Volume XVII.

1 | JANuARY + FeBRuARY 2010

Tangible Interaction =
Form + Computing
Cover Story By Mark Baskinger & Mark Gross
Association for
Computing Machinery
Copyright 1996-2009 Infragistics, Inc. All rights reserved. Infragistics and the Infragistics logo are registered trademarks of Infragistics, Inc.
 MORE

UNIVERSITY
 eXPeRIeNCeS | PeoPle | TeCHNoloGY

The Tactile Experience

• PAgE 6 An intimate and satisfying relationship between a
person and a designed artifact.

COVER STORY

6 Tangible Interaction =
Form + Computing
Mark Baskinger, Mark Gross

The Critical Role of

Co-Creation by Users
User participation needs to go well beyond the
passive role of “spectator” in all sorts of contexts.

THE WAY I SEE IT

12 The Transmedia Design

• PAgE 40 Challenge: Technology that Is
Pleasurable and Satisfying
Don norman

BETWEEN THE LINES

16 The Art of Editing: The New

Old Skills for a Curated Life
Liz Danzico

(P)REVIEW

20 Of Memories and Memorials:

A Conversation with Jake Barton
about the Make History Project
Alex Wright

FEATURE

24 Operationalizing Brands
with New Technologies
Denise Lee Yohn
• PAgE 44
FEATURE

28 The Social Life of Visualization

Jeremy Yuille, hugh Macdonald

• On the COver: Designers meld lessons from the first

tool with today’s latest devices to form tangible interaction
design. The cover story presents new paradigms in comput-
ing created when physical form and computing merge. This
left-handed Lower Paleolithic hand ax captured within today’s
iPhone dates back 1.2 million – 500,000 years ago.

• PAgE 62
 VOLUME XVII.1 JANUARY + FEBRUARY 2010

Societal/Cultural Clarifying Interactions

Consciousness and Change Meeting and benefiting from the challenge and nature
Attending to and altering cultural constraints. of communication and community.

UNDER DEVELOPMENT Ps AND Qs

32 Beyond the Benjamins: Toward 62 Socializing at Cross Purposes

an African Interaction Design elizabeth Churchill
n.J. Bidwell, h. Winschiers-theophilus TIMELINES
FEATURE 66 Reflections on the Future of
36 Social Change: Women, iSchools from a Dean Inspired
Networks, and Technology by Some Junior Faculty
natalie Quizon Martha e. Pollack

INTERACTINg WITH PUBLIC POLICY ON MODELINg

40 Interacting with Public Policy 70 The Language/Action Model of
Jonathan Lazar Conversation: Can Conversation
SUSTAINABLY OURS Perform Acts of Design?
44 Reclaim Peter Jones
eli Blevis FEATURE

76 Is Wellness Informatics
a Field of Human-Centered
The Important Role of User Research Health Informatics?
Examples of, and discussions about, the role user rebecca e. Grinter, Katie A. Siek,
research can and should play. Andrea Grimes

FEATURE

48 User-Research-Driven Mobile INTERACTIONS CAFE

User Interface Innovation: 80 On Designers as

A Success Story from Seoul Catalytic Agents…
Jon Kolko, richard Anderson
Jay Chaeyong Yi

FEATURE

52 Why Marketing Research

Makes Us Cringe
Dan Formosa

Why Designers Sometimes

J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

Make Me Cringe
Klaus Kaasgaard

LIFELONg INTERACTIONS

58 Let the Experts Talk:

An Experience of Tangible
Game Design with Children
Javier Marco, Sandra Baldassarri,
eva Cerezo, Diana Yifan Xu, Janet C read Read articles from this issue
interactions

and previous issues online at

http://interactions.acm.org
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 Welcome
Interactions:
Information, Physicality,
Co-Ownership, and Culture
Tangible computing has a long history of interest
in technology circles; like augmented reality and
computer-supported cooperative work, it has long
been the focus of research studies in academic
institutions, and not ironically, the focus of a large
quantity of science fiction movies, too.
It is only in the past half-decade, however,
that the stars have aligned to support tangible
computing in practice. The low cost of technical
components, a more ubiquitous approach to rapid
prototyping, and introductory behavioral memes
(such as touch-based computing, made popular by
the iPhone) have pushed tangibility to the forefront
of actually shipping consumer products and have
encouraged the development of product ecologies
as related to systems, services, and the blurring of
lines between physical and digital computing.
Timely, then, is Mark Gross and Mark Baskinger’s
cover story describing the opportunities—and
challenges—of tangible computing in normal life.
They introduce the new and old, and emphasize the
importance of product form in bringing tangibility
to life in an appropriate and reflective manner. Don
Norman builds on the premise of “transmedia”—
technological media solutions that aren’t just func-
tional, but are also pleasurable and satisfying.
From the tangible to the intangible, several
articles describe human problems facing society
that require a much more theoretical approach to
design. For example, J. Bidwell and H. Winschiers-
Theophilus pull no punches in their outstanding
exploration of the topic of design for Africa by
Africans, which narrows in on the problem and
how it distorts designing in developing countries.
Another theme of this issue describes curation
and the increasingly vague—and important—role
of information, socialization, and data visualization
in our lives. A third and final segment in our mini-
series on iSchools is presented by Martha E. Pollack,
dean of the School of Information at the University
of Michigan. She describes the need to embrace—
and potentially, better define—the word “informa-
• Richard Anderson
tion” in our efforts to train those who will engage
in design and information. Peter Jones responds to
Hugh Dubberly’s thoughts on conversation, with his
own ideas on this method of information transfer;
Jones reflects on the relationship between conver-
sation and design, and calls attention to a deep
body of knowledge related to this topic.
And many of this issue’s contributions address
the increasing importance of the ongoing role of
user as co-creator and co-owner, such as in the • Jon Kolko
operationalization of brands (see Denise Yohn’s
article) and even in the creation—and ownership—
of a museum (see Alex Wright’s interview with Jake
Barton, the designer of the September 11 Memorial).
We think you will benefit from how the articles
in this issue thread together a story of information,
physicality, and culture. And we think you will be
delighted with the addition of two members to the
interactions staff: Liz Danzico and Jonathan Lazar.
Danzico replaces Steve Portigal as a columnist.
She is cofounder and chairperson of the MFA
Interaction Design Program at the School of Visual
Arts. Her column will always provide an insightful
look “Between the Lines” of issues of vital impor-
tance to design and practitioners. Jonathan Lazar
joins us as editor of a new forum on policy and
interaction. He is a professor of computer and infor-
mation sciences at Towson University, where he
founded and is director of the Universal Usability
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Laboratory and serves as director of the undergrad-
uate information systems program.
We thank Steve Portigal for his two years of
outstanding columns and welcome him as a new
contributing editor. We’ll try to squeeze an article
or two out of him as well.
Welcome to our first issue of our third year as
editors in chief.
—Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko
eic@interactions.acm.org
interactions
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649476
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
5
 The Tactile Experience
Tangible Interaction =
Form + Computing
Mark Baskinger
Carnegie Mellon School of Design | mbasking@andrew.cmu.edu
Mark Gross
Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture | mdgross@cmu.edu
Interaction design melds tradi-
tional methods and approaches
from other established dis-
ciplines. Many immediately
think of digital technology or
software, but the concepts of
“interaction” are deeply rooted
in classical industrial design—
products are designed to active-
ly engage people and mediate
their relationships with systems,
activities, information, and
with each other. Today interac-
tion design includes services,
systems, and strategic planning
and reflects core principles of
human-system/human-object
interaction.
Within the diverse landscape
of interaction exists a special-
ized area where physical form
and computing combine to yield
new paradigms of interaction.
This area, “tangible” interac-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
tion design, broadens scope,
relevance, and application,
linking interaction designers
more directly with product
development. It provides a new
arena for industrial designers,
transdisciplinary thinkers, and
experimenters to develop arti-
facts that behave, react, and/or
interact with people. More than
interactions
computation or embedded intel-
ligence alone, tangible interac-
tion design focuses on human
6
behavior and experience that
guides the design of form and
establishes the roles an artifact
will play. Tangible interaction
designers use their work to ques-
tion and reflect on the integra-
tion of technology and its effects
on human experience.
the First interaction Designers?
The Lower Paleolithic
(Acheulian) hand ax (see Figure
1) discovered in northern Africa
was designed with obvious
intent and made specifically
for a left-handed individual. It
tells the story of how our hands
inform our brains during inter-
action. Primitive humans (Homo
ergaster) from eons ago were
among the first to consider ergo-
nomics and fit—they were early
pioneers of good design, and yes,
interaction. It was great product
design and great interaction
design all rolled into cutting-
edge technology of the time,
and it was intended to endure.
This left-handed hand ax is
an important example of how
the physical form of our hands
guides how we shape things and
how we interact with and expe-
rience the world.
What products today will
endure? Will the iPhone have the
same impact as the hand ax? Is
it tangible enough? Why do avid
texters prefer phones with phys-
ical keyboards? Does a vibrator
motor provide enough feedback
to make a virtual keyboard seem
“real”? Asking questions like
these is important in designing
tangible products. Such ques-
tions challenge us to reflect
upon how artifacts facilitate
interaction and help us connect
with people on deeper levels.
Convergence, Synthesis,
and new Paradigms
The hand ax reminds us that
design has always been about
interaction, and interaction has
always been tangible. What’s
new is that physical interac-
tion is becoming computation-
ally mediated—or conversely,
that computational media are
becoming physically embodied.
Designers of physical things
and places must consider how
to embed software; designers
who work in software alone
must leverage the constraints
and affordances of the physical
world. New paradigms are aris-
ing through the investigation of
new embodiments of technology
that achieve seamless integra-
tion of form and interaction.
Integrated form and computa-
tion that enhances our experi-
 COVER STORY

ences with systems, objects, • Figure 2: Primitive tool-like

forms focus on expressing
and places will resonate on
cues for interaction in physical
deeper visceral levels, tapping form. Hand ax and scraper by
into emotions and sparking new Nathaniel Paffett-Lugassy.
relationships. This integration
leverages form to influence
human behavior in richer ways.
Adaptive, responsive, thinking—
yet physical—objects induce a
dialogue through gestures and
physical touch. They implore
us to relate to them as if they
were more “alive” than toast-
ers and toothbrushes. Looking
through this lens reveals a
renewed outlook on traditional
industrial design that revisits
aspirations of early pioneers. It
positions designers as catalytic
agents for broader impact rather
than mere stylists for commodi-
ties. And it shifts the design
discourse again, as computa-
tion enables designers to make
objects do things they simply
couldn’t do before. A few years
ago, interaction design meant
solely screen-based digital
interactivity. Today interac-
tion designers are called on to
be cross-platform, multidisci-
plinary problem solvers.
Tangible interaction is the
physical embodiment of com-
putation. Tangible interaction
practitioners, researchers, and
educators integrate knowledge
from many areas. They draw
upon traditional design, engi-
neering, computing, and robot- • Figure 1: (left) This left-handed
ics in a mashup of skills and Lower Paleolithic (Acheulian)
bifacial hand ax found at an
methods—thinking and making
exposed site in northern Africa
in physical form, electronics, dates back 1.2 million–500,000
and code. As the field develops, years ago. The purposeful design
those who are adept in working of contoured surface and place-
ment of indentations for the
simultaneously in code and in
hand demonstrates design to
physical form will synthesize afford grip and guide interaction.
new processes for developing Source: www.paleodirect.com
products. They will see and
work across the old disciplinary
boundaries.
 The Tactile Experience
• Figure 3: Top, forms in vari-
ous materials invite touch and
manipulation (Mark Baskinger).
The wooden forms were found
in a lakeside market in Taiwan.
Bottom, “interactables” that
encourage form development,
construction, and physical
manipulation (Mark Baskinger
and Jason May).
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
interactions
8
Form
Form is an important element in
tangible interaction, as it visually
signals and physically embodies
functionality, expresses cues for
understanding, and provides the
script for interaction. Carnegie
Mellon’s School of Design focuses
on physical embodiment through
projects about people’s relation-
ship with objects and systems.
Students explore the role and
impacts of object forms with the
intention of developing artifacts
that are useful, usable, desirable,
and that exhibit permanence.
We encourage our students to
look past cosmetic aspects of
form to consider objects as com-
municators that will elicit a con-
tinuing dialog with people.
In one exercise, students
design a set of simple hand
tools that facilitate and express
a function. Students struc-
ture semantic cues and form
language to visually inform
the mind, physically engage
the body, and guide the hand
for interaction (see Figure
2). Drawing inspiration from
Neolithic hand tools, they con-
sider body position, movement,
ceremony, and utility to guide
form development. This exercise
is a primer for interaction and
subsequent study in the indus-
trial design curriculum that
emphasizes the role and impact
of form in shaping people’s
behavior and experience.
Students are given design
problems that require them
to use physical form to medi-
ate and facilitate interaction.
They develop sensitivity to
form through experiments
with materials and purpose-
ful play. The specimens shown
in Figure 3 engage students in
form development, construc-
tion, and physical manipulation.
Throughout the curriculum, stu-
dents engage with mechanical,
embedded, intelligent, and/or
adaptive systems that encourage
new forms of interaction (see
Figure 4). They learn to use form
language, aesthetics, ergonom-
ics, and the traditional methods
of industrial design in making
interactive products under-
standable and appropriate.
Computing
Form connects with computing
through sensors and effectors.
Sensors provide input. The sim-
plest and cheapest sensor is a
switch; today, buttons dominate
our interaction with electro-
mechanical products. Well-
positioned switches can sense
how an object is being held.
Sensors abound—for tempera-
ture, movement, pressure, force,
moisture, chemicals, stretch
and strain, and so on. Effectors
provide output. Long popular
as indicators, LEDs mounted
beneath a translucent skin can
change an object’s color. And
there’s audio: Everything beeps
and buzzes, but what do these
sounds tell us? We could do so
much more with sound design.
Motors, too, are effectors, pro-
viding motion and other physical
action. For example, vibrator
motors in cell phones bring a
physical quality to digital inter-
action. Touch and light make a
simple and compelling combi-
nation: The Hit Me interactive
light (see Figure 5) lights up in
different patterns, depending
on how it is touched or grasped.
Less common are effectors such
as the nitinol muscles in Greg
Saul’s paper robots or the ther-
mochromic paint that colors his
lamps (see Figure 6).
 COVER STORY

• Figure 4: “Re-routed Radio”

projects by industrial design
students (a) Nadeem Haidary,
(b) Josh Finkle, and (c) Gavin
Stewart. These music players
were designed to establish new
forms of interaction using stan-
dard electronics combined with
non-traditional materials and
expressive physical forms.

A C

• Figure 5: The Hit Me interac-

tive lighting device responds
to touch with an LED display. It
affords various interactions with
the hand. Designed by Carnegie
Mellon students Henry Julier,
Justin Rheinfrank, Amanda Ip,
and Michael Cruz-Restrepo;
directed by Kees Overbeeke
(TU/e). Image source: www.hen-
ryjulier.com

• Figure 6. Interactive designs with

J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

unusual effectors by Greg Saul

(Carnegie Mellon and Victoria
University of Wellington): Left:
family of paper robots, folded
paper boxes actuated with nitinol
shape-memory alloy muscles.
The simple devices can be
programmed to respond to
light, sound, or online chat; their
motions are alternately graceful,
silly, and playful. Right: Paper
interactions

lamp colored with thermochro-

mic ink changes appearance as
its bulb heats its shell.

9
 The Tactile Experience
The new element in design
is software, a fundamentally
abstract and disembodied way to
prescribe behavior. In the past,
industrial designers set the stage
for interaction and behavior by
making decisions about physi-
cal form and materials. Now
the designer also programs the
object’s interactive behavior. The
simplest program relates inputs
directly to outputs (“When the
door is open, the lights blink”).
Usually, though, software is a
more subtle model of the design
in use. For example, a state-
machine model looks at different
states of the design in use and
transitions between states. In
one state, a clock displays the
time; in another state, it can
be set. A sensor on the clock—
typically, but not necessarily,
a button—triggers transitions
between the two states.
Fueled by the enthusiasm of
artists, hobbyists, DIY hackers
and by the interaction-design
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
interactions
• Figure 7. Eric Schweikardt’s toy blocks snap together to construct working robots. Black
blocks are sensors; white blocks, effectors; and colored blocks operate on data. The
configuration of blocks determines the robot’s behavior. Modular Robotics LLC is bring-
ing the kit, designed at Carnegie Mellon, to market.
10
community, new hardware tool
kits and platforms make it eas-
ier to build and program work-
ing prototypes of products with
embedded electronics. An early
well-known kit was Phidgets;
popular today in the design
community is the Arduino
family of microcontroller
boards, including the Lilypad,
engineered for embedding in
textiles. Hardware design envi-
ronments such as Fritzing and
a host of programming environ-
ments such as Pd and Funnel
invite designers to work directly
with electronics and code. Tool
kits and platforms are crucial,
and as tangible interaction
design moves forward, we will
see more “designerly” languages
and tools for hardware proto-
typing and programming.
Soon tangible interaction
design will come to encompass
not only individual products
with embedded computation, but
also ensembles of computational
objects that work together. Take
the robot construction kit in
Figure 7. Microprocessors in each
block communicate with neigh-
bors, giving the robot ensemble
emergent behaviors: Form and
program are one. As compu-
tation becomes more deeply
embedded in form, program-
ming ensembles will become as
important as programming the
behavior of single objects.
Where Do tangible
interaction Designers Fit?
Many first-generation tangibles
have been whimsical and artis-
tic explorations of what new
technology can do. Some are
simple; some, more complex.
Some are elegant embeddings
of display and projection. Some
celebrate new materials. Some
add sensing in clever ways. The
field is still wide open, but one
thing is clear: We’re likely to
see more, not less, program-
ming in things, and a lot more
experimentation.
Faced with the integra-
tion of form and computation,
researchers and practitioners
are asking new questions about
the aesthetic qualities of inter-
action and the impact of form
on human behavior. As tangible
interaction design matures,
designers will focus more on the
meaning and impact of form on
people. This, of course, echoes
traditional human-centered
design approaches, but compu-
tation provides the opportunity
to design adaptive, responsive,
and highly interactive products
and systems.
Tangible interaction design-
ers are the new “Leonardo/
Edison” types. As makers
they are equally at home in
the worlds of material and

physical design, mechanical
engineering, electronics, and
programming. Already they are
in demand, precisely because
they transgress the traditional
disciplinary boundaries that
characterize (and limit) our
schools and firms today. Their
diverse range of ability is what
enables them to be creative in
this new design space. As firms
embrace the new integration of
form and computation, tangible
interaction designers will play a
more prominent role in product
development, bridging the gulf
between traditional design and
programming.
The growing tangible interac-
tion community meets at several
conferences that explore design,
technology, and societal impact.
DesForM (Design of Semantics
of Form and Movement) gath-
ers academics and professionals
in a forum that embraces the
diversity of design approaches.
It focuses on the meaning of
products and how designers
communicate information, func-
tions and ideas to enable these
to be perceived and understood
by people in their everyday
lives. TEI (Tangible, Embedded,
and Embodied Interaction) is a
demo-friendly conference about
human-computer interaction,
design, interactive art, user
experience, tools and tech-
nologies. And of course there’s
CHI, which in 2009 showcased
tangible interaction design
with a new “Design Vignettes”
venue. Other pertinent confer-
ences include DIS (Designing
Interactive Systems), UIST
(User Interface Software and
Technology), IDSA (Industrial
Designers Society of America),
and DUX (Designing for User
eXperience).
COVER STORY
The first schools to embrace
tangible interaction design in
the 1990s included the Royal
College of Art, the MIT Media
Lab, and NYU’s Tisch School of
the Arts. Programs have since
sprung up around the world.
Perhaps because of the inher-
ently interdisciplinary nature
of tangible interaction design,
many universities teach this
form of design in a distributed
manner across schools, depart-
ments, and programs. For
example, Carnegie Mellon’s new
master’s of tangible interaction
design program leverages the
university’s strengths in design,
robotics, and engineering,
human-computer interaction,
architecture, and the arts.
toward a tangible Future
We have painted a rosy view
of tangible interaction design,
emphasizing two different and
equally important aspects of
the field. On one hand, tan-
gible interaction designers are
experimenters, playing purpose-
fully in a new space of form and
computing. The vocabulary of
form, function, and behavior of
computationally enhanced prod-
ucts is still very much under
construction; this yields some
work that is an engineering tri-
umph yet awkwardly made, or
work that is elegant and clever
but without apparent function.
On the other hand, tangible
interaction designers aim to
make things that elegantly inte-
grate form, computation, and
behavior. Bringing these two
together is the challenge for
individual designers, and also
the challenge for the field. The
spirit of experimentation with
new materials and processes is
what makes tangible interac-
tion design daring. Yet it is the
seamless integration of form
and computation that makes it
magical. We must keep the thrill
of experiment while evolving
design vocabularies and pro-
cesses that integrate code, prod-
uct form, behavior, information
and interaction. In this way, we
will enable a new genre of prod-
ucts to achieve relevance and
connect with people in mean-
ingful ways.
About the Authors
Mark Baskinger is an asso-
ciate professor in the
School of Design at
Carnegie Mellon University,
where he teaches courses
in industrial design with an emphasis on
form and interaction. His interests include
exploring new paradigms for interactive
objects and interpretive environments, and
methodologies of design drawing and visu-
al thinking to promote collaboration. An
international speaker and workshop leader,
Baskinger also conducts “Drawing Ideas®:
A Field Guide to Visual Thinking” courses in
conference and business contexts where
he makes design drawing methods and
visual thinking techniques accessible to a
broader audience and demonstrates strate-
gies for using sketching to foster collabora-
tion in design processes. Parallel to his
appointment at Carnegie Mellon, he co-
directs The Letter Thirteen Design Agency
(www.letterthirteen.com).
Mark D. Gross is a profes-
sor at Carnegie Mellon
University’s School of
Architecture where he stud-
ies and teaches tangible
interaction design. His MIT
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Ph.D. dissertation, “Design as Exploring
Constraints,” is in design theory and meth-
ods. Gross is interested in computational
tools to support designing, and ways in
which computing can be embedded in
things and places. He recently co-founded
Modular Robotics (http://www.modrobotics.
com/) to build computational construction
kits for children.
interactions
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649477
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
11
 The Critical Role of Co-Creation by Users
The Transmedia Design
Challenge: Technology that is
Pleasurable and Satisfying
Donald A. norman
Nielsen Norman Group, Northwestern University, and KAIST | don@jnd.org
I agreed to give a keynote address
at the 21st Century Transmedia
Innovation Symposium (www.21ctis.
or.kr/). Traditional dictionaries do
not include the word “transmedia,”
but Wikipedia does. Its definition
introduced me to many other words
that neither I nor my dictionaries had
ever before heard (for example, “nar-
[1] Jenkins, H. ratological”). Strange jargon aside,
“Transmedia
Storytelling: Moving I do believe there is an important
Characters From
idea here, which I explore in this
Books to Films to Video
Games Can Make column. (Intelligent discussions
Them Stronger and
More Compelling.” can be found in the books and
Technology Review articles of Henry Jenkins [1,2]).
(2003); http://www.
technologyreview.com/
Biotech/13052/
We live in exciting times.
Finally, we are beginning to
understand that pleasure and
fun are important components
of life; that emotion is not a bad
thing; and that learning, educa-
tion, and work can all benefit
from pleasure and fun. Up to
now, a primary goal of product
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
[2] Jenkins, H. and service design has been to
Convergence Culture:
Where Old and New provide useful functions and
Media Collide. New
York: New York
results. We should not lose track
University Press, 2006. of these goals, but now that we
are well on our way to doing
that for an amazing variety of
goods and services, it is time
to make sure they are pleasur-
able as well. Not only does this
require emotions to be a major
interactions
component of design think-
ing, but we must also incorpo-
rate actions; actions that use
12
the whole body in movement,
rhythm, and purpose.
In the bad old days we learned
that thinking—cognition—was
king; emotion was bad. We were
encouraged to memorize, to
study, to think in words: reading,
writing, and arithmetic prevailed.
But that is not how people have
evolved. We are living animals,
creatures with bodies, with legs
and arms, eyes and ears, the abil-
ity to taste and smell, vestibular
and feeling systems. We use our
bodies to understand the world.
We learn from concrete experi-
ences, not from abstractions—
abstraction comes last.
Games are the natural way we
explore the world. Modern games
are engaging, entertaining, and
filled with learning experiences.
They require thinking and act-
ing, cognition and emotion, body
motion and mental creativity.
Games ought to be how we learn
in school. Teachers should learn
along with students. If cognition
is about understanding the world,
emotion is about interacting with
it: judging, evaluating, and pre-
paring to engage. The key term
here is “engagement.”
Transmedia, on the other
hand, is a strange beast. It
comes from the world of com-
merce, where different people
and companies used to own
different parts of our experi-
ence—corporations, companies,
profit making, and ownership.
Transmedia today is the new
emergence of multiple media
in common pursuit of a story
or experience. It mainly speaks
of how companies tie together
movie releases with videos,
games, books, and websites.
Blogs and tweets, social net-
working, and telephone calls.
Yes, this is a clever use of mul-
tiple media, but it is still based
upon a distorted view of com-
merce: We make it, you consume
it. The media moguls think of
this as a one-way transmission:
They would have their compa-
nies producing, with everyday
people consuming. Why the
asymmetry? We should all be
producers. We should all have a
say in what we experience.
My form of transmedia has
nothing to do with companies
and formal media channels. It
has everything to do with free,
natural, powerful expression. Let
transmedia stand for those multi-
sensory natural experiences:
trans-action, trans-sensory. Let it
stand for the mix of modalities:
reading and writing, speaking
and seeing, listening and touch-
ing, feeling and tasting. Let it
stand for actions and behavior,
thought and emotion.
 OPINION THE WAY I SEE IT

There is another side of this

new transmedia: co-develop-
ment, co-creation, co-ownership.
In this new world, we all produce,
we all share, we all enjoy. Teacher
and student learn together
achieving new understand-
ing. Reader and writer create
together. Game player and game
developer work together. This is
the age of creativity, where every-
one can participate. Everyone can
be a designer. Everyone can be
involved.
The personal computing revo-
lution has been both liberating
and restricting. We have gained
access to powerful technologies
for communicating with one
another, for creating art, music,
and literature. Everyday people
could now do extraordinary
things. At the same time, we
became trapped by the confines
of a keyboard, mouse, and screen.
Instead of actively engaging the
world, we spent our days in front
of keyboards and screens, typing
and pointing.
Today we are moving beyond
the constraints of the mouse,
screen, and keyboard. Now we
can merge all the benefits of the
information revolution with the
benefits of movement and activ- power. If functions are equated There is nothing the matter • Most IKEA
furniture is
ity. We can post notes on build- with cognition, pleasure is equat- with being an audience member,
designed to be
ings where only the intended ed with emotion; today we want a consumer, or a spectator. It is assembled by
receiver can see them, or we can products that appeal to both cog- how we have come to enjoy the the consumer—
an effort that
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

let everyone see them, whatever
we wish. We can play games or
hold meetings with people all
over the world, moving, gestur-
ing, and acting.
Products were once designed
for the functions they performed.
But when all companies can
Photograph by Niklas Pivic
nition and emotion.
Consuming versus Producing:
Spectator versus Creator
There is a major difference
between the experience of con-
suming and producing, or if you
will, between being a spectator
great works of art and literature.
reflects the
We go to galleries to view, the-
creativity of the
aters to watch, libraries to read. manufacturer,
We can be casual or engaged, not the user.
watching from a distance or
becoming deeply embedded
in the events of music, opera,
a painting, a video, or a book.

make products that perform and being a creator. In the tradi- We can become emotionally
their functions equally well, the tional view of media, most of us involved, weeping or laughing as
interactions

distinctive advantage goes to are consumers. Artists and com- the scenes unfold.
those who provide pleasure and panies produce, while the rest of But there is a great difference
enjoyment while maintaining the us consume. We are spectators. when we are actually engaged in

13
 The Critical Role of Co-Creation by Users

New technologies
allow creativity to
blossom, whether for The same holds true for the
objects of our lives. We can pur-
themselves, they spend consider-
able time and thought specifying
chase them in stores, bring them just how the finished bike should
reasons silly or sublime. home, and either display or use look and behave. Similarly, many
them. They may give pleasure. home electronics can be cus-

Simple text messages or But contrast this with objects

that we ourselves have created or,
perhaps, co-created.
short videos qualify as Consider the old story so
beloved in marketing 101 courses
production, regardless about the invention of cake
mix. When the Betty Crocker
Company first introduced a cake
of their value. This mix, so the story goes, it was sup-
posed to revolutionize the mak-
new movement is ing of cakes. Instead of toiling for
hours, one had only to open the
package of mix, add water, and
about participating bake. The result was a simple,
satisfying cake. But the product
and creating, invoking was not a success. Housewives (at
the time, the target audience—
tomized with “skins,” adjustable
features, add-on components,
and hand-painted exteriors. So
too with automobiles. One could
argue that part of the popular-
ity of social sites is that they are
personal: One is sharing personal
ideas and thoughts.
But how much of this is cre-
ative? How much requires com-
mitment and concern, deep
thought and effort? Most of this
involves the simple following of
instructions, whether for a cake
or a chair. Or customizing an
automobile by choosing among
predefined options such as color

the creative spirit— college students and single people

were not then considered a mar-
ket) rejected it. After a bit of mar-
this is what the ket research, the Betty Crocker
Company realized that they had
and fabric. Adding an egg to a
mix that didn’t really need one
makes clever use of psychology,
but it is not what I call being truly
creative. The cake mix, with egg

transmedia experience made the mix too simple: There

should be about.
the activity, whether as producer,
participant, or creator. When
playing a musical instrument, I
am producing, and all the senses
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
was no pride of ownership. The
cake could have been purchased
at a store. It tasted fine, but it
wasn’t truly made at home, even
if it was baked at home.
The solution was to modify
the recipe to require the addi-
tion of an egg. This worked: Sales
soared. Requiring a bit of extra
labor gave the cook some feeling
or without, is mindless. Read the
instructions and follow them:
Everyone’s mix produces the
same result. Following instruc-
tions to assemble furniture does
not qualify, but mixing and
matching furniture parts to cre-
ate something personal, some-
thing special does. So too with
the customization of the Harley.
Even though the customization is

are involved. I feel the sound
pulsating through my body. My
mind is completely engaged
with the music, not only with
the emotional aspects and the
sound, but also with the physical
and cognitive complexities of the
mechanics of playing. To me it is
simultaneously frustrating and
pleasurable. To the listeners, it
interactions
of accomplishment, a feeling of
being the producer.
Today a reasonable number of
products are designed to require
work and effort on the part of
their possessor. The purchaser
must assemble IKEA furniture.
Harley-Davidson aficionados
often customize their motor-
cycles—many take their bikes
actually done by the specialists
in the shop, the specification and
design relate to the specific needs
and aspirations of the bike owner.
None of this is truly creative;
none of this is truly meaningful.
Music mashups qualify. Here
one takes samples of existing
music and mixes them to create a
truly novel experience. The result

is probably awful, but I am not straight from the dealer to the may sound awful or wonderful,
playing for them; I am playing custom house, and even though but that is not nearly so impor-
for myself. they do not do the customization tant as the act of creation. The

14

world of “DIY” or “make” relishes
in creativity and imagination.
Mashups work across all media,
sometimes producing spoofs and
satire, sometimes truly useful
and valuable results.
Here is a simple example of
a mashup that, although not
profound, does reveal a sense of
humor, creating a clever spoof
of two very different events.
The first event occurred dur-
ing the televised presentation of
an MTV Video award. Just after
one award had been announced,
Kanye West jumped on to the
stage and interrupted Taylor
Swift’s acceptance speech to
complain that a better perform-
er, Beyoncé, had been passed
over. The second event was a
major speech on health care by
President Obama to the United
States Congress. Obama’s speech
was interrupted by a congress-
man who shouted, “You lie!”
An enterprising mash-upper
recognized the similarities of
the two incidents and quickly
combined components of the
two videos so that the complaint
about Beyoncé was inserted into
President Obama’s speech. As a
result, now one can watch presi-
dent Obama delivering a speech
on health care with a heckler
interrupting to say, “Imma let
you finish, but Beyoncé had one
of the best videos of all time!” to
which Obama calmly responds,
“Not true.” That is mashup as
satire. Mashups don’t have to
be satirical, of course: When
someone takes census data,
overlaps it with police reports,
and enters all on to a city map,
that is mashup with meaning
and import.
Good games can also create
meaningful participation, mean-
ingful experiences. Whatever
OPINION
the form of game—athletics
and sports, cards, board games,
video, or computer—the players
are simultaneously creating the
experience. Perhaps this is why
they are so engrossing. They pro-
vide a transmedia experience in
which people are simultaneously
spectator and performer, and in
the case of many games, using all
of the senses, all of the body.
New technologies allow cre-
ativity to blossom, whether for
reasons silly or sublime. Simple
text messages or short videos
qualify as production, regardless
of their value. This new move-
ment is about participating and
creating, invoking the creative
spirit—this is what the transme-
dia experience should be about.
All of these experiences allow
people to feel more like producers
and creators than passive con-
sumers or spectators.
the Design Challenge: Active,
Participatory transmedia
Transmedia experiences are
not particularly new. Consider
an opera, a musical comedy, a
Hollywood (or better, Bollywood)
extravaganza, or an amusement
park. All of these experiences
cut across media—sight and
sound, motion and emotion. But
all of them involve a transmitter
of the experience and a passive
audience.
Creation is not new. Artists
and craftspeople create.
Amateur artists and musicians
create. Game players create. But
in all of these activities, there
are still creators and viewers.
Moreover, the creativity is often
limited, much as it is limited in
so-called “personalization” of
software or IKEA furniture—it
is limited by the desires of the
manufacturer. What is needed is
THE WAY I SEE IT
meaningful, thoughtful creation
and participation.
Jon Kolko examined this point
in a thoughtful essay in this mag-
azine [3]. Assembling IKEA furni-
ture is not a display of creativity,
nor are any of the standard selec-
tions of items from a menu that
go along with simple personal-
ization or customization choices
offered by manufacturers or
websites. A mindless tweet is not
creative. True creativity requires
some thought, some work, some
effort. It has to be reflective, even
if only after the fact. Mindless
creativity has its place, but the
real challenge before us is to
unleash the substantive creativ-
ity inside most people.
The new design challenge
is to create true participatory
designs coupled with true mul-
timedia immersion that reveal
[3] Kolko, J. “On
new insights and create true Creation and
novel experiences. We all partici- Consumption.”
interactions 16, no. 5:
pate, we all experience. We all 2009, 80.
design, we all partake. But much
of this is meaningless: How do
we provide richness and depth,
enhanced through the active
engagement of all, whether they
be the originators or the recipi-
ents of the experience?
How will this come to pass?
What is the role in everyday life?
Will this be a small portion or
will it dominate? Will it even be
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
permitted within the confines of
contemporary commercialism?
Those are the significant design
challenges.
About the Author Don Norman
wears many hats, including cofounder of
the Nielsen Norman group, professor at
Northwestern University, visiting professor
at KAIST (South Korea), and author. His lat-
est book is The Design of Future Things. He
interactions
lives at jnd.org.
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649478
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
15
 The Critical Role of Co-Creation by Users
The Art of Editing: The New
Old Skills for a Curated Life
Liz Danzico
School of Visual Arts | liz@bobulate.com
In a workshop led by Ira Glass,
host of public radio’s “This
American Life,” I heard him
admit, “We edit out people’s
breaths and pauses in the inter-
views before they go on air.”
Referring to those ums and
stammers, this well-known
personality admitted to a group
of aspiring storytellers that his
renowned radio show might
not be as unvarnished as it had
once seemed. Editing out pauses
makes the story flow better—a
measure designed to improve
his audience’s experience. Even
the non-frilly is edited.
As the Information Age bar-
rels forward, a new role has
emerged. While platforms from
Facebook to Twitter to Tumblr
have turned consumers into
creators, they’ve given way to
more writers, more content,
and (as we’re painfully aware)
more choices. But there’s some-
thing else. Content creators are
not passing content through
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
traditional editorial channels,
nor should they be. The job and
the cost of filtering content
has passed from the hands and
pocket of the publisher way
downstream to the consumer.
As a result, consumers are left
in the position of having to
decide for themselves who and
what is worth their time. Which
interactions
content is exceptional and
what to tune out? Whom to pay
attention to? Whom to ignore?
16
Whether we accept it or not,
we have a new responsibility.
This promotion came about
without warning, without train-
ing, without org charts or man-
uals. As both creators and con-
sumers, now we’re all “editors.”
We often hear the term
“information overload” tossed
about—most likely as we skim
Google Reader, or perhaps while
we discuss multitasking as we
delete our way toward Inbox
Zero. Yet, more so than infor-
mation overload, we may be fac-
ing a “filter failure.” Clay Shirky,
author and New York University
instructor, pointed out in a 2008
talk at O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo
that information overload is not
a new problem and therefore
does not accurately describe
what’s at issue today. The criti-
cal issue is simply a failure of
filters.
Enter the editor. There has
long been an invisible tribe, a
mysterious group, who trans-
form scattered thoughts into
compelling stories, who splice
hundreds of hours of video into
feature-length films, who seg-
regate the semicolons from the
em dashes. These are editors
working across media sectors—
publishing, film, music, more—
to deliver transformative stories
with clarity and grace.
The editorial role has evolved
into one that involves shap-
ing conversations with audi-
ences. “Curate,” a term once
reserved for an elite group,
is being adopted by people as
far-flung as musicians and
chefs to fashion designers and,
indeed, interaction designers.
Rather than strict altering and
selecting as editors do, curators
are culling and selecting col-
lections. However the editor’s
legacy, and venerable history
of the editorial process, give
today’s curators visible models
to build upon.
In the Gutenberg era, the
one-to-many relationship, in
which an editor dictated the
content for the masses, was
common. In the post-Gutenberg
era, our reliance became more
democratic: We sought out edi-
tors who could sift through the
staggering amount of informa-
tion for us, signal where to
look, what to read, and what to
pay attention to. Now there’s
another shift at play; in fact,
you may have seen it reblogged
or retweeted recently. With new
tools allowing an unlimited
degree of flexibility and free-
dom, we’ve gained comfort in
controlling our own media. We
are, for the first time, accepting
the role, and by exhibiting these
qualities outward are becoming
curators in our own right. We’re
gaining followers and pointing
the way forward for others. But
without any training, how are
we doing it?

Like many products and ser-
vices, the modern construct of
editing has had predecessors
of sorts. Scene changes were
already taking place in live
theater, flashbacks had already
existed in the novel, and nar-
rated sequences had been part
of visual culture as far back as
Photograph by Angela Moran
medieval altar triptychs. Yet in
the nascent era of film, film-
makers were hesitant to edit.
They were afraid audiences
would become confused by the
OPINION
splicing together of different
shots. It wasn’t until the early
20th century, with films such
as “The Great Train Robbery”
(1903), that filmmakers discov-
ered that editing could contrib-
ute added depth to storytelling.
Likewise, by the 1850s book
publishing had taken root,
with texts being published
in many formats—from love
stories to textbooks to fiction,
from Hawthorne to Thoreau
to Melville. But editors were
BETWEEN THE LINES
nowhere to be found; publish-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
ers and authors communicated
without an intermediary. It
wasn’t until the 20th century,
when author reputation became
important to publishers and the
rules of grammar and language
garnered increasing attention
that the demand for editors
arose. In other words, when the
service experience mattered,
interactions
editors were introduced.
Even though an editor’s
responsibility is widespread,
17
 The Critical Role of Co-Creation by Users
shaping stories for audiences
(whether small or large), this
filtering crisis we’re in may be
easier to manage than we think.
You see, the skills of an editor
are at once novel and familiar.
So our new role is new, yes,
but not entirely without prec-
edent. Early curatorial editors
like Arianna Huffington, Matt
Drudge, Jason Kottke, and com-
merce sites like Etsy.com and
later 20x200.com led the vision,
shaping a pace, tempo, and
dare I say, patterns. These early
forerunners had a point of view,
meaning consumers didn’t have
to sort information themselves.
Such strong editors teach con-
sumers, by example, how to
curate experiences to make
meaning. Consumers need only
show up or subscribe.
Editing is to media as a per-
formance is to a composition: It
is an act of interpretation, rich
with opportunities for personal
insight, misguided judgments,
or brilliance. Each individual is
different, and each individual
will construct experiences dif-
ferently. In our new editorial
roles, we’re tasked with acting
as equal parts consumer and
editor. What we’re doing is, in
fact, parallel to decades of edi-
torial traditions:
1. Saying no. While “stub-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
born” and “opinionated” might
be too strong, it is a truism that
an editor’s chief responsibility
is to say no. Like all truisms,
it is probably false some of the
time, but having a recognizable
voice is essential. In the recent
documentary, “The September
Issue,” Anna Wintour exposed
hard-handed opinions neces-
interactions
sary to differentiate Vogue in
the $300 billion fashion indus-
try. Call it decisiveness. Call it
18
intuition. Whatever you call it;
editors have the responsibility
to quickly sift through abun-
dance to decide what’s impor-
tant. Just as our Twitter reputa-
tion may rest on our ability to
make quick judgments about
the quality of a tweet before
reposting them, so are we all
editors in media.
2. Determining the tempo. The
editor determines the tempo,
and therefore, the amount
of information a consumer
receives. Website editors decide
when and how often to deliver
information to consumers. Film
editors decide the duration
of a shot, or what kind of edit
happens between shots. Both
set the pace for a particular
experience. The slow dissolve at
the end of “Psycho” (1960), for
example, can leave an audience
lingering, while the timing of a
video release on TED.com con-
tributes to our impression of the
brand’s value. This is all within
an editor’s control. Likewise,
the editor’s own tempo must
be high. He or she must plow
through manuscripts on subject
matter that may be of no inter-
est with passionate disinterest.
3. Giving out (or withhold-
ing) information. Editors deter-
mine how much information
audiences need access to, and
how much to hold back. Well-
known curated sites such as
Core77.com are celebrated for
the considered content, not
overloaded links. Editors know
when and how to scan sources
to determine which parts can
be skimmed and when it’s key
to read it all the way through—
every line, word, and scene.
4. Creating coherence. Editors
create relevance and experience
where there was none before.
Whether it’s constructing a
theme or splicing together a
flashback sequence for a film,
editors are creating connections
for their audience with, some-
times, mismatched shapes and
concepts. Access does not mean
a free-for-all curation party.
5. Lacking a personal agenda.
An editor is creating a narrative
from other people’s stories, and
must be comfortable doing so.
In this sense, the editor is large-
ly invisible, yet knows the value
of citing. Sourcing references
carefully using “via” or another
format demonstrates humility
and respect for your sources.
Editors are valuable and
needed, but there is the added
challenge: the issue of choos-
ing sources in the first place.
When we’re all editors, how
do we choose content? In The
Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
talks about Dunbar’s num-
ber, the cognitive limit to the
number of people one can
have social relationships with.
As we try out our new edito-
rial roles, and choose just a
small number of sources who
are pointing to a larger num-
ber of sources, what sort of
sources will we be bumping
up against? Won’t we be in
danger of filter failure all over
again? It might look potentially
like what Nicholas Negroponte
calls “The Daily Me”—the idea
that a newspaper, for example,
can be customized so spe-
cifically to your wants that
it’s simply an echo chamber.
Finding sources is one of
the key challenges in the
struggle through filter fail-
ure, and recently Ethan
Zuckerman, researcher at
Harvard’s Berkman Center,
and Clive Thompson from the

New York Times Magazine and
Wired spoke on “homophily,”
the natural tendency for indi-
viduals to seek out others who
share their preferences. In other
words, birds of a feather flock
together. Thompson observes
that people online are flocking
to like-minded people—paying
allegiance to “editors” in Twitter
and Facebook who are similar
to them. But how diverse can
the content be? Are we missing
out on serendipity? How can we
design an experience so that we
can accidentally happen upon
information we might not oth-
erwise encounter?
Of course, we’re already get-
ting practice as editors: using
RSS readers to deliver content
from trusted sources; unsub-
scribing; creating coherence
with groups; and perhaps a
most interesting recent develop-
ment, crafting language pat-
terns to communicate. We’re
using links via people or groups
we follow on Twitter to filter
content that matters to us.
For seven centuries, editors
have used symbols to commu-
nicate with one another: proof-
readers’ marks. Proofreaders’
language comprises 42 symbols
that take the place of common
instructions such as “delete,”
“insert comma,” or “begin new
paragraph.” Editorial teams
have traditionally worked in
print manuscripts, passing lay-
ers of proofreaders’ marks back
and forth. The patterns of this
language have not changed
since it was introduced in the
early days of printing. Its effi-
ciency is unarguable—in a 600-
page manuscript, for example,
it allows a single symbol to rep-
resent “insert period” instead
of the inefficiency of writing
OPINION
that out every time. But these
marks don’t translate well to
editing in digital formats; in
large publishing houses, edit-
ing still takes place in analog
format. Traditional editors
are running up against chal-
lenges as they question how to
translate proofreaders’ marks
into digital manuscripts for
formats like the Kindle. While
digital editing tools such as
Microsoft Word and Revizr help
mitigate some of the digital
issues, they’re far from perfect,
and many houses still rely on
the fusty print manuscript.
In the meantime, while we
edit our own experiences, new
patterns are rising: a language
for contextualizing content. On
Twitter an emergent practice
has become prevalent, albeit
not standard. Users have begun
to develop language for edit-
ing content for others through
“retweeting,” reposting content
that another individual posted.
Twittergirl: This is a tweet!
Twitterguy: RT This is a tweet!
(via @Twittergirl)
In a recent draft of a paper
by danah boyd, Scott Golder,
and Gilad Lotan from Microsoft
Research, they explore the
syntax of retweeting and the
diverse conventions by which
it’s communicated within
Twitter. Another practice, the
#hashtags—the curious mash-
ups of words and phrases pre-
ceded by the hash sign—is also
widely used. When it’s included
in a Twitter post, it indicates a
topic, location, or emotion the
user is believed to be addressing.
So from here, where? We’re
now simply making footprints
and leaving signs. While this is
BETWEEN THE LINES
a small step for us as burgeon-
ing editors, it’s a fascinating
departure as, traditionally, an
editor’s role has been an invis-
ible one—one to provide a sort
of statuesque transparency—to
give it form without knowing
he or she is there. The charac-
ter of the medium remained
unchanged, but the transfor-
mation was essential so that
consumers reveled in the media
rather than deliberated over it.
With this change, everything
has shifted downstream. The
footprints and signs of the edi-
tor’s role have moved from pre- Further reading
publishing to post-publishing. “Brooke, Clive and
Where once editors and cura- Ethan at Aspen.” On
the Media. September
tors provided meaning, now 4, 2009; http://www.
onthemedia.org/tran-
we’re providing it. It remains scripts/2009/09/04/06/
to be seen how filter failure
Gross, G. Editors on
will be solved, and whether our Editing: What Writers
Need to Know about
editorial practices are going to
What Editors Do. New
be enough to stamp it out. But York: Grove Press,
1993.
meanwhile, though red pens
and proofreaders’ marks are Shirky, C. “It’s Not
Information Overload.
not in our future, better ways It’s Filter Failure.” Web
2.0 Expo, New York,
of collecting and distributing 2008; http://web2expo.
stories are. This age is not about blip.tv/file/1277460/
writers learning new tools, nor boyd, d., Golder, S., and
Lotan, G. “Tweet, Tweet,
is it about readers sift through Retweet: Conversational
content; it’s about editors exper- Aspects of Retweeting
on Twitter.” Microsoft
imenting and making meaning Research, January
of stories for themselves and for 2010.
their new audiences—whether
those are small or large.
About the Author Liz Danzico is
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
equal parts designer, educator, and editor.
She is chair and co-founder of the MFA in
Interaction Design Program at the School
of Visual Arts. She is an independent
consultant in New York, on the editorial
board for Rosenfeld Media, and on the
board of Design Ignites Change. In the
past, Danzico directed experience strategy
for AIGA, and the information architec-
ture teams at Barnes & Noble.com and
Razorfish New York. and lectures widely.
interactions
She writes ongoing at Bobulate.com.
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649479
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
19
 The Critical Role of Co-Creation by Users
Of Memories and Memorials:
A Conversation with Jake Barton
about the Make History Project
Alex Wright
New York Times | alex@agwright.com
With each passing September 11 anniversary, the
headlines drift a little further down the front page.
The moments of silence feel a little shorter. Painful
memories fade.
In another era, our shared recollections of such
a world-historical event might have drifted slowly
out of the news cycle and into the long-term cul-
tural memory of museums and history books.
Today, however, the process of making history
edges into the present tense, as a vast outpouring
of personal memories linger online in the form of
blogs, photos, videos, and individual stories that
now comprise an essential part of the historical
record.
In a world where anyone can publish, and seem-
ingly everyone does, what is the role of cultural
institutions in curating our collective memory? Can
“official” institutional versions of history coexist
with this proliferation of constantly shifting per-
sonal expression—or is such a distinction growing
increasingly meaningless in a networked world?
Jake Barton of Local Projects has been wrestling
with these questions for the past few years as he
works with the National September 11 Museum &
Memorial team to build Make History (http://make-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
history.national911memorial.org/), a new site that
allows individuals to share their photos, videos,
and personal stories of the event.
Since the site launched in September 2009, about
1,000 visitors have contributed more than 3,000
photos, videos, and stories. When the memorial
eventually takes shape in lower Manhattan, this
virtual repository will find a permanent physical
home.
Recently Barton and I discussed the project, the
interactions
challenges of designing interactive storytelling
environments, and the long-term vision for the
memorial.
20
Alex Wright: Can you give us a little background
on the project? How did you first get in touch with the
National September 11 Memorial team?
Jake Barton: Around three years ago, I was
approached by Tom Hennes of Thinc design, an
exhibition design firm, to partner for an inter-
national competition to design the National
September 11 Memorial Museum. There were 16
firms in the running, and our team, Thinc Design
with Local Projects, made it through a few rounds
until there were just three firms left—one led
by my former mentor, Ralph Appelbaum, which
was quite awkward. The three firms were given a
three-week design charrette to create an exhibit
in a small space, and we developed a few strong
design ideas that we visualized in a very specific
fly-through. I think the client was able to really
experience our ideas, which became the most com-
pelling argument for hiring us.
Alex: Over the past few years, you have worked on a
number of projects involving personal storytelling. What
are the ingredients for a successful collaborative storytell-
ing environment?
Jake: People must care about the topic. I’ve
turned down many projects, both commercial and
non, because I just didn’t think the topic would
garner enough of a passionate or critical response.
Formally, the key to collaborative storytelling is the
right mixture of freedom and constraints. Like a
good sonnet or limerick, a collaborative storytelling
project needs a formal structure that brings out
creativity from its participants. The worst thing
is a blank page or open microphone; you need a
clearly defined rule-set that inspires people. The
five-word biography, the Twitter update, the con-
versation of a lifetime—all of these structures
inspire people to be more creative because they
are constrained.
 Alex: Local Projects is perhaps best known for the
StoryCorps project, which has allowed users to contrib-
ute oral histories via special recording booths in Grand
Central Station, the World Trade Center, and elsewhere.
What lessons have you learned from StoryCorps that
informed your approach to the NS11MM project?
Jake: The 9/11 Memorial Museum will be the first
major museum of the 21st century, and in many
ways it’s poised to really evolve what a museum
can be. Some of that is because it’s the newest, but
much of that is because of the specific facts of 9/11.
Because 9/11 is a very recent event whose impact
is still evolving, and because it was experienced by
a third of the world live within 24 hours, there is
a very concrete sense that the definitive “history”
of 9/11 has yet to be written. The 9/11 Memorial
Museum will take many of the methods of collab-
orative storytelling that we started working with in
StoryCorps, and apply them to the history of 9/11,
without presuming, or imposing, a prime narra-
tive. There will be spaces that are pulling stories
randomly from a massive archive of accounts,
giving visitors both specific accounts, and also the
sense that for each story, there are hundreds or
thousands of similar stories. There will be multiple
moments for visitors to put in their own stories of
the event, as well as reflections on the significance
of the event.
Unlike StoryCorps, where the thrill is really in
either making the recordings for personal use, or
in listening to one of the few edited pieces, the 9/11
Memorial Museum will do much more to shape
and aggregate the entire archive that is created.
To date, 911history.org is the best example; visi-
tors can participate by either putting materials in,
or shape the history by playing specific searches,
locations, or times of day from the archive itself.
One other lesson has to do with the feeling of
the project. StoryCorps is a very human project. It
has the subversive goal of getting people to talk to
each other. Whether it’s the questions you could
Rendering courtesy of Silverstein Properties, Inc. and dbox

never ask your father, or your grandmother’s past

you never knew, the project aims to make listening
a transcendent experience. At the 9/11 Memorial
Museum, whether through the physical exhibitions
that Thinc Design and Local Projects are making,
or through the interactives or media, we’re looking

• A rendering of the future WTC site. Included are 1 World Trade

Center, Tower 2, the National 9/11 Memorial Museum Pavilion,
and Memorial Quadrant.
 The Critical Role of Co-Creation by Users
• Make History at ways to embed listening, dialogue, and the mak-
is an online
ing of history into the visitor experience.
collection of
stories, videos, Alex: What were the major design challenges with this
and photos project?
submitted by
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Jake: While there are many in the large suite of
people who
media pieces we are designing for the exhibitions,
experienced
9/11. the main challenges for 911history.org involved
making a project that really spoke to where we are
now, somewhere between 9/11 as a raw and recent
event, and 9/11 as a receding historic moment. For
many, the events of 9/11 are still very much pres-
ent, a daily reality of grief and pain, while others
have seemingly moved on and give it little thought.
We wanted Make History to match this moment
interactions
when the past and present are starting to become
distanced, and so we turned to overlaying historic
photos over street-view images of the present, giv-
22
ing a “double exposure” that speaks to where we
are right now. Further, this technique underscored
that history was made in the same streets and
roads all around New York City, the other sites,
the nation and the world. At many churches or
mosques or city halls, historic vigils linked com-
munities together, and these were also historic
events.
Alex: How do you see this project unfolding over the
long term? Once the memorial is built, how will the
interactive elements evolve in concert with the physical
installation?
Jake: Many of our interactive installations have
been created specifically to evolve over time,
allowing the exhibitions to respond and progress
to changing times. The Memorial Museum will
actively pursue the general goals of Make History

by continuing to gather stories, photos, and vid-
eos of experiences of 9/11 and the aftermath, and
adding these newly gathered materials to many
different exhibitions inside the museum. Visitors
will not just witness history, but participate in the
documentation and making of history through the
exhibitions.
Further, there will be an exhibit piece that will
analyze the post-9/11 world, using current events,
semantic analysis, and ongoing research to try and
define just what the post-9/11 world is. Whether
through inference, connections between keywords,
evolving thoughts on 9/11 themes, this series of
visualization and collaboration will allow visitors
in the present and future to try and define the
post-9/11 world, even as the meaning is evolving
into the future.
(P)REVIEW
EDITOR
Alex Wright
alex@agwright.com
And finally, there will be a space for visitors to
reflect on the meaning of 9/11 within their own
personal experience. These voices and reflections
will make up a diverse and dynamic display that
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
will evolve as time moves forward, giving the
museum a historic record of the changing meaning
of 9/11 over time.
Alex Wright is the author of Glut: Mastering
Information Through the Ages. He has led user
experience design initiatives for the New York Times,
Yahoo!, Microsoft, IBM, Harvard University, and the
Long Now Foundation, among others. His writing
has appeared in Salon.com, the Christian Science
Monitor, Harvard Magazine, and other publications. He writes regu-
interactions
larly about technology and design at http://www.alexwright.org.
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649480
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
23
 The Critical Role of Co-Creation by Users
Operationalizing Brands
with New Technologies
Denise Lee Yohn
Denise Lee Yohn, Inc.| mail@deniseleeyohn.com
New technologies—like Twitter,
Facebook, YouTube, Flickr,
social networking, augmented
reality, tagging, wikis, social
indexing—and the applications
they make possible have affect-
ed our culture in a profound
way. Still, I hope they will have
an even greater impact going
forward.
Truth is, the use of these
new technologies has been
quite limited when it comes to
the way companies build their
brands. To date, most technol-
ogy-enabled, brand-building
approaches have focused on
brand expression and commu-
[1] Hemp, P. and T.
nication.
A. Stewart. “Leading
Change When Business The widely praised use of
Is Good: The HBR
Interview—Samuel J. social media by Starbucks pro-
Palmisano.” Harvard vides an excellent example.
Business Review
December 2004. The promotions the company
has run on its Facebook page
and the engagement ads on
Facebook’s home page have
helped Starbucks build a larger
brand fan base. Other social-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
media initiatives, such as ask-
ing people to take photos of new
outdoor advertising and post
them on Twitter, and using a
YouTube video to promote its
Election Day free-coffee offer,
are ways in which Starbucks
has employed new digital tools
to express its brand values and
attributes and to communicate
interactions
with consumers.
But expressing and com-
municating are not the same
24
as operationalizing. While
expressing a brand is to dimen-
sionalize it through creativity,
to operationalize a brand is to
use it to drive the business and
to develop an organizational
system for delivering brand
value.
After all, a brand isn’t simply
a logo, image, or message. A
brand is a bundle of values and
attributes that defines:
• a product or service’s value
that is delivered to its custom-
ers, and
• the way of doing business
that is the basis of a company’s
relationships with stakeholders.
Simply put, a brand is what a
company does and how it does
it. And brand building involves
improving what the company
delivers to its customers and
how it runs its business—essen-
tially its experience design for
customers and stakeholders.
Delivering value to Customers
New technologies can play as
much of a role in operational-
izing a brand as they do in
expressing it. Operationalizing
involves identifying, prioritiz-
ing, and implementing pro-
grams and initiatives to deliver
the brand through the core
organizational operating sys-
tem, fulfilling the first part of
the brand definition.
eBags and Nike are good
examples of companies that
use new media applications and
tactics to operationalize their
brands and design the customer
experience to deliver increased
value to customers.
eBags is a leading online
retailer of luggage, handbags,
business cases, and backpacks
with a brand platform based
on the idea that eBags is your
“perfect bag” expert. Instead
of initiating a new media cam-
paign declaring themselves as
“your perfect bag expert,” it has
focused on developing ways to
be that expert.
eBags provides more than
1.9 million customer reviews
and testimonials so that buyers
can make informed purchases.
Providing such detail makes
it easy for customers to deter-
mine whether or not a bag is
the right one for them. Indeed,
negative and critical comments
are included, proving eBags’
understanding that being an
“expert” means being honest
and unbiased.
However, the company takes
commenting one step further by
tagging reviews with customer-
supplied information about how
frequently the bag is used, what
it’s used for, and the occupation
and gender of the customer.
eBags promises that customers
will soon be able to search and
sort products by these tags.
There is also an eBags blog
that provides shopping tips and
 recommendations, and videos
that explain the design and fea-
tures of bags. The site features
a “Laptop Bag Finder” that uses
filtering technology so custom-
ers can enter their laptop model
and/or its dimensions; the
search function lists only those
bags that will fit their laptop.
Almost all of this information
can be shared, Digg’d, or com-
mented on. eBags unleashes
the power of social media
to deliver their “perfect bag”
expertise to a broad audience.
eBags has demonstrated it
understands the difference
between using new technical
capabilities for simple brand
expression and for more valu-
able brand delivery. Of course
the company has a Twitter
account and a Facebook page.
But it shows that Web 2.0 is not
just a way to facilitate com-
munication about its brand—it’s
a way to actually deliver the
brand.
Nike also uses new technolo-
gies to deliver increased value
to customers. The Nike brand
is about providing innovation
and inspiration to every ath-
lete, amateur and professional.
Nike+ integrates an in-shoe
sensor device with nikeplus.
com allowing runners to track
their progress, compare their
performance with that of oth-
ers, and participate in forums.
Nike+ makes it possible for run-
ners to set up virtual challenges
with other participants and to
personalize their homepage to
illustrate their mood, route, and
Image created by Monica Sebial

the weather. From hardware

design to software capabili-
ties, and from user interface to
social networking integration,
the entire Nike+ operating plat-
form brings the value of Nike’s
 The Critical Role of Co-Creation by Users
Simply put, a brand is
what a company does
and how it does it. And
brand building involves
improving what the
company delivers
to its customers
and how it runs its
business—essentially
its experience design
for customers and
stakeholders.
brand to life in a valuable cus-
tomer experience.
Brand As a Way
of Doing Business
Conventional wisdom suggests
that internal brand efforts
should focus on line employees,
e.g., staffers working the coun-
ter at McDonald’s or those who
play the characters at Disney
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
World. But, in fact, all stake-
holders affect and are affected
by the brand.
The second half of the defi-
nition of a brand speaks more
to its internal value: It’s the
bundle of values and attributes
that define the way a company
does business with its stake-
holders. The brand should drive
interactions
the organization, aligning and
guiding every single business
decision and task. It should also
26
“vertical” Alignment of
Heads
Hearts
Hands & Feet
serve as a compass, defining
what the company does and
does not do.
Stakeholder integration with
the brand must happen on two
dimensions:
• Horizontal alignment —across
the organization, all internal
stakeholders share a common
understanding of the brand.
• Vertical engagement —each
individual person is fully
engaged from their:
• heads—they’re knowledge-
able about what the brand
stands for and how it is posi-
tioned, to
• hearts—they’re inspired
by the brand and motivated to
change what they do and how
they do it in order to operation-
alize the brand, to
• hands and feet—they’re
equipped with and empowered
by tools to interpret and rein-
force the brand appropriately.
New technologies play a role
in brand operationalization by
facilitating both dimensions.
Some examples:
IBM. Using unique online col-
laboration tools and moderation
techniques, IBM undertook a
three-day, enterprisewide effort
it called “ValuesJam.” It was ini-
tiated by CEO Sam Palmisano,
who believed that revisiting the
company’s founding principles
would be critical to future
growth and success and needed
a way to unify, manage, and
integrate IBM’s 300,000 employ-
ees, who were spread across 17
countries.
ValuesJam involved an online
forum in which senior execu-
tives moderated employee dis-
cussions about the proposed
new values. Employees’ input
was monitored in real time, and
thanks to IBM’s text-mining
software, moderators were able
to flash the hottest themes in
order to focus the discussion.
The values that arose out of
this undertaking now guide
everything IBM does. Palmisano
explains, “When your business
is primarily based on knowl-
edge…people—rather than
products—become your brand.
Just as our products have had
to be consistent with the IBM
brand promise, now more than
ever, so do our people. One way
to ensure that is to inform their
behavior with a globally consis-
tent set of values” [1]. This is an
example of how new collabora-
tion technology was used at

Executive
Managers
Committee
Board of
Vendors
Directors
IBM to drive brand integration
and alignment.
Sony. As Sony faced techno-
logical change and continued
expansion, its leaders knew
they could not assume all
stakeholders shared one com-
mon understanding of the
brand and how to evolve it to
maintain the company’s leader-
ship position. So they decided to
use the Sony brand to focus and
align the company—the brand
was central to the organization,
and it was used to drive and
guide everything Sony did.
The company developed a
Brand Engagement Toolbox to
drive brand execution. This
collection of tools was used to
inform, inspire, and instruct
internal stakeholders—for
example, decision trees guide
people through key decisions
so that the outcomes support
the brand and interactive expe-
riences that help employees
internalize the brand values
and attributes. The Internet-
based Toolbox contained imag-
es, content, video clips, and
quotes, and featured a blog-like
forum for sharing and learn-
ing about the brand from other
employees.
FEATURE
“horizontal” Alignment of
Corporate
Employees
Agencies
Sony’s initiative was under-
taken before Facebook and
Twitter were developed, but it’s
easy to imagine how a Brand
Engagement Toolbox might
employ these tools and their
applications today. Polling and
quiz features might be used to
gauge people’s understanding of
the brand or to nominate brand
case studies. Real-time mes-
saging might enable employees
from different areas of the com-
pany to ask questions and con-
tribute ideas to brand-building
efforts. And consumer input
and feedback might be seam-
lessly integrated into brand-
based decision making.
new technology,
new Brand Building
New technologies can be used
to operationalize brands: One
is by developing and deploy-
ing operating systems in
which brand value is delivered
through social media technol-
ogy, as in the case of eBags, or
through interactivity, commu-
nity tools, and customization,
as in the Nike example. The
other is by using the brand to
align and integrate stakehold-
ers through collaboration pro-
Frontline
Employees
Channel
Partners
grams (IBM) or virtual Brand
Engagement Toolboxes (Sony).
Both ways leverage the
capabilities of networks and
new media to optimize busi-
ness strategies and experience
design. As such, new tech-
nologies extend beyond their
current brand expression and
communication applications
and affect the business at an
entirely different level.
As business leaders return
their attention to growth, they
need more than marketing solu-
tions and innovative tactics. By
operationalizing their brands,
companies use their brands not
just to gain a competitive edge,
but to change the game com-
pletely.
About the Author
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Denise Lee Yohn has been
inspiring and teaching
companies how to opera-
tionalize their brands to
grow their businesses for
more than 20 years. World-class brands
including Sony, Frito-Lay, Burger King, and
Nautica have called on Yohn, an estab-
lished speaker, author, and consulting part-
ner. Read more by Yohn at http://www.
deniseleeyohn.com/resources.html.
interactions
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649481
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
27
 The Critical Role of Co-Creation by Users
The Social Life of Visualization
Jeremy Yuille
RMIT University | jeremy.yuille@rmit.edu.au
hugh Macdonald
RMIT University | hugh.macdonald@rmit.edu.au
Data.gov is an open govern-
ment initiative of President
Barack Obama’s administration,
designed to increase the public’s
ability to find, download, and
use high-value, machine-read-
able data sets generated by the
[1] Data.gov; http://
www.data.gov/about/ executive branch of the federal
government. The site sees public
participation and collaboration
as one of the keys to the success
of Data.gov; it will enable the
public to participate in govern-
ment by providing downloadable
[2] Power of Information
Taskforce; http:// data sets to build applications,
powerofinformation. conduct analyses, and perform
wordpress.com/
research [1].
Data.gov is part of a wider
movement called “open data,”
which various (mainly govern-
ment) organizations around
the world are exploring. In
[3] Government 2.0 Great Britain, the Power of
Taskforce; http://gov2.
net.au/about/ Information Taskforce has out-
lined its vision for public sector
reform. Of particular note is its
concept for open information,
whereby “to have an effective
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
voice, people need to be able
to understand what is going on
[4] Felten, E., Robinson,
in their public services.” Also
D., Yu, H., and Zeller,
W. “Government Data of interest is its vision for open
and the Invisible Hand.”
Yale Journal of Law and discussion that seeks to promote
Technology 11 (2008): greater engagement with the
161.
public through more interactive
online consultation and col-
laboration [2]. A similar move is
under way in Australia with the
interactions
Government 2.0 taskforce, which
is concerned with encouraging
online engagement with the aim
28
of “drawing in the information,
knowledge, perspectives and
even, where possible, the active
collaboration of anyone wishing
to contribute to public life” [3] .
A signification consideration
for these governments might be
how to build public participa-
tion and collaboration in the
process of collecting and shar-
ing data. In order for public data
to benefit from the innovation
and dynamism of Web 2.0, gov-
ernment needs to change its
modus operandi as an informa-
tion provider [4]. In doing this, it
should focus on design sites that
create simple, reliable, and pub-
licly accessible infrastructure
that expose the underlying data.
“Private actors, either nonprofit
or commercial, are better suited
to deliver government informa-
tion to citizens and can con-
stantly create and reshape the
tools individuals use to find and
leverage public data” [4].
As we move into this new age
of open public data, what sort of
tools should an individual have
at his or her disposal to find and
leverage this public data? How
can these tools be designed so
that people can better under-
stand what is going on in their
public services and engage with
them more fully?
The framework presented
here could enable individuals to
explore open data, understand
what is going on, and engage
with it. The framework relies
on the use of visualization as
an interface to explore data
and support social collabora-
tion around it. It allows people
to take some data, explore its
properties, and present their
findings to others. This is the
process of shared storytelling
that the framework supports:
It can be seen as a democratic
way of working with the ideals
of open data and government
2.0 that allows people to better
understand government pro-
cesses and engage with them
more fully.
At the basis of the data-
visualization framework is the
distinction between an object-
centered social network and an
ego-centered one. Prominent
object-centered social networks
are Flickr and del.icio.us, where
the network revolves around
an activity—sharing photos or
sharing links to websites. The
best example of an ego-centered
social network is Twitter, where
people within the network share
their thoughts with each other.
The idea of object-centered
social networks comes from
the work of sociology professor
Karin Knorr Cetina’s theory of
object-centered sociality—the
individual and the object as
central elements in social inter-
action. Cetina proposes that
objects, around which discus-
sions take place, help focus and
 FEATURE

start conversations and other

social interaction among people.
In this case, visualizations are
the objects within the network,
and because it prioritizes them
over the relationships between
people in the network, it focuses
attention on the process of
shared storytelling.
For the process of shared
storytelling to occur around an
object, such as a visualization,
the object needs an identity
within the social network so
that people within can easily
recognize it and its unique prop-
erties can be retained. Identity
in this context is created in
much the same way it is created
in other scenarios: through a
combination of visual and textu-
al information about the object.
Providing these contextual clues
about the object ensures that
people within the social network
can locate it without difficulty
and establish whether or not
they can make contributions
to it. The specifics of giving a
visualization an identity within
the network is described in the
framework as the process of dec-
oration, and through its use the
object prepares for the process
of shared storytelling to occur
around it.
Data sets provided by Many Eyes • http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/

Decoration is essential because

the process of shared storytell-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

ing through visualization can

take place only when there is
a shared understanding of the
medium’s properties. Visual • IBM’s Many Eyes
communication does not have project uses visu-
the level of shared understand- lization for data
analysis. Data
ing that written communication
sets are trans-
does. So in addition to present- formed into an
ing the visualization to begin on screen image,
the process of shared storytell- and the user can
interactions

then perceive
ing, a well-established visual
an unexpected
language has to exist so that the pattern.
properties of the data can be

29
 The Critical Role of Co-Creation by Users

For the process of

shared storytelling to
occur around an object, processes through technology,
so the entry barrier to using this
technology must be low enough.
such as a visualization, The shared storytelling pro-
cess begins with the creation of
using the visualization as an
interface. These tools should
transform the data set in some
way, whether by flipping the
axes to gain a different perspec-

the object needs an the visualization itself. People

identity within the
social network so that
people within can
easily recognize it and
its unique properties
can be retained.
communicated. People within a
social network may not have the
necessary knowledge to grasp
what sort of visualization tech-
nique to use, but they may still
have interesting data to share.
This is particularly important
for open data that seeks to
promote greater transparency
for government and increased
engagement with democratic
who wish to share their data
need help with the process of
choosing a visualization tech-
nique in case they don’t have
the necessary knowledge to
begin that conversation. This
particular process is known as
mapping, which can help people
to visualize a data set so that a
shared conversation around it
can begin.
The conversation around visu-
alization takes place because
it has become a social object
within the network. A social
object is anything around which
discussion takes place. A movie
is a social object because it has
a plot, cast, crew, and a mise
en scène, all of which can be
discussed by fans, critics, and
other interested parties. On the
other hand, a visualization is a
social object because it is a rep-
resentation of a data set.
Consequently, the data set is
the true object of discussion,
and there must be a set of tools
to allow people to explore it
tive on the data, or by mapping
some new axes onto the visual-
ization to look for correlations
in the underlying data. This is
the process of tweakability that
reasons that users must shift
and reformat a visualization
in order to make sense of the
whole data set.
Users within an online social
network also need a way of
documenting their discoveries,
particularly as a way of contrib-
uting to the democratic process
surrounding a piece of govern-
ment data. A simple form of
annotation is crucial in ensuring
that people can employ the visu-
alization interface to highlight
the insights they have drawn
from the data set and continue
the storytelling process. In the
framework, it is a non-disrup-
tive form of annotation that will
leave the original visualization
intact and make the annotated
version a derivative. This type
of process maintains the anal-
ogy to storytelling, in which an
original story might be fleshed

CREATE INTERPRET CAPTURE

J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

001101011100110101
110101110011010101

n
011100110101010111
TWEAKING
001101010101110011
010101011100110101
010111001101010101
110011010101011101
MAPPING DECORATION SNAPSHOT

ANNOTATION
interactions

• The Social Life of Visualization. The move from raw data to data storytelling, involving processes of: mapping—where communication
objectives are translated into visualization schemas; decoration—creating an identity around the visualization and placing it in the social
space; tweaking and annotation—interfaces to interrogate and mark up the representation of data; and snapshot—enabling storytelling
to grow around a data visualization.

30

out on subsequent tellings, the
source of the derivation remains
clear. This process also supports
the democratic notion of back-
ing up a claim with evidence. In
exactly the same way, the visu-
alization interface must empha-
size the original visualization
and its intention, yet support
derivations. This process is
called annotation.
A means of capturing these
story annotations will retain the
benefit of the community-driven
storytelling process around the
visualization. Just as the origi-
nal visualization is a capture of
the underlying data set, subse-
quent versions of the visualiza-
tion also must be captured and
attached to preserve the origi-
nal message but at the same
time allow the breadth that
comes of continued discussion.
So another part of the model
is building processes into the
interface that allow annotations
to be preserved, commented on,
and subsequently reviewed by
other members of the commu-
nity. It is this process within the
framework that provides shared
storytelling through visualiza-
tion with the ability to create
knowledge artifacts around
data. The process is called snap-
shot, and with this, extra data
created around the visualization
is preserved.
Significant amounts of data
can be generated because the
entire process of shared sto-
rytelling through visualiza-
tion is a life cycle that repeats
infinitely. The framework gives
data visualization a life force
by providing it with an identity
that enables it to exist within an
object-centered social network
and making it an interface so
that people can interact with it
FEATURE
to begin a shared storytelling
experience. As data becomes
increasingly prevalent on the
World Wide Web, the ability to
engage with a communal visu-
alization of a data set is a more
useful experience than new
methods of visualizing data. For
designers, this is a change in
approach toward visualization;
no longer is it about making the
most visually appealing and
sophisticated representations.
Instead, this creativity should
be constrained to reverting the
control of data to people and
providing a good experience
along the way. With these tech-
nologies, it’s impossible to imag-
ine how many important stories
will be told by groups of like-
minded people in the future.
With the increasing adoption
of open data by governments
around the world, and in the
case of Data.gov especially, the
amount of new data sets being
added to the site, many stories
can come out of this marriage of
government 2.0 and the shared
storytelling process. The frame-
work presented should offer the
flexibility and intuitiveness to
enable people to leverage public
data for their own purposes.
Through this, people should be
able to collaborate more closely
with their governments and
better understand government
decisions: how they are made
and how they might affect indi-
vidual citizens.
Postscript
In this article we’ve discussed how
the framework for an interface
encourages social interactions around
data visualization, which we’ve
proposed, can be used with open
data, to encourage transparency and
enhance community engagement
with government. If you’re interested
in finding out about the framework
in more detail we’ve published it as a
series of interaction design patterns
at http://socialvizpatterns.info.
Acknowledgements
This research was conducted within
the Australasian CRC for Interaction
Design, which is established and
supported under the Australian
Government’s Cooperative Research
Centres Program.
About the Authors
Jeremy Yuille is an interac-
tion designer, digital media
artist, and academic with a
background in digital art,
music, performance, and
architecture. He has a bachelor’s of design
studies from the architecture department of
the University of Queensland and a mas-
ter’s of design from SIAL at RMIT University.
Yuille is a cofounder of the Media and
Communication Design Studio at RMIT,
where he undertakes collaborative research
with the Australasian CRC for Interaction
Design (ACID), supervises postgraduate
students, and holds interaction design stu-
dios. He is also a certified ScrumMaster
and a director of the Interaction Design
Association. He infrequently blogs on
design and the progress of his Ph.D. at
http://isomorpho.us.
Hugh Macdonald is a
research assistant on the
ACID Loupe Project and
has been researching infor-
mation visualization and
theories of social interac-
tion design. He is also currently a Ph.D.
student at the School of Media and
Communication at RMIT University in
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Melbourne, Australia. His research involves
how the emergence of networked media,
along with its technologies and social prac-
tices, is changing the way professional
sporting organizations and sports fans
interact with each other within the media
landscape. Macdonald also maintains a
keen interest in mobile technologies, hav-
ing previously worked in this area and
received a related master’s degree. He is
currently looking at some of the social
effects of these technologies.
interactions
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649482
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
31
 Societal/Cultural Consciousness and Change
Beyond the Benjamins: Toward
an African Interaction Design
n.J. Bidwell
Centre for ICT for Development | nic.bidwell@gmail.com
h. Winschiers-theophilus
Polytechnic of Namibia | hwinschiers@polytechnic.edu.na
Localizing interaction design in Africa is criti-
cal for improving usability and user experience
for African populations. Genuine localization, as
Lucy Suchman and others argue, requires locating
accountability in the production of technologies;
for Africa, this means design by Africans in Africa
for African situations [1].
However, supporting Africans in developing
and applying the skills they need to localize inter-
action design is a serious issue beleaguered by
paradox. Here we discuss some of the challenges
in building capacity for an African interaction
design by reflecting on our 16 years of combined
experience in teaching HCI, managing computer
science programs in academia, and undertaking
interaction design research in southern Africa.
These challenges are embedded in an array of fac-
[1] Suchman,
L. “Located tors including: cultural values, which affect both
Accountabilities in system usability and learner and teacher behavior;
Technology Production.”
Scandinavian Journal of historical and geographical power relationships;
Information Systems 14,
2 (2003): 91–105.
and socioeconomic issues that both constrain
technology and shape the aspirations of learners
and professionals. These factors have been widely
and deeply discussed independently, but the effect
of their intricate interrelationships on the evolu-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
tion of HCI practice in Africa by Africans has not.
To illustrate the effects that emerge from this
mesh of factors, we refer to phenomena that we
routinely encounter in our work, in particular in
Namibia and South Africa.
We seek to depict this reality as a motivation
for establishing new ways to support Africans
in localizing interaction design, but we do not
intend the reader to generalize the details of our
specifically situated examples across the vast and
interactions
diverse continent.
Competition for enrolling in information tech-
nology in Southern Africa as part of higher and
32
tertiary education is often fierce, and with affir-
mative employment policies for Africans (e.g.,
black people in South Africa) or nationals (e.g.,
Namibians in Namibia), there is little shortage of
IT employment for graduates at locally competitive
salaries. For African IT students and graduates, it
is, as one colleague succinctly states, “all about the
Benjamins.” Money is imperative for African stu-
dents, who are often obliged to return the invest-
ment in their education made by extended kin or
by institutional lenders. Economic pragmatism
means that few African IT students undertake
post-graduate studies. This has consequences for
both IT-teacher education and the scope for an
advanced capacity in local HCI research and pro-
fessional practice. There is little payoff in proceed-
ing to post-graduate studies compared with gain-
ing industry certification (e.g., Cisco). For instance,
there are only 10 Namibian nationals with a mas-
ter’s in IT of which only three work in higher edu-
cation and another two with a HCI specialization.
Individuals undertaking such advanced study
are not representative of the majority of Africans.
Recent and current undergraduates, who are
often the first in their families to matriculate
from high school, tend to not undertake advanced
study. Thus, they are least likely to influence the
frameworks in which HCI and design is practiced
and taught locally. Further, under-resourcing in
high schools and issues related to education in a
language (English) that differs from that spoken
at home means higher education effort is often
concentrated on a subset of core IT skills. This
subset is influenced by employer perceptions of
core competencies, which are tuned by power
relations with the more developed world. IT sys-
tems first introduced to Africa by American and
European multinational companies, or by white
 FORUM UNDER DEVELOPMENT

EDITOR
Gary Marsden
gaz@acm.org

Africans during the Apartheid era, are embedded relations and also to experiences in schools and
with values and practices that differ from those values inherent in African society.
of African people. That is, while systems and pro- Schools continue to favor didactic modes in
cedures might be “internationalized” or custom- which a teacher reads from a textbook and a [2] Winschiers,
ized for African contexts, they are founded on student listens and repeats. Teachers, as other H. and Fendler,
J. “Assumptions
non-African values and practices [2, 3]. Moreover, elders, have authority in knowledge transfer, and Considered Harmful:
The Need to Redefine
while African IT professionals and teachers may young people are not encouraged to explore inde-
Usability.” Usability and
notice gaps in applications and consider “core” IT pendently or pursue curiosity-driven questions Internationalization,
Part I. Ed. N. Aykin.
skills in local contexts, they are unlikely to ques- in learning. Conceding to the textbook becomes Heidelberg: Springer
tion the status quo. habituated learner behavior, and consequently— Berlin, 2007.

To understand why African teachers, students, with little facilitated discussion—time and again
and professionals are unlikely to practicably con- the textbook subverts alternative perspectives. It
test the hegemony of IT systems and design—even is not that African elders do not demonstrate an
[3] Winschiers-
when they recognize incongruence with local val- acute awareness of multiple perspectives or adept- Theophilus, H. “Cultural
Appropriation of
ues and practices—we need to account for some ness in prolonged debate; they do. But discussion Software Design and
of these values themselves, along with power rela- of multiple perspectives is often in the pursuit of Evaluation.” Handbook
of Research on Socio
tions. In teaching we routinely observe students’ consensus, as collectivism is valued more highly Technical Design and
Social Networking
high regard for textually published knowledge, than individualism. So power relations operate in System. Ed. B.
even if the content focuses on the operations of two ways: internally in African groups, between Whitworth. Hershey, PA:
IGI Global, 2009.
systems in the digital landscape of developed learner and elder, and at the interface with
regions and, in the case of HCI textbooks, is Western culture.
invested with non-African values. The authority Africa has a 50-year history of political and
of the textbook for Africans relates again to power philosophical questioning of “progress” as
Photograph courtesy of oneVillage Initiative / http://www.onevillagefoundation.org/index.html

J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
interactions

• Students learn hands-on assembly of computer hardware and networking components at Winneba Open Digital Village IT School in
Ghana as part of a basic training program organized by Taiwanese volunteers and the oneVillage Initiative.

33
 Societal/Cultural Consciousness and Change
IT systems first introduced
to Africa by American and
European multinational
companies, or by white
Africans during the
Apartheid era, are embedded
with values and practices
that differ from those of
African people. While
systems might be customized
for African contexts, they
are founded on non-African
values and practices.
defined by Western readings of modernity and
development; movements from Negroism and
Pan-Africanism to the contemporary African
Renaissance call for vocalizing an African cul-
tural identity in learning. But, at least within
IT, students are at the mercy of achieving their
aspirations by accruing, as Bourdieu would argue,
the educational and cultural capital determined
by the elite of the West [4]. It is not that students
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
and professionals do not recognize the incompat-
[4] Bourdieu, P. The
Logic of Practice. ibility of the imported standards, propagated in
Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1990.
textbooks and professional practices, with African
contexts. However, the capital they gain through
education and professional pathways means that
they do not privilege voicing dissent, such as
when faced with systems that are being globalized
via short visits by non-African IT experts. IT stu-
dents and professionals know only too well that
things work differently in Africa. Consider the
interactions
following banal incident, one of us experienced, in
a country considered to be one of the more devel-
oped in southern Africa:
34
After reserving, but having not yet paid for, a bus
operated by a major company from a regional city to
access a rural research site, problems ensued. While
previously unproblematic, on this particular day the bus
office’s electronic ticketing system was down, which
created a trial of actions simply because clerks at the
regional offices were unable to handle cash payment or
manually process credit cards. Thus, payment required
finding and then taking a taxi to the bank to draw a
bankers order, then to a fax office to fax the receipt of
the bankers order to the bus headquarters. It would
seem the designer of this system had not balanced the
constraints of permissions of the regional office clerks,
probably associated with employee trust or security, and
the highly likely event of compromised connectivity, due
to electricity cuts, etc. The consequence would not have
been affordable for the ordinary African passenger.
Situations of the type are common in many
African countries and may be acerbated by pov-
erty, corruption, and cronyism. However, they
are not the type of constraints and consequences
that appear frequently in HCI and systems-design
textbooks, nor those that a prospective employee
might feel comfortable raising during an interview,
especially with an international consultant.
Students and professionals certainly recognize
dissonance and cultural gulfs in their relation-
ship with the values that construct and shape
gathering requirements and design and usabil-
ity methods, as well as the constraints shaping
the digital environment. For instance, students
show a genuine recognition of the paucity of cer-
tain instruments for collecting reliable data, in
particular, the questionnaire. Class discussions
reveal their representative strategy of filling a
questionnaire with the expected correct answers,
independent of their personal opinion. Yet in HCI
examination papers or project proposals, students
repeatedly recommend these very same instru-
ments, “because it’s in the textbook.” It is no sur-
prise that when students enter professional life,
perhaps collaborating with international consul-
tants, that again they will support inappropriate
methods in requirements gathering and usability
tests. This is despite an intimate appreciation of
the values (e.g., consensus, reciprocation, and eco-
nomic pragmatism) that drive participants to try
to determine what might be the “correct” response
on a questionnaire.
To enable students in the context of dissonance
and cultural gulfs, we encounter a paradox. In

seeking to realize the potential of appropriately
encultured design, we need to teach African stu-
dents to critique the relevancy of system design
and development practices that originate in norms
produced elsewhere. However, enabling students
to enact such critical and reflective practice may
require them first to change their own cultural
practice in response to perceived authority, and
second, to do so within the reality of economics
and global power relationships.
It appears that IT students and professionals in
Africa manage their identities—within the culture
of IT and their home culture—in the context of
dissonance, conflicts, and multiple perspectives.
This is particularly clear in considering systems
design and development for rural environments.
Unlike migration patterns in the West, students
from rural areas in Southern Africa usually
intend to return home from the major cities once
they have accumulated sufficient income and
maintain ongoing and important kin relationships
with their home villages. They rarely intend to
practice professionally in their villages and have
difficulty envisioning the relevancy of their tech-
nical skills. This is not unsurprising since, despite
the contribution of the cell phone to rural con-
nectivity, computer systems are designed in and
for urban places and are ill-matched to rural life-
styles [5]. But the issues seem to be deeper than
prosaic opportunity; they implicate incompatibili-
ties of identity.
Both our observations of people in our research
in the remote rural area of the eastern cape of
South Africa [6] and Mozambique and our African
co-researchers with strong links to rural areas
show how difficult it is both to be part of a local
community and introduce new technologies and
practices. Of course, these issues are simply local-
ized versions of the general challenges of manag-
ing home and professional identity; articulating
aspects of one’s own domestic and intimate life;
and translating and conceptualizing informal
systems of knowledge in defining and developing
systems. The situation, however, is more acute
when these challenges are compounded by issues
of language, significant cultural gulfs, and global
power relations.
With such intractable difficulties, what should
we do to equip African students with the skills to
localize interaction design? We believe that train-
ing students overseas has limited impact, as many
FORUM UNDER DEVELOPMENT
do not return and those that do are arguably
even less equipped to tackle cultural translation
than those educated at home. On the other hand,
training overseas graduate students studying in
Africa has considerable potential to start the pro-
cess of integrating African scenarios and views
into global HCI. This strategy can only enrich the
practices, frameworks, and toolkits that we have
to draw upon for design and usability generally.
For example, our experience of Africans’ deep
appreciation of multiple perspectives and their
multilingual skills can broaden conceptual capac-
ity beyond that which is currently available in the
developed world.
[5] Bidwell, N.J. &
Investing in specialized advanced courses in Browning, D. “Pursuing
Genius Loci: Interaction
Africa, for overseas students, may also begin to Design And Natural
redress bias in curricula exerted by the need for Places.” Personal and
Ubiquitous Computing
African universities to gain international accredi- (First published online
March 2009) Springer
tation. That is, it may open up opportunities for us
Verlag, 2010.
to more comprehensively insert African scenarios
and their consequences for computational think-
ing into a range of undergraduate subjects beyond
the conventional domain of HCI. However, for our
African students and teachers to engage with such
material, it needs to be supported by textbook con-
tent based on theoretically sound and authentic
real-world projects. So we are issuing two invita-
tions: Come to learn from Africa by staying here
for a while, and think about ways to enliven those
textbooks with stories from the ground.
About the Authors Nic Bidwell spent the
first few years of life in Africa and has been a Third
[6] Bidwell, N.J.
Culture Kid ever since. From 2003 she has focused “Anchoring Design in
on designing interactions suited to rural contexts Rural Ways of Doing
and Australian indigenous and African cultural and Saying.” Interact
2009, Part 1. Ed. T.
views. In her research—most recently in South
Gross et al. Heidelberg:
Africa, Mozambique, and Namibia—she spends extensive dura- Springer Berlin (2009),
tions in situ. Bidwell is a senior research fellow at the Centre for ICT 686–699.
for Development in Cape Town, South Africa, and senior lecturer at
James Cook University in far north Australia.
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Heike Winschiers-Theophilus is dean of School of
Information Technology at the Polytechnic of
Namibia. She has lived in Namibia and lectured in
the field of software engineering at the University
and Polytechnic since 1994. Her Ph.D. research
explored cross-cultural design issues and suggests
a framework for culture-centered dialogical design. Since then her
research has focused on the cultural appropriation of design and
evaluation methods of information systems supporting local con-
tent creation, storage, organization, and retrieval.
interactions
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649483
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
35
 Societal/Cultural Consciousness and Change
Social Change: Women,
Networks, and Technology
natalie Quizon
Orange Labs SF | natalie.quizon@orange-ftgroup.com
“How can a girl grow up to be a
technician, engineer, or a scientist?
Providing girls with the guidance
and incentives to take skilled posi-
tions in science and technology is
a major responsibility of educators
[1] Markoff, J. and employers. How can teachers,
“Computer Science
Programs Make
human resource experts, govern-
a Comeback in ment, universities, and women’s
Enrollment.” the New
York Times, March 16, organizations contribute to increas-
2009.
ing career options for women?”
—“Women In Science and
Technology,” a report on an MIT
workshop, May 1973
More than 35 years ago, Laya
[2] “Fastest Growing Wiesner first came up with the
Demographic on
Facebook: Women Over idea of convening a workshop
55.” InsideFacebook.
at MIT University on Women In
com; http://www.
insidefacebook. Science and Technology (WIT).
com/2009/02/02/
fastest-growing-demo- In her role as the wife of Jerome
graphic-on-facebook- Wiesner, then the 13th president
women-over-55/
of MIT, she immersed herself
in what she recognized was a
critical educational issue. The
subsequent report introduced
the above questions, the guiding
objectives of the WIT Workshop
[3] Heil, B. and
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Piskorski, M. “New
held at MIT in 1973, which
Twitter Research: focused on the challenging
Men Follow Men and
Nobody Tweets.” dearth of women in the science,
Harvardbusiness.org
Voices; http://blogs.
technology, engineering, and
harvardbusiness.org/ math fields (STEM).
cs/2009/06/new_twit-
ter_research_men_follo. Indeed, in 2009, we are still
html/ grappling with these very same
issues. Today only 11.8 percent
of computer science bach-
elor’s degrees are awarded to
interactions
women [1]. The WIT Workshop
highlights the prevalence of a
top-down approach, coalescing
36
governmental, institutional, and
business resources to increase
the numbers of women in
STEM fields. However, much
has happened in the interven-
ing decades, most notably, the
rate of technological innovation.
Ironically, the role of technology
itself in drawing women into the
STEM fields often gets relegated
to the background in this dis-
cussion.
Today we live in a world
augmented by data, content,
images, and conversations. From
IM to texting, videoconferenc-
ing to email, and landlines to
mobiles, we have an abundance
of communication modes. This
has unleashed a creative fervor
evident everywhere we look.
At no time in history have so
many people had the ability to
create, publish, and broadcast
their work to so many others,
to those they know intimately,
those with whom they are virtu-
ally acquainted, and complete
strangers they have yet to meet.
Only recently has it begun to
surface that women have been
dominating the exploding world
of content creation and cultural
production. Startling statistics
are emerging that highlight
women’s participation in social
media, which includes blogs,
microblogs, video sharing, and
social networks.
Women, particularly older
women are some of the fastest
growing groups in some social
networks, so much so that other
media such as television are
seeing attrition in viewership. A
recent survey by Q Interactive
from August 2009, with data
from 1,000 women, shows that
more than 45 percent of those
surveyed spent less time watch-
ing TV due to spending more
time on social networking sites.
The survey also showed that
75 percent of the women were
“more active” in social network-
ing than they were the year
before.
The surge in women’s par-
ticipation in content creation in
the social media space is inter-
esting not just for its cultural
implications, but also for what
it means from a professional
perspective, especially when
considering young girls and
women. Statistics from the Pew
Internet & American Life proj-
ect also support the idea that
young girls use social media.
This may be the salvation
from the maddening dearth
of women in STEM fields.
Engagement in social media
itself might very well be genera-
tive not just of crucial mentor-
ing and support, but also of the
critical coding and program-
ming skills young girls need in
technical careers. A closer look
at girls’ communication choices
reveals how they are drawn to
social media.

Girl talk
Statistics show that communi-
cation in all its aspects is the
domain of girls, from in-person
communication to cellphone use
to instant messaging. Girls also
outpace boys in journal writ-
ing, 49 percent to 20 percent [4].
Driven by a desire to communi-
cate, girls think of social media
as simply new tools for broad-
casting and publishing.
In the social media space,
“girls dominate the teen blogo-
sphere and social networks—66
percent of girls have an SNS
[social networking service] pro-
file compared with 50 percent
of boys, and 34 percent of girls
(versus 20 percent of boys) keep
an online journal or blog” [4].
The domination of girls in social
media is represented across all
ages in the youth segments.
The Pew study found that:
“Older teen girls are still
far more likely to blog when
compared with older boys (38
percent versus 18 percent),
but younger girl bloggers have
grown at such a fast clip that
they are now outpacing even the
older boys (32 percent of girls
ages 12-14 blog versus 18 percent
of boys ages 15-17)” [4].
Highly skilled in the art of
weaving stories and fostering
social connections, teenage girls
have embraced the Internet and
transferred these skills to social
media at a time when the tech-
nology itself is going through
radical changes, allowing
content to be treated program-
matically, shared as objects, and
providing endless opportunity
for self-expression. In this peer-
based learning model, the excit-
ing convergence of the social
Web with open-source devel-
opment has enabled an entire
FEATURE
generation—GenY—of girls help-
ing girls to make the leap from
content creation to coding.
A notable example of this
is the Alice Project (Alice.org)
at Carnegie Mellon University.
Alice is an open-source, edu-
cational, object-oriented pro-
gramming environment that
teaches young kids how to cre-
ate animations and tell stories.
For example, Storytelling Alice
was created to specifically focus
on middle-school children, and
girls in particular, motivating
them to learn computer pro-
gramming by creating short 3D
animation movies [5].
Programming Purpose
The momentum to program will
only win more ground for girls
and young women as they get
older and transcend storytell-
ing. While their initial exposure
to technology might have been
driven by the desire to play
online games on mobile phones
or computers, or to connect in a
social way—be it Club Penguin,
Webkinz, or Facebook—they
increasingly see the potential for
technology as a tool for change.
The pervasiveness of technology
in all aspects of our lives and
society today is markedly dif-
ferent from 1973. An important
shift has occurred, one in which
technology goes beyond “social-
izing” to a focus on what Sue
Rosser, in Female Friendly Science,
calls “social context.” According
to Rosser, “insuring science and
technology are considered in
their social context …may be
the most important change that
can be made in science teach-
ing for all people, both male and
female” [6]. Rosser argues for a
contextualization of technol-
ogy that emphasizes its more
purposeful, socially conscious
potential to draw in more men
and women to STEM fields.
Jane Margolis’s later study
(from 2001) of the gender gap [4] Arafeh, S., Lenhart,
in the computer sciences, A., Macgill, A., and
Smith, A. “Writing,
“Unlocking the Clubhouse: Technology and Teens.”
Pew Internet; http://
Women in Computing,” echoes www.pewinternet.org/
Rosser’s findings. The conclu- Reports/2008/Writing-
Technology-and-Teens.
sions from Margolis’s interviews aspx/
with 100 male and female
computer science students at
Carnegie Mellon University,
while now almost eight years
[5] Storytelling Alice;
old, a lifetime in technology http://www.alice.org/
kelleher/storytelling/
years, are still noteworthy: index.html/
“For males, the attraction to
computers comes early in life and
appears to be magnetic. Males are
more likely to be fascinated with the
[6] Rosser, S. Female-
computer itself, find satisfaction in Friendly Science:
controlling and mastering a machine, Applying Women’s
Studies Methods and
and enjoy hacking for hacking’s Theories to Attract
Students. New York:
sake. Females’ interest in comput-
Teachers College Press,
ing is more likely to be one interest 1990.
among several others. They are
more likely to place a high value on
the context of computing, the links
between computers and other fields,
[7] Fisher, A., Margolis,
and the contribution to society that J., and Miller, F.
“Computing for a
computers can make. We refer to Purpose: Gender
this orientation as ‘computing for a and Attachment to
Computer Science”
purpose’.... Many women who decide (Work in progress).
Carnegie Mellon
against studying computer science, Project on Gender and
either before or after starting, do so Computer Science;
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/
after concluding that their interests afs/cs/project/gender-
gap/www/purpose.html/
in application, helping people, and
being a ‘people person’ do not have a
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
place in computer science.” [7].
“Computing for a purpose”
defines the Web today. There is [8] See for examples:
CarrotMobs; http://
no shortage of examples of social carrotmob.org/;
media promoting civic engage- 1BlockOffTheGrid
(1BOG); http://1bog.
ment, volunteerism, and sustain- org/; The Whuffie
able practices [8]. As technology Bank; http://www.
thewhuffiebank.org/;
becomes a pervasive tool for or CitySourced; http://
www.citysourced.com/
getting things done, and both
women and men engage with it
interactions
equally, one can begin to imagine
that women and young girls will
be less alienated by technology.
37
 Societal/Cultural Consciousness and Change
Research conducted in 2009
by Orange Labs San Francisco
(OLSF) provides some hope.
Guided by a historical perspec-
tive, enriched by interviews with
[9] “Her Code: high-profile women executives
Engendering Change in
the Silicon Valley”; and journalists in technology,
http://www.slideshare.
net/playslides/her- supplemented by interviews
code-report-olsf/; with young girls, and comple-
http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=JyXT4N3 mented by literature review
K1WA/; http://www.
orange.com/en_EN/
and secondary research, the
press/press_releases/ research project “Her Code:
cp090722en.jsp/
Engendering Change in the
Silicon Valley” examined the
under-representation of women
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
in STEM fields. The project
results are available in multiple
[10] These include
women with computer formats: a magazine, a report,
science or engineer-
ing backgrounds,
and a video [9]. Interviews con-
like Marissa Mayer of ducted by Pascale Diaine of
Google, Leah Culver of
Pownce, Gina Bianchini OLSF for the Her Code project,
of Ning, and Ann highlight the technological shift
Winblad of Winblad
Hummer. of “computing for a purpose.”
Diaine’s interviews at the SD
Forum’s Teen Tech Titans of
interactions
Tomorrow provide concrete
examples of how “a more con-
textual approach includes early
38
experiences that situate the
technology in realistic settings”
could draw more girls into the
field [7].
Anika Ayyar, a seventh grader
at Harker School in San Jose, CA,
is exemplary of the shift toward
a more socially conscious
deployment of technology.
Ayyar is the founder of Skip-
a-Birthday.com, whose main
purpose is to “introduce philan-
thropy to kids.” Skip-a-Birthday
connects tweens and teens, 10
to 18 years old, whose birthdays
are at about the same time, and
gets them to “skip” an elaborate
birthday party and instead work
together to raise funds for a
worthy organization.
Since the Margolis study,
“experience with computers
between boys and girls has
equalized,” according to the
National Center for Women
& Information Technology.
Another interview at the SD
Forum resonates with these
findings. When asked about gen-
der differences in learning about
technology, Emily, a 13-year-old
student, commented: “Anyone
can learn, if they just get accus-
tomed to it. Technology is cool
for both genders actually. Maybe
a lot of people think that boys
are more into it, but recently
with all the Girls Tech Challenge
and SD Forum promoting girls
[they are] getting them inter-
ested in science and technology.
Everyone can do it.”
Social Seen
In addition to young girls, OLSF
interviewed many of the female
stars of Silicon Valley who have
developed codes, started com-
panies, and funded startups
for the HerCode project [10].
These women are omnipresent
at networking functions and
online, be it news coverage,
YouTube, blogs, Flickr, or Twitter.
Their adept use of social media
provides young women with a

glimpse into their professional
and personal lives. Through
social media tools like Twitter,
these young women can begin
to imagine what the daily lives
of their role models are like, and
new coverage on the Web pro-
vides them with a longer view
of particular career paths in
technology.
The Web’s shift to more
emotionally rich content favors
girls and women who tend
to cultivate social networks,
develop emotional connec-
tions online, and create profile
pages more than men and boys.
Furthermore, the anecdotal
and storytelling quality of the
Internet today also makes it
a more girl-friendly domain.
And as young girls of the GenZ
generation (born after 1995)
become proficient in program-
ming interfaces like Alice.org
and social networks like Club
Penguin and Webkinz, which
promote storytelling through
FEATURE
the use of emerging technolo-
gies and cuddly stuffed animals,
we can begin to rethink conven-
tional strategies for increasing
the participation of women in
the development of technol-
ogy. It is imperative to contex-
tualize STEM education today
as something very different
from more than three decades
ago when Laya Wiesner initi-
ated the WIT workshop at MIT.
(Indeed, MIT’s current president
is Susan Hockfield, a noted
neuroscientist.) Clearly, we
must look beyond “educators”
and ““employers” to increase
women’s participation in the
STEM fields. By harnessing the
social component of today’s
technology, maximizing its
network effects, cultivating role
models through social media,
and understanding the appeal
of “purposeful programming” to
women, we can start to imagine
a world where the cyberpioneers
are girls [11].
About the Author
Natalie Quizon is the user
experience and design
lead in the Knowledge
Transfer Group at Orange
Labs San Francisco
(OLSF), part of France Telecom. Quizon
combines her formal training as a cultural
anthropologist with her knowledge of user-
centered design issues to generate innova-
tion insights. She brings 15 years of experi-
ence in research into underlying human-
behavior patterns. In addition to evangeliz-
ing design thinking, developing ideation
strategies, researching emerging trends in
culture and technology, she has also
[11] Rosenbloom, S.
worked on the design of location-based “Sorry, Boys, This Is
services and social media. Prior to OLSF, Our Domain.” New
she worked for Lante Corporation, an inter- York Times, February
21, 2008.
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
net consultancy in San Francisco, as a
senior user researcher in the User
Experience Group. Before Lante
Corporation, she went to Hong Kong as a
Fulbright Scholar to conduct ethnographic
research, where she also worked as a tech-
nical writer and university lecturer. Quizon
has a B.A. in social science from the
University of California, Berkeley and is a
Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology at
the University of Washington in Seattle,
where she also received her M.A.
interactions
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649484
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39
 Societal/Cultural Consciousness and Change
Interacting with Public Policy
Jonathan Lazar
Towson University | JLazar@towson.edu
Welcome to a new forum in interactions on interac-
tion design and public policy. You might be reading
this and saying, “Why should I care about public
policy? I’m not a policy wonk, I’m not a politician,
and I don’t get involved in politics.”
Public policy actually has a great impact on the
work we do in interaction design and human-com-
puter interaction. “Public policy” is a broader term
that includes both government policy and policy
coming from non-governmental organizations, and
yes, every now and then, it does include politics.
[1] Web Accessibility Around the world, many governments are grap-
Initiative. “Why
pling with similar policy issues related to human-
Standards
Harmonization Is computer interaction, usability engineering, and
Essential to Web
Accessibility.” 2009; interaction design. Two of the biggest interaction
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ design policy topics are how to facilitate fair and
Policy/harmon/
accurate voting (what types of interfaces, what
types of voting machines), and what types of Web-
based information should be legally required to be
accessible for people with disabilities. Often, policy
discussions do take place in a one-country context
due to the need to adapt to the laws or cultural
issues of a country (or even different laws of a
smaller state or a province or administrative unit).
But these aren’t just American issues (or British,
French, or Brazilian ones).
[2] Hochheiser,
Policy is Local; research is international
H. and Lazar, J.
“HCI and Societal While government policies are often limited to
Issues: A Framework
for Engagement.” one country, the community of researchers and
International Journal designers who hopefully are involved in informing
of Human-Computer
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Interaction, 23, 3 (2007): policy makers is international. There are research-
339–374.
ers working on voting-machine usability and Web
accessibility throughout the world. We may col-
laborate on research and design projects, and we
may meet face-to-face at conferences. When we
work together, we can be more effective at inform-
ing policy makers and ensuring that science and
research and good design practice are the driv-
ing factors for policy, rather than politics or scare
tactics. Have you heard the term “harmonization”
interactions
recently? It’s the idea that we should have a con-
sistent set of international technical or design
standards [1]. Harmonization would mean that it is
40
easier for interaction designers to build tools and
systems that can span multiple countries. But har-
monization happens only when interaction design-
ers are out there talking with policy makers, say-
ing, “Yes, standards are important. Yes, consisten-
cy in policy is good.” Policy will always be based
on a specific country, state, province, borough,
or city and will be local. One person alone can’t
influence policy in multiple countries. But you
can work to create technical and design standards
that are applicable in multiple countries. We want
to encourage local policies that use international
standards. The environmental tagline “think glob-
ally, act locally” really applies to interaction design
and public policy, as well!
Being Proactive versus reactive
If you want to understand the impact that we
as interaction designers and researchers can
have on public policy, you should compare the
policy issues of Web accessibility and voting
machines [2]. Researchers and designers have
been involved and proactive in Web accessibil-
ity from the beginning, helping drive the public
policy. After the confusing results of the 2000
U.S. presidential election, voting machines fell
under scrutiny. It was as if the entire interaction
design community woke up and said, “Hey, those
are interfaces…. Why weren’t we involved?” We
were reactive, not proactive, and even today we
are still behind the ball and have trouble getting
policy makers interested in the usability concerns
of voting machines, rather than issues of security,
accuracy, or paper verification trails. Compare
that with Web accessibility. People from our
research communities helped work on the Web
Accessibility Initiative from the World Wide Web
Consortium (an international, non-governmental
organization). In 1999 the first design guidelines
to address accessible Web content (the Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG) were
based on research and science and design, not
politics. Those original WCAG 1.0 guidelines form
the basis for most accessibility laws around the

world today. For instance, when the guidelines
for the Section 508 law in the United States were
announced in December 2000, the guidelines
were primarily based on WCAG 1.0. The early
involvement of those in the research and design
communities helped drive the public policy.
The new WCAG 2.0 was approved in 2008 and
is starting to gain recognition from policy mak-
ers around the world as the new benchmark for
accessible Web content. With Web accessibility,
the research community was proactive; instead of
running and trying to catch up, we were actually
influencing the policy!
interaction Design Policy issues
What are some of the policy issues related to
interaction design occurring right now in the
U.S.? As a part of the stimulus bill (the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009), the
government is working toward having a digital
version of all medical records. Certainly, there
are issues related to the interface—what types of
interfaces doctors and nurses will use, whether
patients will be able to access their own medi-
cal records, and if so, how? There’s now a bill
in the U.S. Congress (the Twenty-First Century
Communications and Video Accessibility Act)
that would require full accessibility for people
with disabilities, for VoIP, text messaging, and
videoconferencing, among other things. Agencies
such as the Department of Defense are trying to
create policies on how agencies can use social
networking tools like Facebook, and what limita-
tions employees and military personnel have on
using those services. The guidelines for govern-
ment computer accessibility, known as Section
508, are currently undergoing revision (the “508
Refresh”). The Telecommunications and Electronic
and Information Technology Advisory Committee
(TEITAC) submitted its suggestions for how
Section 508 should be revised [3]. The U.S. Access
Board, a federal agency focused on accessible
design in general, is currently reviewing the report
and will decide on the new set of guidelines. The
suggestions from TEITAC, if adopted with only
minor changes, would align the 508 refresh with
the new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG 2.0) from the World Wide Web Consortium.
And there continues to be a lot of activity
related to Web accessibility. On Sept. 1, 2009, the
New York State attorney general reached an agree-
FORUM INTERACTINg WITH PUBLIC POLICY
EDITOR
Jonathan Lazar
JLazar@towson.edu
ment with HSBC Bank that, among other things,
requires the bank’s website to be accessible for
people with disabilities by May 31, 2010. This fol-
lows the big news of the 2008 settlement in the
long-running Target vs. National Federation of the
Blind class-action lawsuit. Target, a large chain of
stores, was sued by a group of blind individuals
because Target.com was not accessible for people
with impairments. The legal argument used was
that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
applies to websites. For those not familiar with
the ADA, it was signed into law in 1990, and it
requires access to any places of public accom- [3] Telecommunications
modation and requires accommodations for any and Electronic and
Information Technology
private companies with 15 or more employees. Of Advisory Committee.
“Report to the Access
course, in 1990, the Web was not a consideration Board: Refreshed
to policy makers. So it has been unclear in the Accessibility Standards
and Guidelines in
law whether the ADA, which applies to private Telecommunications
and Electronic
companies, would also apply to websites. There
and Information
have been many previous lawsuits and attempts Technology.” 2008;
http://www.access-
to understand if ADA applies to the Web, with board.gov/sec508/
little success. However, in the Target vs. NFB, there refresh/report/
were a number of preliminary court rulings that
stated that ADA did apply to the Web. Both sides
agreed to a settlement in 2008, which included
Target agreeing to make its website accessible and
creating a $6 million fund to pay claims to blind
individuals who suffered as a result of the inacces-
sible website.
In other recent accessibility news, new regu-
lations went into effect for airline websites
and airport kiosks in May 2009 under the U.S.
Department of Transportation. While the new
regulations don’t require accessible websites [4] U.S. Department
or kiosks, there’s an interesting wrinkle: If an of Transportation.
“Nondiscrimination on
inaccessible airline website causes an impaired the Basis of Disability in
Air Travel.” 2009; http://
customer to call or otherwise contact the airline airconsumer.ost.dot.
telephone call center, that individual may not be gov/rules/Part%20382-
2008.pdf/
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
charged extra for placing the call (as is often the
case). And they must be given, over the phone or
by other means, the lowest airfare available on
the website at that time [4]. Charging a higher fare
over the phone could be considered discriminatory
pricing based on impairment. It should be noted
that when contacting the call center, the indi-
vidual must immediately identify him or herself
as having an impairment. Is that fair? And is there
any way to validate that? We shall see how this
interactions
policy works out.
There’s currently a bill in the U.S. Congress (the
Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act
41
 Societal/Cultural Consciousness and Change
of 2009) that would require all voting machines
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
to allow for independent verifications of voting,
with paper trails. Voting machines remain a hot
topic. Even without federal action, many states
have decertified their existing voting machines to
require paper verification during the next election,
or at least that it be phased in over the next few
elections. For many states, that means switching
from the touch-screen machines to optical-scan
machines. And for voters, that means learning yet
another voting-machine interface, which will no
interactions
doubt be challenging.
Finally, for many people in the U.S., government
defines the perception of “usability.” The usability.
42
gov website is the starting point for many Web
searchers looking for basic information on usabil-
ity. When I searched on Google, it’s the second
result, after Wikipedia, and before groups like the
Usability Professionals Association.
Policy Comes From Many Different Sources
Public policy is complex because it comes in
many different forms from many different
Photograph by Phil Stefans
sources. International stakeholders in design-
related public policy include the non-govern-
mental organizations such as the World Wide
Web consortium, and professional organizations,
such as ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group

on Computer-Human Interaction), USACM (the
U.S. public-policy arm of ACM), the Usability
Professionals Association, and AIGA. Here’s
where it gets more complex, becoming more spe-
cific to each country. Policy comes in different
forms in each country. In the U.S., public policy
can come in the form of a law, a signing state-
ment, a regulation, an executive order, case law,
or other forms. Different agencies and organiza-
tions within the U.S. federal government can
influence public policy on interaction design. For
instance, the usability.gov website is managed
and was developed by the Department of Health
and Human Services. The National Institute of
FORUM INTERACTINg WITH PUBLIC POLICY
Standards and Technology (NIST) is involved in
measurement and metrics related to voting, bio-
metrics, and usability testing. The U.S. Access
Board sets the standards for Section 508. And
this doesn’t even touch on state-level laws and
policies related to interaction design. Many states
now have laws related to the two big design-
related policy topics, voting machines, and Web
accessibility. Public policy is complex and it
changes rapidly. Since magazine articles must
be submitted a few months before publication,
my hope is that none of this is out of date by the
time you read it. I guess, if you work in technol-
ogy, you are used to print publications being a
little bit out of date.
What Can You Do?
This is the first article for this forum. In every
issue of interactions, different authors will write
about public policy issues that impact on interac- For more info,
check out:
tion design. We will include policy issues from
around the world. Policy is about being involved. USACM; http://usacm.
After reading a policy article, I encourage you acm.org/usacm/
to contact those involved in writing it. Also, try
UPA Usability in
to learn more about the issues. And if you have Civic Life; http://www.
some knowledge on a given topic, get involved, usabilityprofessionals.
talk to legislators in your country, serve on local, org/civiclife/
national, and international organizations that
AIGA Design for
have advisory and standards committees. There is Democracy; http://
a great need around the world for knowledgeable www.aiga.org/con-
interaction designers to engage with their local tent.cfm/design-for-
democracy/
policy makers. Think globally, act locally…. I really
like how that sounds for our community. Now, if
I can just decide if it’s better for the environment
to eat organic produce or locally grown produce. I
still haven’t figured that one out.
About the Author Jonathan Lazar is a pro-
fessor in the department of computer and informa-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
tion sciences at Towson University, where he
serves as director of the undergraduate program in
information systems and is founder and director of
the Universal Usability Laboratory. Lazar has pub-
lished five books, including Web Usability: A User-Centered Design
Approach (Addison-Wesley, 2006), Universal Usability (John Wiley
and Sons, 2007) and Research Methods in Human-Computer
Interaction (John Wiley and Sons, 2010). He currently serves as
national chair of the ACM SIGCHI U.S. Public Policy Committee.
interactions
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649485
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43
 Societal/Cultural Consciousness and Change

Reclaim
eli Blevis
Indiana University at Bloomington |
eblevis@indiana.edu

You can see and touch and feel a physical thing.

Oftentimes, you can understand from looking
at a physical thing how it works. Moreover, it’s
frequently—but not always—the case that your
conceptual model of a physical thing corresponds
to its actual operation and attributes, and we gen-
erally equate the absence of such correspondence
to “bad” design [1]. It’s relatively easy to understand
[1] The notion of the how to use a physical item and how to prolong its
quality of mental
mappings between use and how to reclaim it for another purpose.
conceptual models You can’t see, touch, or feel software.
and operational ones is
foundational knowledge Oftentimes, it’s difficult to understand from look-
in cognitive-science-ori-
ented HCI and a matter ing at software how it works. Moreover, most peo-
of profound treatment ple’s conceptual model of how software works dif-
by Don Norman and by
others. See: Norman, D. fers from its actual operation and attributes, and
The Design of Everyday
Things. Basic Books,
we generally accept this difference as axiomatic
2002. to the very nature of software. It’s much harder to
understand how to use things constructed from
the material of software [2]. It’s much harder to
understand how to prolong the use of things con-
structed from the materials of software and how to
reclaim such things for new purposes.
In this column, I present four images of physi-
cal things I have chosen to represent the act of
[2] The notion of soft- reclaiming. I reflect on the potential roles of digital
ware as a material is
foundational knowledge
materials in reclaiming.
in design-oriented Please don’t throw me away. (Figure A). Outside
HCI and a matter of
profound treatment, of a school of art and design, some large iron cyl-
especially by Erik
Stolterman and others.
inders sit bearing the lines “Please Don’t THROW
See: Nelson, H.G. and ME AWAY!” The fact that the cylinders appear to be
Stolterman, E. Design
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

Way: Intentional Change in a 15-minute loading zone, ironically, adds to the

in an Unpredictable urgency of the need to reclaim these materials for
World — Foundations
and Fundamentals of a new use.
Design Competence.
Educational Technology
Rainwater cistern reclaimed from an old water
Publications, 2003. heater. (Figure B). An old water heater is reclaimed
for use as a garden cistern with the addition of
some PVC piping to attach it to the rain gutter of
a house. The original outlet copper piping acts as
a kind of fountain when this water-heater-turned-
cistern overflows.
interactions

Rain-barrel garden and mini farm consultancy.

(Figure C). A plastic rain barrel and various other
presumably reclaimed apparatuses are used to

• Figure C
44
FORUM SUSTAINABLY OURS

EDITOR
Eli Blevis
eblevis@indiana.edu

• Figure A

• Figure B

• Figure D
 Societal/Cultural Consciousness and Change
It’s much harder to
understand how to prolong
the use of things constructed
from the materials of
software and how
to reclaim such things for
new purposes.
create a public “mini farm” advertising a consul-
tancy targeted at people who may want to know
more about recent trends in urban agriculture.
Recycle bin decorated with its own contents. (Figure
D). A recycle bin in a trendy district of Indianapolis
is decorated with its own intended contents and
signed by what appears to be a craftsperson or
designer. As such, it integrates reclaimed mate-
rial as affordance, both to provide a visual cue to
intended use and to serve as public art.
In manufacturing, the idea of a closed loop sys-
[3] Quariguasi tem—in which materials are reclaimed for reuse
Frota Neto, J. and
from products that have reached the end of their
Bloemhof, J.M. “The
Environmental Gains useful service life—is frequently described as key
of Remanufacturing:
Evidence from the to environmentally sound practice. For example,
Computer and Mobile Quariguasi Frota Neto and Bloemhof recently argue
Industry.” ERIM Report
Series Research In from evidence that reclaiming certain forms of
Management. 2009.
See also: Nasr, N.
electronics—especially mobile phones and com-
and Thurston, M. puters—by means of remanufacturing and resale
“Remanufacturing:
A Key Enabler significantly increases eco-efficiency [3].
to Sustainable
What is the role of digital materials—software
Product Systems.” In
Proceedings of the and things driven by software and interaction
13th CIRP International
Conference on Life design—in reclaiming things?
Cycle Engineering: A few years ago, the large space required to run
15–18, 2006. There is
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
a broad literature on the Microsoft Vista operating system was a seem-
this topic.
ingly intentional source of obsolescence for many
computers. That Vista has not been well received
is an understatement. As I write this, Windows
7 appears to reverse Microsoft’s earlier strategy,
allowing its customers to reclaim their existing
computers from Vista-dom. My personal laptop
and desktop machines have both been so rescued
and I’m delighted. Interactivity and reliability are
both greatly improved. Possibly, the lesson of Vista
interactions
and Windows 7 will prove to be a trend—business
strategists and software designers will target the
ability to reclaim through software upgrades that
46
improve quality without the need for new hard-
ware as a core business model instead of using
software materials as a tool to promote the prema-
ture obsolescence of physical materials. It’s encour-
aging to see the sustainable path may turn out to
be the better business path in this case—one hopes
for such a trend. Of course, by the time this article
appears, the wider reception to Windows 7 will be
better known. It also remains to be seen how many
people will purchase new machines rather than
install the newer operating system on their exist-
ing machines. Moreover, our optimism should be
tempered by the fact that system requirements for
Windows 7 are still much larger than for Windows
XP, according to Microsoft’s site. Nonetheless, many
machines that originally shipped with Windows XP
will probably run Windows 7 adequately.
As interaction designers, we may not believe
we are at the helm of the enterprise forces, which
choose the disposal of old things and the consump-
tion of new ones over reclaiming. We may hold
more influence than we think. We can align our-
selves with the folks who reclaim things as in the
presented images. We can design interactivity to
promote such thinking, making it easy to reclaim
physical things by improving software and making
it easier for consumers to install newer software
themselves rather than buying new things in order
to obtain newer software. We can persuade busi-
ness strategists that increasing the quality of the
amorphous software elements of products can
build customer loyalty and increase the willingness
to pay for software upgrades.
Therein lies a possibility for a better, more sus-
tainable business model than the targeted obsoles-
cence of physical things. The recent trend toward
netbooks over more powerful laptops suggests
that improvements to software quality and core
functionality may trump the prior model of ever
increasing demands for improved hardware perfor-
mance and features.
Eli Blevis is an associate professor of informatics in
the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana
University Bloomington. He is contributing editor
for the Sustainably Ours forum. His primary
research concerns are sustainable interaction
design and design-oriented perspectives in the
confluence of HCI and design.
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649486
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
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 The Important Role of User Research
User-Research-Driven Mobile
User Interface Innovation:
A Success Story from Seoul
Jay Chaeyong Yi
pxd | arangyi@hotmail.com
According to Strategy Analytics,
Korean mobile-device manufac-
turers captured more than 45
percent of the North American
market during the first quarter
of 2009. Samsung Electronics
has remained a top seller
since 2008, currently holding a
26.3 percent market share. LG
Electronics holds a 19.6 percent
share, while Motorola trails
with 18 percent. The impor-
tance of Korean vendors is
increasing; not only have they
become leaders in certain major
markets, but they are also
the only companies to report
[1] Grinter R. et al. increased total handset sales
“Wan2tlk?: Everyday during this global economic
Text Messaging” CHI
2003. Ft. Lauderdale, slowdown.
Fl, 2003.
While success stories about
Korean handset designs and
user interfaces (UI) are well-
known, the activities and UI
strategies of Korean telecom-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
munications companies are
rarely reported to readers
outside Korea.
South Korea has three
telecommunications compa-
nies: SK Telecom, KT, and LG
Telecom. The market size of
South Korea (about $20 bil-
lion) is smaller than that of
the U.S. (about $160 billion in
interactions
2008), but competition for new
services, user interfaces, and
technologies is very tough. The
48
Korean market is important
for global players because it is
the first place where most new
devices, mobile technologies,
and services are commercially
launched.
A notable mobile user inter-
face design success story
involves mMessenger, a mobile
instant messenger platform that
pxd, a Korean user-interface
consultancy, and SK Telecom
have been building since 2005
(see Figures 1, 2).
Mobile-Messaging
user research reveals
Opportunities and risks
By 2005 most carriers had
deployed or had expressed
interest in deploying mobile
ports of existing instant-
messaging services, such as
ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, or
Yahoo! Messenger. SK Telecom
also offered a mobile version
of a PC Internet messenger
called NateOn. The mobile
instant messenger seemed
likely to bring in more revenue
than SMS, since teenagers in
Korea frequently have con-
versations via SMS. However,
the outcomes of the first and
second versions of NateOn
Mobile were not particularly
positive. Before SK Telecom
proceeded with developing the
third NateOn upgrade, they
asked pxd to conduct user
research in order to discover
why the main target audience
(young people) did not like the
idea of real-time chatting.
After two weeks of journal-
ing, we conducted contextual
inquiries and interviews with
12 users (see Figure 3). Our
research revealed that for users
in their teens and twenties, two
or more consecutive messages
sent and received (a so-called
conversation) accounted for 95
percent, while messages sent
without reply (“singles”) made
up less than 5 percent of all
messages. This “conversation”
rate is higher than those among
English teens studied in 2000
(66 percent conversation [1]).
Among Korean youth, one con-
versation typically comprised
an average of 7.8 messages.
Our study confirmed the
common belief that the major-
ity of SMS usage by young
people consists of conversa-
tional or threaded messaging.
However, when we scrutinized
the situations in which these
messages were actually sent or
received, we found that only
6 percent of situations were
“absolutely effective” for real-
time chatting, and real-time
chatting was “possible” in only

24 percent of the total com-
munications situations. This
explained why conventional
MIM would not be successful
as a replacement for SMS. The
lives of young Koreans were
often not conducive to inten-
sive real-time chatting; they
were in class, walking around,
or at work—in many cases
unable to focus on a conversa-
tion. In addition, users could
not decide at the beginning of
the exchange whether a con-
versation would be real-time
or fragmented (intensive or
intermittent). Further, it was
usually not clear when the
conversation was completed.
Since these Koreans could not
determine the type of conver-
sation in advance, they were
also unable to decide which
tool to use (SMS or MIM); as a
result, they tended to always
choose the familiar SMS as the
default option. Our analysis led
us to believe there was a need
for a communications tool that
could support various types of
conversations.
We came up with six user
requirements from the Green
Label of the Affinity Diagram,
based on 320 pieces of user data
(see Figure 4). The six require-
ments are as follows:
(a) Must be able to communi-
cate without being tied up in a
conversation
(b) Fees must be reasonable
(c) Benefits must outweigh
inconvenience
(d) Must be able to select the
appropriate mode of communi-
cation
(e) Must be able to play with
friends via cell phone
(f) Must be able to store mes-
sages effectively
Conventional MIM failed
FEATURE
because it could not meet user
requirement (a). The MIM users,
waiting for a reply, had to keep
their cell phones up and run-
ning to receive any response,
while SMS users could put the
phone away and forget about
the message while doing some-
thing else.
In addition to the Affinity • Figure 1. The mMessenger tool for cellular phones.
Diagram, we created personas
based on our collated user data
(see Figure 5). By analyzing
behavior patterns for SMS and
MMS usage, we learned that
users in their teens or twenties
can be grouped into three cat-
egories: “culturally talkative,”
“born to talk,” and “not to talk.”
First, we discovered that
most teens are “culturally talk-
ative.” Since the entire group
exhibits a strong preference
for conversation, individual
differences in the levels of
preference are insignificant. • Figure 2. mMessenger in action.
They reported having many
conversation partners and
frequently met up with these
people in the offline world.
When these teenagers reach
the age of 20, individual ten-
dencies start to become appar-
ent. They are divided into two
groups. One group is classified
as “born to talk,” as they are
desperate to have conversa-
tions all the time. The other
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
group is characterized as “not
to talk”; they prefer maintain-
ing relationships with a few
select individuals instead of • Figure 3. User research.
just making conversation for
the sake of it. They become We chose “not to talk” as
partner-oriented, and they like our primary persona, because
to keep digital conversation at we felt that if we could satisfy
a minimum to maintain their this persona, we could prob-
relationships. They find text ably meet the needs of the
interactions
messaging exhausting and con- others. “Not to talk” individu-
verse only with a small number als do not like to text message,
of people. and most work in front of a PC,
49
 The Important Role of User Research
• Figure 4. Data consolidation: the Affinity Diagram.
• Figure 5. User modeling: examples of personas.
where instant messaging is just
a mouse click away. However,
they still want to communi-
cate with a small number of
friends using their cell phones.
They prefer to have conversa-
tions that consist of only two
[2] IDEA; http://www. or three messages, and SMS
idsa.org/IDEA_Awards/ group conversations give them
gallery/2008/
award_details. a headache.
asp?ID=35918411/
innovative Mobile user
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
interface and Service Strategies
Based on our research, the
Affinity Diagram results, and
[3] Global Messaging the needs and pain points
Award; http://
www.160characters.org/
of our primary persona, we
pages php?action= developed a new conversa-
view&pid=53/
tional messaging tool that
consolidates various types of
conversations. These include
interactions
both short-interval (intensive)
and long-interval (sporadic)
messaging. The tool fills the
50
gap between SMS and MIM.
The new messaging tool is
“mMessenger”—it combines
the strengths of SMS and MIM.
Imagine a 25-year-old “not to
talk” named Tracey. Unlike
with existing MIM solutions,
Tracey does not have to register
a screen name or password for
initial use, nor does she need
to find out her friends’ screen
names to add them to her
buddy list. mMessenger takes
advantage of a standard SMS
feature, namely, telephone-
number-based communication.
Tracey can use mMessenger
instantly without any registra-
tion hassle, since her telephone
number is her ID. She can send
messages to anyone whose
telephone number is in her cell-
phone contact list without the
cumbersome process of adding
a buddy.
Users with mMessenger on
their phones can still com-
municate with standard SMS
handsets, since the mMes-
senger server automatically
transforms the message into
SMS. Customers can simultane-
ously send and receive mes-
sages with two or three friends,
individually. In addition, with
a threaded messaging format—
considered novel at that time
(Apple announced its threaded
SMS format for the iPhone in
2007)—they can read the con-
versation conveniently.
Our research suggests that
a user like Tracey encounters
a conflict: She does not want
to be tied up in a conversation,
but she does need to commu-
nicate effectively. The design
of mMessenger solves this
problem. The user can send a
one-way message as well as
engage in two-way conversation
when necessary. After we devel-
oped the UI of mMessenger, we
conducted usability tests and
focus groups, both of which
confirmed the effectiveness of
the new UI.
On the business side, the cli-
ent (SK Telecom) was very satis-
fied with the new mMessenger
user interface. SK Telecom has
high hopes for its new services-
based business model, which
is now a key focus area. Since
the mMessenger commercial
launch in 2006, the number
of users has been increas-
ing despite the fact that SK
Telecom does not advertise
this service for the mass mar-
ket. pxd recommended that SK
Telecom not spend money on
advertising until the number of
users reached a critical mass; if
network services such as MIM
are over-advertised, early users
will be disappointed due to
the paucity of other users with
whom they can talk. After they
have been disappointed once, it
is very difficult to change their
attitude.
mMessenger’s user interface
was recognized internationally;
in 2008 it was nominated for
the IDEA Award in the interac-
tive product experiences cat-
egory [2] and short-listed for the
Global Messaging Award in the
user experience category [3].
Korean handset Manufacturers
and telecommunications
Companies
As demonstrated in the case
of mMessenger, user research
is the key in choosing not only
the right user interface design
but also the right strategy.
Stakeholders in major Korean
mobile companies such as
Samsung and LG Electronics

see the user interface as their
No. 1 priority.
When voice communications
were the main service for the
mobile industry and Korean
mobile manufacturers followed
leading companies like Nokia
and Motorola, technology and
quality of voice communica-
tions were important. As soon
as they achieved a certain level
of technological sophistica-
tion, Korean manufacturers
shifted their focus to the design
of products. However, as data
communications surpassed
voice communications in
importance in most developed
countries and Korean manufac-
turers began to lead the market
instead of following it, they
realized the importance of UI.
In order to be a top seller in
tough markets such as North
America, they needed more
than stunning design and a
balanced portfolio of phones.
They learned that UI itself
can be a key strategy not only
for smart phones but also
for all other feature phones.
This is why Samsung and
LG Electronics focus on user
research to understand the
unmet needs of mobile users
and to satisfy their customers
with impressive and unique UI.
LG Electronics recently founded
its Insight and Innovation (INI)
research center, which identi-
fies new business opportuni-
ties, new product designs, and
new marketing strategies—all
based on insights gained from
user research. INI investigators
use cutting-edge qualitative
research methods and segmen-
tation approaches to better
understand target audiences.
For example, INI researchers
visited Indian homes to study
FEATURE
the local lifestyle, eventually
developing home appliances
that are optimized to Indian
culture. The “Stars of India”
brand line resulted in a 100 per-
cent increase in LCD TV sales
and a 30 percent boost in cell
phone sales.
Telecommunications com-
panies in Korea also recognize
UI’s important as a sales point.
As average revenue per user
(ARPU) from data communica-
tions is rapidly increasing con-
current to the reduction of voice
ARPU, they must understand
users and UI. SK Telecom cre-
ated its HCI (Human Centered
Innovation) team to focus on
human behavior research and
help transition its telecom-
infra-oriented revenue struc-
ture into an innovative service-
oriented revenue structure. SK
Telecom recently launched a
new service called “Pajama5,”
based on user research that
the communication patterns of
Korean girls are limited to only
four or five very close friends.
Korean companies are using
many qualitative research
methods, including contextual
models, personas, focus groups,
home visits, and central loca-
tion testing. They are working
to introduce innovative prod-
ucts and services to both the
global and domestic markets
based on user research. Most
of today’s methodologies and
UI development processes are
imported from the West, and
Korean companies are still
optimizing these approaches
to match local workflows.
Following the dramatic growth
of the Korean mobile indus-
try, Korean companies will no
doubt wish to develop their own
methods in the future.
User research is the
key in choosing not
only the right user
interface design but
also the right strategy.
Stakeholders in
major Korean mobile
companies such as
Samsung and LG
Electronics see the user
interface as their
No. 1 priority.
Acknowledgment
I am grateful to Seok-Moo Kang
and Byungwoo Yang at SK Telecom,
who worked with us on the
mMessenger project. They showed
true partnership.
About the Author
Jay Chaeyong Yi is the
founder and CEO of pxd
(http://pxd.kr), a user inter-
face consulting firm that
offers digital products and
services strategy, user interface design,
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
and graphic user interface design. He holds
a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineer-
ing from Seoul National University and a
master’s in design from Carnegie Mellon
University. He and his colleagues apply
their interdisciplinary understanding of tech-
nology, art, and business to simultaneously
formulate business strategies and profes-
sional design implementations. He teaches
user interface design at Yonsei University.
Prior to founding pxd, Yi also worked at
interactions
Samsung Electronics for six years.
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649487
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
51
 The Important Role of User Research
Why Marketing Research
Makes Us Cringe
(Does it bother anyone that design continues
to be driven by awful marketing techniques?)
Dan Formosa
Smart Design | dan.formosa@smartdesignworldwide.com
The role of marketing research is
to work with product or service
consumers to understand their
needs and desires, while design-
ers are often asked to use the
marketing research results. So
why have I never seen a market-
ing study targeting designers to
find out how marketing research
can benefit them? The answer
may be because it can’t.
Design research and mar-
keting research are far from
interchangeable. While both are
intended to help us understand
people, their raisons d’être are
very different. Accordingly, so
are the ground rules that govern
the two. Yet more than three
decades after the inception of
design research as a discipline,
far too much design work is sub-
ject to methods implemented by,
or borrowed from, marketing.
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
It’s no surprise that this often
makes marketing-generated
studies frustrating for designers,
and generally underwhelming in
terms of usefulness.
Meanwhile, designers’ contin-
ued willingness to put up with
these methods is curtailing the
evolution of design research—
interactions
and perhaps design itself.
Market research evolved from
a need to understand consum-
ers’ reactions to products, mea-
52
suring responses to products
already on the market—after
they’ve been designed, not
before. Enter the toothpaste aisle
of a supermarket and you are
faced with many choices. Buy
one and leave, and you are play-
ing out an action that formed the
genesis of marketing research.
Given choices on a shelf, which
one would you choose? A bit
oversimplified, but that’s the
basis. In contrast, the goal of
design research is to make us
smart about our creative direc-
tions and opportunities.
Unlike marketing research,
design research demands an
understanding of things that
do not yet exist. The difference
between the two is so funda-
mental that it often isn’t obvious.
Pointing this out typically yields
a deer-caught-in-the-headlights
look. Yet this difference explains
why, in many cases, innovation
seems to be a casualty of mar-
keting research, not a result of it.
An emphasis on the Artifact
Historically, designers have
concerned themselves with the
“thing”—the product they have
been hired to design. The initial
description of this product, the
design brief—as well as funding
for the project—typically came
from elsewhere. Marketing’s job
was to interface with consum-
ers. Designers rarely ventured
outward. And, certainly, design
education never suggested that
consumer interactions were
part of the program. Few, if any,
courses in social sciences, bio-
mechanics, or psychology were
a typical part of design curricu-
lum. At the inception of 1930s
industrial design, designers
appeared happy to draw sketch-
es or shape clay models in an
ultimate effort to cull aestheti-
cally pleasing forms from the
manufacturer’s factory machin-
ery. Verification of these design
efforts came afterward.
While there were design
heroes and heroines with more
humanistic or socially respon-
sible goals prior to that time,
for the most part designers
were about objects. But by the
late 1970s, several people were
pioneering the idea of design
research. Usually this meant
enlisting experts from other
fields. And often their expert
background in ergonomics or
cognitive psychology stemmed
from the military, where every-
thing from jet fighters to sub-
marines needed to be controlled
or inhabited by people. Henry
Dreyfuss’s Measure of Man, and
 later Niels Diffrient’s Humanscale,
served as standard reference
materials for product designers
for decades; the best available
source at the time, but contain-
ing information gathered largely
from studies performed on rela-
tively fit military populations—
making application to consumer
products dubious, if not inappro-
priate. Even well into the 1980s,
when designers said they were
doing “research,” it often meant
they were going to a library to
look through various regurgita-
tions of that same military infor-
mation. Either that or they were
browsing design magazines.

Design Versus Marketing

For most, then, design research
is relatively new. To get their
feet wet, designers initially were
invited (or forced) to participate
in marketing studies. Usually
this meant sitting behind a
glass window in a focus-group
facility, sucking down M&Ms,
and saying rude things under
their breath. The bad attitude
was often justified—these ses-
sions could be more aggravat-
ing than helpful. Perfectly good
companies, it seemed, were
trying to drive forward by look-
ing out the back window; many
sessions focused on ways to
Photograph courtesy of Smart Design / www.smartdesignworldwide.com

position existing products, or

methods of “spinning” in order
to paint a negative in a positive
light. Designers usually reacted
by abhorring research, label-
ing it as meaningless. But in
a few cases, a more proactive
reaction took place. Designers
retaliated by conceiving and
conducting their own research.
These proactive steps were
tempered by a lack of resources;
with little training (an under-
standing of statistics, for exam-
 The Important Role of User Research
ple, is rarely part of a designers’
tool kit), designers lifted many
techniques from marketing or
worked with marketing in a new
form of relationship. But did that
bridge prevent design research
from coming into its own? Many
design efforts are funded through
marketing, encouraging polite
interrelationships (in which
marketing needs to understand
or approve every design move)—
with the unfortunate conse-
quence that this may be slowing
the evolution of design research.
three Basic rules
What separates design research
from marketing research is a core
but elusive principle: There is a
phenomenal distinction between
evaluating a product before it
is finalized, the focus of design
research, and evaluating con-
sumer response after a product
is finalized. Logics and statistical
methods used in studies can be
misapplied—often by prestigious
(and expensive) marketing con-
sultants. They affect even seem-
ingly simple questions that, while
appropriate for finished products,
can be completely inappropriate
for products under development.
While many, many differences
exist, here are three rules outlin-
ing basic things to avoid:
1. Never ask people which one they
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
like best. While this is probably
the most often asked question in
marketing and design, it’s a faulty
question. Not simply because
it’s closed-ended. Putting two or
more items in front of someone
and asking “Which one do you
like the best” can yield a mean-
ingless response.
Surprising? Here’s why. Put
interactions
three shapes in front of 100
people—a circle, a hexagon,
and an oval—and ask them to
54
choose the one they like best. The
results: The circle gets 28 percent
of the votes, the hexagon get 40
percent, and the oval gets 32 per-
cent. Go with the hexagon, right?
What you may have found is
that 60 percent of people like
soft roundish shapes such as the
circle or oval. Either one may
have been good with your par-
ticipants. But in the results the
hexagon looked falsely popular.
The problem is right in front of
us. The “which one do you like
best” question contains two
traps. First, you told the person
he or she had to pick one (elimi-
nating any knowledge on your
part about ties or close calls).
This means that the combination
of soft, roundish shapes—picking
both circle and oval—is not an
option. The participant must
pick one or the other, dividing
the vote. The second trap is that
we assume by the question that
the person does, in fact, like the
one they chose. They may, in
fact, have not liked any of them,
but given their simplistic answer
there is no way to differentiate
that response from that of some-
one who liked them a lot. The
question forced them to choose
in a manner that did not reflect
their actual opinion.
Note that the problem exists
even when other words replace
“like.” For example, “Which one
of these hats looks good on me?”
embodies the same traps. This
form of questioning presents a
fundamental problem. Yet while
the results are devoid of mean-
ingful information, it’s surprising
how many people will tabulate
and act on them.
The “like it best” question may
have some toothpaste-purchasing
merit when we are trying to find
out how something would sell—
assuming all of the options would
be shown simultaneously on the
shelf, and consumers would be
purchasing just one. But that’s
marketing, not design. Even then
there are far more insightful
ways to get to that information.
2. Don’t force people to rank
things in sequence. Even more
disturbing (perhaps because
I’ve seen the results turned into
important-looking charts by
otherwise respectable marketing
firms) is the “forced hierarchy.”
Respondents are shown a group
of products and asked to place
them in order of preference: first,
second, third, and so on. Similar
to the “like it best” question, the
forced hierarchy makes no more
sense than asking two Democrats
to run for president against
one Republican. It can split the
vote. A political party would
never entertain two candidates
simultaneously—let alone three,
four, or more. Most forced hierar-
chy results really just cloud the
issue. A forced hierarchy provides
no indication of how or why the
rankings were split. The respons-
es from a person who hates them
all look the same as results from
someone who loves them all. Yet
the results make it to top-line
reports and deceptively inter-
esting charts, and can mislead
major design and product devel-
opment programs.
I saw this happen recently in
a package design study for a line
of sports equipment. Three out of
four concepts showed a woman
running, each using a much dif-
ferent photograph. The fourth
concept did not. When ranked
in sequence, the “popular” vote
was split three ways. Although
the photo helped convey the mes-
sage, by asking people to rank in
sequence, the version without the

photo came up in first place more
often. Luckily, in this case the
pattern was easy to spot. When
we condensed the offerings to
one package with a photograph
and the one without, the one
with a photograph received three
times the votes.
Perhaps an even more obvious
problem with the ranking tech-
nique, as well as the “like it best”
question, is the fact that while
a design is still in development,
what people chose can be far less
important than why. The design
isn’t final; it can be changed.
Understanding why provides
more food for the creative process
and information that a design
team can act on. Unfortunately,
the why issues are often ignored
or poorly addressed.
3. Don’t worry about the average
person. The average, although
a basic statistical concept
used in marketing, in itself
does not contain any informa-
tion on another basic statisti-
cal concept, probability.
Occurrences in nature, even
chance games like coin tossing,
center on probability. While the
chances of tossing heads four
times in a row is remote (1 in
16), toss enough coins and it will
definitely happen. Scientists typi-
cally employ the convention of
a 95 percent confidence level for
acceptance of a finding, or con-
versely, 1 out of 20 for rejection.
A hypothesis will be considered
“proven” if the chance of an “acci-
dental” occurrence of seeing a
specific result in a study is 5 per-
cent or less (probability is typi-
cally notated as p<.05). Analyses
in marketing studies follow suit,
looking for 95 percent confidence
in the results.
In essence this means that if
you toss heads four times in a
FEATURE
row, science still considers the
coin “fair.” But toss heads five
times in a row (where the chance
is 1 in 32, or just more than 3 per-
cent) and that coin, or the person
tossing it, has just been placed
under suspicion. Although we
know it could happen, science set
its threshold at 5 percent, which
translates to science wanting to
be correct at least 19 out of 20
times. In doing so, it accepts a
range of possibilities.
An “average” set of coin tosses
therefore means little—many
different combinations are nor-
mal and expected. Why, then, is
there continued emphasis on the
“typical” or “average” consumer?
In past projects I’ve been handed
detailed descriptions of a com-
pany’s average user, a statistical
distillation of thousands of data
points. But designers don’t care
about the average person. We
need to care about everyone.
People will vary. Design a door-
way for the average person and
half the people will bump their
heads. Designers must under-
stand the spectrum—tallest and
shortest, fastest and slowest, or
any number of corner cases that
seem to not fall into typical mar-
keting discussions. While we may
hear from a marketing viewpoint
that “that’s not our consumer”—
in actuality, he or she is. In fact,
understanding the complete
spectrum may present our big-
gest opportunity for innovation.
A reliance on a “persona”—a
fictional distillation of a con-
sumer that’s assigned a name—
is equally as limiting, even
when more than one persona is
identified. There are plenty of
real people in the world; there’s
no need to design for a fictional
one. Our PowerPoint tendency
to oversimplify for purposes
of consensus in a group hurts
design and our understand-
ing of people—and probably
underestimates the group.
is there a Solution?
The solution can be discussed
in a “little picture/big picture”
way. A simple solution to the
first two issues, for example, is
to simply think in analog terms.
For example, ask people to rate
the products on a scale. Rate, not
rank. And be sure to ask why.
The results will be infinitely
more informative. Love, hate,
indifference, and ties will all be
spelled out. The design team
will get a sense of what they are
up against in terms of usability,
product performance, or con-
sumer perception, which is the
ultimate purpose. Designers don’t
need closed-ended questions and
answers; they need to set direc-
tion and cultivate a point of view.
As for the average person,
one homogenized fictional
person will make a lovely pre-
sentation slide but in reality
will get us nowhere. It takes a
much more thorough under-
standing of people’s diver-
sity in needs and desires to
develop design parameters.
In a bigger picture, design
research needs to expand its
techniques to more fully under-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
stand the potential of design. It’s
bad enough that some of these
marketing-based methods con-
tinue to be practiced in a rote
manner. (Delving into technical
discussions involving both logics
and statistics can bring many
people, in marketing and design,
far from their comfort level.)
But blindly applying market-
interactions
ing methods to design creates a
double whammy that should be
avoided at all costs.
55
 The Important Role of User Research
There is hope. In light of the
fall of some major product-pro-
ducing U.S. corporations, it may
be obvious that the problem was
not lack of design or engineering
expertise, but an over-reliance
on marketing practices that sub-
stituted for a strong, meaningful
direction. It seems silly to hear a
vice president of failed automo-
bile maker GM say that they were
just giving people the vehicles
that they wanted, when clearly
this was not the case. The “posi-
tive change” that needs to emerge
will require us to abandon anti-
quated methods for determining
product and design directions.
We’re certainly not there yet. I
was recently in a presentation to
a health care company in which
the design research team pre-
sented findings from interviews
conducted with seven potential
consumers, the result of in-depth
home visits. Each person was
individually profiled.
At the end of the presentation
a key person on the client’s team
asked, “Which one is our target
consumer, or should we rank
them in order of importance?” All
that research work, and all three
rules instantly broken with one
seemingly innocent question!
About the Author Dan Formosa is
a consultant in design and research. He has
received a variety of awards and his work
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
has been selected for national and inter-
national exhibits. Formosa was a member
of the design team for IBM’s first personal
computer, OXO Good Grips kitchen tools,
XM Satellite Radio, Ford’s SmartGauge
instrument cluster, and was a founding
member of Smart Design. His work is
included in the permanent collection of the
Museum of Modern Art. He lectures world-
wide on design and innovation. On a differ-
ent note, Formosa recently co-authored the
book Baseball Field Guide, explaining the
interactions
intricate rules of Major League Baseball.
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649488
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
56
Why Designers
Sometimes Make Me Cringe
Why is it that user experience
design—often hailed on the
covers of major contemporary
business magazines as the
creative savior of everything from
product innovation to business
operations—seems to prefer
to paint a picture of itself as a
misunderstood, misapplied, and
unrecognized profession; a victim
of ruthless market forces and
incompetent business managers?
I asked myself that question
once again after reading Dan
Formosa’s article about design
and market research.
Questions about how to better
integrate marketing functions
and design functions—and by
extension, market research and
design research functions—are
valid and worthwhile. But
unfortunately, there is a great
divide between the constructive
discussions needed for these
disciplines to better leverage
each other.
For many years I have
wondered why so many
companies seem to struggle
with effective integration—even
simply effective collaboration—
between marketing and design.
Why? The overall objectives of
the two functions are largely
complementary, and both apply a
customer-centric view of business
management.
Yes, marketing typically has
a broader view and provides
essential input to a business
strategy, while user experience
design typically has a narrower
view that focuses on product
design and use. However, the
responsibilities and capabilities of
these two functions have changed
over the last two decades.
First, let’s consider the
marketing function. Marketing
has traditionally focused on what
is referred to as the “marketing
mix” (the four Ps: product, price,
placement, and promotion). In
some industries, “product” has
become relatively more important
for many reasons (one being
that the customer relationship is
considered much more fragile
and vulnerable in an online world
where the competition is only a
click away). As a result, a specific
product marketing discipline has
emerged, focused on defining
product strategy and positioning,
market demand, customer
needs and requirements, and
making sure that products are
designed and positioned to meet
said needs. In effect, product
marketers are stepping into well-
known terrain for user experience
designers.
Second, user experience
design has established itself as
a professional discipline in its
own right, although apparently
lacking the self-confidence of its
older siblings. Growing out of the
human factors discipline, it has
embraced new techniques and
insights (participatory design,
ethnographic techniques, etc.)
and new technologies and
interaction paradigms. Today,
in what some people call an
“experience economy,” many
companies’ strategic planning
and innovation practices have
user experience planning and
design front and center. In effect,
designers are stepping into well-
known terrain for marketers.
With increasingly overlapping
objectives, why is there so much
finger pointing between the
disciplines? Unfortunately, I have
found no satisfactory answer to
this question, other than it is often
based on a lack of understanding
of the other discipline and very
active stereotyping. Unfortunately,

that seems to be the case in Dan
Formosa’s article as well, which
focuses specifically on design
research vis-à-vis market research.
Although I would agree the two are
far from interchangeable, I do claim
they are complementary and their
ground rules are not as different as
Formosa would have us think. They
are both built on scientific method
and thus should comply with
principles and requirements related
to data collection and analysis.
Understanding “independence
of events” and “levels of
measurement” is no different for a
design researcher than for a market
researcher, as Formosa seems to
argue (although I admit to having
a difficult time understanding
the coin-toss metaphor, as it
supposedly relates to different
underlying statistical principles
of design research and market
research). It is also simply not true
that market research focuses only
on evaluating a product after it is
finalized, whereas design research
focuses only on evaluating a
product before it is finalized.
There is no doubt that Formosa
has been exposed to a lot of bad
market research in his career.
So have I. But I have also been
exposed to a lot of bad design
research, whether dealing with
qualitative data or quantitative
data. I cringe at both. And while we
should point out when the emperor
has no clothes in our daily work
situations, it is not the bad research
that defines a discipline. I have
been exposed to both good market
Photograph by Claudia Betia / claudia@flickr
research and good design research
as well and, more important,
some of the most compelling and
impactful research combined
different research techniques for a
more comprehensive and insightful
outcome. That, I suppose, leads me
to my conclusion.
FEATURE
First, as professionals who rely
on research insights, we must take
responsibility for shaping the quality
and usefulness of the research
outcomes. Step out of the victim
role and demand representation
if you don’t have it, or proactively
define your research needs with
your research teams (Formosa lists
some do’s and dont’s to be aware
of; hopefully your research team is
no stranger to such considerations).
Better yet, show that you
understand the research process
and that you understand how to
make informed decisions based on
a range of data—both qualitative
and quantitative.
Second, find ways to bring your
research teams closer together.
For example, have you considered
merging your market research
team with your design research
team to actively seek to leverage
the different perspectives and
skills for the better of the whole?
Formosa refers to “failed attempts”
of bridging the gap, and while it
is certainly possible to point to
examples of such, I have seen
only very few attempts of close
collaboration based on a shared
understanding of underlying
principles as well as respect for
differences in research needs.
One such example is the research
organization and practice at Yahoo
that actively seeks to leverage the
perspectives and competencies
of both disciplines for a better
combined outcome.
Third, create opportunities for
your product marketing and design
teams to improve collaboration
on product strategy, planning,
positioning, and innovation.
Marketing and design have more
in common than we seem to
acknowledge today. It is time
to define where and how that
overlap—which, in my mind, is
complementary—can lead to
more positive outcomes. Surely,
it would not hurt many design
professionals to better understand
market analyses, ROI, NPV, and
customer value analyses, just as
it would benefit many marketing
professionals to better understand
persuasive design, affordances,
and the role of design in user
behavior. Cringing at examples of
poor practices and stereotyping
other disciplines will not move
either of them forward.
— Klaus Kaasgaard | Telstra
Klaus.Kaasgaard@team.telstra.com
About the Author Klaus Kaasgaard
is the executive director of customer experi-
ence at Telstra in Sydney, Australia. He
leads the user experience design team
responsible for bringing to life the company
vision of “1 click, 1 touch” simplicity. Before
joining Telstra in April 2009, Kaasgaard held
the position of Vice President, Customer
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Insights, at Yahoo! where he was responsi-
ble for user experience and market research
across the business. He spent more than six
years at Yahoo! in a range of roles including
Vice President, User Experience Design,
and Director, User Experience Research.
Prior to this, he held user research roles at
MSN Hotmail and KMD in Copenhagen,
Denmark. Klaus has a Ph.D. in sociology
of technology from Aalborg University in
Denmark and an M.A. in human-computer
interaction and philosophy from Aalborg
interactions
University and Aarhus University, Denmark.
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649489
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
57
 The Important Role of User Research

Let the Experts Talk:

An Experience of Tangible
Game Design with Children
Javier Marco
University of Zaragoza, Spain | javi.marco@unizar.es

Sandra Baldassarri
University of Zaragoza, Spain | ecerezo@unizar.es

eva Cerezo
University of Zaragoza, Spain | sandra@unizar.es

Diana Yifan Xu
University of Central Lancashire | yfxu@uclan.ac.ukt

Janet C. read
University of Central Lancashire | jcread@uclan.ac.uk

In the past 15 years, Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs)
have emerged as an ideal technology for deliver-
ing child-computer interaction that is adapted to
children’s psychomotor and cognitive skills develop-
ment. The rapid evolution of these tangible technol-
ogies has meant that there has been little or no time
[1] Marco, J., Cerezo,
E., Baldassarri, S., to build a foundation for the design of games and
Mazzonne, E., Read,
J. “Bringing Tabletop
learning applications that could offer pleasant and
Technologies to useful experiences to children. Our research group
Kindergarten Children.”
23rd BCS Conference specializes in multimodal and natural human-
on Human Computer
computer interaction and conducts child-focused
Interaction. Cambridge,
United Kingdom: 2009. research that highlights children’s real needs and
wants. This approach can be highly rewarding when
designing new interfaces and interactions for chil-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Figure 1). Physically inert, tangible objects are used
on the table; these are conventional rubber toys
that children can grasp with their hands [2]. Two
visual-output information channels are supported:
active projection on the surface of the table and a
frontal computer monitor standing on the table.
The projected 2-D graphic image provides input/
output space coincidence, while the monitor shows
a 3-D virtual environment. Recognition software
tracks the toys movement and provides informa-
tion to the system.
the tangible Farm: A Game for niKvision
When we started this project, we did not have a

dren [1]. Rather than designing and implementing clear idea for a tangible game suitable for young
finished applications by ourselves and then testing children, but we knew that farm toys were very
them with children, we work with them throughout popular with three- to four-year-olds. Therefore, we
[2] Ishii, H. “Tangible
Bits: Beyond Pixels.”
the process. bought some rubber farm animals and modeled a
2nd International Following this design philosophy, we have built a 3-D virtual farm with animal avatars as inputs and
Conference on Tangible
and Embedded tangible tabletop prototype suitable for ages three outputs. This initial game had no structure: When
Interaction. Bonn,
Germany: 2008.
to four. To do this, we have been inviting children an animal toy was placed on the table, it would
into our lab to work with us in designing a tangible be detected. The 3-D avatar of this same animal
storytelling farm game. appeared on the monitor. Moving and rotating the
toy on the table produced the same movements
interactions

niKvision: A tabletop tui in the animal avatar (see Figure 2). We did not
The NIKVision tabletop system consists of several implement more interactive elements to the game
components. The first is a 70x70x45cm table (see because we were interested in the spontaneity and

58
 FORUM LIFELONg INTERACTIONS

EDITOR
Allison Druin
allisond@umiacs.edu

J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
interactions

• Figure 1. NIKVision
tabletop prototype

59
 The Important Role of User Research

• Figure 2. Tabletop not have 3-D avatars in the virtual farm; e.g., a little
surface with toys.
bucket toy was spontaneously used to feed the ani-
mals. These first experiences directed us in how to
implement a more structured game.

team Work With Children in Lab

After the first group of children played the initial
version of the farm game, a pair of children (a four-
year-old boy and a three-year-old girl) became more
involved in our project. Their parents were able to
bring them to our lab once a week, so the children
became familiar with us and our environment. In
this way, children took on the role of testers for
each new implementation we made to the game [5]
• Figure 3. Our (see Figure 3).
little members
At this stage, the farm game had a structure and
testing in the lab.
goals. Children had to locate on the farm where
each animal ate. We implemented a 3-D virtual
farmer character for the 3-D farm. This charac-
ter could promote children to carry out activities,
detect if they were having problems or staying inac-
tive for a long time, and encourage them to play.
Here we received the first feedback from children in
relation to the tone of voice and the way the farmer
spoke to them. In the first version, the children did
not like his voice, and they interpreted some of his
expressions as yelling.
As the game was interactive, we had a new
design element to worry about: Could children
improvisation of the first group of children who vis- easily do the actions we were asking of them?
[3] Druin, A. “The ited our lab. Most of the actions required that children place a
Role of Children in
the Design of New As we understood children’s experiences play- particular toy near a virtual farm object; of inter-
Technology.” In
Behaviour & Information
ing with NIKVision, the farm game changed and est to the developer was learning how precise
Technology 21, 1 (2002): evolved, while the role of the children during the the children’s movements would have to be. We
1–25.
design process changed from that of informant to implemented keyboard shortcuts to change these
[4] Scaife, M., Rogers,
Y. “Kids as Informants: that of user [3, 4]. restrictions while they were playing: If we detect-
Telling Us What
We Didn’t Know or
At the first stage, children got involved in our lab ed they were having problems placing the toys on
Confirming What We test as “informants.” Their role was to give clear a particular spot, we could modify the size of the
Knew Already?” In The
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

Design of Children’s design ideas for the structure of the game. As noted hot spot until children could perform the action
Technology, ed. by others, we recognized that with children ages without difficulty.
Druin, A. 27–50. San
Francisco: Morgan three to four, significant effort would be needed to During play, children helped us create new ways
Kaufmann Publishers,
1998.
establish “equal” communication channels between of interacting with the toys. A boy was lifting the
[5] Markopoulos, P.,
children and adults. In our first informant sessions, hen toy on and off the table, playfully jumping
Read, J., MacFarlane, we let children play NIKVision together with their the object. When we asked him what he was try-
S., Hoysniemi, J.
Evaluating Children’s parents, which made the children comfortable with ing to do, he answered that he wanted the hen
Interactive Products:
Principles and
our lab and the tabletop. We could observe them to lay eggs. Later, we implemented new code to
Practices for Interaction playing and take notes of the interactions between detect jumps and added a nest for the hen. We
Designers (Interactive
the children and the toy animals to determine tested this at the next test session. After refining
interactions

Technologies). San
Francisco: Morgan
which of these interactions was especially fun for the timing of the action, we observed that laying
Kaufmann Publishers,
2008. children. In order to observe improvisation, we eggs became a favorite activity of the children who
decided to introduce new toys to the game that did played. Nevertheless, a new kind of design problem

60

emerged, as the children did not identify the 3-D
nest we modeled as the place where the hens laid
the eggs. The problem was not simply solved by
remodeling the object; instead, we remodeled and
also used the virtual farmer to reinforce that the
nest was where the hen lays eggs.
We spent some months working to implement
new activities until we felt comfortable with the
interactions. It was during this time that we real-
ized the game needed a story to connect all these
activities to a more general goal. So, we wrote a
story that included our animals and the farmer.
Children use the toys to find ingredients to make a
birthday cake for the farmer’s son. Then, the ani-
mals play traditional games like hide-and-seek with
the farmer’s son.
Moving to Schools
The design resulted in a more complete and struc-
tured game, playable from beginning to end with
two or three children. To get a sense of how the
tabletop could be played with by many different
children, we carried our prototype to several nurs-
eries and schools where children could play the
farm game in pairs. At this stage, their role in the
design process was that of user. We did not inter-
rupt the class routine; the tabletop was like any
other classroom activity [5]. Children went over to
the table, played with the game, and then returned
to their normal activities.
We used this new situation to evaluate different
versions of the game. For example, we implemented
three different behaviors of the farmer, varying the
level of guidance he gave to the child to complete
the game: providing the goal of each minigame
“what” (e.g., “I need eggs”); suggesting “what” and
“which” is involved (e.g., “put eggs with the hen”);
and indicating “what,” “which,” and “how” children
have to play (e.g., “do little jumps with the hen on
the nest”).
We used new ways to retrieve useful information
from children. Sessions were recorded with video
cameras. In addition, the game recorded the move-
ments and actions of the toys on the table surface,
so later we could redraw the paths made with a par-
ticular toy during a particular minigame.
Having big groups of children can often be chaot-
ic. However, it was very useful in evaluating differ-
ent unplayed variations of the game with children.
We found that giving more guidance (“what, which,
how”) helped children complete the minigames
FORUM LIFELONg INTERACTIONS
quickly and directly to accomplish the goals. With
a less talkative farmer, children had to “explore and
discover” and appeared to have more fun.
Today when we see children playing with
NIKVision and the newest farm game, we reflect on
the days when we first started the project. Our pri-
mary concern was how to design tabletop games for
very young children. From our experience, the solu-
tion seems obvious: “Let the experts talk.” Taking
our tabletop game to children gave us inspiration
and ideas for providing solutions that we could
never have imagined on our own.
Acknowledgements
This work has been partly financed by the Spanish
DGICYT NºTIN2007-63025 and by the Government
of Aragon: IAF Nº2008/0574 and CyT Nº2008/0486
projects.
About the Authors Javier Marco obtained a
B.Sc. in computer science engineering in 1998. He
is currently a Ph.D. candidate in computer science
engineering at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. His
thesis researches the benefits of tangible interfaces
for children and their involvement during design and
evaluation stages. Learn more at http://webdiis.unizar.es/~jmarco.
Sandra Baldassarri obtained a B.Sc. in computer
science in 1992 and a Ph.D. in computer science
engineering in 2004. She is an associate professor
in the computer science department of the
University of Zaragoza, Spain, and is member of
the Advanced Computer Graphics Group (GIGA).
Eva Cerezo obtained a B.Sc. in physics in 1990 and
the M.Sc. in nuclear physics in 1992. She received
a Ph.D. in computer science in 2002 and is current-
ly an associate professor in the Computer Sciences
and Systems Engineering Department at the
University of Zaragoza, Spain, as well as a member
of the Advanced Computer Graphics Group (GIGA).
Diana Yifan Xu is a member of the Child Computer
Interaction (ChiCI) Group at the University of
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Central Lancashire in the U.K. Her research
involves tangible user interface and tangible inter-
action, evaluating novel technologies for and with
children.
Janet Read has a first degree in mathematics from
the University of Manchester and a Ph.D. in child-
computer interaction from the University of Central
Lancashire (UCLan). She is director of the Child
Computer Interaction Group at UCLan in the U.K.
interactions
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649490
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
61
 Clarifying Interactions
Socializing at Cross Purposes
elizabeth F. Churchill
Yahoo! Research | churchill@acm.org
Indulge me for a moment. I have
a series of jokes I want to tell you:
How many social scientists does
it take to change a lightbulb? None.
They do not change lightbulbs; they
search for the root cause of why the
last one went out.
How many simulationists does it
take to change a lightbulb? There’s no
finite number. Each one builds a fully
validated model, but the light never
actually goes on.
How many statisticians does it
take to change a lightbulb? We really
don’t know yet. Our entire sample
was skewed to the left.
So what’s with the (not par-
ticularly funny) jokes? The point
is that they play off particular
ways of thinking. In doing so,
they show us how different the
world can appear, depending on
your perspective.
This was evident in a recent
meeting. Reminiscent of another
set of common (and usually also
not funny) jokes involving dif-
ferent nationalities walking into
a bar, there were six people in a
room: an interaction designer,
a statistician with an interest
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
in behavioral modeling, a social
scientist, a computer scientist, an
self-described “back end with a
touch of front end” engineer, and
a business executive. We were
brainstorming about accessing
social Web applications from per-
sonal mobile devices.
Two minutes into our con-
versation, I said, “We should
interactions
start with some sound social
principles.” This was my bland
opening gambit, a preface. Or so
62
I thought. I paused for a fraction
of a second, took a breath and
… everyone started talking at
once—like whippets chasing after
the faux rabbit at a dog race, the
conversation was off. Then it
stopped, followed by blank looks.
The problem was the word
“social.”
Sometime later, as I was con-
templating what had happened,
a quick perusal of the diction-
ary yielded these definitions of
social: relating to human society
and its members, living together
or enjoying life in communities
or organized groups, tending to
move or live together in groups
or colonies of the same kind, and
living or liking to live with others,
disposed to friendly intercourse.
Etymologically, the word derives
from the Latin socialis, meaning
“united,” “living with others,” and
sequi, meaning “follower,” which
should make contemporary
social Web application designers
happy”. John Locke, the famous
17th-century philosopher, spoke
of “social” as meaning “pertain-
ing to society as a natural condi-
tion of human life.” And as an
adjective, “social” creeps in over
the years as: “social climber”
(starting in 1926); “social work”
(1890); “social worker” (1904);
“social drink(ing)” (1976); “social
studies” as an inclusive term for
history, geography, economics
(1938); and a concept close to
our hearts in these hard times,
“social security” as a “system
of state support for needy citi-
zens” (1908). That gelled with my
thinking, and was the backdrop
to the conversation I thought I
was starting.
However…to the interaction
designer, “social” invoked “social
Web applications” and all that
it means for human interaction
with voting (thumbs up and
down), favoriting (stars), contact
lists and buddy lists, followers,
avatars and profiles, chat thread-
ing, commenting, recommenda-
tions, and view counts. It meant a
discussion of icons that suggest-
ed (or were derivative of) those
on successful social media sites
and multimedia content upload
and sharing. Talk poured forth
about social games and ques-
tionnaires, pokes and winks and
friending. Let me be clear. I love
thinking about these issues, and
have recently reviewed drafts for
two excellent books about how
to design interaction elements
for social applications well—
Building Social Web Applications by
Gavin Bell and Designing Social
Interfaces by Christian Crumlish
and Erin Malone. But for the
purposes of this meeting, toss-
ing out all of these concepts
was great, but it was also put-
ting the cart before the horse.
We’d get there, but not yet.
To the computer scientist,
“social” sparked sweet, seductive
imaginings of the social graph.
Photograph by Quinn Dombrowski
Wikipedia defines a social graph
by explaining that “a social net-
work is a social structure made
of individuals (or organizations)
called ‘nodes,’ which are tied
(connected) by one or more spe-
OPINION Ps AND Qs
 Clarifying Interactions
cific types of interdependency,
such as friendship, kinship,
financial exchange, dislike, sexu-
al relationships, or relationships
of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.”
The entry continues: “Social
network analysis views social
relationships in terms of network
theory about nodes and ties.
Nodes are the individual actors
within the networks, and ties
are the relationships between
the actors. The resulting graph-
based structures are often very
complex.” No kidding…I love the
complexity and curiosity of my
species—human beings—and
these ways of conceiving social
relationships often strike me as
dismayingly reductive. They’re
very useful within their bounds,
but they are summary abstrac-
tions of the lyrical complexity
of everyday social life. We had a
very fruitful foray at this meet-
ing into social recommendations
and boundaries—the complexity
of “friend relations” and “access
control privileges”; the connec-
tions between objects via hash
tables; and connections between
people, their stuff, and other peo-
ple’s stuff. We discussed these
things as inadequate approxima-
tions for supporting the negoti-
ated and fluid nature of social
trust relationships and the subtle
boundaries we negotiate with
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
others.
Somewhat related, my col-
league with statistical train-
ing was excited to introduce
aggregate behavioral models
from activity data and collective
intelligence from explicit data
in our discussion about contem-
porary notions of “harnessing
the hive.” We pressed through
interactions
issues in database design and
the potential for data mining,
as well as the relevance, recom-
64
mendation, and algorithms for
automatically inferring buzz,
interest, and so on. Here, “social”
was to be found in the shadows
cast by humans clicking, clack-
ing, typing, uploading across
the interconnected networks of
the Internet, and making con-
nections betwixt and between
things that were heretofore not
there to be connected, or at least
not visibly so. We discussed how
we sometimes derive models—
hypotheses, really—about
behavior from these obscured
traces and how we are some-
times fooled into seeing patterns
where there in fact are none.
I won’t enumerate all views
expressed, but surely you get
the point. I also don’t want to
pretend I was seeing the whole
picture as this conversation was
unfolding. I was equally seduced
by these viewpoints and equally
entranced by possibilities for
implementation and creation.
But later—and it was some time
later—when I pondered how this
short conversation had played
out, I realized that we had all col-
lectively engaged in a “we could
build/implement/create/design/
make” discussion. I had intended
to have a conversation at a higher
level—one that addressed what
people really need, or what would
be really helpful and valuable
to people. Stepping back even
further in the ideation process, I
would have liked a conversation
about broad design opportunities,
about finding out what people
want/need/desire or would value
before we outlined interface,
interaction, and “under-the-hood”
possibilities.
Instead, we were enacting
the classic “ready, fire, aim!”
approach to design that has
been a parody of innovation
for many years now—design it
because you can, stitch together
what you already know how to
do, throw it out and see what
sticks. This is perhaps a natural
human tendency because really
creative thinking is hard. In a
1986 paper entitled “No Silver
Bullet,” Fred Brooks differentiates
software design and develop-
ment processes; he calls them
“essential” and “accidental.”
“Essential” refers to the diffi-
cult part of understanding the
domain for which we’re building
software and the determina-
tion of what software to build in
that domain—what activities to
inspire, improve, or transform.
“Accidental” is the programming
and process that has to follow
to implement the solution that
has been devised. Brooks aptly
points out that we have become
quite good at training people and
designing tools for the accidental
part of software development,
but the ideation part continues
to pose problems. He succinctly
states, “The hardest single part of
software development [remains]
deciding precisely what to build.”
Perhaps this will always be the
hardest part because it requires
embracing uncertainty, open-
ing possibilities for new solution
tracks and resisting the urge to
redescribe every scenario until is
appears tractable – that is, until
it becomes the kind of problem
for which we already have an
familiar, easy to execute solution.
What I had intended to inspire
when I dropped my word-bomb
was a discussion of the role that
such applications could and do
play in everyday life. I was talk-
ing about the potential contexts
of use for any application we
would build. I was silently chan-
neling ergonomists and social

scientists who address the physi-
cal and/or social constraints
of settings, about the factors
beyond the interface, applica-
tion, device or appliance that
would be the major part of why
it would be adopted or aban-
doned. I was talking about how
whatever we propose could fit
into people’s social context, into
how they manage their everyday
doings. I was thinking about
people, about relationships and
friendships, and about the con-
texts that we inhabit and cocre-
ate as we move through daily
life. I was hoping to explore the
options and hone in on possible
social settings that would afford,
support, and allow a technology
to be used. I was talking about
delivering value in situ without
disrupting the situ—or at least
giving some thought to design-
ing ethically; to considering the
positive versus negative knock-
on effects—any disruptions to
the social status quo we wanted
to inspire and those we did not.
I was talking about social norms
in the places people frequent—
whether or not, for example, it
would be socially acceptable to
whip out said devices and appli-
cations in public.
I am not saying we should have
indulged in an infinite regress
into consequences of every
design decision, but I am saying
it is worth engaging in chain-
reaction thinking. I was inviting
us to elaborate the potential
design spaces, where there would
be something useful for people,
before we start coming up with
specific solutions. It seemed to
me that we needed to under-
stand what we were designing
for before we starting design-
ing. I was trying not to be Rube
Goldberg or Heath Robinson—
OPINION
whose love of the engineered
artifact gives us fantastic con-
traptions that maybe, perhaps,
get the job done but in the most
circuitous manner possible, hon-
oring the engineering over and
above utility, aesthetics or the
social/physical context of use.
In retrospect I inadvertently
started the conversation poorly,
and it took us some time to get
back on track.
However, the rambling conse-
quence was perhaps the greatest
lesson. I am not a social linguist,
but perhaps what I was seeing
at work was the result of each
of these people being represen-
tatives of different “epistemic
cultures.” An epistemic culture
underlies how we know what
we know and how we think
about things. Think of places
you have worked: how different
organizational cultures enact
and formally or informally
measure performance based on
concepts like incentive, perfor-
mance evaluation, teamwork,
work-life balance, and so on. In
the same way, “social” may be
observed, measured and applied,
or designed differently in dif-
ferent epistemic communities
or cultures. What this means is
that we must be wary of words,
vigilant of misunderstanding,
and prepared for the work of
creating shared meanings—we
need to understand these con-
versations are not casual, they
are the place where we broker
between different epistemic com-
munities and different constitu-
encies in the design space. We
also need to look out for design
suggestions that are drawn out
of comfort (let’s do it how we
have always done it and with
what we have available), where
that strategy will not result in
Ps AND Qs
the experience we are trying to
design. I am all for reuse and
finding new value in known
techniques, but not when it is
done because it is simply less
work. I suspect it also means that
if one is to carry a vision for a
designed artifact from ideation
to implementation and release,
one had better be present for
all the “decision” gates—from
inspiration to innovation.
With these observations, I am
likely preaching to the choir. In
the world of design we know we
need to accommodate a lot of
perspectives.
How many designers does it
take to change a lightbulb? Well,
normally one...but:
+1 because we need to user-
test the lightbulb
+1 because marketing wants to
build the box and brand the bulb
+1 because sales wants to go
global with the lightbulb
+1 because engineering wants
details specs
+1 since we need to evangelize
about it
+1 since we need to build a
user community around the
lightbulb
+1 since we need to explore
different directions we can take
the lightbulb.
About the Author Elizabeth
Churchill is a principal research scientist at
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Yahoo! Research leading research in social
media. Originally a psychologist by training,
for the past 15 years she has studied and
designed technologies for effective social
connection. At Yahoo, her work focuses on
how Internet applications and services are
woven into everyday lives. Obsessed with
memory and sentiment, in her spare time
Elizabeth researches how people manage
their digital and physical archives. Elizabeth
rates herself a packrat, her greatest joy is
interactions
an attic stuffed with memorabilia.
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649491
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
65
 Clarifying Interactions
This article, by Martha Pollack, Dean of the School of information at the University of Michigan, completes a year in which
five of the six Timelines columns have dealt with prospects for research on Information as well as aspects of its history.
This is an exciting time for many elements of HCI, including Design, the input and display device renaissance, a flowering
of domain-specific HCI–yet this period may be most remembered for its embrace of Information. —Jonathan Grudin
Reflections on the Future of
iSchools from a Dean Inspired
by Some Junior Faculty
Martha e. Pollack
University of Michigan | pollackm@umich.edu
In the September + October issue of interac-
tions, three junior faculty members at the
University of Washington School of Information
(iSchool)—Jacob Wobbrock, Andrew Ko, and Julie
Kientz—proposed a definition for what we study
in iSchools, one that, interestingly, omits the word
“information.” They characterized iSchools as “the
place where people and technology meet.” In their
thought-provoking article, they also provide crite-
ria for successful iSchools that include:
• They must value both analysis and invention.
• They must enable different disciplinary per-
spectives and methodologies to reinforce one
another in research.
• They must be places where rules and policies
are minimal.
Near the end of their article, Wobbrock, Ko,
[1] Stokes, D.E.
Pasteur’s Quadrant: and Kientz (hereafter, WKK) described these
Basic Science as three challenges that iSchools must meet.
and Technological
Innovation. Washington, However, throughout earlier portions of the arti-
D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press, 1997.
cle the authors suggested the criteria also help
define the field.
It is heartening to see junior faculty step back
and consider the broader picture, and there is
much in their article with which I agree. However,
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
I would strongly argue that, in the final analysis,
they have not provided a clear statement of our
field’s identity, and that by abandoning the idea
of information as the essential focus of our study,
they do a disservice to it.
Let me start with the three criteria listed here.
They’ve got these basically right: iSchools do need
to include both analyzers and builders, with mul-
tiple disciplinary backgrounds, and there must be
a culture in which this range of perspectives is
interactions
mutually reinforcing. Our subject matter simply
demands that, because we work at the intersec-
tion of people and technology. Rigid rules and pol-
66
icies are at odds with such a culture. As a dean of
an iSchool, I view it as one of my central respon-
sibilities to ensure that we have just the sort of
environment that WKK propose: One that values
and supports intellectual diversity, balances
analysis and invention, and provides appropriate
incentives for people with different backgrounds
to engage with one another around fundamental
research questions. (And yes, one that provides
needed lab space to the inventors!)
But contrary to WKK’s claim, iSchools are not
unique in their need for a culture with these
characteristics. We are not the only place on cam-
pus that combines scientific analysis with inven-
tion. Computer science provides a good counter-
example: It is squarely within Pasteur’s quadrant,
motivated by a desire both to understand an
important phenomenon (computation) and to
create better solutions to real-world problems
[1]. Computer theorists study algorithms and the
underlying mathematics of computation (analy-
sis), while systems researchers develop new data-
base mechanisms, operating systems, and net-
work protocols (invention). Indeed, even individual
researchers within the field of computer science
may straddle the divide: Theorists also produce
new algorithms, which may or may not lead to
practical results, and systems researchers ana-
lyze things like network performance in the real
world. Nor is computer science the only example
of work in Pasteur’s quadrant. Most biomedical
research has this spirit, and it is thus no acci-
dent that the NIH frequently cites Stokes’s work.
These days a great deal of academic engineering
research involves what would be generally consid-
ered to be basic (analytic) work, and increasingly
academic science aims at developing solutions to
real-world problems. (Wander over to the chemis-

try department and ask some of the faculty what
they’re working on. Almost certainly you’ll find
people who talk both about understanding the
fundamental mechanisms behind some sort of
chemical process and about developing some kind
of therapeutic based on that process.)
Similarly, there are plenty of other units on
campus that are multidisciplinary, spanning both
social science and technology: public policy; busi-
ness; science, technology and society (STS) pro-
grams; and emerging programs on sustainability,
to name just a few. The iSchools may be among
the most interdisciplinary—we often include
not just social scientists and engineers, but also
people from the humanities, from library and
information science, with business degrees, and
possibly even lawyers. We can and should develop
effective approaches to nurturing interdisciplin-
ary work, but we cannot claim this as a factor
that uniquely identifies us.
As for rules and policies: As WKK note, a
thicket of these is never a good thing. Overly com-
plicated or rigid regulations nearly always stifle
innovation and are, in my view, best avoided in
any field, regardless of whether it is well estab-
lished or emerging.
Thus, WKK’s three criteria seem to me to be
important characteristics of a good interdisci-
plinary program, and thus a good iSchool. These
characteristics are an important part of our iden-
tity. But they by no means distinguish us; we still
need a defining framework of some sort.
The simplest definition, of course, is that we
study information in all its forms, and more
particularly, the connection between people,
information, and technology, and that we create
solutions to information problems. WKK, however,
reject this definition and make the surprising
claim that information as a concept should not be
part of our identity statement. In fact, they argue
that information should not even be viewed as
something separate from people and technology.
They provide two types of support for this claim.
The first is sociological. WKK argue that in gen-
eral people have a hard time understanding what
information is, and that this makes it difficult
to explain what we are about. Additionally, they
claim that when those people are our academic
colleagues, we risk being off-putting by claiming
information as our own, since “there is no such
thing as an informationless field of study.”
FORUM TIMELINES
EDITOR
Jonathan Grudin
jgrudin@microsoft.com
Their second argument is epistemological.
Information, they claim, is “just” an abstraction.
As they put it: “It is the thing that moves within
and between people and technology, making them
interesting.” For them this is a problem, since they
believe that “most other academic disciplines—at
least those claiming to be part of the sciences—
have concrete objects of study in the world.”
The sociological arguments are simply not valid
in my experience. While it is true that neither
academics nor non-academics have much experi-
ence with information as a field of study, and thus
are prone to ask what an iSchool is, I have found
that a fairly simple explanation suffices once you
get past the initial joke—“You’re the dean of infor-
mation?? Wow, you must know everything.” My
pitch goes something like this:
“Since the advent of the Internet, there’s been an
explosion in the influence of information. The informa-
tion revolution changed everything: the way businesses
and governments work, the way we do science and
provide health care, the way we educate our children
and entertain ourselves. There are all kinds of important
questions involved in understanding and improving the
ways in which we generate, collect, analyze, store, pre-
serve, and disseminate information in the modern world.
That’s what we study in the iSchool.”
And often I add:
“At our school, our slogan is ‘Connecting People,
Information, and Technology in More Valuable Ways.’”
That nearly always does the trick, and I’m off
and running in an interesting conversation about
some aspect of information generation or collec-
tion or…. My dialogue partner may not know or
care about how to define information, but that
fact doesn’t prevent her from seeing the scope and
value of what we do. In this, we’re no different
from biologists: One can appreciate that biology is
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
the study of life without having a clue about the
nuances that define life.
What about the claim that our academic col-
leagues will be offended by our staking out
information as our intellectual territory? Once
again, I have not found this to be an issue. On the
contrary, my problem is often the opposite: Once
other faculty members recognize our expertise,
they want to collaborate with us, because they
understand that they have information-level
interactions
questions about which we can provide insight.
I often have to fend off requests to find a fac-
ulty member who can work with Prof. X in
67
 Clarifying Interactions
Overly complicated
or rigid regulations nearly
always stifle innovation
and are, in my view,
best avoided in any field,
regardless of whether
it is well established
or emerging.
discipline Y, not because the request is inappro-
priate, but simply because we don’t have enough
faculty in the School of Information to participate
in every attractive collaboration opportunity.
Beyond that, the fact that all academic disci-
plines involve information doesn’t mean that all
academic disciplines study information qua infor-
mation. Most engineering disciplines involve mat-
ter, but they don’t study matter qua matter, and
hence engineers don’t view as a land grab the fact
that physicists claim matter as their subject.
Turning to the epistemological claim, that infor-
mation is too abstract to be the subject of a field
of study, I would point out that law schools study
law, business schools study business, schools of
public policy study policy, and so on. Certainly
information is no more abstract than law, busi-
ness, or policy. Even amongst the sciences, it’s
not clear that the objects of study are concrete.
Contrary to what WKK state, many people would
agree with Edsger Dijkstra’s famous statement
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
that computer science is not the study of comput-
ers; instead, IT is the study of something at least
as abstract as information, to wit, “computation.”
None of these objections would matter if the
proposed WKK definition of the iSchools were
adequate. Alas, I believe that claiming that
iSchools are “the places where people and tech-
nology meet” is too broad, and at the same time,
not bold enough, and thus does not do us justice.
There are lots of technologies with which
interactions
people interact, but not all of those interactions
fall within our purview in the iSchools. Many
technologies for transportation exist, but iSchool
68
faculty would be unlikely to study the question
of how railroads changed the social structure in
our country, or of how automobile emissions are
affecting respiratory health. The former would
be a question for STS; the latter for public health
schools. Similarly, ergonomics is all about the
connection between technology and people, but
we don’t generally study ergonomics in iSchools,
except when the ergonomic questions involve
information technology—and then we call the
subject HCI. Simply put, we are not about the
interactions between people and arbitrary tech-
nology: We focus on technology that mediates
information use.
Perhaps most important, if we shy away from
the central use of the term “information” in carv-
ing out an identity for ourselves, we will fail to
convey the enormous importance and breadth
of what we do. People do understand the signifi-
cance of information in the 21st century. They
understand the challenges and opportunities that
the information revolution has posed. They’ve
used Google and Facebook and Netflix; they’ve
bought things online and worried about whether
they should enter their credit card into a Web
interface; they’ve watched the music industry be
transformed and the newspaper industry collapse;
they’ve read the news story about the risks of
electronic voting; they’ve considered alternative
ways to save and share the data from their last
experiment, or the photos from their last trip. The
examples are endless. Undergraduates get it, our
colleagues in other fields get it, and—let me put
on my dean’s hat—provosts get it. “It,” of course,
is the intellectual richness and the concomitant
importance of this thing we call information, and
we in the iSchools need to be proud about claim-
ing it as the focus of our work.
About the Author Martha E. Pollack is
dean of the School of Information at the University
of Michigan. An elected fellow as well as the cur-
rent president of the Association for the
Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, she is also
on the Board of Directors of the Computing
Research Association and the Advisory Committee for NSF’s
Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate.
Pollack’s research has spanned many areas of artificial intelligence,
including the design of assistive technology for people with cogni-
tive impairment, a topic on which she testified before the U.S.
Senate Subcommittee on Aging.
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649492
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
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 Clarifying Interactions

Editor’s Note: In last year’s January + February issue Usman Haque, Paul Pangaro, and I described several types of
interaction—reacting, regulating, learning, balancing, managing, and conversing. In the July + August 2009 issue, Paul
Pangaro and I described several types of conversing—agreeing, learning, coordinating, and collaborating—and we pro-
posed using models based on Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory as a guide for improving human-computer interaction.
Peter Jones responded, noting that there are other models of conversation and prior work in bringing conversation to
human-computer interaction in particular Winograd and Flores 1986 work with The Coordinator. We agree on the impor-
tance of The Coordinator and invited Peter to outline the history of models of conversation and their relationship to HCI. His
response follows. —Hugh Dubberly

The Language/Action Model of

Conversation: Can conversation
perform acts of design?
Peter h. Jones
Redesign | peter@redesignresearch.com

This article will step back in time to retrieve networks has inspired interest in social design and
alternative, influential views of conversation for social systems, particularly in applications to net-
[1] Winograd, T. “A
Language/Action design, and then bring the discussion forward work systems, including business models, online
Perspective on the
Design of Cooperative
to current situations where we might learn from social activism, and organizational systems.
Work.” Human- this history.
Computer Interaction 3,
1 (1987): 3–30. Three historically parallel pathways can be A Conversation about Conversation
shown as influenced by a common circle of sys- What are the contexts for conversation? Most
2] Rittel, H. “Issues as
Elements of Information
tems theorists: the well-known language/action theories of communication assume a dyad model
Systems.” Institute of perspective (LAP) [1], Rittel’s argumentation of information exchange: two individuals talking
Urban and Regional
Development, Working perspective [2], and the dialogic design school, with each other. Cherry defined “communica-
Paper No. 131.
emerging from Christakis’s structured dialogue tion” as the exchange of normatively defined
Berkeley: University of
California, 1970. [3] and Warfield’s science of generic design [4]. meanings and creating understanding between
Distinctions between these three perspectives purposeful social participants [5]. Conversation
[3] Christakis, A.N.
and Bausch, K.C. are readily apparent in the embodiments of their is seen as a form of communication in which a
How People Harness design languages in software, with very differ- particular exchange takes place between at least
their Collective
Wisdom and Power to ent routines for conversation modeling. They two people at a time, representing individual
Construct the Future
in Co-laboratories of
also share a central concern with the role of interests or intentions, or collective interests rep-
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

Democracy. Greenwich, generative conversation for design outcomes. The resented by individuals.
CN: Information Age,
2006. current series of On Modeling articles attempts In everyday parlance, we subscribe to a more
to coordinate common elements and concerns inclusive view. In fact, many and perhaps most
[4] Warfield, J.N.
Science of Generic
among perspectives in the attempt to establish a conversations occur as or start with small talk.
Design: Managing workable common ground. Known as phatic communication, it is present
Complexity Through
Systems Design. Iowa This article focuses on the theory of conversa- to some extent in most real conversations, and
State Press, 1994.
tion embodied in LAP—an influential framework is identified as “orientation” in the LAP model.
[5] Cherry, C. On
of phenomenology, pragmatics, and speech act While its power to reinforce relationships should
Human Communication: theory. While LAP has received significant atten- not be minimized, here we focus on purposeful
A Review, a Survey, and
tion in prior ACM publications, the framework conversations that enable the coordination of
interactions

a Criticism. Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, deserves further consideration in light of renewed multiple perspectives in the activity of designing.
1966.
interest in the systemic view of conversation in Any design activity is guided by the intention
design. The emergence of massive social media to change a situation in accordance with a com-

70

municated desire or intention. Conversations
for design must reflect and preserve the posi-
tions and contributions of multiple participants
included (and excluded) in the model of change.
By “merely” speaking, the designer creates a
context for the relative inclusion of stakehold-
ers or users, an ethic explicitly revealed by his
or her conversational model. By extension of
this assumption, the way we converse may also
be seen as, perhaps unwittingly, reflecting our
working philosophy of designing.
Several implicit models of conversation can be
identified that guide participation in very dif-
ferent ways. Three epistemological orientations
include the rational, pragmatic, and phenomeno-
logical.
The rational perspective may be viewed as an
instrumental and purposive individual commu-
nications system used by designers to achieve
sophisticated design outcomes. Conversation
can be understood as a set of patterns employed
as skillful means in facilitating the relationship
between designers, stakeholders, and product or
materials. This is the mainstream perspective
in our technological culture, and perhaps the
way most readers view conversation in design.
This perspective is observable in practices that
employ a well-defined set of methods and com-
munications with every problem situation.
A pragmatic perspective considers design
an inherently communicative practice, where
design activities enact the creation of a linguistic
system of meanings applicable to a problem in
context. In practice, we create a unique coupling
of appropriate language to the design situation,
following stakeholders and their lifeworlds rather
Three Orientations
three Orientations
Orientation Rational
Relationships Conversation as a tool
Methods 1st-gen design methods
Methods standardized
Influences Bruner, Simon
Systems, engineering
FORUM ON MODELINg
EDITOR
Hugh Dubberly
hugh@dubberly.com
than promoting our own language of design.
When we customize design methods to suit a
particular purpose, rather than pull methods “off
the shelf,” we reveal a pragmatic philosophy.
A phenomenological perspective acknowledges
that all meaning arises in language, that human
activity is not separate from language. This view
suggests that design itself is a conversation,
products and services are networks of other con-
versations, and designing acts are performed and
recognized by language. Conversation is not a
tool for outcomes; rather, language uses us, shap-
ing and constraining our work and experience.
These are not mutually exclusive perspectives;
designers may adopt different perspectives to
calibrate responses to a situation, while scholars [6] Winograd, T. and
may be adherents of one school of thought. And Flores, F. Understanding
Computers and
while not an inclusive list, perspectives from Cognition: A New
Foundation for Design.
sensemaking and constructivism, for example, Boston, MA: Addison-
range beyond this current focus of conversation Wesley Longman
Publishing, 1987.
for design. Elements of all three perspectives,
and more, could inform responses to a single
problem. The language/action artifacts appear to
embrace elements from all three schools, even
though the foundation text presents a phenom-
enological perspective.
Conversation as Designable Action
Readers of interactions and Communications of the
ACM may be familiar with Winograd and Flores’s
(1986) LAP work [6]. Flores demonstrated suc-
cesses in software (The Coordinator and Action
Workflow), education (Logonet and Landmark),
and management (Business Design) based on
an integral philosophical system. While LAP’s
critique of the artificial intelligence field had an J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Pragmatic Phenomenological
Design as conversation Activity embodied in language
2nd-gen design methods Ethnomethodology, “Design for...”
Methods customized to context Products seen as conversations
interactions
Peirce, Rittel Heidegger, Varela
Human-centered design Generative design
71
 Clarifying Interactions

Conversation for Possibility design activity, but also to generate those possi-
bilities in reality by intentional speech acts.

What if we captured Where do we start? types of Speech Acts

a patient’s personal reflections What’s possible? LAP adopted Searle’s speech act theory, wherein
in the medical records system? What would that even look like?
language performs an action represented by the
Conversation for possibility.
content and intent of the utterance. Performative
speech acts instantiate the action referred to in
speech itself. Five basic speech acts, called illo-
cutionary points, are specified as:
• Assertives commit a speaker to the truth of
me you
an expression.
• Directives (such as requests, commands, and
advice) cause the listener to follow a requested
action.
• Commissives (such as promises and oaths)
commit the speaker to future actions.
Conversation for Action • Declarations change the circumstances of real-
ity to accord with a proposition (e.g., pronounce a
couple as married).
(Offer) Let’s write a proposal I’m in. (Accepted) We need
• Expressives convey a speaker’s attitudes
to the IT board for a research a position paper. Can you write
project on this idea. a draft by next week? (Request) or emotions about a proposition (e.g., praise,
gratitude).
Conversation for action. The applicability of performative speech acts
in design was pointedly critiqued, essentially
based on the hermeneutic problem that a lis-
tener might interpret an illocutionary point dif-
ferent from the speaker’s intention [7]. However,
me you Searle’s model provides a descriptive power of
language as action helpful in understanding and
even guiding the messy dynamics of design prac-
tices. And since conversation (and hermeneutics)
is recursive, continuous, and correctable, the
enormous humanist impact, its longevity was interpretive critique seems overwrought.
disrupted by critiques of the embedded conver-
sational model in The Coordinator. Today we Speech Acts in Conversation
may consider the irony of how the LAP, a critique While a conversation must be “about something,”
of the micro-cognitive and rationalist view of conversations often have no purpose other than
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

AI, was itself critiqued as socially determinis-
tic (macro-cognitive) and insensitive to natural
[7] de Michelis, G. human interaction. However, LAP reenvisioned
“Categories, Debates
and Religion Wars”. cognition and agency as responsive to action
Computer Supported
in the world, a humanistic concern. Winograd
Cooperative Work, 3, 1
(1994): 69-72. and Flores’s unit of analysis for embodied cogni-
tion was conversation, expressed in an explicit
phenomenological approach known as ontologi-
cal design. Ontological design was construed
as a practice of formulating conversations to
interactions
social mediation and acknowledgement of phatic
communication. Conversations that lead to
action exhibit intentionality, and differences in
conversational structure are apparent.
Winograd describes three types of purpose-
ful conversations based on the LAP model. His
nomenclature reveals intention by the preposi-
tion “for,” as “conversations for”:
• Orientation
• Possibility

invent new modes of being and co-create action. • Action

Conversation was deemed the appropriate way Orientation is maintained by conversation that
not only to explore the possibilities invented in mutually regards a shared referent object (e.g.,

72

the weather), “creating a shared background as a
basis for future interpretation of conversations.”
The intent of this so-called phatic communica-
tion is merely acknowledgement.
Conversations for possibility include interper-
sonal queries, inquiries, and propositions that
“open a context.” Winograd notes the importance
of common ground (background), including prior
intent, upon which speakers can instantiate new
contexts for conversation. There are no “goals” in
conversations for possibility, but rather the co-
construction of understanding and novelty.
A conversation can be observed as moving
through progression of stages, where an opening
affords the potential for action. The coordina-
tion of action requires meeting what Searle calls
conditions of satisfaction [8]. Conditions may
include some agreed outcome, and agreements
about necessary quality and future dates. While
some may consider these conditions goals, LAP
does not refer to goals in the objective sense .
This difference is crucial, as LAP suggests that
we honor the commitment, as if spoken between
persons, not the objectives.
This model has much in common with the dis-
covery orientation in design practice. Designers
are taught to “challenge the brief ” and to help cli-
ents reformulate a problem as given so that the
right framing of a problem is adopted in a design
project. The skills for mediating conversations
for possibility are learned through the experi-
ence of navigating different frames of possible
visions or outcomes in conversation. Other dis-
tinct “conversations for” that were not proposed
in LAP show in a designing context, as they occur
as patterns of sense-making between committed
participants. Conversations for understanding (or
dialogue) and for clarification (convergence) are
two that might be further distinguished.
Moving the “right possibility” toward a con-
versation for action is another embodied skill.
The ability to move stakeholders in social design
situations is not seen as a rhetorical, persuasive
skill, but one that turns on what Searle identi-
fies as illocutionary force. This is the extent to
which action is performed by words, not by the
semantic content, but by the speaker’s intent.
The variable capacity to move together toward
action is embodied by the speaker at the time of
utterance. This distinction is inherent in LAP’s
formulation of ontological design—design actions
FORUM ON MODELINg
are co-created by speaker and listener at the
time of conversation in a mutual grounding of
understanding and agreement.
Learning from the Coordinator
A 2006 issue of Communications recapped the lan-
guage/action perspective, but it included no men-
tion of the early email activity management sys-
tem released by Flores in 1986. The Coordinator
was (primarily) designed for ultimately manag-
ing conversations for action, by instantiating
requests, offers, counter-offers, promises, and
other commitments as mediated transactions.
These illocutionary points were identified in [8] Searle, J. R.
“A Taxonomy of
Flores’s earlier research on effective business Illocutionary Acts.” In
K. Gunderson (Ed.),
conversations in the workplace, and were formu- Language, Mind and
lated in his notion that “organizations exist as Knowledge, 344-369.
Minneapolis: University
networks of directives and commissives.” of Minnesota Press,
1975.
Early email systems followed a slow adoption
curve, given the limitations of computing and
networks. Free-form email was initially perceived
to be unnecessarily constrictive, a “cold” medi-
um that was not at all conversational. During the
years The Coordinator was available, early con-
ventional email systems were used for sporadic
and discretionary communications. The ubiqui-
tous acceptance of email required a span of five
years to alter communicative practices, even in
dedicated organizations. While The Coordinator
did not fit the cognitive style or tasks of exist-
ing organizations, even unstructured electronic
communications were fraught with resistance [9] Suchman, L. “Do
Categories have
and halting advances. Since The Coordinator also politics? The Language/
Action Perspective
required a commitment to managing accountable Reconsidered.”
communications, its use was limited to fairly Proceedings of the
Third Conference on
small and dedicated networks. European Conference
on Computer-Supported
The design and flaws of The Coordinator might Cooperative Work.
still teach us about structuring conversations Milan, Italy, 1–14, 1993.
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
and accountable communicative actions. Perhaps
the system’s intent was, as Lucy Suchman said,
“to remedy the carelessness of organization
members regarding their commitments to each
other through a technologically based system of
intention-accounting” [9]. Yet this critique focus-
es on the functions of The Coordinator, as origi-
nally designed. Speech act theory was certainly
not perfectly matched to the intended domains
of conversation. Searle’s explicitly-described
interactions
theory does not preordain a “rationalist” imple-
mentation. As a conversation theory, it retains
constructive power for formulating social (and
73
 Clarifying Interactions

the Basic Conversation for Action (Alternative)

States:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Initial Request Request Candidate Candidate Counter Promise Request Request
state made agreed proposed accepted made withdrawn terminated withdrawn
Agreement Fulfillment Acceptance Conversation Agreement Conversation Conversation Conversation
pending pending pending completed pending completed completed completed

requests
A B Options at
state 2:

promises
(accepts)
B A Options at
state 3:
counters
B A Options at
state 6:
rejects
B A

withdraws
A B

revises
A

asserts
B A Options at
reneges, state 4:
with liability
B A
withdraws,
with liability
A B

declares +
A B

declares −
A

withdraws, with liability

J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

A B

accepts
A

counters
A

rejects
A B
interactions

withdraws, with liability

B A

• This diagram translates Winograd and Flores’ original state diagram into a flow diagram, in the hope of making it more accessible.

74

therefore design) commitments as acts by their
very communication.
One can agree with the underpinning concern
of Suchman’s critique while identifying signifi-
cant exceptions. For one, regulated organizations
could benefit from Searlean communication by
filtering today’s overwhelming volumes of data
by displaying information by action: requests,
commitments, dates, and implicit promises to
network participants.
LAP-structured conversations might enhance
communications in complex, high-reliability
organizations. Winograd’s 1987 case study of
hospital conversation flow foresaw the usability
nightmare of electronic medical records systems.
In regulated environments the coordination of
commitments is as important as data quality.
In operations such as health care, transporta-
tion, and the military, the ability to manage and
respond to commitments fosters operational
resiliency by managing actions that occur “as
speech,” such as orders, responses, announce-
ments, and outcomes. The entire chain of com-
mitments following a medication order would be
tracked as a directive conversation, rather than
as “workflow.” It instantiates a process based
on verbs, action, rather than nouns and objects.
While Google’s adoption of the “conversation” as
a unit of communication appears to build on this
perspective, in practice, few email threads are
true conversations. The meaningful verbs that
prompt action are hidden in today’s electronic
communications.
While The Coordinator software passed into
collective memory without further enhance-
ment, Winograd and Flores’s bold experiment
in organizing communication should be evalu-
ated from an innovation perspective. Consider
the audacity of introducing a dedicated, tightly
structured email system in the late 1980s. As an
early adopter, I found its most significant diffi-
culty was the macrocognitive problem of its lack
of organizational fit (as suggested by Suchman’s
critique) and the necessity of changing commu-
nicative practices. For it (or any email system) to
be of value, all participants in an action network
had to agree to use it consistently.
Conclusion
A major contribution of LAP was creating a
design language for the construction and moni-
FORUM ON MODELINg
toring of commitment. As Web-based systems
have greatly enabled the ability to collaborate,
people are easily overloaded by multiple commu-
nication channels. Managing commitment and
attention remains the weak link in our technol-
ogy panorama. A conversation design perspec-
tive can enhance our coordination of attention as
well as action.
With respect to The Coordinator, I would make
the personal observation that successful soft-
ware systems are rarely treated as newsworthy
in scholarly publications, and failures are typi-
cally ignored. Successful software products are
discussed only peripherally. With no venue for
cooperative constructive critique of social and
interactive artifacts, we collectively risk losing
the value of learning from the wisdom embod-
ied in such artifacts and their adoption by real
users. We also suffer the loss of shared mean-
ing from collective memory by not sustaining
an academic tradition of a balanced interpretive
review and critique of artifacts we design and
endorse. Perhaps interactions might host such a
critique as a shared conversation toward creating
a critical discourse, in support of creating a con-
structive shared memory.
Finally, the emerging perspective of purpo-
sive design—“designing for” (e.g. sustainability,
thrivability, transformation, care)—shares an
ontological basis with “conversation for” in terms
of intentionality and social teleology. When
designing for a purpose, our “conversation for”
that purpose brings it forth, a distinctly different
view from a design method perspective. These
and other proposals ought to be considered in
the emerging reconfigurations of design thinking
and practice.
About the Author Peter Jones, Ph.D.
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
founded the Redesign innovation research firm in
2001, and conducts independent and client-based
research. Redesign, specializes in information and
process strategies for scientific, organizational and
healthcare practices. Jones is writing
Design for Care (Rosenfeld Media, 2010), exploring how new
design thinking is transforming healthcare. He resides in Toronto,
where he is on faculty at Ontario College of Art and Design. Find
him at designdialogues.com.
interactions
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649493
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
75
 Clarifying Interactions

Is Wellness Informatics a
Field of Human-Centered
Health Informatics?
rebecca e. Grinter
Georgia Tech | beki@cc.gatech.edu

Katie A. Siek
University of Colorado at Boulder | katiesiek@gmail.com

Andrea Grimes
Georgia Tech | agrimes@cc.gatech.edu

The past decade has seen an prevention of disease and the constitutes healthy practice
explosion of health-related, management of health [1]. It (e.g., the appropriate amount of
[1] By human facing we
mean technologies that human-centered computing is human-centered because it exercise). Wellness informat-
people are using i.e.,
adopting, accepting,
research and practice focused requires that technologies are ics applications also frequently
and appropriating it into on wellness (e.g., good nutri- married with innovations in have to collect other behavioral
their lives; people are
empowered through tion and exercise promotion) to how the ICT communicates with measures of health outcomes
their usage; and it’s help people avoid the need for the user, in ways that are psy- (e.g., how long an individual
readily accessible tech-
nology. medical care. And while health chologically, sociologically, cul- stays engaged with a particular
informatics may appear to be turally, and societally relevant— practice). Other sources of data
[2] Pratt, W., Unruh,
K., Civan, A., and
the obvious home for these without which wellness will inputs to the system stem from
Skeels, M. “Personal activities, it is a discipline that not be promoted and sustained. the socioeconomic and cultural
Health Information
Management.” has focused on the design and It is also a computing science nature of wellness (e.g., what
Communications of evaluation of systems to process because it requires hardware traditions influence cooking
the ACM 49, 1 (2006):
51–55. health care data and, through and software innovations to practices). These sources have
that, aid in patient treatment. make devices that people can a greater degree of heterogene-
[3] Maitland, J., Siek,
K.A., and Chalmers,
Given the ubiquity of wellness use anywhere and everywhere ity than some fields in health
M. “Persuasion Not systems, we think it’s time to wellness occurs. informatics, whose data sources
Required: Improving our
Understanding of the create a wellness informatics We offer some themes come from health care and
Sociotechnical Context community of researchers and that we think characterize medical sources.
of Dietary Behavioural
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

Change.” In Proc. 3rd practitioners, and through this wellness informatics: Example: During a design
International Conference
on Pervasive Computing
define opportunities and chal- Data sources are numerous. In workshop with low-income
Technologies for Health lenges in the design and evalu- wellness, the individual man- caregivers, we met single moms
Care 2009, IEEE.
ation of information and com- ages their health information, Maria and Sophia, who each
[4] Grimes, A., Bednar, munications technologies (ICTs) and consequently relies on have three children and work
M., Bolter, J.D., and that help people stay well. multiple data streams that long hours at multiple jobs.
Grinter, R.E., “EatWell:
Sharing Nutrition- Wellness informatics is a come from numerous sources They told us about their typical
Related Memories
in Low-Income
human-centered computing [2]. Wellness informatics appli- hectic day. After 12 hours on
Communities.” In Proc. science focused on the design, cations may collect data from her feet working at McDonald’s,
ACM Conference on
deployment, and evaluation of the patient themselves (e.g., Maria picks up dinner at Burger
interactions

Computer Supported
Cooperative Work, ACM
Press (2008): 87–96.
human-facing technological exercise completed), or incorpo- King and heads home. She
solutions to promote and man- rate data from the medical and cannot eat fast food anymore
age wellness acts such as the health communities about what because of a health issue.

76

Instead, she takes a nap while
her children eat dinner and
watch television. Her brother
arrives to watch the kids and
wakes her up in time to go to
her night job. Maria’s family
does not live near affordable
grocery stores, where they could
purchase quality food. They do,
however, pass multiple fast-food
restaurants coming and going to
their homes.
In this scenario, we would
ideally know Maria’s health
goals, dietary restrictions, shop-
ping list, context, and schedule.
We envision a mashup system
that merges these personal
inputs with publicly available
data streams, such as public
transportation and maps, to
recommend that in her 30-min-
ute break, she could walk three
blocks and purchase good pro-
duce from a store near her work.
Challenges: Understanding
all the sources of data that
might be necessary to incorpo-
rate into the system that not
only support the user’s health
goal, but also facilitate steps
necessary to achieving that
goal. Another challenge is that
although human-centered com-
puting research is well suited
to address this challenge, we
still must build on social sci-
ence methodologies to identify
the needs of the diverse target
populations participating in
wellness activities.
The end user (the person stay-
Photographs from top by Brian Talbot, Sylvain Mercier
ing well) is the primary user
of the information. In many
health informatics fields, the
end user is a source of data
(e.g., input into clinician-used
systems). By contrast, in well-
ness, the end user is not just a
producer of data, but also the
primary consumer of informa-
FEATURE
tion. For example, consider
how socioeconomic status and
culture affect the design of
technologies. A nutrition sys-
tem designed for a particular
individual must account for
how easy it is to find inexpen-
sive, healthy food locally (or the
time/money costs of leaving the
neighborhood to shop) [3]; and
whether the food recommenda-
tions fit the food-consumption
practices of that person [4].
Finally, those applications must
present his information in ways
that make sense, such as being
actionable [4, 5].
Example: Extending our previ-
ous example, Maria explained
that the only time she thinks
about herself is when she puts
on her make-up each morning.
Thus, she designed a make-up
clamshell case where the mir-
ror could look at her and let her
know what she needs (in this
case, more water) [6]. Although
she constantly thinks about
the wellness of her family, she
cannot always be there because
of work constraints. Her solu-
tion to this problem was a
portable game system that
would provide children points
on their game for each task
they completed—in this case,
drinking more milk. The system
could also remind the child of
other family and wellness-based
tasks, such as eating as a family
to engender communication.
Challenges: Once the hurdle of
accurately identifying data and
processing the data in context
is cleared, we must address the
issue of presenting this aggre-
gate and contextualized data.
It is not just enough to provide
all the necessary information;
it needs to be given in such
a way that the end user can
 Clarifying Interactions

Wellness informatics
is a human-centered
computing science provide either emotional (e.g.,
through praise) or informational
user and the health care estab-
lishment. Wellness systems
(e.g., through education about may contain data that does not
focused on the design, healthy lifestyles) support. This come from medical sources but
contrasts with health informat- that still provides value to the

deployment, and ics that often emphasizes pop-

ulation-based data (e.g., public
health and hospital information
evaluation of human- systems).
Example: In a field study,
facing technological we met Mary and David, who
explained they want their chil-
dren to be aware of their exer-
solutions to promote cise habits, because they value
transparency [8]. So they were
and manage wellness excited by an application that
could help them to visualize
their fitness patterns as a way
acts such as the to promote family conversations
about health. Simultaneously,
prevention of disease they hesitated to share this
information because of a con-
end user. For example, a person
decides that they need to make
life adjustments as a result of
discussions with family and
then implements those changes.
These changes may draw on
medical information but not
involve, for example, any direct
consultations.
Example: EatWell is a system
that we developed to promote
the sharing of information
among community members [4].
It is an audio-based technology,
and we encouraged people to
call into the system and leave
memories (tips for healthy eat-

and the management flicting value: protection. For

example, if a technology made
ing in their community) and
listen and comment on other
Mary’s habits visible to her people’s suggestions. The tips
of health. children, what happens when people shared included healthy
she cannot exercise because of cooking methods, where to eat
increased obligations at work? out in the neighborhood, and
make sense of it on the screen Her children might grow con- where to find fresh vegetables.
[5] Maloney-Krichmar,
size in use. An additional chal- cerned or potentially misinter- When our participants evalu-
D. and Preece, J. “A
Multilevel Analysis of lenge is that the end user will pret such information. David ated it, many spoke enthusiasti-
Sociability, Usability,
and Community presumably be using wellness and Mary’s competing values cally about the tips, saying that
Dynamics in an Online tools throughout their lives in have design implications. they were meaningful to them
Health Community.”
ACM Transactions different capacities; thus, we Challenges: Wellness informat- because they were commu-
on Computer-Human
Interaction, 12, 2 (2005):
must be able to present 80-plus ics highlights the importance of nity focused. This encouraged
201–232. years of an individual’s data interpersonal, online, and local people to share and apply the
[6] Siek, K.A., in an understandable way that communities that support indi- information.
LaMarche, J.S., and
Maitland, J. Bridging encourages reflection and an viduals; however, open research Challenge: One drawback of
the Information
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10

Gap: Collaborative
understanding of appropriate questions remain about how we diminished interaction between
Technology Design with cause and effect. design systems that navigate the health-care establishment
Low-Income At-Risk
Families to Engender The individual, group, and com- what is shared and how. So and the end user is that the
Healthy Behaviors.
munity are emphasized as the while human-centered comput- medical soundness of the infor-
OzCHI 2009, 89-96.

[7] Consolvo, S.,

appropriate levels of data granu- ing has a history of exploring mation can be called into ques-
Everitt, K., Smith, larity. Wellness is personal: value interaction, this domain tion. At the same time, people
I., and Landay, J.A.
“Design Requirements Consider systems that support presents new challenges around can and want to share informa-
for Technologies that
individual reflection and learn- wellness information. tion, so a design trade-off exists
Encourage Physical
Activity.” In Proc. ACM ing [4, 7]. But many wellness There may be little or no between encouraging wellness
Conference on Human
informatics systems also sup- interaction with the health care behaviors and risking that
interactions

Factors in Computing
Systems (CHI 2006). port communication among establishment. A focus on well- some will not be as medically
ACM Press (2006):
457–466. friends, family, and cowork- ness also suggests a different sound as others. If our aim, as
ers [2]. Such collaborations relationship between the end we discussed earlier, is to help

78

healthcare environments
Biomedical Informatics
Medical Imaging
Clinical Infomatics
Informatics
Nutrition
Nursing Infomatics
Infomatics
Consumer Health Translational
Informatics Informatics
Public Health
Informatics
Nutrition
Physical Activity
everyday environments
people avoid needing the formal
health-care system through
wellness applications, then
how can we let people redefine
health to meet their own needs
(e.g., walking up the stairs more
easily) that have not been clini-
cally proven to improve health?
We must evaluate if redefining
health truly helps the indi-
vidual.
We offer wellness informatics
as a starting point for defining
a set of common characteristics
that can frame the fundamen-
tal contributions that we have
collectively made in this space.
We also believe it may help in
defining the challenges that
still remain. For example, what
is the full range of social and
cultural values that influence
wellness practices and conse-
quently need to be accounted
for in the design of health ICTs?
How do we evaluate wellness
informatics solutions, includ-
ing addressing how frequently
they have to be used in order
to make an impact? We are
not suggesting that people are
not currently working on these
FEATURE
Laboratory environments
Bioinformatics
Wellness Informatics
Environment
Mental Health
questions; rather, we want to
argue that wellness informatics
could be used to draw together
the many distinct projects that
now compose the space. In
conclusion, our goal in writing
this article was to begin the all-
important process of engaging
in dialogue with our colleagues
working on health-related,
human-centered computing
research. We offer this as a
starting point for what we hope
will be a series of conversations
that collectively define wellness
informatics. We look forward to
hearing from you; to encourage
conversation, we have created a
Facebook group called “Wellness
Informatics.”
About the Authors
Rebecca E. Grinter is an
associate professor in the
School of Interactive
Computing at Georgia
Tech. Her research focuses
on problems at the intersection of comput-
ing and humanity. Specifically, she applies
empirical methods to understand how infor-
mation and communications technologies
(ICTs) are both human-built and human-
used machines. Her research has shown
how human-centered problems affect the
production of complex technologies, and
how patterns of appropriation shape sys-
tem use. Grinter received her Ph.D. in infor-
mation and computer science from the
University of California, Irvine. Prior to join-
ing the Georgia Institute of Technology, she
worked in the computer science division of
Bell Laboratories and in Xerox PARC’s
Computer Science Laboratory.
Katie A. Siek is an assistant
professor in computer sci-
ence at the University of
Colorado at Boulder, where
she leads the Wellness
Innovation and Interaction
Lab. Her primary research interests are in
human-computer interaction, health infor-
matics, and ubiquitous computing. More
specifically, she is interested in how socio-
centric technology interventions affect per-
sonal health and well-being. Her research
is supported by the National Institutes of
Health, the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, and the National Science
Foundation, including a five-year NSF
CAREER award. Prior to her appointment at
Colorado, Siek completed her Ph.D. and
M.S. at Indiana University-Bloomington in [8] Grimes, A., Tan,
computer science and her B.S. in computer D. and Morris, D.
science at Eckerd College. “Toward Technologies
that Support Family
Reflections on Health.”
Andrea E. Grimes is a In Proc. ACM 2009
human-centered comput- International Conference
on Supporting Group
ing Ph.D. candidate at
Work (GROUP ‘09), ACM
Georgia Tech. Her research Press (2009): 311–320.
lies within the fields of
human-computer interac-
tion and computer-supported cooperative
work (CSCW). In particular, she studies
how technology can be designed to fit with-
in specific socio-cultural contexts. Much of
her work has focused on designing tech-
nology to address diet-related health dis-
parities in the African-American population.
This research has involved designing and
evaluating a nutrition-oriented mobile game
and a community-based information-shar-
ing application. Her other research includes
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
examining the future of human-food inter-
action research in HCI and designing tech-
nologies to support family health. Grimes
received a B.S. in computer science from
Northeastern University. She is a Microsoft
Research Fellow and was an NSF Graduate
Research Fellow, a Google Anita Borg
Scholar, and she received a Yahoo! Key
Technical Challenge Grant to support her
dissertation research.
interactions
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649494
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
79
 Interactions Cafe
On Designers
as Catalytic Agents
Richard: The increasing importance and acceptance
of user participation in multiple ways is stressed
within most of this issue. Do you find a similar
increase, and acceptance thereof, in designer
participation among frog’s clients? Are designers
increasingly positioned as “catalytic agents for
broader impact rather than mere stylists for com-
modities” (borrowing words from the cover story)?
Jon: Absolutely—and at the same time, no. Our
clients are begging for, and willing to pay for,
strategic, organizational change. But that work
has to have some “thingness” to it—it must be
accompanied by actual design work, embedded in
actual products, systems, and services. The hand-
waving that accompanies a lot of “design thinking”
doesn’t fly; clients see through it and won’t pay for
it exclusively. That means that for all the userness
in our work, the designerness is as important. How
do you describe design thinking and the value of
designers when advising non-design executives?
Richard: Sharing examples is key, as is enabling
the executives to experience the value. Both facili-
tate countering “cultural constraints” and “power
relations” of old, as discussed in the article on
African design education. Those old constraints die
hard, as suggested by Don Norman. He argues that
much of the integration of new media that increas-
es user participation is “still based upon a distort-
ed view of commerce: We make it, you consume
it. The media moguls think of this as a one-way
transmission: They would have their companies
producing, with us everyday people consuming.”
J a n u a r y + F e b r u a r y 2 0 10
Jon: Yeah, but it’s not just media moguls who
think this way. All of us are guilty of taking a
“heroic design” approach, one that puts us at the
center of the world and mandates use, consump-
tion, and our own twisted form of “user experi-
ence.” Design comes with a huge responsibility,
and part of that responsibility is realizing when to
get the hell out of the way. The piece on African
design education you mention describes a 50-year
history in Africa of questioning “progress” as
interactions
defined by the West. We might be able to act as
catalytic agents in Africa, but we’re going to need
to realize that the West’s idea of how life should
80
be—a small family, a house in the suburbs, and
all the technology we could possibly eat—just isn’t
going to fly there.
Richard: In past issues, we’ve published articles
that contain powerful examples of the impact of
corporate failure to heed such advice. But not all
organizations can benefit more comprehensively
from designers, good design, design thinking, and
user participation. And what to do to achieve such
benefit will vary, since the nature of corporate
“cultural constraints” and “power relations” vary.
Jon: What type of organization won’t benefit from
good design?
Richard: It is really a function of readiness.
Some companies are in markets where good
design doesn’t yet matter; customers are willing
to tolerate poor design, and executives might be
right to hold off investing much in it. Readiness
scales galore have appeared over the years, some
addressing the readiness of the market, others
addressing the readiness of the organization. Yet
most organizations can benefit from design think-
ing applied in areas in which analytical thinking
dominates.
Jon: It’s a good point. The readiness of a com-
pany has a lot to do with the readiness of the
industry, but all of that is contextually sensitive,
and I wonder who is driving culture. In the past,
it’s been marketing or technology. Based on the
state of cultural constraints and power relations
you mentioned, do you see a future for designers to
actually drive readiness? Maybe we shouldn’t wait
around for people to come to us as we gain trac-
tion in making fundamental and strategic deci-
sions. Maybe we should be the catalyst for change.
Richard: Designers should be the catalyst for
change, but in most companies, they are forced
to be reactive rather than “involved and proactive
from the beginning”—words from Jonathan Lazar’s
forum. Designers will be considered primarily as
stylists by many, for a long time to come.
—Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko
DOi: 10.1145/1649475.1649495
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00