Does data make humans beautiful?
By: Micah Tinklepaugh
Tags: Cybernetics, Triathlon, Visual Design, UX, Data Science

Does data make humans beautiful?

UX Design for Cybernetic Applications

Figure 1 @lilianpereir on unsplash

Corporation ‘X’ thinks there is a huge market for a new product in endurance sports such as swimming, biking, and running. How should they design one? Determining ‘Worth’ is a great place to start. How important would the product be to society?

Product Worth.

Let’s conjecture why most people participate in endurance sports, including all the training it requires. Do they want to…

A. Become a professional athlete?

B. Grow into a healthier and more beautiful versions of themselves?

C. Socially engage others, including obtaining acceptance and personal meaning?

D. All of the above?

Assuming some or all of these are important to a lot of people, then a product could have significant worth.

The worth could be demonstrated to them by revealing the beauty of how they use data to achieve more.

The human and data are working together to reach an optimized performance, which feels brilliant. Think of the last time you ran faster, felt strong and beautiful, and posted your performance to a social application?

Should data be designed Intrinsically or Extrinsically?

Photo by Natasha Connell on unsplash.com https://unsplash.com/photos/byp5TTxUbL0

We have at least two options for the design of a product: intrinsic and extrinsic data interaction. In short, data interaction can feel as if it is a natural part of our existence but it can also feel separate and outside of our existence. This is important because it determines how the product works with the human body as a means to measure, visualize, and suggest insights into how to become better versions of ourselves.

An Intrinsic interaction could be biologically integrated. This could be done perhaps by implanting an electrode that receives electrical signals from our brain [1]. An Extrinsic interface could gather data from sensors. This could be through contact the outside of the body [2].

Although we can assume that most people we talked to prefer extrinsic design, do you find intrinsic design unsettling? Why?

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Design for Humans and Machines

Art from undraw.co

Determining answers to how people will interact with the products the next step after we find out the worth of the product to people. This is because although the product may seem important to them it doesn’t mean it will make them feel its importance. There are many reasons for this. Much of it has to do with the human sensory system(s).

Designers need to determine how to relate digital processes to our brains. This is because they are essentially creating inputs by which we learn. These must match what we pay attention to which is principally driven by our sensory motor cortex and pain vs pleasure feedback [3]. This is done in our email and calendars when we quickly create appointments. Creating the appointment can take longer if we are using a mouse or finger to physically touch a device but we receive a sensory signal that it happened and thus they seem more extrinsic. This can even be true if we ask Siri or Alexa to do something. There is audio feedback. Less extrinsic interactions occur when we don’t have the sensory signal for the prompting of the calendar event creation. There is less perceived agency when the system asks us if we would like to complete the task based on the information it maintains about us. The question and confirmation make it sufficiently extrinsic.

What if the system had something distinct and seemingly independent about it such as making calendar decisions without asking us to confirm them and providing no notification of the occurrence? That is, when our own internal thought processes are automated in systems outside of ourselves.

At this point we simulate intrinsic design when we forget we are dispatching the externalized things, but the design is still inherently extrinsic, since it is removed from our body’s biological processes.

For instance, what if an application on your phone learned how you like to bank based on transfers you make, when you check your account, and maybe when you purchase things? Psychologically it diminishes a sense of agency or causality for the human and a greater awareness of the system.

What if your colleagues and friends were all doing the same thing? They relegated choices to electronic systems so that their calendars were no longer being planned on their selections but rather on their general preferences. Would these preferences change based on how the network’s preferences changed? This could lead to new and seemingly bizarre social patterns, especially if you didn’t have access to the system.

How should we arrange things that seem discreet and to exist independently of us? Should we feel physically connected? Should we only be able to sense them through some external cue whether through hearing, seeing, or feeling?

In the next discussion, we will form a hypothesis as to what product would create product worth: