Actions speak louder than words: shifting from buttons and icons to aesthetics of interaction

Digital products are generally controlled by buttons and icons, which places an emphasis on the userÕs cognitive skills. We propose to take respect for the user as a whole as a starting point, including his perceptual-motor and emotional skills. Designers should create a context for experience, rather than a product. Aesthetical interaction becomes the central theme. As designing becomes contextual, research should be contextual too. To realise conditional laws, we believe that design research has to become research through design. We exemplify with work from our own research and teaching, how to study contextual and experiential design. Appeared in: S. Pizzocaro, A. Arruda and D. De Moraes (Eds.). Design plus Research. Proceedings of the Politechnico di Milano conference, May 18-20, 2000, pp. 284 290. 1. Research through design Figure 1. Smeg gas cooker Figure 2. Samsung Microwave Everyday, I enjoy the refined details of our Smeg gas cooker. That wee bit of resistance when you turn on the gas by means of the beautiful and functional knobs. That automatic snapping back of the knobs when you turn the gas off. That large cooker for preparing delicious Asian meals. That stainless steel shine, at least when I have cleaned the cooker. But the most excellent and even touching part of our cooker is the sound of the in-built kitchen timer. This sound is so subtle and refined, that it seems as if the cake leaves the oven more beautifully. Despite my passion for our gas cooker, I yielded to the temptation of fast meal preparation several years ago, and extended our kitchen inventory with a microwave. My problem is, that I can not detect the relation between time and the temperature of my meal. I havenÕt got a clue how long the microwaves should penetrate my meal to heat it up, without turning it into a dried out, dreary meal. Sure, the microwave has some predefined buttons, but I hardly ever prepare such predefined meals or weights. Furthermore, the pleasure I derive from using my gas cooker, with the refined details on the knobs and the sound of the kitchen timer, is never obtainable with such a white, anonymous and plastic-looking box. Digital technology has brought us many new opportunities, such as fast defrosting of frozen food (microwave), waking up in a pleasantly warm house (programmable thermostat), doing the laundry automatically (programmable washing machine) or bringing overseas friends close to us (internet). However, this technological development changed products both in appearance and interaction, and as a result our relationship with products is a less engaging one (Borgmann, 1987). The machinery withdrew to the background and control by means of buttons and icons became prevalent, see Figure 3. The functionality of digital products quickly expanded. The microprocessor made it relatively easy to add new functions, and the interface could by and large remain the same with modal controls, i.e. controls with different functions depending upon their mode. As a consequence, the emphasis was placed on the cognitive skills of the user to operate a product. Figure 3. Digital products are generally controlled by buttons and icons, which places an emphasis on the userÕs cognitive skills. Examples of such interfaces are a Honeywell thermostat (left), a remote control for SONY hi-fi equipment (middle) and a AKAI CD player (right). But is that what we want? Should products make life easier by offering infinite functionality? Should human-product interaction be largely based on cognition? Ferren (1999) states it perfectly in his speech ÔThe lost art of storytellingÕ: ÔAll too often the purveyors of new technology are providing really excellent answers but to the wrong questions. This produces a whole variety of solutions to problems that nobody has. The real challenge seems to be knowing how to ask the right questions in the first place. What is in it for them (the users, C.H.)? Õ When one truly wants to start with the user, as Ferren suggests, we believe that designers should respect the user as a whole, with all his skills. Thus, the designer should respect the perceptualmotor and emotional skills of the user as well as his cognitive skills. Because Ôthe userÕ do not exist, the designer should respect Peter, Simone, Claire, . as a whole. When starting from knowing, doing and feeling, a product has to be more than a withdrawn machine with buttons and icons. It should be a context for experience, rather than a functional product. It should be an open and engaging system which tempts and supports users to have an experience. This means that the focus shifts from the result of interaction e.g. a heated meal, clean tableware, a video recording -, towards the involvement, pleasure, beauty . during interaction, e.g. the surprising beauty of preparing a delicious meal, the devoted serenity of doing the dishes, the tempting joy of programming and watching a movie. The interaction has become the central theme of design, especially the aesthetics of interaction (Hummels, to appear). What are the implications of a context for experience for research? How can we study the aesthetics of interaction? First and foremost, ÔDesign (plus) ResearchÕ has to become ÔResearch through DesignÕ. Contexts for experience presuppose diversity, subtlety and richness of design solutions in order to support Peter, Simone, Claire, . To conduct experiments about human-product interaction, one needs to use fairly detailed designs that allow for this diversity, subtlety and richness during interaction. One needs to design wealthy solutions and test them in their context: with users in their environment. As designing has become essentially contextual, scientific work and results should also be contextual, i.e., lead to conditional laws instead of general laws. Shifting to research through design in a context-dependent setting, implies that the designer-researcher needs new methods and research techniques to find conditional laws. In this paper we will describe and show with examples from our research and teaching, how we approach context-dependent research through design. Firstly, we will discuss the concept Ôcontext for experienceÕ. Subsequently, we will show what kind of information is needed and which kind of methods and approaches can support designer-researchers to gain insight in the aesthetics of interaction. 2. An engaging context for experience When we place respect and engagement in a design context, it means that we should not only focus on the user or the product, but on the relationship between the user and the product. We propose a design shift from creating products to creating contexts for experience. By this we mean that a designer creates possibilities for a user to do things, to gain knowledge and to be affected in some way, dependent on the intentions of the user and the situation in which the event occurs. This implies that the focus shifts towards the involvement, pleasure, beauty . during interaction. Consequently, engagement can be obtained. Let us show an example from our second-year design students, to give you an idea what we mean with a context for experience. For this design exercise, we asked our students to design a pager with which a user was able to send the simple message ÒI need youÓ in a non-verbal manner. The pager had to be context-dependent. This implied that the pager should enable the user to indicate the urgency of his message to be sent, as well as his availability for incoming messages. Furthermore, the pager had to be user-dependent, which meant that it should allow the user to contact two specific friends. In appearance and interaction it had to express the users as well as the functions. Figure 4. The pager designed by Yannic Figure 5. The collage expressing Eva according to Yannic Figure 6. How to use the pager YannicÕs pager consists of a central unit with bars and a balloon, and two personal pumps. These pumps are a simplification of the collages which Yannic made to express Eva and Cees. The blue cube is used to contact Cees and the yellow sphere is used to contact Eva. To contact Eva, Yannic places the yellow sphere on the central unit and pumps. The force with which he squeezes the pump indicates the urgency of his message. A comparable unit owned by Eva is reacting to YannicÕs call by a balloon increasing in size, which begins to emit a red light. If Eva does not want to be disturbed, she twists the bars from her central unit, thus preventing the balloon from increasing in size. YannicÕs central unit twists simultaneously, blocking the passage of air and complicating the squeezing activity. This example shows that a context for experience addresses aspects which are ignored by ÔtraditionalÕ technological products. This context for experience has an overall expression in which the appearance and the kind of interaction become one. They are adjusted or dynamically adjust to the user and the situation. Finally, this pager shows that intangible electronics do not necessarily have to result in intangible products. This shift towards involvement during interaction means that the designerÕs and designerresearcherÕs emphasis should be placed on a beautiful, engaging interaction with a product. The focus shifts towards the aesthetics of interaction. In general one could say that the aesthetics of interaction is the sense of beauty that arises during the interplay between a user and a product in their context. What creates this sense of beauty? Why do some products resonate with a user, while others do not? We believe that five aspects are essential to evoke this sense of beauty. In the next section, we will discuss these five aspects and illustrate with an example of the Sunbeam toaster owned by the first author, what we mean with the aesthetics of interaction. 3. The aesthetics of interaction Figure 7. The Sunbeam toaster Figure 8. The interior work of the toaster can be easily cleaned by ope