Here’s an experience for you: sit back, close your eyes (but not really because then you won’t be able to read the post. Unless you ask that person sitting next to you to read the rest aloud for you), think of Italy-the delectable food, the canals of Venice, the Alps.
Now you’re stretching your arms and legs, jumping up and down in place to get your heart pumping, almost ready to ascend that giant pink bunny knitted by some grannies to look as if plummeted from so high in the sky to its quite nasty demise that its internal organs have exploded and lay beside it.
Yes, this seemingly delusional fantasy can indeed be a very real experience. Those of you going to CHI may want to factor in a few extra days to see this man-made anomaly.
Last week, I conducted some user studies to learn about music libraries. One of the participants commented on how cool mix tapes were yet how rarely he creates playlists in iTunes.
I started to wonder about the differences between old and new music media formats. In particular, I was interested in the differences between mix tapes (cassette tapes created by the user from other cassettes or CDs) and digital music playlists (lists of current or saved songs in digital music players like iTunes or Windows media player). I found various theoretical concepts helpful in thinking more precisely about these differences and how we might improve the design of digital music technologies.
Jenny Brown sent around a link to this website. I believe it does a nice job illustrating many of the aesthetic concepts we struggled with yesterday (especially hypermediation!).
p.s. if it is illegal to post this link for some reason, I take full responsibility for it and ask you to forget that I mentioned Jenny Brown sent it because that was a lie (even though it’s true).
In dialog surrounding the reviews of a recent paper a colleague and I submitted, one of the reviewers, resisting our call for a greater emphasis on criticism in interaction design on the grounds that psychology already does it, asked the following question:
How can you prevent the “anything-goes-subjectivism” when the judgments are not objective?
This is the kind of question that drives me–and I think anyone trained in the humanities–crazy. My immediate reaction is that this question is both naive and bigoted, not merely privileging that person’s own scientific background, but categorically excluding the possibility of intellectual contribution from anywhere in the liberal arts (art history, literary criticism, fashion design, philosophy, music, film, etc.).
But after some reflection, I realized that my reaction isn’t good enough. Here’s why:
So I was reading through my google reader feeds, and came across this gem over at Functioning Form.
The post came out of the recent conference VizThink which has this example.
I think that this example is very compelling as both represent some kind of fact, or statistic (reminds me of Mark Twain’s quote on stats) but it is presented visually in such a way that it totally changes the way the viewer perceives those facts. On the right we tend to see polarization & division, while on the left we see a more balanced representation of facts.
Just as computer systems embed values, so do User Interfaces and anything visual. This isn’t exactly groundbreaking news, but I thought it would be worth sharing.
The kinds of values we embed into systems as designers should be carefully chosen, and not haphazardly done. The metaphors chosen in any given interaction will open up certain spaces for action and tend to close others.
I think that often in games the iconography chosen is very engineering and object oriented. What I’m saying is that so much about the interface is just about doing, without giving any idea about what that kind of action will bring. The example that springs to mind is cursor usage in WoW. When you mouse over an item to be picked up or used, whatever it may be from a chest, to a chair, to picking up sunken artifacts in a marsh, a gear appears. You can “do” something with it. This gear conveys nothing about the consequences of your action. Perhaps in some cases that is a good thing. What are the other ways we can re-imagine a game interface? What are the values in them?
We all have a general conception about aesthetics and we discussed most of that in the class. Based on that I tried to have a discussion with my fellow photographer friends. In common terms, it is something that is appealing, an epitome of beauty, a piece of art, or more broadly something that gives us joy. It is contextual. It deals with balance and co-ordination, it is a consummation or a closure.
Aesthetics is a subjective responses to the things we consider beautiful.
These were said in class.
Wikipedia defines it as : Aesthetics is commonly perceived as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as “critical reflection on art, culture and nature.”Aesthetics is a subdiscipline of axiology, a branch of philosophy, and is closely associated with the philosophy of art. Aesthetics studies new ways of seeing and of perceiving the world.
While I read the Dewey’s book, I was wondering if I am an artist, designer, or even scientist. My identity, just as a humble live creature is seriously getting to be ambiguous. When I was addicted to draw I thought I was an immature artist, when I had studied and worked in design I used to be a fake designer, and now, in this HCI area, I feel I am an irrational researcher in science field even though the field is somewhat different from natural science.
Of course, I have read that someone have said in terms of the definitions of each area and the evidences they collect in order to support their argument in terms of the boundary between Art and Design, between Design and Science, and even, in the design discourse, the design from the realization of everyday life to technology-centered design to Human-centered design, and as Klaus Krippendorff said, if we need to consider of Science of Design, Design science, or Science for design or not.
For me, it is getting to be difficult to realize that what identity of design is where the boundary is and what its discourse stands up.
In some moment, it seems to be clear for me, but in the other moment, I have no idea what it is.
In addition, as if HCI people seem to enjoy jumping in its ambiguity when they design, they have thrown many questions and unsettled resolutions to me even though Jeff has been not to stop explaining what design is, what factors of human beings we need to consider, what theoretical methodology we need to study users. I think his explanation is just for him and his evidences that he collects, but not mine. He provides me with huge thinking space to make me ponder in the questions. And I have to think about the questions in my own way: How do I ultimately answer this question? How do I participate in the design discourse?
The name of design, it changes its semantic body. It is like another aesthetical experience for me.
I wanted to share a clip about beauty and perception that was part of a Dove campaign. It’s kind of cool just to watch without knowing too much about it beforehand, so I suggest doing that before reading the rest of my post.
Boy does it speak volumes. Obviously there are several people involved and one can assume they at least have one similar intention-to make something beautiful to showcase what the make-up products are capable of. The funny thing is that all we see when we look at the billboard is a photo of a gorgeous face. Why do they make this choice and not say, show a before/after shot of what the model looked like with/without make-up on? Would this be more effective? Would most women feel their intelligence insulted at such an obvious display? Did they choose to do this simply because it is a norm of make-up producers to make ads that have this particular look (a close-up head shot)? There is another group of authors, too; the ones involved not in creating the billboard ad but the film clip. The people who chose to show and speed up the process of taking this girl and making her billboard worthy, and chose the music.
And what makes this ad or this polished head shot of a model beautiful (or high-class, expensive-looking)? I’ve heard about studies that try and understand beauty come to the conclusion that people are more likely to find beauty in symmetry. We certainly see the editing done to the photo to reposition and enlarge the eyes, elongate and thin the neck, etc. Even I remember when someone was teaching me how to draw a face, I was surprised at how calculated the procedure was-the eyes went on the imaginary line dividing the vertical space in half, etc. In fact, see here for yourself. And what about the eyebrows being darker than the blond hair, or that she has blue eyes, shorter and curly hair, or that she has light skin? What role do those play?
And after all that, take a look at the parody of the Dove ad, too.
World-renowned violinist (and IU alumnus and professor) Joshua Bell agreed to a Washington Post stunt to offer a 40 minute solo concert in a DC-area subway station, to see if any of the DC commuters noticed the greatness around them. The Post did a long and thoughtful write-up, after filming the whole thing, and they even posted video online. You can see the article + video for yourself (you may need to register to access the site, but it is free–and totally worth it). Awesome.
Props to DC-area resident and Sister of Moi, Kathy Thomas, for sending me this!
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Aesthetics, Leisure, WTF | 
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Posted by laurabrunetti
