due to the new possibilities for both political and commercial gains. That is an all-encompassing idea that designers are now tasked with; multitudinous variations of the same narrative must be accounted for to fulfill the varying desires and capabilities of its users. You could argue that reality is both a design goal and foe for the contemporary designer in an electronic space, as who will determine the information that is accessible through such tools. The electronic space going beyond the screen can be seen by Apple’s use of the slogan “ Gestures that feel real” as they brand their innovative use of NUI in their multi-touch gestures technology. Gradually the user has become more empowered to control their own environments through hyper-media technology, e.g. Kinect technology, and Samsung Smart TV’s. Similarly, Microsoft says, “in the future, display technology will move towards being an interactive window,” suggesting transparency to a degree where not only will light shine out but also inwards. With the screen now understood to be a “ metaphor both for viewing and being viewed.” It has been asked then at this point has the role of the designer changed? “ Are we makers or managers? Controllers or curators? Editors or Aesthetes?” As the worlds of technology and design are inextricably linked the effects of such will be best seen in how readers adapt to respond to the new technology and the way we communicate through it. Soon ”the display will know who and where you are”. With seeming ease we are moving towards a predominantly screen based world where we can control our experiences.

Interactivity, by definition requires a user response or in a certain instance. Gameplay brings consequences of success or failure. If the environment cannot be navigated, efficiently, then the usability of that solution is not suitable for its end use. Facebook is an example of a malleable online environment where users can input their own data: through customization of their pages to create a reality that is acceptable to the user is achieved by the allowance to change aspects of the page privacy and layout. Facebook has undergone layout changes, upgrades since its inception but we can begin to understand why when Facebook engineer Jing Chen said in a blog post about a recent expected update. “ We’re releasing a set of products designed to improve your everyday experience, these product releases are part of Facebook's ongoing efforts to streamline the site and make it easier to use.” The constant evolution of Facebook means it exists in an electronic multi-platform environment as to where it cannot survive without the interaction of its subscribers as they create the content. Prosumerism as a model involves the input & interaction of its users to continually develop, update, interact with its content as they determine & drive the content. Communication through the user content driven applications such as a Wikitude is encouraged through the various functionalities; which include but is not restricted to the ability to be a developer and submit your own modifications to the non-linear building infrastructure. This Copyleft attitude creates higher quality software. There is a chat forum, which can be used, in both communal and private settings but also the creative opportunity for those wishing to be more anonymous which allows the user to send a message in a virtual bottle – taking old principles digitally making them modern. ¬¬¬At¬¬¬¬ the forefront of the reasons for the success of such applications is the ability to move through digital information much more efficiently. Ever increasing RAM, GPRS tracking, capabilities, bandwidth and fibre optic developments mean that people can consume information much quicker than ever before. The ability to access digital information is an efficient tool, resource and it trebles up as a source of entertainment. The traditional graphic designer must now contend with contemporaries who operate on a platform with more possibilities for non-linear functionality based on interaction design presenting issues on audience captivation and longevity. The merging of the real and digital worlds via a few clicks means that users have now become accustomed to demanding efficiency in the portals that they choose to interact with. ”As J. David Bolter points out in the course of explaining that hypertextuality embodies post-structuralist conceptions of the open text, “what is unnatural in print becomes natural in the electronic medium and will no longer need saying at all, because it can be shown.”(Writing Space, 143)”.

The ability to access information is greater than ever which now opens up the door to new areas of design as we now begin to produce metadata that wasn’t even available before the evolution of the electronic space. We now have the ability to say things we have never been to say before, however if through the use of metadata we are able to say these things then this brings with it new concerns in the form of responsibility as to how it is used and managed. Brett Barney, who lectures at Duke University, said in a discussion on Digital Humanities “ anyone having control is a dangerous thing”. We must ascertain the voice with which they speak and have authority. OpenText, “the leader in Enterprise Information Management (EIM)” since 1991 began to harness the power of digital information and have amassed a PUBLICLY TRADED company valued at US$1,207.5million helping their customers wield control over these new ideas and concepts. Access and censorship to such information as Google search data from political bodies has created heavily debated topics in the world of ownership and authorship. Evident in the copyright controversy that arose amidst Google’s collaborative effort with several libraries in an attempt to digitally scan millions of books in order to create a new framework to support what they say is their simple aim: “to make it easier for people to find relevant books – while carefully respecting authors' and publishers' copyrights.” One of their partner libraries is the Mirlyn Library Catalogue owned by the University of Michigan who said, “we don’t think of it as controlling access but as providing it”. Whatever the case may be they are still changing the way we interact with even linear print through applications such as QAR Scanners & Layar “that lets publishers infuse static pages with interactive experiences” enabling the user in their search for more.




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reference list

Harris, R., (1988). Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein. Routledge

Davis, M., (2012). The Changing Notion of Audience, ‘Graphic Design In Context: Graphic Design Theory’. London: Thames & Hudson, pp. 224.
Bagnara, S., Smith, G. C., (2006). Theories and Practice in Interaction Design. pp. xxii

Bagnara, S., Smith, G. C., (2006). Theories and Practice in Interaction Design. pp. xxv
Bagnara, S., Smith, G. C., (2006). Theories and Practice in Interaction Design. pp. xxiii
http://www.apple.com/osx/what-is/gestures.html
Helfand, J., (2001) Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture. Princeton: Architectural Press, pp. XV
Helfand, J., (2001) Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture. Princeton: Architectural Press, pp. XIV
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/about/feature/nui.aspx
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/7164912/Facebook-makes-layout-changes.html
Barney, B,. (2008)., Metadata, and the need for control. [online] Available from: [Accessed 8 December 2012].
http://www.opentext.com/2/global/company.htm
http://www.google.com/googlebooks/library.html
http://www.layar.com/