Category: tech design

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exam readings tech design

Exam reading: “Design of everyday things”

This book could be an interesting read for a wide audience, while introducing useful concepts for designers of all stripes. Donald Norman’s “Design of everyday things” discusses the places where technology and people just don’t get along: goofy door handles, impossible-to-program electronics, hanging chads, etc. (Hey, it’s election season in Florida, so I can dredge that example up!)

Summary: According to Norman, object design frequently is non-intuitive and causes users headaches; users perceive faults of use to be their own. These faults include slips, where the user has a good plan, but poor execution (e.g., substituting numbers, doing a habitual activity by mistake), and errors, where the goal itself is not well-thought out (e.g., social pressure, subconscious vs. conscious decisions). He outlines several ways to make design better, to help users avoid such errors. First, correct uses should be visible: conceptual models of the proper use should be apparent in the placement of parts (“natural mapping”), and feedback should let users know whether something is working. Next, users should be guided by constraints on possible uses as well as affordances (design features that lead users toward the appropriate actions). Designers should also be aware that knowledge about how to use an object can be “in the world” (i.e., apparent from structure) as well as “in the head.” Other key things to do are simplify task structures, design for error, and standardize when all else fails (standard configurations become social conventions, hence “knowledge in the world”).

Comments: Norman offers some specific advice for computer design (e.g., find a balance between text- and icon-based displays, make them explorable), but his general advice could easily be adapted to digital media. Probably most useful in a design context (could include information design), rather than for exploring expressive possibilities of new media.

Links to: Gee (network model for memory, learn by doing), Tomlinson (tech design), Liu (user-friendly design), Johnson (user-friendly design principles)

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exam readings knowledge work politics tech design

Exam reading: “Laws of cool”

Again, another book that went in a direction I didn’t expect. Alan Liu’s “Laws of Cool” raises some important questions about the relationship between corporatism and knowledge work:

Summary: In this book, Liu takes a somewhat pessimistic view of knowledge work and the information economy. He contends that knowledge work, and the culture of “free information,” is the continuation of a developmental trajectory that minimizes history and subordinates individuals (and the humanities, as a field) to corporatist, profit- and efficiency-motivated thinking. In the new corporatist economy, personal identity and social class are subsumed into the team; workers are expected to constantly improve productivity, be lifelong learners, and effectively become “nomads” across the employment landscape. The producer culture dominates life and work to the extent that counterculture is an alternative “workstyle;” “cool” is the “shadow ethos” of knowledge work- the only way to resist while not being able to escape the system. “Cool” is characterized by a fusion of ironic snark, mockery, design that delivers unimportant or information-poor content in typically information-dense formats, and a politics (or non-politics) of the “bad attitude.” Liu especially criticizes “cyberlibertarianism,” which presses for some individual freedoms (e.g., access to Internet, free speech) while ignoring others (worker health, workplace privacy), and completely ignores class issues like social justice. According to Liu, students mistakenly associate school with the dominant culture and turn to (corporate-sponsored) pop culture; in order for educators to break this association, they must help students become grounded in historically-informed critical thinking.

Comments: Some of his description of the online aesthetic was dated (the book came out in 2005). Liu’s conclusion is that the fusion of avant-garde & electronic arts with the historical perspective afforded by the humanities is the most likely site of resistance to the new corporatism (though he also discusses historical critical thinking). I think there are two reasons why this isn’t necessarily an effective approach: 1) (shallow) not everyone can relate to this sort of art; and, 2) (deeper) perhaps the social justice and labor movements, which he does discuss, are more effective approaches to resistance (as well as appealing to a wider audience). Though, in the latter case, perhaps an argument can be made that we need conditions of scarcity for people to empathize with these materially- and collectively-oriented movements; Liu’s book was written from an affluent American perspective during fairly flush times, and maybe these movements could be more effective nowadays…

Overall, this book was more thought-provoking than I expected it to be. It got me thinking about social/environmental justice issues and how these interact with new media in a very different way than the dominant culture that Liu describes. His suggestion that what the humanities should offer “cool” culture is a historical grounding was also a useful thought, and is something that has added to my thinking about dissertation projects in the last few days.

Re: libertarianism and knowledge work, this book articulates some things that I’ve thought about but not from an employment-based perspective. For example, the lack of individual responsibility for the common good and the environmental consequences of non-regulation espoused by libertarianism are things I’ve really disagreed with before. The historical lack of attention to worker rights among libertarians (when they often define themselves as knowledge workers who you’d think would need these protections) was a new thing to think about for me.

Links to: Brown & Duguid (corporatism, knowledge work, changing education culture); Feenberg (philosophy of technological development); Lessig (“free” information); Norman (user-friendly design)

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exam readings tech design visuals

Exam reading: “Language of new media”

Well, class started this week- I have no idea what the historical basis is for starting school in Florida in the middle of August when it’s 95 degrees out and there’s 90% humidity. It’s bizarre: it makes our “Spring Break” a winter vacation. Maybe it’s because August is one of the only months without a national holiday (Florida is stingy about state holidays– I miss Hawaii, where we got at least one day off a month.)

Anyway, to business: in this exam reading, I tackle Lev Manovich’s “Language of New Media.” The rest of my books came in this week, so I have a big stack of them staring at me. Moving on quickly…

Summary: In this book, Manovich discusses new media in the context of visual media (especially cinema) and computer cultures. “New media” are computer-based, but more specifically: data are numerically represented, objects are composed of modular parts, functions are automated, both data and structures are variable (e.g., updatable, scalable, customizable), and viewable in multiple formats (transcoded). It is not enough for a medium to be computer-based, digital, interactive; it has to have the former properties to be “new media.” Manovich discusses four key aspects of new media in detail: interfaces, operations, illusions, and architectural elements. “Interfaces” are important because the mediate the human interaction with the database; constraints on interface design include print and cinema conventions, as well as general computer-interface conventions (e.g., tensions between icons vs. work surfaces). There are three “operations” that characterize new media: selection of ready-made parts from a database, which are then composited into an object; and teleaction, realtime action at a distance. The “illusions” he discusses are primarily the move toward photorealism in computer animation; the important characteristics of such images that differentiate them from photography are that they are moving, and non-iconic. Finally, the “architectural elements” (my term) he discusses are databases and virtual spaces. These are important because they are cultural forms newly characteristic of new media.

Comments: Manovich’s background is in cinema, and much of his theoretical discussion is centered on theories of visuality. He also discusses how cinema has both influenced and been changed by new media. Since that’s not my main focus, I’m skipping this material here, but one could certainly read this book while paying more attention to the visual material. A comment on databases: M. states that the virtual world is composed of data structures and algorithms, but does not infer a rhetorical or political motivation for such things (unlike Brooke). For M., politics seems to enter into the process at a later level, during selection, compositing, and teleaction.

Links to: Brooke (M’s “death of rhetoric”); Benjamin (visual media, concepts of aura & flaneur); Gee (gaming; G. discusses learning with games, while M. focuses on the overall forms)

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exam readings networks tech design

Exam Reading: “Greening through IT”

This book, “Greening through IT” by Bill Tomlinson, is one of the newer ones added to the T&T core reading list, and addresses one area that I think the core list as a whole ignored previously: the broad-scale material basis of electronic technologies. While many of the theorists covered in the program emphasize the connections between mind and materiality (e.g., the physical experience of interacting with a computer is part of what makes reading online different from reading a book), no one thus far has addressed the broader ecological implications of these new technologies.

I would venture that most theorists approaching the T&T field from a critical theory perspective are (understandably) not aware of the ecological sustainability issues surrounding electronic tech- for example, electricity use, e-waste, programmed obsolescence of devices. Most authors focus on the social/philosophical implications of new technologies, and there’s a definite assumption overall that we will be able to continue to physically make and use these technologies in the future, without too much consideration of natural resource limitations. Even the authors who focus on “materiality” of technology focus on the individual user-machine interaction.

So there’s a need in the program for attention to these issues (which are a main concern of mine, given my background in ecology). I think Tomlinson’s book does a decent job of addressing them. It’s not the perfect book on this issue for this program- I can see some of the more theory-centered students discounting it because of its low theory quotient (and that apparently annoying “evidence is used to support my theory, not contest it” thing). However, it does provide a needed perspective to the program, and I’m not sure what an alternative text that addresses these issues might be…

Summary: Discusses potential uses of information & communication technologies (ICT) for environmental sustainability. Tomlinson lays out a framework for “extended human-centered computing” (EHCC), which requires consciousness of scale (temporal, physical, complexity) when analyzing problems, guides system development in green directions, and compares technologies in a range of time/space/complexity scales to identify gaps not being addressed. There’s detail about various environmental problems, social barriers to change, and how we can use IT to address both of these large areas. There’s a lot of detail, but it basically boils down to expanding our sense of/ability to cope with large time/space/complexity scales. Touches on three orders of effects of technologies, which need to be considered: 1st (direct effects), 2nd (specific impacts on other economic sectors), and 3rd (general social or cross-industry effects). He breaks down his discussion of pathways for using green IT ides into industrial, educational, personal motivation, and collective action categories (a lot of detail is outlined for each category). He presents several case studies in education, personal data tracking, and collective action, and discusses how each worked (or didn’t).

Comments: This book was heavy on examples, and perhaps short on theory. It would have been nice to see how the EHCC framework was used specifically to address gaps in scale (is there a heuristic for applying it in specific cases?). In the case studies, it seemed that the more controlled the environment, the better the technology worked for its designed purpose, e.g., the museum display worked better than the online programs that utilized crowdsourcing. I’d like to see more research on whether crowdsourcing/networking actually works for more than just getting Betty White on SNL (granted, this area of research is in its infancy). It’s also possible that more advanced research in museum displays/childhood education in general are responsible for this effect. The question seems to be how to get adults to buy into some of these ideas. Some of the cited examples (Indian fishermen) seemed to be more effective, though that could be because he was emphasizing the positibes. The context/discussion of the theory of punctuated equilibrium was odd-with his emphasis on the importance of metaphors that work on more than just the surface (an idea I feel strongly about), this bugged me.

Links to: Norman (technology design), Feenberg (applied case of design with technical and social ends in mind), Spinuzzi (objects & network formation?), Johnson (design for a purpose, though T. specifically focuses on the larger system rather than the user- the opposite direction from J?)

Edited 8/28 to add links, correct Johnson’s name.