To explore the consensual domain

These days, one of the important issues among my realizations is that it is so hard to design a certain solution for user without having to understand their contextual stories. (I did not realize the fact when I was conducting user study in participatory observation method two years ago. I suddenly realize this fact now) And, I have thought of the interpretation methods in terms of the signs that user produce, exploring their contexts, and of how can I applying the signs to design solutions. In my superficial assumption, an artifact is a certain point of contact when human being interacts with the value, perception, or experience that this environment provides us. The signs, which mean the artifact produce, might be in the consensual domain to link the relationship between designer and user. A designer detects the activity signs by which user consciously or unconsciously produce without having to let the user recognize the fact that the designer discovers the signs in user’s life. At this situation, the designer would say “you have the same usage interpretation with others” or “you have a different one to use an artifact.” The designer would be willing to mediate some artifact in both interpretation stances, the generalization(structural) and specialization(anti-structural) approach like a sort of creative things<?> for user’ activity. On the other hand, the designer would empower user’s interaction with artifacts or restrict by designer’s interpretation. 

 According to Acting with technology, by Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie A. Nardi, “Technological/psychological tool is the sign intended to help people affect others or themselves.”
“The tool is at the same time both enabling and limiting: the tool empowers the subject in the transformation process with the historically collected experience and skill “crystallized” to it, but it also restricts the interaction to be from the perspective of that particular tool or instrument only; other potential features of an object remain “invisible” to the subject”. Based on the sentences, my term “the generalization approach” is related to “collected experience and skill “crystallized” like a sort of paradigm or discourse, and the term, “specialization one” is the interpretation of particular culture or phenomenon of individual. (I am not sure if my definitions are proper interpretation)   Anyway, a few of question arises in my mind again.  As the functions of signs, how can designer create and transmit the intended sign/information to user, persuade them, seek to establish the sign that artifacts create by designer, and enable them maintain the relationship with the artifacts? How can I regulate the consensual domain between artifacts and user? To get the answer of my curiosity, I am thinking of how I have to do create the consensual domain as an interaction designer. Simply, I need to comprehend complex phenomena of human activity, which reveal motivation and action level of user. I have to be able to recognize the issues that are relevant to the intended user and that affect on identifying the appropriate attributes and qualities for the artifact concept. That can be achieved by utilizing various design methods, and drawing an overview in concept design aspects or more detailed aspects. Hopefully, after that, it is possible to get deeper insight of user. However, there are a numerous number of layers of experiences/phenomenon. User experience of a certain phenomenon is wide and cannot be examined from by macro discourse. This needs to take many different angles per each user experience. Moreover, tacit or hidden aspects such as product meaning or personal motivation have also influence in the user phenomenon, which are unlikely that easily recognized or communicated to design, or even directly affected by design. Hmmmmmmm. What am I supposed to do? It is so hard to explore the consensual domain.

person-costume-person

Last night we went to mad scientist ball party as last year.

It is an event held by psychology and informatics school annually before Halloween. Faculty and student come together to have fun together.

Last year I have been here and I dress my Nowitzki’s jersey and to be a basketball star.

This year for some reason I don’t have time to prepare costume and just attend with friends casually. It is a little bit embarrassing when I was asked who I am. So I just stand against the wall, and see what happened. There are many crazy figure and beautiful dresses. Scientist with fluffy hair dressed in white passed by, I noticed that he hold a test glass with full of beer.

 

For a party, beer is one of the beverages, which usually is put in bottle. But for this special theme party within a Halloween background, it is super good idea to use a test glass as a drink container because it conveys a meaning that he wants to be identified as a “mad scientist”. This is a typical addresser and addressee relationship case.

For the receivers who attend party with no idea what the theme is, it is a regular Halloween party; For the receiver receive e-mail titled mad Scientist Ball, we know it is hold by our faculties-psychology and informatics scientists and they ARE scientists in weekdays;

For the receivers who attend here but don’t know Halloween and costume party culture at all, it will be a ridiculous public place at a crazy night; for those hearing disable people attend this party, it will be seen as a silent weird dancing party.

In conclusion, there is a sharing collection of knowledge among the addressees (receiver)

 

From another perspective, costume is just one kind of clothes. Why we are enjoy to see other people dressed different clothes When we see other people dressed in variety of costumes, we related them to the role they pretend to be. It gives them different personality of we think of them. Meanwhile the dressers can either play themselves in a costume or the role the clothes give them. We make fun of the dressers and new characteristics of personality. Dressers also enjoy combination of his original role and new meaning added by dressing the clothes. The new meaning comes from two resources: one is the thinking by watching themselves in mirror, the other one is influences by other’s opinions.

In conclusion, the clothes people dressed in reflect and shape their personalities, amplify their desires.

pre-writing experience: “Instant Messenger and Activity Theory”

I was struggling on selecting a theory from the phenomenology system and a concrete HCI phenomena from my personal interests. Because I always found they’re hard to be connected. One of my interest is the online Anime book watching, but what to apply there? Ready-to-hand? Ethnomethodology? Activity theory? I found none of them fits to it very well.

I decided to do this in another way. So I picked up my most familiar phenomenological theory - Activity Theory and one of my most familiar softwares - Instant Messenger, to see what I can get from this combination.

I am hesitating to say this combination went pretty well, but I do get a huge list from it:

The points made in the mind-map may not be useful for a paper, but I found the process of connecting IM and AI together was pretty interesting. I am not quite sure what in this list can contribute to a paper, but at least I found mind map is a good method to list everything out.

Nurses in the Health Care Industry

Clarion Health Partners in Indianapolis uses software for the management of patient records. Nurses and physicians interact with software extensively to get their jobs done. The integration of technology for hospitals and patient care is continuing to be used in more integral ways with the hope that it will assist in alleviating the high costs and demands in the health care industry today.

The average age of nurses in the United States is about their mid-40s, and having worked in the health care industry, I noticed that one of the greatest challenges has been in training computer illiterate nurses to use technology. A specific example is the use of electronic patient charts by nurses. Electronic charts have numerous institutional benefits over paper: quick access, integrity of information, automatic conflict checking, not getting lost, the ability to transfer information across institutions easily witihout the need for it to travel, integrity of information, the ability for statistical analysis and the ability to access the chart in multiple locations at the same time. Despite these and other benefits, nurses are not always enthusiastic about the use of such systems because it does not always enhance their work experience.

As technology progresses and the demand for health care increases, we are also increasing in our dependence on technology. We have surpassed both enthusiast and professional stages for many technologies for hospitals, but we have yet to arrive at a “consumer” stage for most applications of technology in the health care industry. The use of “implicit” meaning is lacking and nurses often require special training to use technology effectively. Emotional satisfaction, communication, intuitive interaction and sociability in healthcare IT are all areas that interaction design has not effectively addressed for managing patient charts, as is evident in the challenges nurses face today. Phenomenologically, we need to consider the horizons of nurses and have an understanding of their lifeworlds so that the aforementioned areas can be adequately addressed. With technology, the nursing “role” has been changed. As actors, nurses presently need to acquire rules of participation together with props, and many times, as designers, we lack the understanding of the actor’s definitions of the situation.

In a famous quote by Isabel Maitland Stewart, she explains “The real essence of nursing, as of any fine art, lies not in the mechanical details of execution, nor yet in the dexterity of the performer, but in the creative imagination, the sensitive spirit, and the intelligent understanding lying back of these techniques and skills”. This quote is supportive of approaching design for nurses beginning at the micro level. A micro level approach would include the assumption that “people are creative, intelligent and knowledgeable” and it would include using “interpretative methodologies which try to capture the actor’s definitions of the situation”.  This is also very realistic because now more elaborate “movement” than a new page loading or progress bars can be implemented easily with web 2.0 technologies, making their technological experiences more lively.

Trusting technology is also a common issue at hospitals, which is suggestive that a level of realism should be expressed through digital medium. This obviously could not replace a formative approach, which could be creatively used to enhance the patient-nurse relationship. Those issues that nurses do not care about could be designed to be as ready-to-hand as possible. One goal of nurses is often to reach a level of accomplishment and satisfaction through care for a patient, so the things that nurses care about, such as aspects of the patient-nurse relationship, should probably remain as present-to-hand as possible and could be enhanced instead of abstracted through the use of electronic patient charts.

What did I do in the past three days!

O MY GOD, I just realized that I didn’t finish my pre-writing until now. However, I did some reflection-on-action work.

After Tuesday’s class I decided to do the most time-consuming work: re-read those readings and gather all my notes and those underlined sentences together! It turns out that it is a huge project! Usually I read on my screen. I could not stop underline those so good sentences when I read those theories due to that the mouse would never short of “ink”.  Other than underline, I made so few notes on those pages!  Although it is a huge project, and I didn’t finish it until now and plan to stop now, I still believe that it is a so good idea I got from Tuesday’s lecture. It is not easy time when I realized that I just throw all my learning methods away since some time I don’t exactly know. I used to have a lot of good learning methods once upon a time. Reviewing old works is as important as learning new things. But now I seldom to re-examine the old works I did. I should do it regularly.

Now I decided to focus on pre-writing, and hope I can get something out of the messy mind with my painful head.

Examples on the reciprocal relationship between activities and tools

“Activities shape the requirements of particular tools, and the application of the tools begins to reshape dimensions of activity.”

iPod Touch

When planning on the next generation of ipod, Apple wanted a better view for photos and videos, and a more intuitive way of interaction. As a result, they integrated the multi-touch function and the 3.5 inch screen in the new ipod touch. So firstly, activities have shaped the requirements of tools here.

As there’s no camera integrated in ipod touch, the photo function is more or less unnecessary. I don’t often load photos from my computer to ipod. However, I found the scale of the anime books I downloaded from internet (every page is a .jpg file) fit in the screen perfectly. Characters on every page are fairly clear. I can also turn to next page by simply flick on the screen. This makes me feel like reading a real anime book. I’ve also exported some of Jeff’s readings from .pdf to .jpg files and loaded them onto my ipod touch. So that I can continue my reading on bus or while waiting in the Informatics lobby. So secondly, the application of the tools begins to reshape dimenstions of activity in my example.

Warcraft III

When designing Warcraft III, designers in Blizzard already had plenty of RTS designing experiences from former works: Starcraft, Warcraft II and Warcraft I. They had also gained experiences from other RTS games, such as the Age of Empires. They had a great knowledge of which parts of the activities in a RTS game were necessary, which parts they could do better and also more creative way of entertaining. In a word, they have a clear mind of the game activities they want to design. So those intended design of activities shaped the Warcraft III - the tool. In order to give the players freedom of designing their own map, Blizzard also integrated powerful map editor in Warcraft III.

As Warcraft III was becoming more and more popular, players found the revolutionary hero mechanism of this game pretty interesting. Every single hero has different skills and attributes. Some players were considering creating games in which they can only control one or more heroes to fight. Then they could enjoy the heroes more thoroughly. So they used the powerful map editor integerated with the game to make maps with only hero control. All the sub-games of Warcraft III have been generated since then. Some of the pretty popular ones are: Defense of the Ancients, 3C and a number of warcraft RPGs. The conclusion is, the applications of tools have reshaped the dimentions of activities once again.

Phenomenology, AT, UX, and Post-Modernism

Before reading my blogging, I want to let you know briefly about my assumption. I guess the assumption is somewhat ridiculous. Turning back Macro/Micro point of views or Composing/Decomposing issues of human beings, I wanted to think about the views and the issues in Post-modernism and ecological system. I don’t read the book, ‘The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception’ written by J. J. Gibson yet (I just wanted to know the fundamental concept of the ecology in his book since He created the concept of affordance and Don. Norman borrowed it. That’s why I want to know about him further). I might make some mistake for my assumptions to apply it to build my thoughts up for this article, since I couldn’t survey enough. However, I am starting to write this article based on the fact that his intrinsic point of view on the notion of ‘ecology’ mentioned in his book would not be different from the dynamic process of nature where we live now. Based on my assumption, I mostly found my ideas for the blog fodder in the article, Activity Theory and Context Based Design, reading and comparing with other articles carefully. I want to apologize to you since I almost spent my time in investigating and studying to make myself understood for these questions so I couldn’t fully elaborate my ideas for posting yet. What I came to realize by comparing the earlier theories with AT and phenomenology is that we need to understand carefully the notion of ecological system that allows the whole contexts of human beings as nature teach us, and we can consider of the interrelationship between phenomenology and AT in the ecology system like post-modernism. Furthermore, I realized why we truly need to understand the moments of a user in HCI field, and more specifically, User Experience (UX) belonged to experience design is the fundamental goal for HCI people. I want to explain my idea by using the sentences extracted from the article and wiki. I hope my thoughts just acts on a sort of suggestions for this blogging. It is so difficult to make me understand but it is worth for bothering me even though my idea would be controversial or irrational. So, here are my ideas of the blog fodder.

What does activity theory expose as the limits of earlier ways of thinking about problems?
“Ecological systems are not always harmonious and functioning but have constant, tensions, discontinuities, and breakdowns that are necessary for survival and adaptability”. “The tensions and breakdowns that occur within activity system can be used as points of reference for studying the social constructions and design process”. 
Owing to the meanings of sentences, I realized that the ecological system does not always provide perfect theories with human beings, animals, plants, and so on to be able to deal with the all kinds of contexts/phenomenon occurred in the world. (I guess I can understand this is the merit of what we are calling ecological system). It lets human beings sense naturally constant, tensions, discontinuities, and breakdowns that are also the part of our life, and recognize the limitations, which is that we built up the former theories for only some parts of human beings’ life-world and horizon, trying to put them intentionally into sorts of standards/matrix/theories that we devised in the stance of structuralism. In my opinion, the former theories are not essential to allow to the exceptional tensions and breakdowns in human beings’ phenomenon. On the other hand, AT seems to try to absorb a number of individual activities into social network, recognizing the fundamental characters of the ecological system.  

What philosophical functions replace which other (earlier) philosophical functions?
Although I cannot help admitting post-modernism would not be comprehensive for the limitations such as tension, breakdowns, I think that Post-Modernism can somewhat support the limitations of the earlier philosophical functions. I found the dynamic analogies between the Ecology and Post-modernism through my research.  As the ecology system includes the terms such as constant, tensions, discontinuities, and breakdowns, ambiguity and change, order and chaos, steady state and breakdowns, harmony and controversy, Postmodernism also tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, also ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness or interreferentiality. Post modernism imposes unities of meta-narrative (Wiki); the breaking of traditional frames of genre, structure and stylistic unity; and the overthrowing of categories and other forms of artificially imposed order. Activity theory and theories and related ideas evolve within the complex systems mentioned above. Phenomenology is understandable to include such exceptional examples. I guess that Post-modernism endows us with compatibility or omnidirectional editing opportunities of the phenomenon in the world.      

Phenomenology replaces Cartesian mind-body dualism.  
How did AT overcome those limits?
“Elements of our daily experience gain their meaning from the network of social interactions in which they figure. So the social and the physical are intertwined and inescapable aspects of our everyday experience”.     
Out of the dichotomy, the dualism that the mind and body were different things, if according Urin Bronfenbrenner’s model, Micro, Exo, Meso, and Macro are the elements for consisting of an ecological system or main culture/intersubjectivity for human development, as an example, I am thinking about the process that each armature’s individual activity in the activity triangle can be a bit of consisting a huge pyramid like a density spectrum, that contains the lower level that a number of armatures exist, intermediate level, and the upper level that professional exist so that the higher level is influential on the main stream culture. Here, the pyramid is just a certain ecological form/example of featuring a certain culture/phenomenon. These elements of the armatures’’ experiences consist of intertwined and inescapable aspects of our everyday experience. What I want to mention is that no matter what kinds of the features, AT, the organic methodology, inform of us that any meditating tool has the potential to transform the activity in which it is used reciprocally, allowing tensions and breakdowns. By using the meditating tools, the armatures and professionals are continuing to doing trials and errors the breakdowns and tensions. That is the way to interact with communities they belong to and to consists of the organic networks of social interaction.
         
What new limits are introduced by AT?
Since I am still studying AT and thinking that it is a perfect methodology in designing ;), I have no idea of the new limits caused by it. Nevertheless, it is necessary to ponder how HCI as mediator of tools does intervenes/mediate/design/edit User’s activity in complex technology system. Today, HCI focus on User experience, often abbreviated UX, which is a term used to describe the overall experience and satisfaction a user has when using a product or system( from Wiki ), but it is a frequently mentioned design that can lead to a poor user experience. We, HCI people, found in the past years, are finding still, and won’t stop to finding the breakdowns and tensions in UX contexts. I guess HCI people are confused that which solutions are better for users. They cannot choose the intuitive solutions like embodiment yet.     
“Embodiment: Embodied phenomena are those that by their very nature occur in real time and real space in where the action is written by Paul Dourish”  
There are a lot of challenges that I might be worry on myself since I would access users with lacking of understanding them. Ethnographical methodology as an ambiguous, not scientific, not logical more open ended way to access users is helpful to understand them. Designers are the moderator between users and technology.   

Ø     Human Computer Interaction
Ø     Information Architecture
Ø     Interaction Design
Ø     Interface Design
Ø     User Interface Design
Ø     Usability
Ø     Usability Engineering
Ø     Visual Design         
    ( From Wiki ) 

On the other hand, in the fields above, we also need to think about the issues of multi-disciplinary, pursuing positive aspects of psychology, anthropology, computer science, graphic design, and industrial design in HCI body itself. It is true that HCI members in the multi-disciplinary are facing with conflictions, tensions, and breakdowns. The limits might create synergy to support users or not. Designer is also the moderator between them, understanding each own field.   
        
How could we overcome them (by adjusting our philosophical foundations)?
Like Dourish’s idea, I guess we are already used to be encompassed by the philosophical foundations. As we are inhaling and exhaling air, we do not feel them but we know we need them definitely. Without the theoretical value conveying our philosophies and the concomitancy of thoughtful consideration on them, I realized that I could not design any things and would not think what my fundamental approaches for design are even though it is not directly related to each other and not practical to apply them into real design things, or even though I have excellent sense/originality to create/design so that I don’t need to care of them ( please, don’t get me wrong I know I am not ). I am reflecting on myself now since I used to design superficially some things like vogue, style, or sense. Yes I did. (But if we are designers, we need to enhance our instinctive sense too) I want to be subordinated to them by engaging thoughtfully with users’ activity and technology used in various contexts. I think that my solution to overcome is to develop the practical interconnection of design methodology based on the philosophical foundations.

MyActivityTheory and John Edwards

Like Kayce, i was taking in the cultural nuance this weekend that is MTV. Actually, i happened upon the MySpace/MTV Political thingamajig on Friday night, and was only able to stomach the first 10 minutes or so. John Edwards was the focus, but my dislike of the forum had little to do with the candidate. It had to do with Activity Theory and what it exposed of the brokenness of our electoral process.

The format was as follows:

1. Candidate is asked a question by an audience member
2. Candidate answers the question
3. People in MySpace.com place vote in the following categories, based on the answer:
   • “understands reality”
   • “answered questions”
   • “has the wrong ideas”
   • “out of touch”
   • “dodged the question”
4. Candidate can view the results of the poll immediately

What bothered me about the process was nicely and unwittingly exemplified by Edward’s own words in the video above when he asks the moderator how he should understand the livepoll pie chart. After the moderator explains that the last 3 categories (colored pink and red in the chart he was viewing) are “bad,” Edwards says  “The pink and the red you want as little of as you can get by with.”   With just a little bit of Activity Theory, one can quickly parse out the many ways that the technology, in this case, is part of a sociotechnical system that is helping to destroying the democratic process by increasing the rate at which presidential candidates can morph their message into something that is what people want to hear, rather than something that they actually believe and plan to carry out.

rationalism v. phenomenology v. activity theory

I started to think about how different theories constrain and open up the space for design but got caught up in trying to sort out how exactly these theoretic traditions (rationalism/cognitive science, phenomenology, activity theory) are similar and different. It would be nice to have some sort of philosophical foundations of HCI cheat sheet. Here is an attempt at an oversimplified (and very likely incorrect or unforgivably incomplete) summary of the basic distinctions between the three theories…

The rationalist/cognitivist perspective has nice, clean distinctions between mind and body and between thinking and action. It’s highly reductionist.

Phenomenology rejects the rigid distinction between mind and artifact and between thinking and action. Tools mediate meaningful human experience. Pheneomenology also considers a multiplicity of thoughts/actions. There is no objective reality that we are capable of knowing. Instead, knowing is highly subjective.

Activity Theory builds on phenomenology but takes a more holistic view. It diminishes the role of the individual by emphasizing the social nature of the mind as well as the unity of consciousness and activity.

All three approaches assume an actor with intention.

rationalism phenomenology activity theory
………………………………………………………………………………………..

objective <—> subjective/pluralistic “

mind/world<—> mind&world “

individual consciousness <–> social/distributed consciousness

micro<———————-> macro*

reductionist<————————–>holistic

*Activity theory seems like more of a macro theory compared to phenomenology in that it considers whole ecologies within which the individual acts, but it also seems to be trying to hold on to the micro perspective by considering the conscious intentional goals of individuals.

What did I get it wrong? What am I missing?

Game play experience today

Nine friends played Wii games today at my home including sport games and Mario party games. We have four handlers which means that we could have four people play at the same time. When we played those minigames, eight of us were really enjoy. Another one was very busy and working by using her laptop.

Clearly, everyone has a clear goal, win the game. In order to win, people use strategies, and share their win strategies with others. When we played 2 vs. 2 games, people shout their strategies to their partner about how to divide their labor, and how to aim their targets. Through the practice sessions, we were trying to find some tips by doing consciously. We were trying to stand out of others by predicting the others’ behaviors and actions.  Sometimes we wanted to win, and also want others to be happy. Activities were mediated in the game experience.

However, it seems that nobody really think about the final goals of the party during the gaming process. Maybe they were thinking about it, but who knows!?

Based on this game experience, I got some questions about Activity Theory. In AT, we mentioned in our class that all the activities involved in conscious mini goals. How about when activities happen in a social contexts, and everybody has different mini goals and maybe has similar activity? Or maybe we all have same mini goals but express it in different ways? When these happen, we have no way to connect a specific goal and a specific activity due to the dependency on people and context. The mini-goal direct activities are always changing. How can we connect activities and operations with planed and un-planed?

In one game, suddenly one friend found a new way to shake the handler and he won the game. He was very happy to tell others that we could shake the handler faster by using his strategy. And every other three players stared at their own handlers and began to shake in that way. This is really a wonderful breakdown!

I also think that the mind/body theory was challenged in this game.  It is impossible to think and plan our activities first before actions. The situation in every moment decided by the past activities and mediated by both the game environment and other people’s reaction. A lot of operations were  conditional response. and happened unconsciously. However, if some players are very familiar with the game, and they got the ability to predict the possible situation in the future moments, and they kind of got “more time” to react to the situations they were facing. This  matches the embodiment theory and this kind of familiar shapes the sensibility in HCI design.

Embodiment always exist in reality.