Posts from — February 2007

Well, either it’s a down year at CHI or I’m finally understanding the academic world. My friend Arvind and I got a Work-in-Progress (w-i-p) paper into the same conference I’ve been accepted for the student design competition. While it isn’t an archived publication, it’s a feat nonetheless (now I can at least Google Scholar myself . The w-i-p is basically a call for papers on projects that either aren’t yet completed or are in a preliminary, exploratory state. The paper is a part of our ongoing Master’s capstone project where we are trying to develop a framework for HCI/d practitioners in the developing world–specifically in the village. He is concentrating mainly on his homeland of India, I am concentrating on Africa–though I really place my research specifically in Southern Zambia (coincidentally my fiance is completing her phd in anthropology there). The paper itself shows how Activity Theory can serve as backbone for deriving practical methods for the field. Activity Theory, very briefly, seeks to steer away from previous models in HCI that focused more on cognition and information processing. It is more in the field of ethnomethodology, action-network theory and situated action theory. However, it distinguishes itself from those in that it puts more emphasis on the individual and his/her activities as they exist in the world. Activity Theory does allow for broader group activities to be analyzed but it leaves room for how individuals can affect the collective whole. Getting back to earth…we wrote that in areas where there is no previous computer technology with which to study interaction, a theory that doesn’t focus on artifacts and technology is best suited. This is a cluttered explanation but if you really want to know more I’ll post the paper when it’s all ‘camera ready’. Until then you can get a better picture of Activity Theory by looking at Bonnie Nardi’s papers over the last decade (I’m also reviewing her latest book with Victor Kaptelinin in another post). For info on the other areas, start out with looking at Yvonne Rogers’ paper from I think ‘94 because she gives a great overview of HCI theories.

Anyway, this CHI conference will be absolutely amazing. I have to make two posters now and if I get through the poster round in the competition I will then give a presentation with my group members. On top of all that, I really hope to meet a lot of people because there is a ton of stuff going on that I’m interested in.

As I look around TreeHugger’s website I see videos and read articles in which people talk about how they are being sustainable. I just watched a video of a woman talking about how she was using finger food for her party to avoid using utensils so that she could ‘be sustainable.’ This term is quickly being misused and this is causing the idea behind sustainability to lose focus. In the mainstream it has basically become the new term for being ‘environmentally friendly’ or a ‘conservationist’. The term was well defined in the Brundtland Conference in ‘87 as something that would describe a top-down approach to development. When people talk about their actions, that is simply conserving. Here’s an example: one might ‘act sustainably’ by flushing only when necessary (if it’s yellow let it mellow…you get the idea) but you are simply conserving water. Sustainability in this sense has more to do with the system and process. Is your toilet designed to use under 1.4 gallons per flush? Where is the water going? A sustainable system would be one where that same water would then run underneath your garden or lawn and irrigate food crops you eat. If that is the case, it really doesn’t matter how often you flush so long as your crops aren’t being irrigated otherwise. That is sustainability. It refers to the entire process. Essentially, a person cannot be sustainable in their actions (except maybe in the case of overeating) but one can conserve. It is the policy-makers, developers, designers and builders–those that create the systems–that have the ultimate responsibility of being sustainable.

For my graduate capstone I am researching the role and appropriation of interaction design in rural areas of developing countries. As I research a lot of information and communication technology (ICT) projects or UNESCO-sponsored initiatives, I come across a lot of implications for what to do in the future. Most of these projects are failures but even the successes often cite this one implication: “The technology utilized should be affordable.” What the hell does that mean? Why would anyone consciously develop a technology that is unaffordable–especially in the cases of poverty-stricken rural areas. This doesn’t make any sense. To think that these ICT projects might fail because the creators did not consider cost, or that the major insights are to simply make the technology affordable in the future, is ridiculous. Why isn’t that common knowledge? Apple wouldn’t make an iPod that costs $2,000 aimed at college students so why would a developer implement a technology that costs thousands a year in maintenance in a village that has an average income of a few hundred dollars a year? I mean, Sony wouldn’t sell a Playstation 3 for…..okay, wait, that might not be the best example

So what I really wonder here is what is at the core of this ‘design implication’? In this setting I think what is really at play is that developers do not design the system/artifact in a way that makes the user capable of maintaining or improving upon it in the future. If the system relies on outside support it is doomed to fail because researchers and developer can only linger so long to ensure a project’s success. I read all too frequently that projects might be a raving success while the developers are still around, only to find that years later it becomes a dismal failure. The failure is actually amplified by the fact that when users become accustomed to a system/artifact, they change their activities to center around it. As a result, when it leaves, they are left in a worse condition than before. So my thoughts on this idea of “unaffordable technology” are that designs in these settings must be participatory and adaptive. Developers and support cannot be around forever so it is important that the designs can not only be learned by the users but mastered in such a way that the user then becomes the designer (see Acting with Technology by Nardi and Kaptelinin for more on this). This way, Users can take ownership and innovate for their own uses. From a participatory standpoint, designs can most likely become adaptive. In this sense, the design is possibly modular or it is malleable so that it can be modified and reappropriated in the future. If implementations have adaptive capacity then their usage will be more sustainable.

I am excited to report that I and my colleagues Arvind Ashok and Nick Quagliara have gotten our design submission into the Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) student design competition. We are 1 of 12 finalists from 54 applicants from 11 countries. More importantly, we are 1 of 5 from the Human-Computer Interaction Design (HCI/d) program at the School of Informatics in Indiana University! Congrats to all my peers who made it.

To most people I think that the digital world seems untaxing on the environment. After all bits have no real physical form that we can see so it’s counter-intuitive to think that have any physical value. However, the first law of thermodynamics would tell us otherwise. All the information being transferred across fiber optics cable is created by something physical. Beyond the energy spent creating the devices that power the machines or the production of silicon and other metals, the real drain I see now comes from the electricity used to power these bytes. For every new computer connected to the Internet, the power drain grows exponentially. Computers are no longer used in isolation so as the numbers grow, their effects grow exponentially in a large network.

There has been a lot of discussion about ‘information overload’ since the early 90s but to me it is a term that has carried little significance because it is poorly defined. Nobody is really overloaded when they get on the web. There are plenty of filters that keep information from simply streaming onto your desktop. Users, decide where they go, which sites they visit or what to search for. The real overload happens in that the meaningless information out makes these processes all inefficient. To give a counter-example, wikipedia.org has provided well-filtered content all in one repository. While the site’s sustainable efforts are seemingly never cited (most likely because I don’t think this was a direct goal of the creators), the site provides a model nonetheless. Before wikipedia, to find information about a country, I would use a search engine. This will probably result in wasted time and energy sifting through mis- or irrelevant information. Now, wikipedia has decreased both. When I say energy, I’m not simply talking about my personal energy but the energy that is powering the data transfer between my computer and the servers that host the information. I’m sure the energy wasted is not great but multiply this by the number of searches, and the effect is quite noticeable (I should note that I have absolutely no data…just a ramble).

Searching is only one example of unsustainable ‘digital practice.’ I recently came across an article that discusses the electricity consumed by electronic avatar. According to some stats and extrapolation, the average avatar in a virtual world such as Second Life consumes around 71% the electricity of a human! This is the first ‘mainstream’ article I’ve found that actually tries to put a natural cost on something digital. As I look at images of server farms like the one Google is building (I think this was in January’s Wired), I would hope that this happens more in the future. I am not proposing that wikipedia be a model for this or that Second Life is bad. Simply, more notice needs to be taken about how the digital is physical.

UPDATE: I have actually found a great resource that at least gets at part of this issue. Megan Prusynski wrote about some sustainable web hosting services that have more sustainable practices on the server side. She provides a great list on this topic. Green Options alone is a great resource for practical sustainability issues–it’s listed in my blogroll.

Acting With Technology
by Kaptelinin and Nardi

This is a book that has really changed my mode of thinking in terms of how to think about the effect of design. Most of my education has been based around usability testing–especially in a set laboratory setting. Nardi and Kaptelinin describe in detail how Activity Theory can inform interaction design (ID) to look beyond this close-minded view. This theory seeks to take the focus of interaction design off of the artifact and more towards preexisting activities. They give a great, abridged evolution of HCI over the last 30 years. In this, they show how the 80’s saw HCI based solely around the desktop computer, informed mainly by information processing techniques from cognitive psychology. As computers have gotten smaller and more ubiquitous, so must the theories that inform such designs. Computers can now reach beyond just the desktop and into our daily activities. As a result, designers must look more closely at these activities to find how design can work within these activities rather than create new activities in and of themselves.

This is an academic book and not recommended to a general audience. I would recommend it almost as required reading for those in the field of Interaction Design. I was discouraged to see so much “old-school” HCI this year at CHI and I think this is book is even more important if the field is to enter the new millenium.

The Semantic Turn
by Klaus Krippendorff

This should be required reading for interaction designers. It came out in 2005 and I believe it represents a huge paradigm shift in the field. Krippendorf argues that design should focus more on the semantics and value of artifacts rather than intended use. The idea is that a designer cannot possibly foresee what use somebody might glean from a design. Additionally, different users attach different meanings to the same artifact. He gives a simple example of the Lamborghini. The artifact is essentially a sports meant to be used to drive fast. However, the car takes on different meanings (such as a status symbol) in use. However, this ’semantic turn’ also takes the stand that there is no real wrong use. It is simply an awareness and forethought that the artifact’s use and meaning will evolve.

The book is filled with quotables and new directions for design. He asserts that “design is fundamentally concerned with innovation, with making changes happen, and designers are especially challenged by common beliefs in what cannot be done” (210). Essentially, Krippendorf tries to illustrate the unique and inherently powerful (although he doesn’t state the latter) role of designers. When he describes his ideas of a ’science for design’ rather than of design or design science, he tries to reconcile misconceptions of design as being problem-solving 0r in the service of well-defined causes. The above quote shows his belief (and this is echoed previously by Stolterman and Lowgren in Thoughtful Interaction Design) that design is concerned more with ‘creating’ future, or creating the unknown. For this reason, scientific methods of analysis will never fully serve the practice of design because it cannot be defined or systematized.

It is difficult to summarize this book or give it proper treatment. But, it should be known that this will probably become one of the founding writing’s in the field of interaction design. A must-read for practitioners