VOLUME XVI .

3
|
MAY + JUNE 2009
Association for
Computing Machinery
Design Fiction
Cover Story By Bruce Sterling
MIT Press ad for Interactions S09-66 - 1/2 page - 7 x 4.74 - May/Jun 2009
Design Meets Disability
Graham Pullin
This book will change your emotional response to designing
for disability forever, as you discover that designs can celebrate
a medical necessity, as in elegant and fashionable eyewear
from Cutler and Gross, or openly express functionality, as in the
carbon fber running legs sported by Aimee Mullins.
Bill Moggridge, Cofounder of IDEO and author of Designing
Interactions
336 pp., 114 color illus., $29.95 cloth
Simulation and Its Discontents
Sherry Turkle
with additional essays by William J. Clancey,
Stefan Helmreich, Yanni A. Loukissas, and Natasha Myers
As computer simulation techniques have been transforming
the practices of designers, engineers, and scientists, Sherry
Turkle and her collaborators have been operating, at close
quarters and over an extended period, as ethnographers
among the simulators. This long-awaited volume presents their
observations and refections. It is an indispensable source of
insights into the changing nature of learning, research, and
expert practice in the digital era. William J. Mitchell, MIT and
author of Worlds Greatest Architect
Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life series, edited by John Maeda
208 pp., $22 cloth
The Allure of Machinic Life
CYBERNETICS, ARTIFICIAL LIFE,
AND THE NEW AI
John Johnston
John Johnston is to be applauded for his engag-
ing and eminently readable assessment of the
new, interdisciplinary sciences aimed at design-
ing and building complex, life-like, intelligent
machines. Mark Bedau, Reed College, and
Editor-in-Chief, Artifcial Life
494 pp., 51 illus., $40 cloth
Now in Paper
Participatory IT Design
DESIGNING FOR BUSINESS AND
WORKPLACE REALITIES
Keld Bdker, Finn Kensing,
and Jesper Simonsen
This book provides an excellent argument and
a repertoire of well-tested methods for an early
design phase in IT systems development.
Thomas Binder, School of Architecture, Copen-
hagen
360 pp., $26 paper
The MIT Press
To order call 800-405-1619 http://mitpress.mit.edu
You've come a Iong way.
Share what you've Iearned.
ACM has partnered wlth MentorNet, the award-wlnnlng nonprot e-mentorlng network ln englneerlng,
sclence and mathematlcs. MentorNet's award-wlnnlng Dne-on-Dne Mentoring Programs palr ACM
student members wlth mentors from lndustry, government, hlgher educatlon, and other sectors.
- Communlcate by emall about career goals, course work, and many other toplcs.
- Spend [ust 20 minutes a week - and make a huge dlnerence ln a student's llfe.
- Take part ln a llvely onllne communlty of professlonals and students all over the world.
Make a dierence to a student in your eId.
Sign up today at: www.mentornet.net
Iind out more at: www.acm.org/mentornet
MentorNet's sponsors lnclude 3M Poundatlon, ACM, Alcoa Poundatlon, Agllent Technologles, Amylln Pharmaceutlcals, 8echtel Group Poundatlon, Clsco
Systems, Hewlett-Packard Company, |8M Corporatlon, |ntel Poundatlon, Lockheed Martln Space Systems, Natlonal Sclence Poundatlon, Naval Pesearch
Laboratory, Nv|D|A, Sandla Natlonal Laboratorles, Schlumberger, S.D. 8echtel, 1r. Poundatlon, Texas |nstruments, and The Henry Luce Poundatlon.
THE ACM
A. M. TURlNG
AwARD
ACM, INTEL, AND
GOOGLE CONGRATULATE
BARBARA H. LISKOV
FOR HER FOUNDATIONAL
INNOVATIONS IN
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
DESIGN THAT HAVE MADE
SOFTWARE MORE
RELIABLE AND HER
MANY CONTRIBUTIONS
TO BUILDING AND
INFLUENCING THE
PERVASIVE COMPUTER
SYSTEMS THAT POWER
DAILY LIFE.
BY THE COMMUNITY...
FROM THE COMMUNITY...
FOR THE COMMUNITY...
ntol is a proud sponsor o tno ACM A. M. Turing Award, and
is ploasod to |oin tno oommunity in oongratulating tnis yoar's
rooipiont, Proossor Barbara Liskov. Hor oontributions lio at
tno oundation o all modorn programming languagos and
oomplox distributod sotwaro. Barbara's work oonsistontly
rohoots rigorous problom ormulation and sound matnomatios,
a potont oombination sno usod to oroato lasting solutions."
kndraW k. 6hIan
VIra FrasIdanI, 6orporaIa TarhnoIogy roup
IrarIor, InIaI asaarrh
For more information see www.inte|.com/research.
"Googlo is doligntod to nolp rooognizo Proossor Liskov or nor
rosoaron oontributions in tno aroas o data abstraotion, modular
aronitooturos, and distributod oomputing undamontalsaroas
o undamontal importanoo to Googlo. Wo aro proud to bo a
sponsor o tno ACM A. M. Turing Award to rooognizo and onoour-
ago tno rosoaron tnat is ossontial not only to oomputor soionoo,
but to all tno holds tnat dopond on its oontinuod advanoomont.
kIIrad Z. 8parIor
VIra FrasIdanI, asaarrh and
8parIaI InIIIaIIvas, oogIa
For more information, see http.//www.goog|e.com/corporate/
inex.htm| an http.//research.goog|e.com/.
FIaaacIaI s0pport for the k0M k. M. I0rIa kWard Is provIded hy IateI 0orporatIoa aad 6ooIe.
EXPERIENCES | PEOPLE | TECHNOLOGY
ON THE COVER: Photograph of Bruce Sterling
by Guido van Nispen.
PAGE 27 PAGE 16
Rethinking the Fundamentals
Many view usability as the root of interaction.
Perhaps we need to rethink the essence of our
profession?
FEATURE
6 Is Usability Obsolete?
Katie Minardo Scott
SUSTAINABLY OURS
12 User Centered Is Off Center
Eric Schweikardt
FEATURE
16 As We May Speak:
Metaphors, Conceptual Blends,
and Usability
Charles Hannon
The Importance of Constraints
As the gritty realities of science fiction become true,
we must consider the role constraints play in our
day-to-day work.
COVER STORY
20 Design Fiction
Bruce Sterling
(P)REVIEW
25 Hes At It Again:
Eyeball-blasting Laser-colored
Neural Helmets
Ryan Jahn
FEATURE
27 Whats Design Got to Do with
the World Financial Crisis?
Elaine Ann
FEATURE
31 Learning from Activists:
Lessons for Designers
Tad Hirsch
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
3
VOLUME XVI.3 MAY + JUNE 2009
http:// interactions.acm.org
PAGE 68 PAGE 42
Three Very Different Design Paths
Creativity is manifested in very different ways.
These pieces explore extremely dissimilar paths
toward new ideas.
FEATURE
34 Physical Games,
Beyond Mini-games
Andrew Hieronymi
TIMELINES
42 Wikipedia:
The Happy Accident
Joseph Reagle
UNDER DEVELOPMENT
46 Reconstructing Australian
Aboriginal Governance by
Systems Design
Peter Radoll
Models and Principles
Relevant to Design
Models help us understand; understanding helps us
formulate principles.
Ps AND Qs
50 Digital Order:
Just Over the Horizon or at the
End of the Rainbow?
Elizabeth F. Churchill
ON MODELING
54 Models of Models
Hugh Dubberly
THE WAY I SEE IT
61 Compliance and Tolerance
Donald A. Norman
LIFELONG INTERACTIONS
66 Persons with Disabilities and
Intergenerational Universal
Usability
Paul T. Jaeger
TRUE TALES
68 Ships in the Night (Part I):
Design Without Research?
Steve Portigal
INTERACTIONS CAFE
72 On Changing the World While
Paying the Bills
Jon Kolko, Richard Anderson
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
o
n
t
h

+

M
o
n
t
h

Y
Y
Y
Y
EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
Richard Anderson & Jon Kolko
GROUP PUBLISHER
Scott Delman
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Diane Crawford
MANAGING EDITOR Denise Doig
ART DIRECTOR Andrij Borys
ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Alicia Kubista
ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR Brian Greenberg
PRODUCTION MANAGER Lynn DAddesio Kraus
COPY EDITOR Kate Crane
FORUM EDITORS
Lifelong Interactions: Alison Druin
On Modeling: Hugh Dubberly
Sustainably Ours: Eli Blevis
Timelines: Jonathan Grudin
Under Development: Gary Marsden
(P)REVIEW EDITOR Alex Wright
COLUMNISTS
Ps and Qs: Elizabeth Churchill
The Way I See It: Don Norman
True Tales: Steve Portigal
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Elaine Ann, Dave Cronin, Ame Elliott, Marc Rettig,
Katie Minardo Scott, Lauren Serota, Molly Steenson,
Mark Vanderbeeken
FOUNDING EDITORS
John Rheinfrank & Bill Hefley
interactions (ISSN 1072-5220) is published
six times a year in January, March, May, July,
September, and November, by the
Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.,
2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701, New York, NY 10121-0701.
Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY 10001 and at
additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Please send
address changes to interactions, ACM, 2 Penn Plaza,
Suite 701, New York, NY 10121-0701.
PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE
http://interactions.acm.org
EDITORIAL INFORMATION
To contact interactions, email
our editors at eic@interactions.acm.org,
or mailbag@interactions.acm.org
The EiCs generally respond to inquiries, including
responses to unsolicited manuscripts, in 2-3 weeks.
ADVERTISING
ACM Advertising Department
2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701,
New York, NY 10121-0701
(212) 869-7440 FAX: (212) 869-0481
DIRECTOR OF MEDIA SALES
Jennifer Ruzicka
jen.ruzicka@acm.org
PUBLICATIONS BOARD
Co-Chairs: Ronald F. Boisvert and Holly Rushmeier
Board Members: Gul Agha, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon,
Jack Davidson, Nikil Dutt; Carol Hutchins, Ee-peng Lim,
M. Tamer Ozsu, Vincent Shen, Mary Lou Soffa,
Ricardo Baeza-Yates
PUBLICATIONS OFFICE
ACM, 2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701
New York, New York 10121-0701, USA
+1-212-869-7440
FAX: +1-212-869-0481
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Various subscription rates are available;
please see the interactions Website at
http://interactions.acm.org/subscribe.php
for more information.
Single copies are $13.00 to members,
$20.00 to nonmembers. Please send orders prepaid
plus $4.00 for shipping and handling to ACM, General
Post Office, P.O. Box 30777, New York, NY 10087-0777
or call +1-212-626-0500. For credit card orders,
call +1-800-342-6626. Order personnel available
8:30-4:30 EST. After hours, please leave message
and order personnel will return your call.
CHANGE OF ADDRESS
acmcoa@acm.org
For other services, questions, or information:
acmhelp@acm.org
INTERACTIONS ADVISORY BOARD
Jonathan Arnowitz, Michelle Berryman, Apala Lahiri
Chavan, Shelley Evenson, Richard Gref
ACM Copyright Notice
Copyright 2009 by Association for Computing
Machinery, Inc. (ACM). Permission to make digital or
hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or
classroom use is granted without fee provided that cop-
ies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial
advantage and that copies bear this notice and full
citation on the first page. Copyright for components of
this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise,
to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists,
requires prior specific permission and/or fee.
Request permission to publish from:
Publications Dept., ACM, Inc.,
Fax +1-212-869-0481 or email permissions@acm.org
For other copying of articles that carry a code at the
bottom of the first or last page or screen display,
copying is permitted provided that the per-copy fee
indicated in the code is paid through the Copyright
Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers,
MA 01923, +1-978-750-8400, +1-978-750-4470 (fax).
A BIMONTHLY PUBLICATION OF ACM
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
5
Richard Anderson
Jon Kolko
Welcome
Interactions: The Need to
Consider the Lasting Human
Consequences of Our Work
In our cover story, Bruce Sterling notes: We have
entered an unimagined culture. In this world of
search engines and cross-links, of keywords and
networks, the solid smokestacks of yesterdays dis-
ciplines have blown out. Instead of being armored
in technique, or sheltered within subculture,
design and science fiction have become like two
silk balloons, two frail, polymorphic pockets of hot
air, floating in a generally tainted cultural atmo-
sphere. A tough message, for both technologists
and designers, as Sterlings reference to hot air is
not to be taken lightly. Weve reached a point in
culture, and in the design of all things that make
up culture, where discussion of innovation, trans-
formation, and other triple, bottom-line business
colloquialisms has run its course. In Sterlings
words, we need to stop thinking outside (or even
inside) the money box, and instead consider the
lasting human consequences of our work; we need
to imagine, and think creatively, about society, cul-
ture, and humanity.
His text is not hyperbole, and it is not easier
said than done; following Sterling, Tad Hirsch
paints a broad stroke of the modern contesta-
tional designerdesigners engaged in protest.
Hirschs work is juxtaposed with that of Andrew
Hieronymi, who has exhibited the raw creativity
Sterling demands. Hieronymi presents a return
to the basics, introducing subtle games that
are linked directly to the physical and gestural.
Hirsch, Hieronymi, and Sterling are all offering
views into the same world of design outside of the
context and confines of businessa place where
revenue is simply not part of the equation.
This issue also brings a poignant reminder to
those of us in the United States that our discipline
is global, and the implications of our work reso-
nate halfway across the globe. Elaine Ann, practic-
ing in Hong Kong, describes the manner in which
the word design has taken on new connotations
with respect to the economic meltdown that is
now plaguing the developed world. As she says,
With so much financial confusion, it is impossible
to create a holistic picture of what is going on.
A model of this systema designerly model
could have helped better parse and predict some
of the financial issues weve seen over the past
few months. Hugh Dubberly offers a model of
models, entering a metatheoretical wonderworld
of visualization as a method of making sense of
complexity.
A strand that can be woven throughout these
thoughts is that of usabilityand the demise
of design solely for ease of use or efficiency.
Katie Minardo Scott, Charles Hannon, and Eric
Schweikardt paint three very different pictures
of an increasing trend away from usability engi-
neering as a discipline and UCD as a process. The
connection between usability and creativity is
tenuous, and it can be perhaps argued that the
discipline of interactions is rapidly outgrowing its
traditional HCI roots.
From creative thinking to the obsolescence of
usability, this issue presents a continual conversa-
tion around the changing nature of the interac-
tions game. The stakes have increased, as has the
complexity. Sterling claims that what we are real-
ly experiencing now is a massive cybernetic hem-
orrhage in ways of knowing the world. We trust
this issue will help you begin to know the world a
bit better, via a filter of experiences, people, and
technology.
Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko
eic@interactions.acm.org
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516017
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00
[1] Whitaker, B.
Technologies
Untanglers: They really
make it work. The New
York Times, 8 July 2007.
usability more difficult, if not
irrelevant in the new paradigm.
Products Have Become
Too Complex
First, the idea of a computer
system has obviously changed
significantly. Initially, usability
and HCI research methods were
developed to tackle stand-alone
systems or individual devices
or programs. As computers
evolved, we tweaked our tech-
niques to work with networked
applications, linking a single
provider to a group of consum-
ers. Computing has continued
to evolve, with users now inter-
acting with a vast network of
hosts, services, applications,
and platforms. Most first-world
inhabitants use this intercon-
nected infrastructure on a daily
basis, often without noticing the
underlying infrastructure until
the system breaks down.
Take the example of a location-
based service, like the Urban
Spoon application for the iPhone.
The application provides real-
time restaurant recommenda-
tions based on their proximity
to your current location. The
user launches the application
on the handset, which identi-
fies your location via GPS. The
system returns potential res-
taurant ideas based on location
and ratings in their database
(i.e., highly rated restaurants are
shown more often). With a shake
of the phone, recommendations
appear, cleverly, like reels in a
Usability and HCD grew to prom-
inence with the expansion of the
Web: Weve written the stan-
dards, developed the testing pro-
tocols, and had a hand in design-
ing the leading systems. While
the roots of the field are much
older, growth has been signifi-
cant in the past 15 years. Weve
gone from invisible wonks to key
technology untanglers [1].
Unfortunately, our field has
barely evolved in that time
frame. While the computing
universe has shifted dramati-
cally, weve clung to the same
methods, advice, and processes.
Without significant changes, the
growth and influence of our field
is unlikely to continue. Although
the New York Times named usabil-
ity a hot emerging career field
in 2007, in many ways the height
of usability has already passed
us. Current usability work is a
relic of the 1990s, an artifact of
an earlier computer ecosystem,
out of step with contemporary
computing realities.
Usability can no longer keep
up with computing: The products
are too complex, too pervasive,
and too easy to build. And in our
absence, users and engineers are
beginning to take over the design
process. Five trends demon-
strate the growing gap between
usability theory and commercial
practicethe new realities of
computing havent been truly
embraced by the usability com-
munity. The trends are, at a
minimum, making traditional
slot machine. The Urban Spoon
collects ratings and reviews
from users, as well as aggregated
information from other sites like
CitySearch and Yelp.
There are at least six pieces to
the enterprise of Urban Spoon.
First, there are three traditional
interface components: the store
interface for purchasing and
downloading the application
(managed by Apple), the slot-
machine interface for request-
ing and reviewing restaurants
(part of the iPhone application,
from Urban Spoon), and the rat-
ing interface (part of the Urban
Spoon website). But there are
also three unseen infrastructure
components that affect the appli-
cations usability: the quality of
the restaurant data (e.g., how
many restaurants are available
in any given area), the resolution
of the GPS satellites (e.g., does
it know Im in Boston, or does it
realize Im in Somerville near
Davis Square?), and the respon-
siveness of the system (e.g., do
new restaurants appear in a
timely fashion?).
Even if the system was per-
fect in every other way, a major
breakdown in any of these six
components would cripple the
rest of the system in the eyes of
users. Imagine a recommenda-
tion system with perfect GPS but
with a very limited restaurant
database; similarly, imagine if the
system couldnt resolve your loca-
tion in less than a mile, making
the quality of the actual restau- i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
6
Rethinking the Fundamentals
Is Usability Obsolete?
Katie Minardo Scott
scott@maya.com | MAYA Design
rant database irrelevant. In both
cases, users would cancel the ser-
vice because it just didnt work.
The current suite of usability
methods is inadequate for this
new, enterprise-reliant context.
Testing an enterprise application
is vastly different from testing a
standalone product. How do we
accurately test the usability of
an overall enterprise, like Urban
Spoon, while its still in devel-
opment? How do we ensure it
passes both the ease-of-use and
utility benchmarks that users
require? We could easily test
narrow portions of the applica-
tion using traditional techniques:
Lab testing could evaluate the
process of entering constraints
or purchasing the application.
We could even test the latency
or resolution alternatives in
a simulation (e.g., is 100-foot
resolution adequate for dense
urban settings? Is the resolu-
tion requirement equal in both
urban and suburban settings?).
Unfortunately, the sum of these
narrow tests would not be able to
get at the true value of the ser-
vice or its real-world usability.
We see sophisticated clients
who still focus their design on
lab testing and scripted usability,
when its not really appropriate
for their networked environment.
Certainly, there is a narrow role
for sanity checking the usabil-
ity of each interface within the
enterprise, and there are naive
clients who see usability testing
as shorthand for all user-cen-
tered design. But scripted usabil-
ity testing forces the product into
unnaturally small pieces, tested
in series. Worse, it means you
are setting yourself up to miss
the larger design issues (e.g.,
does the latency make the core
idea impossible? Does actual
context of use make this feature
meaningless, or does the size of
the hardware make this product
unattractive?). Lab testing, once
regarded as the gold standard,
isnt meaningful for most current
products. Products are no longer
rooted in singular settings;
they are collaborative, interwo-
ven, and interdependent. To be
accurate and relevant, the test-
ing must be mobile, modular, and
contextual (none of which can be
accomplished in a lab).
With service-based, coopera-
tive enterprise applications, we
are limited to hacked-together
usability methods (i.e., a series
of narrow simulations) or
rough design estimation (i.e.,
a combination of contextual
studies and design research) to
try to understand the benefits
and pitfalls with the system.
And these enterprise chal-
lenges are becoming ubiquitous:
location-based services like
Urban Spoon, social-networking
applications like Facebook and
Twitter, or third-party platform
sellers like eBay and Amazon.
We need to replace our nar-
row usability methods with
rich design methods that can
address these types of enter-
prise-design challenges.
The Urban Spoon application for the iPhone provides real-time restaurant recommendations based on proximity to your current location.
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
7
FEATURE
acteristics like heart rate or skin
temperature to calculate fitness
metrics. The sensors can be used
during athletic or day-to-day
activities, or can be repurposed
as health-reporting tools. There
are complex chips and sensors
in late-model cars that can track
our driving behavior, monitor
our safety, and improve our driv-
ing skills.
The point here is not that
computing has moved into the
domain of automobiles, fitness,
or music. Its that these com-
puting applications themselves
are pervasive: They live in a
variety of different environ-
ments, scenarios, and contexts
of the users choosing. While
context of use has always been
a part of usability, the vari-
ability is making our job much
more difficult. In the past, we
could study and then simulate
the anticipated context of use:
an office, a vehicle, a kitchen,
or a school. Even if the context
were outside the norm (e.g.,
an operating room rather than
an office), we could reasonably
estimate the context as a cat-
egory. In general, the per-device
variability was much lower.
Most contexts of use today,
however, live in the long tail.
The increasing mobility and
ubiquity of devices makes pre-
dicting the context of use, and
thus its usability, more difficult.
Sure, we can test the interface in
an operating room, or in a yoga
studio, or in the airportpark-
ing lot. Besides the obvious cost
of repeating our tests, how can
we even be sure weve chosen
the right contexts as our bench-
mark? These three examples
represent a raw sampling of the
1,529 potential contexts of use
for the product. And as the con-
Computing Has Become
Too Pervasive
As computing devices get smaller
and more pervasive, they are
used in a broadening array of
contexts. For example, com-
pany email accounts were once
reserved for in-office communi-
cation during the workday. Then,
in the 1990s, employees were
supplied with laptops to work
anytime, anywhere, introduc-
ing the world to the concept of
telecommuting. Now, with email-
enabled phones, employees can
read and respond to work email
at any hour of the day or night,
from truly anywhere.
Beyond mobile phones, there
are thousands of other mobile
computing devices. There are
satellite radios and Internet radi-
os that can be used in the car, on
a boat, out camping, or within
the home. There are fitness sys-
tems like the Garmin Forerunner
or the BodyMedia GoWearFit that
sense and track physical char-
text of use varies significantly
from user to user, or day to day,
the homogeneity of usability
testing becomes a poor proxy for
real use. And, again, perhaps the
richest data comes from niche
contexts within the long tail
(e.g., ice rinks, car repair shops,
hospital waiting rooms). We need
methods that can anticipate and
account for unexpected and con-
tinuously changing contexts of
use. And we need to see the rich-
ness and variability as an oppor-
tunity for universal design.
Products Are Too Easy To Build
Introducing a product or service
used to involve an inevitable
production lag. With traditional
hardware products, there were
upfront design and development
costs, plus the huge production
costs. The factory must be built
or reconfigured, new machinery
or dies developed, and work-
ers hired or trained. The initial
delays are considerable, and
they are repeated each time a
change is made.
As we all know, cycle time
has been shortened dramati-
cally for software-based prod-
ucts and services. While the
early design and development
phase still exists, the deploy-
ment phase is essentially zero.
Design and development can
now be intensely iterative, with
little additional cost. Downloaded
applications are upgraded with
weekly service patches; new
features appear, often without
notice, within Web applications;
Web services are refined almost
hourly as errors are fixed. In the
growing open source community
especially, the invisible hand
of shared revision and correction
has dramatically accelerated the
pace of development. A study
Usability and design
become add-on fixes or
upgrades, rather than
initial product drivers.
We need to make
usability and design
an integral part of the
development process,
at whatever rate its
conducted.
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
8
Rethinking the Fundamentals
[2] Viergas,
Watternberg, D.
Studying Cooperation
and Conflict between
Authors with History
Flow Visualizations.
Working Paper, CHI
2004, Vienna, Austria,
2004,
[3] von Hippel,
E. Democratizing
Innovation Cambridge:
MIT Press, 2005. 19-22.
of intentional errors inserted
in Wikipedia showed they were
removed in less than two minutes
[2]. While errors in Wikipedia are
easier to fix than errors within
programs, the fast pace is still
indicative of a greater trend.
Certainly, the longer cycles still
exist for products heavy in indus-
trial design. Early vehicle GPS
systems cost thousands of dollars
and relied on embedded media.
The early systems couldnt be
upgraded as available data
improved, making the naviga-
tion system look embarrassingly
obsolete long before the vehicle
body did. Even the agile and
vaunted Apple still releases its
hardware on annual cycles. But
as more physical products have
embedded software and auxiliary
services, they can essentially
become self-correcting as well.
Were beginning to see this trend
extending to other devices: televi-
sion receivers that reset them-
selves to receive new channels,
GPS systems that learn shortcut
routes from other drivers, and
gaming systems that update and
patch in new features.
But this quick iteration cycle
is a threat to traditional usability
in two ways: Deployment begins
to trump testing, and upgrades
begin to overrule design.
With such short development
cycles, deployment can eas-
ily replace even the cheapest
or most realistic testing. Beta
tools that would have once lived
only as paper prototypes can be
introduced as rough products
and then refined to find a wider
audience. The beta prototype can
simply be reworked until it is a
marketplace success, without
any formal usability or design.
While this may not be the most
efficient development method,
it often appears to be. Adding
design tasks, usability tests, or
contextual studies easily looks
costly and unnecessary. While
those tests could provide rich
insight into why a service is fail-
ing for users or how it could be
improved, that data is qualita-
tive and formative. The pace of
iteration reinforces an existing
usability challenge: making a
case for qualitative findings
when tomes of quantitative data
are available.
Second, the fast iteration
cycles also reduce the focus on
upfront design workshifting
the focus toward ongoing cor-
rection and revision. The lure
of later revisions makes each
individual deployment less
crucial. Unpopular design and
usability issues can be pushed
off indefinitely to be part of a
big redesign that never mate-
rializes. Usability annoyances
can be ignored until they become
entrenched parts of the product.
If the system works on met-
rics that the owners care about,
there is a decreasing pressure
to get it right. Usability and
design become add-on fixes or
upgrades, rather than initial
product drivers.
We need to make usability and
design an integral part of the
development process, at whatev-
er rate its conducted. The speed
of agile development and the
constant deployment pressure
must be embraced as an oppor-
tunity: for rich data, for iterative
design cycles, and for immediate
answers.
Users Can Design Their
Own Products
An ever-expanding base of users
are repurposing or reimagining
how their products are used by
modifying, tweaking, adding,
building, etc. This work was once
limited to a small population of
hackers, but is expanding to a
larger segment of the user base.
According to research on user-
driven innovation, these adapta-
tions can represent up to 40 per-
cent of the market. The research
also shows that while many of
these modifications are small,
their makers are often leading
users. The user-driven innova-
tions signal future trends or
unmet needs in the broader mar-
ket. This adaptation also causes
the double usability challenge.
First, the system must provide
users a straightforward way to
make changes (e.g., APIs, help
files, parts libraries). The second
challenge is guiding new users
to make their new products
usable as well, for their own use
or potential customers.
The online multiplayer game
World of Warcraft provides a
great example of user-driven
innovation with a low barrier to
entry. Users download the main
game, pay a subscription service,
and can interact with other play-
ers through an online metaverse.
Users develop their own collab-
orative experiences within the
WoW environment: joining guilds
to team up with other players,
choosing their character and
style of play, and deciding their
path through the games quests.
A subset of highly engaged users
also builds and maintains a com-
plete infrastructure outside of
WoW to support their guild- and
individual-game play. There are
loot-tracking systems, project-
management tools for planning
large-scale events, and a myriad
of UI modifications that enhance
game play. These complex modi-
fications are built, downloaded, i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
9
FEATURE
methods that can identify lead
users, their unique characteris-
tics, and homegrown innovations
in order to remain relevant.
Engineers Can Design
on Their Own
When the usability field explod-
ed, the Web was a nascent tool
with few standard paradigms.
Usabilitys rise (and potential
fall) mirrors the Web closely.
Early on, usability was needed
to evaluate potential pitfalls
with existing sites and propose
guidelines to design against. The
Nielsen/Norman Group made
a mint by providing detailed
guidelines for specific contexts:
for e-commerce, site maps, gift-
certificate workflows, corporate
intranets, etc.
And while these guides are
useful, there is now a flood of
successful examples to emu-
late and an archive of research
to mine. We have discovered,
tested, and refined the best ways
to design basic tasks: organize a
form, display a pull-down menu,
define pagination, highlight items
in a list, etc. Certainly, usabil-
ity pioneers like Jakob Nielsen
deserve a hat tip for laying the
crucial groundwork. Looking
forward, however, we can rea-
sonably assume that many of
the simple problems have been
solved and we are working up the
ladder of complexity. If many of
the basic usability problems are
fixed, are more complex assess-
ment methods needed to address
the more complex issues that
remain?
Second, many of the tra-
ditional usability methods
quantify data that we no longer
care about. Lab tests, heuristic
evaluations, and computational
models focus solely on goals like
revised, enhanced, and shared
through open source forums.
Similarly, less tech-savvy users
also have the ability to make
modifications and produce
their own products. A plethora
of online tools has allowed users
with limited technical skills to
publish, communicate, create,
and organize. Even 10 years ago,
publishing a blog or sharing pho-
tos required dedicated software
and a certain level of expertise.
Sites like Blogger, Facebook, and
Flickr provide usable streamlined
functionality, templates, work-
flows, and platforms that allow
novice users to produce content
and create their own sites. New
parents provide baby blogs for
extended friends and family, for
example. While Facebook and
Blogger pages may not have high
design style, they do allow nov-
ice users to publish content and
customize their pages in sophis-
ticated ways.
These users are engaged, inno-
vative, and creative, but they
are unlikely to be understood or
addressed using standard usabil-
ity methods. Again, we face the
variability problem and the long
tail. Standard usability methods
rely on the similarity between
participants (e.g., 90 percent of
users did X) rather than focus-
ing on individual innovations or
usage patterns. The novelty and
insight of the lead users can get
lost within the aggregate of the
usability collection. And we can
only anticipate the modification
barriers to be reduced further
and the percentage of hackers to
continue to grow. If user-driven
innovation and content continue
increasing, anecdotal evidence
will begin to outweigh the gener-
alized statistics of usability. We
will need to shift toward design
efficiency, accuracy, and initial
ease-of-use. While these metrics
were relevant early on, they are
rudimentary at best. Common
system-design techniques like
use cases and scenarios should
make fast, straightforward, and
learnable UI design a given.
Again, there are thousands of rel-
evant, successful, timely exam-
ples to baseline against. And the
new metrics like affect, sticki-
ness, buy-in, loyalty, and engage-
ment are nearly impossible to
test within the confines of classic
usability. How can we revise our
core tool set toward the new met-
rics? How do we reprioritize the
services we teach, use, and sell
based on the current environ-
ment (rather than the past)?
Lastly, with the growth of the
Web and usability, clients are
likely to know the underlying
usability principles, be familiar
with the core heuristics, and
have already solved the obvious
gotchas in their products. They
may even have in-house usability
departments, labs, and protocols.
Fewer and fewer clients need to
be reminded of the basics. The
heuristics we test for and base-
line against are pervasive; at
some level, weve put ourselves
out of business. We need to pro-
vide more to clients than the
same basic assessment from a
decade ago. But how do we work
with embedded usability depart-
ments and dated testing proto-
cols to continue improving our
clients products? Are different
methods, different deliverables,
or different workflows needed to
address the new usability?
What Do We Do Now,
Knowing Its Terminal?
Given these five impending
trends, the field of usability must i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
10
Rethinking the Fundamentals
change to survive. We cant con-
tinue our practice on the current
trajectory, pretending the envi-
ronment around us is static. If
our research methods dont cur-
rently feel outmoded, they will
within the next five years. These
trends are not mere blips on
the radar, but structural changes
to which we must adapt to avoid
being pushed aside. While the
core principles of usability are
universalactive user involve-
ment, iterative and multidisci-
plinary design, appropriate pair-
ing of users and technologyour
techniques and methods need to
catch up.
Looking more broadly, the
usability community must find
ways to embrace these trends,
rather than hide from them.
Certainly, there are obvious steps
we can take to revise our meth-
ods, retire outdated models, and
retool our own skills. But these
trends also push us away from
artificial testing and toward rich-
er and more realistic data. The
growing pains are hard, but if
we capitalize on these trends, we
can drastically improve the user
experience. Even better, we can
also increase our market influ-
ence, making us better predictors
of user behavior, better advocates
for true user needs, and better
critics of design work.
To our credit, there are glim-
mers of hope, where usability has
shifted to address the new com-
puting environment.
Revising our work to fit with
agile. There are significant
efforts toward agile usability,
to address the challenges of
rapid deployment. Online giants
like Google and Amazon deploy
design alternatives, review the
results, and then revise the
products (often without custom-
ers realizing they were part of a
user test). Groups like 37signals
and A List Apart offer recom-
mendations and guidelines for
adapting user-centered design
within fast engineering cycles.
Using ubiquity to our advan-
tage. Researchers are beginning
to reuse artifacts from the
always on culture for design
purposes. Public photo-sharing
sites like Flickr can be mined
for photographs (and timelines)
surrounding specific events or
topics. In our MAYA work, we
used Flickr to identify what
visitors photographed at trade
shows (i.e., to determine what
content was engaging and what
was ignored). Flickr provided
insight into many different
trade shows, users, and patterns
that would have been impos-
sible with other methods.
Breaking our labs into pieces.
There are significant efforts
to break down usability labs
into smaller, configurable
components. Hardware costs
have dropped significantly,
and lightweight testing suites
like Silverback have drastically
reduced the price of data collec-
tion and analysis. Companies
are shifting toward the lab in
a bag model, where teams are
dispatched with a prototype, an
augmented laptop, and a video
or still camera. The lab can
travel to the participants and
their context, rather than try-
ing to squeeze participants (and
their whole external life) into
the lab.
Making our methods contextual.
Guerilla methods continue to
evolve, improving the data while
reducing the overhead. Many of
those methods are contextual,
helping to move research closer
to the field. There are evolving
methods for quick turnaround
testing (with a focus on speed-
ing up the analysis process), lis-
tening labs (which employ con-
textual, user-driven tasks), plus
a ton of revisions and extensions
to paper prototyping. These light-
weight methods are designed
to fit into smaller time frames,
deal with looser requirements, or
make the testing mobile.
Embracing users as designers.
Lastly, there is a growing push
on collaborative research and
participatory design. The users
work closely with the usability
and design team through diary
studies, repeated interviews, and
in-home testing. At MAYA, weve
used long-term participatory
design to develop a home moni-
toring system. We sent users
product kits that they used to
augment their home with sen-
sors (made from Post-it notes).
We asked users to document the
sensors with notes and photo-
graphs, and then we would page
the users with contextual alarms
(e.g., potential leak in the base-
ment) and discuss their response
(e.g., needing to call a plumber).
This usage data helped us to
identify unmet needs in the
market, before we even began to
prototype the system.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katie Minardo Scott is a
designer and researcher at
MAYA Design in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Her work
focuses on organizing
complex information for user understanding
in domains like intelligence analysis, situa-
tional awareness, medical diagnostics, and
engineering research. Scott holds a B.F.A.
in design and a masters in human-comput-
er interaction, both from Carnegie Mellon.
She is also a contributing editor for this
magazine.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516018
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00 i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
11
FEATURE
I listened to a talk by the head of a prominent
design school recently. He explained that the
schools philosophy is to train students to analyze
the needs of their users in order to design reason-
able products. Ethnographies, focus groups, cog-
nitive modeling: Interaction design, at least, has
become a process dedicated to catering to the user.
It seems as though most designers and educators
agree that user-centered design is simply the right
way to do things, and a recent study confirms
its pervasiveness [1]. Its almost a religion in our
design schools, but it is in fact an incomplete phi-
losophy that lacks a sense of responsibility for con-
cerns other than those of the immediate end user.
Although we might wish for word processors
and faucets that are more intuitive, as we look
around in the world, its easy to see daunting,
more serious problems: polluted water, war, exces-
sive atmospheric carbon dioxide, a pressing eco-
nomic crisis. Theres no question that these issues
are, in general, the most serious challenges facing
us today. They threaten our very existence. But
designers have made scant headway in intervening
and creating solutions to these sorts of problems,
and I believe its because of a misguided focus on
the user. An example may help to illustrate.
Imagine a designer tasked to improve a
stores shopping-bag system. Years ago, a big
company might have focused on reducing costs
as the No. 1 criterion for a design task like this,
but imagine that for our task, the company
has chosen a modern, user-centric approach in
the redesign of its bag system. Realizing, per-
haps, that a bag that meets the users needs is
more likely to encourage repeat business, the
designer immerses herself in the experience of
the stores customers. She conducts interviews,
assembles cultural probes, and does targeted
user observation. It wouldnt be at all surpris-
ing if the final design were a thick, disposable
plastic bag. It would meet the users needs of
being inconspicuous, robust, lightweight, and
even comfortable to hold when loaded.
The problem here, of course, is that disposable
plastic bags are clogging landfills and creating air
pollution through their manufacture. These two
(and there are many more) adverse side effects of
the design solutions are far bigger problems than
those experienced by a typical retail customer at
checkout. Our user-centered design process has
answered questions of convenience, comfort, and
cost, but created problems that are far more seri-
ous. It could be argued that the designers analysis
of the users needs was incomplete. After all, no
retail consumer really wants poisonous air or plas-
tic bags littering mountain streams. We might say
user needs must be more explicitly and thoughtful-
ly derived, and that we can attempt to satisfy these
bigger, more critical needs if we can get deeper into
the minds of users. But is that true? Theres a sim-
ple solution users can effect on their own: bringing
their own reusable bag. People arent stupid; they
know this is a great way to make a little dent in a
large problems. But nobody brings their own bag
to Wal-Mart. Smart design decisions can have tre-
mendous influence and can effect change far faster
than the gradual behavior change of individuals.
A popular example of good user-centered design
is the OXO Good Grips line of cooking utensils. It is
successful on many levels: The utensils are easier
for children and people with arthritis to manipu-
late, and they have succeeded wildly in the mar-
ketplace. This is, without a doubt, an example of
great design success. OXO wanted to make the
most money possible, of course, and the design
firm (Smart Design) provided a solution that is
appealing to many. But this universal design pro-
cess results in products for the lowest common
denominator of user, and now everybody, not only
the elderly, ends up with a can opener encased in
a big plastic shell. Santoprene, the soft material
used in the product, is easily recyclable, but OXO
(according to customer service) does not use recy-
cled material in their products. When the number
of items sold runs into the millions, this begins to
seem like a significant waste.
[1] Rothstein, P. and M.
T. Shirey. User-centred
Research. Design
Philosophy Papers 1
(2004).
12
Rethinking the Fundamentals
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
User Centered Is Off Center
Eric Schweikardt
ees68@cornell.edu | Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
13
FORUM SUSTAINABLY OURS
EDITOR
Eli Blevis
eblevis@indiana.edu
[2] Arieff, A. and V.
Casey. Merging
Design, Business, and
Sustainability: The
designers accord.
interactions 15, no. 3
(2008).
[3] Fry, T. Design
Futuring: Sustainability,
Ethics and New
Practice. Oxford: Berg
Publishers, 2008.
[4] Blevis, E.
Sustainable Interaction
Design: Invention and
Disposal, Renewal and
Reuse. Working Paper.
CHI 2007. San Jose,
CA, 2007.
[5] Willis, A.-M.
Editorial. Design
Philosophy Papers 1
(2004).
[6] Norman, D. A.
Human-Centered
Design Considered
Harmful. interactions
12, no. 4 (2005): 14-19.
[7] Architecture for
Humanity, ed. Design
Like You Give a Damn:
Architectural Responses
to Humanitarian Crises.
New York: Metropolis
Books, 2006.
As interaction designers, we often intend to sup-
port the behavior of our users as well as possible.
We might feel that its not our place to suggest
duplex printing, that decisions like that will even-
tually be motivated by cost or by law or by, really,
someone else. And at that point, we can reflect
the change and support the changed view. But this
just marginalizes us. There is nothing wrong with
trying to change behavior. Thats what designers
are supposed to do.
How can we do it? I believe that its up to us, the
design community, to articulate this change. As a
group, we can reduce the emphasis on the user and
broaden the scope of our process. We need a new
direction to guide our work and to educate our stu-
dents in design schools. Don Norman has proposed
activity-centered design [6], but this is similar to
the current philosophy, with more context taken
into account. Inspiring work by Cameron Sinclair
and Kate Stohr might suggest humanity-centered
design [7], but that sounds like were ignoring the
welfare of sea turtles. We could try decentered
design or, centered design, but instead of more
buzzwords, I vote simply for a concerted effort to
take a broader view in our design process. To take
into account the effects of our decisions on non-
users, secondhand users, animals, and the Earth.
To take a wider-eyed, equitable look at design prob-
lems and to take efficiency, sustainability, and pub-
lic safety into account at every design decision.
Its great to make things usable. Im frustrated
trying to open clamshell packaging or redeem-
ing frequent flier miles on a poorly designed Web
page. But many decisions are not win-win; a gain
for a single user is often a loss for others. Design
is not all about ease of use and convenience. We
need to determine when to make things difficult
or unpleasant for users. We must question the
assignments we work on to see whether better
problem formulations exist. This is difficult. But
it is the type of work that designers, more than
anyone else, are capable of doing. Designers are
skilled at working on multiple, concurrent solu-
tions. We are skilled at taking the views of mul-
tiple stakeholders into account. We are often good
at thinking about tangential effects of our work, of
unintended uses and circumstances.
This call to expand our focus just might not
resonate for some interaction designers. The layout
of a GUI might have tremendous influence on an
end users productivity, and the placement of but-
Environmental concerns are clearly a domi-
nant theme here, and designers have recently
started thoughtful and promising initiatives like the
Designers Accord [2] to address problems of sustain-
ability in design, while theorists and educators have
raised these issues in the literature with greater fre-
quency [3, 4]. But my criticism is more than a call for
greater sensitivity to the environment; it is also an
acknowledgement that reliance on our understand-
ing of our users needs has gotten us into this mess.
In her call for papers for a special journal issue on
user-centered design, Anne-Marie Willis explicitly
raises the unanswered question of whether user-
centeredness and conservation are at odds [5].
Another obvious example is the SUV. People
wanted more interior room and a more command-
ing position on the road, so the cars became larger
and larger. Not only do SUVs pollute the atmo-
sphere at an alarming rate, but they also make it
more dangerous for the rest of the people on the
road. Pedestrians and small-car passengers are no
match for a 7,000-pound truck. Wanting to pro-
tect your passengers in the event of an accident
is understandable, but a valuation of the worth
of human lives is not something that should take
place on the floor of a car dealership. Its 2009; we
understand this now. But what about Detroit? It
seems they built their businesses around users
immediate desires with no planning for the
future. And now we are all paying the price.
SUVs and Wal-Mart are obvious examples of
off-center design. But to bring the discussion
closer to home, consider the desktop printer soft-
ware I installed yesterday. Its interface is probably
the result of thoughtful user testing. I imagine
the interaction designers compiled data reflecting
the most often used settings and set the defaults
accordingly, which seems reasonable. But the
defaults are for single-sided printing at high qual-
ity, using more paper and ink than is probably
necessary for most tasks. On the operating system
that I am using, those defaults cannot be changed.
Centering design decisions around what a user
wants, or even what a user needs, is misguided.
Giving precedence to a single person, or group
of people, instead of taking everything else into
account as well, is the root of our major problems.
Side effects from poor design decisions are killing
us. This might be obvious on a political, social,
or even economic level, but it is every bit as ger-
mane in design. i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
14
Rethinking the Fundamentals
[8] Dreyfuss, H.
Designing for People.
New York: Paragraphic
Books, 1995.
[9] Norman, D. A. The
Design of Everyday
Things. New York,
Doubleday, 1990.
tons might not affect anything else. But our cur-
rent focus on the user didnt originate with these
stereotypical interaction design tasksthey were
introduced in the 1950s by Henry Dreyfuss [8] and
popularized by Don Norman [9]. An oft-cited exam-
ple in Normans book is of his labs experiment to
improve the usability of their lighting system by
rewiring so that the lights are controlled by a bank
of centralized switches, laid out on a diagram of the
floor plan. This makes sense, but is getting around
the inconvenience of having to flip a switch on and
off (or of learning which switch goes with which
light) worth several hundred feet of copper and
PVC wiring? With all things equal, Im in favor of
making things easier to use, but most of the time,
all things are not equal. One might respond to this
criticism that the book was written before concerns
about waste became so urgent. But more likely, the
response would be the research was focused only
on usability issues, ignoring other factors like cost
and material waste. That is precisely the problem.
User-centered design is wrong. But the current
myopic view of a designers responsibilities is not
anyones fault. I dont believe people make short-
sighted decisions out of laziness, but because they
lack the appropriate tools and information to make
better ones. Its not trivial, for example, for design-
ers to accurately predict the side effects of using
plastic or paper wrapping on a product because the
network of impacts and stakeholders involved in
these decisions can be mind-numbingly dense. Not
only do we suffer from a lack of design theory that
takes emergent, complex systems into account,
but we also lack solid analytical theories of these
systems. Life cycle assessments are valuable tools
for understanding long-term effects, but they
are complicated processes and not accessible to
designers making everyday decisions. We will cer-
tainly see new tools that can help us make more
informed decisions, but it would be a long stretch
to imagine that we will be able to use them as a
basis for a prescriptive theory of design.
Engineering offers Design for X as a way of
managing the complexity of design problems,
where X represents one of the -ilities. These are
items in a long list of quality attributes (accessibil-
ity, reliability, usability) that engineers must take
into account in their designs. Due to the size and
scope of some projects, engineers need to switch
focus between different -ilities, improving cer-
tain aspects of their design while balancing each
particular goal. Keeping multiple objectives in
mind without centering on a single one leads us to
a promising model for interaction design. The dis-
tinction is important: Design for usability must
be in our set of -ilities, but centering design prob-
lems on the user leads to off-center solutions.
A call to bring balance into design is nothing
new. Buckminster Fuller is widely credited as a
genius, and his designs were notable for effect-
ing broad change, even if they were ahead of their
time. He called himself a deliberate comprehen-
sivist and advocated a broad view, questioning
the formulation of design problems. Even Don
Norman writes, If everyday design were ruled by
aesthetics, life might be more pleasing to the eye
but less comfortable; if ruled by usability it might
be more comfortable but uglier. If cost or ease of
manufacture dominated, products might not be
attractive, functional, or durable. Clearly, each
consideration has its place. Trouble occurs when
one dominates all the others [9].
These shifts in the focus of design may seem
cyclic. Many of the poor designs that Norman
identifies in The Design of Everyday Things exist
because of a need to save money. Now, after a
period of intense focus on the user, it may appear
that I am advocating a return to the old days of
cutting costs and materials. But this is not the
whole story. I am advocating a balanced design
process that considers as many factors as possible
instead of focusing foremost on the end users
needs. Design is by nature a series of trade-offs,
and while every situation is unique, always trad-
ing in favor of the user is rarely a smart idea.
Acknowledgements
Warm thanks to Eli Blevis, Dan Boyarski, Mark D. Gross,
and Gabe Johnson for their comments and conversations
on this controversial subject.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Eric Schweikardt is the
designer of roBlocks, a modular robotic construc-
tion kit for education. He is also a visiting scientist
at the Computational Synthesis Lab in Mechanical
and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University.
Schweikardt recently completed a Ph.D. in compu-
tational design from the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon
University. His current research looks at complex, concurrent sys-
tems and how our notions of design change when working with
thousands and thousands of tiny robots.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516019
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00 i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
15
FORUM SUSTAINABLY OURS
[1] For a treatment of
blends as a design
principle, see Manuel
Imaz and David Benyon.
Designing with Blends:
Conceptual Foundations
of Human-Computer
Interaction and
Software Engineering.
Cambridge: MIT Press,
2007.
[2] Fauconnier, G. and
M. Turner. The Way
We Think: Conceptual
Blending and the Minds
Hidden Complexities.
New York: Basic Books,
2002.
of packet switching. He said
(rightly) that the Internet is not
something that you just dump
something on. Its not a big truck.
Its a series of tubes. And then
(wrongly), if you dont under-
stand, those tubes can be filled,
and if they are filled, when you
put your message in, it gets in
line and its going to be delayed
by anyone that puts into that
tube enormous amounts of mate-
rial. As an example, Stevens
referred to an email (he called
it an Internet) that allegedly
took several days to reach his
office. He seemed unaware that
the principle of network neutral-
ity, against which he was argu-
ing, would eliminate network
bias and ensure that everyones
Internet got delivered equitably.
But what was most frustrating
to many of us listening to these
remarks was the knowledge that
one more metaphor would have
helped the senator immensely:
the postal metaphor, accord-
ing to which Internet traffic is
broken into a numbered series
of envelopes, sent down that
series of tubes, and reassembled
in the correct order once deliv-
ered to our computers.
Conceptual blend theory can
help explain what went wrong
for Stevens [1]. Whereas the
common definition of metaphor
In 2006 Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens
infamously described the
Internet as a series of tubes.
He spoke in opposition to the
concept of network neutrality,
instead supporting the argu-
ment that large cable and tele-
communications companies
should be allowed to charge a
premium to Amazon, Netflix,
eBay, and other Internet busi-
nesses that require reliable
Internet service. His comments
quickly went viral and he was
mocked by Jon Stewart, Stephen
Colbert, and many others.
Ironically, tubes is not a bad
metaphor for some aspects of
the Internet. Experts often use
pipes to describe connections
between computers and routers,
and liken different pipes diam-
eters to the varieties of network
bandwidth. As we all know, this
is how simple metaphors work:
We use a familiar or shared
concept (pipes) to help our lis-
teners understand something
new (bandwidth).
What got Stevens into trouble
was relying on the metaphor
for further details about how
information moves across the
Internet. His comments dem-
onstrate his understanding of
the pipes metaphor, but they
reveal no grasp of the concept
of a data packet or the process
suggests a single input source
that helps explain the target
(pipes help explain bandwidth),
the theory of blends holds that
figurative language draws from
multiple input sources to cre-
ate a new, blended space. The
blended space selectively bor-
rows properties from each input
source to create new meaning.
An example in the work of Mark
Turner and Gilles Fauconnier
describes a newspaper account
of a catamaran in 1993 that was
trying to beat a San Francisco
to Boston sailing record set by a
clipper in 1853 [2]. The newspa-
per reported that as it went to
press, the catamaran was barely
maintaining a 4.5-day lead over
the clipper. This is an example
of a blend because it presents
something that never existed
(a race between the catamaran
and the clipper), and it does so
by selectively borrowing proper-
ties from each of the two inputs
(from 1853 and from 1993). It
also recruits structure from
the frame of a race that never
occurred; the frame is perfectly
understandable to the reader
because of prior experiences
with such contests. The theory
of blends helps us understand
that when we use metaphor
to convey meaning, we often
are dealing with multiple input i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
16
Rethinking the Fundamentals
As We May Speak:
Metaphors, Conceptual
Blends, and Usability
Charles Hannon
channon@washjeff.edu | Washington & Jefferson College.
spaces rather than just one, and
with frames of reference that are
deeply embedded in our assump-
tions about the shared experi-
ences of our listeners. Our use
of figurative language to explain
how to use our technologies will
be effective only when our lis-
teners (or readers or users) apply
the appropriate (and disregard
the inappropriate) properties
from the various input spaces,
and when they really have had
the antecedent experiences
required by the frames of refer-
ence we employ.
Blends can be seen as a con-
ceptual space in which under-
standing does or does not occur.
In describing the Internet as a
series of tubes, Stevens created
a blend that correctly highlight-
ed the similarities of the tubes/
pipes input domain, namely, the
properties of length, diameter,
joints, etc. He created appro-
priate structure for the blend
by drawing upon a universal
conduit frame in which infor-
mation travels from one point
to another. But he also applied
inappropriate properties from
the pipes input: for instance,
the idea that pipes can be filled
to bursting or clogging, or that
they present a single path from
A to B. His blend was overde-
termined by the pipes input
to the detriment of his overall
understanding. (A similar phe-
nomenon is evident in Stevenss
rhetorical question, Ten mov-
ies streaming across that, that
Internet, and what happens to
your own personal Internet?
Personal Internet may be a
beautiful oxymoron, but it is
also the result of a blend that
is overdetermined by the per-
sonal computer input, itself an
interesting blend). If we mocked
Stevenss comments, it is mainly
because we have access to
other inputsmany of them
also blended constructs such as
World Wide Web, store-and-
forward packet switching, or
routersthat help us better
conceptualize how Internet traf-
fic is managed.
Blends are a natural part of
how the human mind works.
Turner and Fauconnier argue
that blends have defined human
thought since the advent of
language, approximately 50,000
years ago. So when we use figu-
rative language to help people
understand new technologies,
we need to be aware of how
blends function. Moreover, we
must avoid metaphors that inad-
vertently encourage blends that
impede usability.
The concept of an e-book or
e-reader has already become
almost meaningless as a result
of marketers failure to consider
how their metaphors will play
out as blends in the minds of
users. In this metaphor custom-
ers are expected to apply what
they know about traditional
books and electronic media to
a new product, the electronic
book. The blend that results
borrows known properties of
books (they have numbered
pages that can be turned; they
are shelved with other books
in libraries, etc.), and known
properties of digital texts (they
can be delivered electronically;
they are full-text searchable;
etc.). The resulting blend should
then define for the user the
imagined properties of the new
device. In an ideal situation,
the result is improved usability,
with the blend representing
those properties of each source
that are relevant to understand-
FEATURE
L
i
b
r
a
r
y

o
f

C
o
n
g
r
e
s
s
,

P
r
i
n
t
s

&

P
h
o
t
o
g
r
a
p
h
s

D
i
v
i
s
i
o
n
,

F
S
A
/
O
W
I

C
o
l
l
e
c
t
i
o
n
,

r
e
p
r
o
d
u
c
t
i
o
n

n
u
m
b
e
r

L
C
-
U
S
W
3
-
0
3
2
3
5
1
-
E
.
[3] Bezos, J. A
conversation with
Amazon.com CEO
Jeff Bezos. By Charlie
Rose. Charlie Rose.
Public Broadcasting
Service, 19 November
2007. <http://www.
charlierose.com/view/
interview/8784>
[4] Sony eSupport.
<http://esupport.sony.
com/US/perl/model-
tutorials.pl?mdl=PRS-
505&region_id=1.>
[5] In their 1998 essay,
Metaphors We Surf the
Web By, on how novice
and advanced users
perceive movement
toward information on
the Web, Paul P. Maglio
and Teenie Matlock
define image schemata
as basic pre-concep-
tual structures that arise
from our embodied
experience [and] shape
both metaphorical
and non-metaphorical
thought. <http://www.
almaden.ibm.com/u/
pmaglio/pubs/meta-
4surf.pdf>
device owners trade secrets on
how to repaginate their texts,
or how to use device work-
arounds (bookmarks, loca-
tions) to recover some aspect
of book reading that they
assumed would be part of this
new reading experience. Even
the manufacturers official
support sites are full of instruc-
tions on how to accomplish
traditional-book tasks that
most users would expect to be
primary properties of a digital
book, like how to view pictures;
how to open and read a book;
how to set and use bookmarks;
and how to put a book into
your library [4]. Likewise, with
Digital Rights Management
protections, e-books on the
Kindle and the Sony Reader do
not carry the defining property
of digital texts; one can not
make perfect copies of them
whenever one wishes. Instead
it is now more difficult to loan
a book to a friend. This is
merely to say that it is difficult
to know what properties from
these two input sources should
be projected into the e-book
blend, and which should be
left behind. Those users who
import irrelevant or misleading
elements from the traditional
books or digital media inputs
will produce blends that make
the devices more difficult to
use and understand.
A second reason the e-book
blend fails conceptually is that it
has been used to describe prod-
ucts ranging from the Amazon
Kindle and Sony Reader; to
Web-based multimedia versions
of college textbooks accessed
through reader software; to
The New York Timess Reader,
which is simply a repackag-
ing of seven days of newspaper
ing the new product. Just as
important, the blend should
not represent inappropriate
properties from the inputs. Nor
should it import any proper-
ties from input sources that are
altogether inappropriate. The
process was nicely illustrated
in a 2007 Charlie Rose interview
with Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com
founder. Rose imagined Bezoss
creative process in developing
the Kindle: When I first heard
about this, my instinct was that
the beginning of this for you
was that, always being inter-
ested in books, and certainly
understanding the digital world
and electronic books, you had
looked at the success of the iPod
and said to yourself, why cant
we do something like this for
books? [3] Here Rose is creating
a new mental space in which
the properties of the Kindle
can be understood in terms of
multiple input sources (books,
digital media, the iPod). For his
part, Bezos immediately cor-
rects Roses blend by explain-
ing ways in which the Kindle
is not like an iPod (it doesnt
require syncing with a com-
puter, for instance).
But the e-books blend is not
altogether effective, for at least
two reasons. First, many prop-
erties from the known spaces,
traditional books and digital
media, are not adequately
supported by e-book devices.
Something as simple as page
numbering is difficult to sup-
port on a device that lets users
change font size. Something
as natural as recommending
a passage to a friend becomes
difficult and awkward (Check
out page 36, FONT SIZE 4!). So
it is easy to find user support
sites where baffled new e-book
content synced to ones desk-
top or laptop computer. This
promiscuous use of the book
metaphor degrades its utility
in explaining what this new
product category is and how it
works. Just how meaningless
the blend has become is evident
in the Yogiism expressed in the
Rose-Bezos interview, as Bezos
explains why the company
needed its own hardware device:
Weve been selling e-books for
a long time; nobodys been buy-
ing e-books The solution to this
problem? Another kind of e-book
(the Kindle) that further con-
fuses real readers (humans) who
are trying to develop a concep-
tual understanding of this new
product space.
Our use of metaphors in the
way we speak about technol-
ogy reduces usability when it
produces blends that contain
inappropriate properties from
the input sources. Novice users
are still baffled by the process
of moving files between two
remote computers because we
insist upon using the vertical
spatial metaphor of up- and
downloading. Up and down
might be called image schema-
ta: constructs of human expe-
rience that our brains naturally
comprehend because they have
always been part of human
experience [5]. They contribute
known properties (movement
from high to low, or low to high;
restrictions of gravity, etc.) to
any blend that forms when they
are used metaphorically, as
when we speak of downloading
video from a website or upload-
ing content to a server. Because
nothing is really moving up
or down when data moves
on the Internet (except in the
case of satellite transmissions), i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
18
Rethinking the Fundamentals
[6] Cooper, A., R.
Reimann, and D. Cronin.
About Face 3: The
Essentials of Interaction
Design. Hoboken, N.J.:
Wiley, 2007.
novice users have difficulty
understanding these processes
and avoid using the devices
that employ them. Listen to
Rose describe one of his favorite
features of the Kindle: What
would be great about develop-
ing an electronic book, a digital
book? It would be if you did
not have to go through the
downloading process, it was all
self-contained. Users rarely
express this level of trepidation
when moving files from one
local directory to another. Even
sending email, and attach-
ing files, makes more sense
to such users, because these
expressions more accurately
draw from metaphors that sug-
gest horizontal movement. We
would never speak of upload-
ing an email to a friend, even
though, protocols aside, the
process is technically very simi-
lar to adding a new page to a
Web server.
And yet the problem is repli-
cating itself today as we speak
of cloud computing in the
naive hope that this will mean
something to our audiences.
Bezos made a casual use of this
metaphor in his interview with
Charlie Rose: When you make
margin notes or highlight text,
he explains, that also is stored
and saved, and its saved on the
server side too, its saved in the
Internet cloud at Amazon so
you can never lose those notes
and marks. Rose did exactly
what most users do when we
speak in such terms: He moved
on to the next question, not
wanting to reveal ignorance
about what a cloud computer
might be. Of course, he knows
what a cloud is, and what a
computer is, but he was unable
to run the blend because
there are very few properties
of a cloud that could actually
contribute to his understand-
ing of this technology. Indeed,
the most salient property of
a cloud, its transience, is not
something we would want users
to associate with our data-stor-
age solutions.
The current proliferation of
touch interfaces will provide
repeated opportunities to think
through the challenges of blend
theory. When Steve Jobs intro-
duced the iPod features of the
iPhone at MacWorld 2007, he
began with the unremarkable
claim that we can now touch
our music. The phrase elicited
silence from the audience, as
Jobss listeners tried to make
sense of this expression. They
all knew what it meant to hold
a CD and page through liner
notes, and most of them prob-
ably remembered the look and
feel of an LP album cover. They
all knew what listening to music
on an iPod Classic was like, the
touch of smooth plastic and
its revolutionary click wheel.
But these two source spaces
dont converge easily into a
blend that describes what it
is like to tap, flick, and swipe
through songs and Cover Flow
artwork on the iPhone/iPod
Touch, and Ive never heard any-
one talk about touching your
music since then. The figure
of speech doesnt work, which
is to say, it doesnt help people
understand how to operate the
new interface.
Metaphors have been prob-
lematic in the field of interaction
design ever since the Macintosh
had us throwing good content
into the trash can. Alan Cooper
has written that metaphors are
bad for interaction design for at
least three reasons: They dont
scale well, they presume shared
(antecedent) experiences that
might not really exist, and they
impede digital projects with
the constraints of the physi-
cal analogs upon which they
are often based [6]. His superb
advice is to focus instead on
idiomatic design: interactions
(such as right-click or pointing
with a mouse) that dont come
naturally and dont presume
shared experiences, but that
are extremely easy to teach and
learn. Most touch interactions
will fall into this category. And
the expression cloud comput-
ing is really an idiom, a col-
loquial metaphor that makes
sense within the context of
technical manuals and the
community of IT professionals,
but not to others, to whom the
expression is confusing. Our
literary minds are immensely
receptive to figurative language.
Knowing about conceptual
blends can help us think a little
more deeply about how users
might be interpreting the figura-
tive language we use to explain
how our devices work.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charles Hannon is associ-
ate professor and founding
chair of the information
technology leadership
department at Washington
& Jefferson College in Washington, PA. He
teaches courses in human-computer inter-
action, the history of information technolo-
gy, data presentation, and project manage-
ment, among others. He is the author of
Faulkner and the Discourses of Culture.
More recently, he has published widely on
the role of educational technologies in
higher education. His current book project
is Usable Devices: Mental and Conceptual
Models, and the Problem of Contingency.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516020
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00 i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
19
FEATURE
The Importance of Constraints
Im a science fiction writer, and
as I became more familiar with
design, it struck me that the
futuristic objects and services
within science fiction are quite
badly designed.
Why? Thats not a question
often asked. The reason is pretty
simple: Science fiction is a form
of popular entertainment. The
emotional payoff of the science
fiction genre is the sense of won-
der it conveys. Science fiction
design therefore demands some
whiz-bang, whereas industrial
design requires safety, utility,
serviceability, cost constraints,
appearance, and shelf appeal. To
these old-school ID virtues nowa-
days we might add sustainability
and a decent interface.
The classic totems of sci-fi: the
rayguns, space cruisers, androids,
robots, time machines, artificial
intelligences, nanotechnological
black-boxes. They have a deep
commonality: Theyre imaginary.
Imaginary products can never
maim the consumer, they get no
user feedback, and lawsuits and
regulatory boards are not a prob-
lem. Thats why their design is
glamorously fantastic and, there-
fore, basically, crap.
On occasion, sci-fi prognostica-
tions do become actual objects
and services. Science fiction
then promptly looks elsewhere.
It shouldnt, but it does. I like
to think that my science fiction
became somewhat less flaccid
once I learned to write design
fiction, as I now commonly do.
I believe that Ive finessed that
issue, at least in my own practice.
However, when science fic-
tion thinking opens itself to
design thinking, larger problems
appear. These have to do with
speculative culture generally,
the way that our society imag-
ines itself through its forward-
looking disciplines. Many prob-
lems I once considered strictly
literary are better understood as
interaction-design issues.
Literature has platforms. By
this I mean the physical struc-
tures on which literature is
conceived, designed, written,
manufactured and distributed,
remembered and forgotten.
Literary infrastructure has user-
experience constraints.
To expand on this, consider
science fiction, a literary form
that is young, small, and geek-
ish. Fantastic writing is old as
the scriptures. Science fiction, by
sharp contrast, emerged in the
1920s from down-market elec-
tronics parts catalogs for teenage
radio enthusiasts. That was sci-
ence fictions original platform.
The American pulp-fiction
platform is now long dead. Still,
any contemporary Web designer
can easily understand how and
why science fiction functioned in
its early days. Pulp-paper maga-
zines were cheap, affordable, eas-
ily distributed, and able to serve
niche markets. Effective graphic
icons quickly distinguished sci-
ence fiction from its sister pulp
genres: mysteries, westerns, P
h
o
t
o
g
r
a
p
h

o
f

B
r
u
c
e

S
t
e
r
l
i
n
g

b
y

G
u
i
d
o

v
a
n

N
i
s
p
e
n

21
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
COVER STORY
Design Fiction
Bruce Sterling
bruces@well.com
Whenever offered the chance at
such goods and services, they
never pursued them. They didnt
genuinely want such thingsnot
in real life.
What the user base genuinely
wanted was immersive fanta-
sies. They wanted warmly sup-
portive subcultures in which
they could safely abandon
their cruelly limiting real-life
roles, and play semi-permanent
dress-up. Science fiction movies
helped; science fiction television
helped. Once massively multi-
player online role-playing games
(MMORPGs) were invented, the
harsh limits of the print infra-
structure were demolished. Then
the user-base exploded.
No sane person reads science
fiction novels for 80 hours a
week. But its quite common for
devoted players to spend that
much time on Warcraft.
This should not be mistaken
for progress. Its not even a
simple matter of obsolescence.
Digital media is much more frail
and contingent than print media.
I rather imagine that people will
be reading H.P. Lovecraftlikely
the ultimate pulp-magazine sci-
ence fiction writerlong after
todays clumsy, bug-ridden
MMORPGs are as dead as the
Univac.
What truly interests me here
is the limits of the imaginable.
Clearly, the pulp infrastructure
limited what its artists were able
to think about. They wore blind-
ers that they could not see and
therefore could not transcend.
The typewriter limited writers.
Magazine word counts limited
writers. Even the implicit cultural
bargain between author and
reader introduced constraints
on what could be thought, said,
and understood in public. Those
mens adventures, womens con-
fession magazines, sports stories,
true crime, and other genres.
For 80 years, science fiction
has been able to find and recruit
fans, and to transform a few
users into cultural producers.
It also made enough money not
to perish under capitalism. And
under Communism, Soviet sci-
ence fiction was a huge success.
It was much more popular than
Soviet industrial design, which
was ghastly and is now extinct.
Below the professional level
of for-profit publishing, the sub-
culture of science fiction fans
exploited early, DIY duplication
technologies such as Gestetners
and the hectograph. There were
letter-writing campaigns, ama-
teur press associations, local
writers groups, regional science
fiction conventions galore. One
might even argue that contem-
porary Web culture looks and
behaves much like 1930s science
fiction fandom, only digitized
and globalized.
This long-vanished situation
was not idyllicit took form
within a specific set of infra-
structural conditions. Early
science fiction writers and edi-
tors imagined they were selling
popular fiction about science and
technology. They were mistaken.
That was a user-interface arti-
fact. The platform was selecting a
fraction of the population willing
to consume radically imaginary
works through print; that demo-
graphic partially overlapped with
science wonks. Scientists never
printed science fiction.
What science fictions user
base truly desired was not pos-
sible in the 1930s. Believing their
own rhetoric, science fiction
users supposed that they wanted
a jet-propelled, atomic futurity.
mechanisms of interactionthe
letter columns, the fan mail,
the bookstore appearances, the
conventionsthey were poorly
understood as interaction. They
were all emergent practices rath-
er than designed experiences.
One might make a
Wittgensteinian argument here
about the ontological limits of
language itself. Wittgenstein once
wrote a famous statement about
the need of philosophers to tact-
fully shut up in the face of the
unimaginable. It reads as follows:
The whole sense of the book might
be summed up in the following words:
What can be said at all can be said
clearly, and what we cannot talk
about we must pass over in silence.
Many science fiction writers,
believe it or not, were capable
of understanding Wittgenstein.
User experience design, however,
was far beyond them. It was also
beyond Wittgenstein, because
there are things we might imag-
ine and speak about that we do
pass over in silence because we
are writing in books.
The whole sense of the
book is not the whole sense of
the words. Look at the weird
Google erudition of journalism
researched online. Consider the
hybridized Creole media of blog
platforms. The line commands in
software are text as an expres-
sion of will.
Let me offer an older example
here, to show how deep this goes.
Consider the literary platforms
of a thousand years ago. This
remote period saw the birth,
or rather the stillbirth, of the
novel, with Murasaki Shikibus
The Tale of Genji. This Japanese
manuscript scroll, written with
an ink brush in the late 900s i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
22
The Importance of Constraints
and published in modern times
as a book, is nevertheless a true
novel. More specifically, its a
womens romance novel. Jane
Austen fans could easily parse
The Tale of Genji.
While this proto-novel was
being written, a rival work
appeared, known as The Pillow
Book of Sei Shonagon. This
other composition is certainly
not a novel. Its intensely liter-
ary, yet it cant be described by
contemporary literary-platform
terminology. The Pillow Book is a
nonlinear set of writings jotted
down on a loose heap of leftover
government stationery.
The Pillow Book is not a diary, a
miscellany, an almanac, a collec-
tion of lists, or even a resource
for composing Japanese poetry,
although it seems to us to have
some aspects of these modern
structures. It is better described
in terms of user experience.
This experience was a four-
or five-year effort to beguile
the tedium of a tight circle of
Imperial ladies-in-waiting. The
experience had a star author/
designerthe glamorous and
attention-hungry Court Officer
Seibut it had no press, no
publisher, no editor, no distribu-
tor, and it was never for sale. Its
user base in total, maybe 200
womenprobably never read
it. Instead, they heard the work
recited aloud by someone crouch-
ing near a lantern after dark.
A strictly literary approach to
this experience hurts our ability
to comprehend what The Pillow
Book is doing. This ancient book
is related only distantly to our
books; in function and audience,
it has more kinship with a small-
scale blog.
The most notorious part of The
Pillow Book is a list of things that
Sei Shonagon finds unsuitable.
Such as the following:
Snow on the houses of common peo-
ple. This is especially regrettable when
the moonlight shines down on it.
What is Sei Shonagon saying
here? Moonlit snow is unsuit-
able on the homes of the peas-
antry. The pretty snow is too nice
for those lowly, humble people.
The glamour of the snow clashes
with their squalor.
Sei Shonagon receives much
grief from contemporary observ-
ers because of the snobbish
nature of this remark. Of course
we find ourselves bound to inter-
pret this statement as hurtful,
hateful, and politically incorrect.
After allwhat if one of those
poor commoners were to read
this crass insult?
But commoners could never
read it. First, because peasants
were illiterate; next, because the
work was copied by hand and
circulated within a small royal
clique; third, it was written in a
special cursive script used only
by women. It was girl talk no
man could overhear.
In this structure of interac-
tion, it was not possible for this
remark to become offensive. Its
crassness for us was unimagi-
nable for Sei Shonagon. To think
otherwise is an anachronism.
Which leaves us to balk at the
unthinkable notion that lovely
snow on the homes of the peas-
ants really was inappropriate. Sei
was telling the truththough
were hard-put to imagine that
now. This was not a catty remark
but an aesthetic assessment,
refined and apolitical. It was like
saying that lime green clashes
with aviation orange. If Sei,
somehow, had directly said that
to a peasantthat peasant would
have promptly removed the snow.
He would not have wanted his
ugly misstep to trouble her lady-
ship further.
The infrastructure of publish-
ing constrains the thinking of
writers. Obviously, all forms of
art and design have some inher-
ent constraintsbut it seems to
me that writers are especially
misled by the apparent freedoms
of language. Published language,
in print, on paper, is not language
per se: Its an industrial artifact.
Writers cling hard to the word,
to semantics, to meaning and
sensibility. Design, by contrast,
is less verbal. Design is busily
inventing new ways to blow itself
apart. Design is taking more risks
with itself than literature. That is
why contemporary design feels
almost up to date, while litera-
ture feels archaic and besieged.
Design and literature dont
talk together much, but design
has more to offer literature at
the moment than literature can
offer to design. Design seeks
out ways to jump over its own
Bruce Sterling
at Art Futura
2005 Barcelona,
Spain.
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
23
COVER STORY
conceptual wallsscenarios,
user observation, brainstorming,
rapid prototyping, critical design,
speculative design. There is even
experience design, which is
surely the most imperial, most
gaseous, most spectral form of
design yet invented.
Experience design is closer in
spirit to theater, poetry or even
philosophy than it is to the older
assembly line. What on earth
isnt experience? And what is
not, in some sense, interactive?
Experience designers are a tiny
group of people with a radically
universalized prospectus.
When science fiction was
born from its radio-parts cata-
logs, design was also born as
the streamlined handmaiden of
industry. The earliest industrial
designers, Norman Bel Geddes in
particular, were much given to
flamboyant sci-fi special-effects
gestures: flying wings, giant
dams, and future supercities.
But these two sister disci-
plines, born within the same
decade and surely for similar
reasons, soon parted ways. The
sisters were distantly cordial; but
they saw no common purpose.
Design, which is industrial, has
clients and consumers, while
science fiction, an art form, has
patrons and an audience.
No major designer ever
dabbled in writing science fic-
tion. Gaudy sci-fi never went in
for stern modernist rationalism,
the glum acceptance of mate-
rial constraints, or the study
of human ergonomics. These
two visionary enterprises never
shared a user base.
Until, that is, the Internet.
When print began to dissolve,
the industrial began to digitize.
The consumers and the audience
became the users, the keyboard-
clicking participants, the people
formerly known as the audience.
Here in 2009, I find myself
wondering hard about those older
commonalities from the 1920s.
The technoculture that we cur-
rently inhabit (its not the post-
modern anymore, so we might
haltingly call it a cyberneticized,
globalized, liberal capitalism in
financial collapse) well, it was
neither rationally designed nor
science-fictionally predicted.
Why is that? What happened?
Why are we like this now? What
next, for heavens sake? Cant we
do better?
We have entered an unimag-
ined culture. In this world of
search engines and cross-links, of
keywords and networks, the solid
smokestacks of yesterdays dis-
ciplines have blown out. Instead
of being armored in technique,
or sheltered within subculture,
design and science fiction have
become like two silk balloons,
two frail, polymorphic pockets
of hot air, floating in a generally
tainted cultural atmosphere.
These two inherently forward-
looking schools of thought and
action do seem blinkered some-
hownot unimaginative, but
unable to imagine effectively. A
bigger picture, the new centurys
grander narrative, its synthe-
sis, is eluding them. Could it be
because they were both born
with blind spots, with unexam-
ined assumptions hardwired in
80 years ago?
There is much thoughtful talk
of innovation, of transforma-
tion, of the collaborative and
the transdisciplinary. These
are buzzwords, language that
does not last.What we are really
experiencing now is a massive
cybernetic hemorrhage in ways
of knowing the world.
Even money, the almighty
bottom line, the ultimate reality
check for American society, has
tripped over its own infrastruc-
tural blinders, and lost its ability
to map value. The visionaries no
longer know what to thinkand,
by no coincidence, the financiers
can no longer place their bets.
I scarcely know what to do
about this. As Charles Eames
said, design is a method of action.
Literature is a method of mean-
ing and feeling. Hearteningly, I do
know how I feel about this situa-
tion. I even have some inkling of
what it means.
Rather than thinking outside
the boxwhich was almost
always a money box, quite
franklywe surely need a better
understanding of boxes. Maybe
some new, more general, creative
project could map the limits of
the imaginable within the con-
temporary technosocial milieu.
Plug that imagination gap.
That effort has no 20th-century
description. I rather doubt that its
ever been tried. It seems to me
like a good response to events.
The winds of the Net are full of
straws. Who will make the bricks?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bruce Sterling, author, jour-
nalist, editor, and critic,
was born in 1954. Best
known for his nine science
fiction novels, he also
writes a weblog. During 2005 he was the
Visionary in Residence at the Art Center
College of Design in Pasadena. In 2008 he
was the guest curator for the Share Festival
of Digital Art and Culture in Torino, Italy,
and the Visionary in Residence at the
Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam.He has
appeared in Time, Newsweek, The Wall
Street Journal, The New York Times,
Fortune, Nature, I.D., Metropolis,
Technology Review, Der Spiegel, La
Repubblica, and many other venues.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516021
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
24
The Importance of Constraints
The book opens with Vera strapped in boneware
(a body suit reminiscent of Obidiah Staness Iron
Monger armor from the Iron Man series) working
to pump toxic ooze from the Earth. She also wears
a neural helmet, which reveals the emotional
states of individuals in order to build transparent
community and monitor collective emotions. This
type of work is a daily activity on Mljet. Radmila,
a second clone
sister, is a power-
ful Hollywood pop
icon propped up
on stardom and
scandals. She is
the head of the
Family-Firm, a
Western organiza-
tion of socialites
that use their pres-
tige and power to
control California
and the American
economic market.
Not much detail
is offered around
this group of indi-
viduals save that
they spend lots
of money and act
absurdly. Sonja is
a medical expert
and rogue war
hero in China, the
only superpower
nation-state left in the world. Biserka is a vil-
lainous force of vengeance, who appears to be a
Luddite, roaming the blackspotsareas void of
sensorweb. Its a futuristic version of todays cell
phone dead zones. The story culminates when
Radmilas husband, a highly networked global
mastermind named John Montgomery-Montalban,
Bruce Sterlings The Caryatids is a masterful, though
at times haphazard, collection of egos, high-tech
devices, and immersive environments that paint a
terrifying picture of the future for anyone familiar
with the potential of technology. Sterling takes on
a massive scope, depicting a world nearing apoca-
lypse by pollution, a supervolcano, and solar flares
(pick your poison), plus all the sloppy politics, pop
culture, environmental work, and business think
that comes with it. Sterlings delivery is descriptive
and chaoticyoud better keep up.
It is bittersweet entertainment when the fate of
the world is in the hands of four women driven by
hatred. I dont mind putting my salvation in the
hands of a Will Smith or a Lara Croft when apoca-
lypse draws near, but instead, in 2065, the world
is stuck with the relentlessly frustrating shells of
women with no aim or direction, united only by
contempt for their mother and for each other. Their
impulsive behavior becomes truly unsettling when
Sterling illustrates how the personal dilemmas of
individuals with power can so easily change the
course of history. Theyre the type of characters you
will love to hate. Eventually, I severed my sympathy
for these wandering souls and was struck with the
sobering realization that there is nothing romantic
about a dying Earth. Its the kind of world you can
imagine, but dont want to, because its horrifying.
Clone copies of their war criminal mother, the
surviving Mihajlovic sistersthe Caryatidseach
serve as a figurehead for a particular sociocultur-
al corner of the Earth. Vera is an environmentalist
workaholic bent on saving her childhood home-
land, the Croatian island of Mljet, from toxic pol-
lution. Veras group, the Acquis, is a controversial
environmental refugee camp that has completely
integrated Mljet with sensorweb, an interface
that mediates human interaction with the physi-
cal world by projecting informational tags onto
almost everything. Each cadre is given a pair of
spex in order to see this mediation interface. i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
25
EDITOR
Alex Wright
alex@agwright.com
(P)REVIEW
Hes At It Again: Eyeball-blasting
Laser-colored Neural Helmets
Ryan Jahn
www.ryanjahn.com | Empathylab
must pull the sisters together in order toyou
guessed itsave the world. Its hard to say if
Sterling is making any serious commentary on
the worlds current state by offering this vision
of the future because, although entertaining, the
situation is grim. Sterlings apocalypse is slow,
dark, and depressing.
The satire of their plight becomes scream-
ingly obvious in lines like, Vera, Im here from
Hollywood! Im here to help you! But there is no
comic relief when, sadly, you realize that in the
world of the Caryatids theres nothing and no one
worth saving. These women are so annoying, I
couldnt care less what happens to them or the
people who are incompetent enough to follow their
lead. Sterling writes with an eerie certainty about
the future, not in ifs but in whens, indicating that
perhaps the human race is fated to fulfill the dark
side of its imagination. Even after eradicating AIDs
and Alzheimers, we will still be plagued by our
hunger for power, money, and fame.
Sterling is a master of dreaming up a myriad of
techy gadgets and gizmos with his usual quasi-
prophetic, matter-of-fact style. Never mind the
lack of description for these devices; there is no
need, because the objects are closely tied to cur-
rent technological trends and pervasive ideas that
his readers already understand. Think e-commerce
websites tracking your every move in order to
serve you a custom experience; such motive is
explored by Sterling: Like any other commons-
based peer-production method, an Acquis atten-
tion camp improved steadily with human usage.
Exploiting the spex, the attention camp tracked
every tiny movement of the users eyeballs
Comparing the movements of one users eyeballs
to the eyeballs of a thousand other users, the sys-
tem learned individual aptitudes.
If youre tempted to question the plausibility of
these devices, youve missed the point. Sterling
spells out how easily year 2065 technologies could
be adopted no matter how unthinkable they may
be today. Take the following and imagine a time
before cell phones: At first, theyd been bewil-
dered. Soon they had caught on. Within a matter
of weeks, they were adepts. Eventually, life became
elite. I like to read this line and think of any prod-
uct you might see on QVC or the Home Shopping
Network. Is a society that buys into attention
camps and neural helmets so bizarre, when the
ShamWow won the best As Seen On TV tourna-
ment on CNBC.com? Sterling meshes existing tech-
nologies with plausible creations that appear just
beyond our current capabilities, and he excites (or
annoys) the creative mind in the process.
While I do not think Sterlings technological
devices are novel, the apocalyptic context he cre-
ates to make neural helmets and spex raises inter-
esting questions: Were these technologies devel-
oped before or after the need to save the planet
came to the fore? Would they be useful in todays
political, economic, or environmental climate?
Can we live in the future world without them? Do
we need them to sustain us in the world we have
created? As breezily as Sterling conjures up his
gadgets, he destroys them: Those technologies
advanced so fast that they vanished. The languag-
es, operating systems, frameworks of interaction,
the eyeball-blasting laser-colored neural helmets
all that stuff is more primitive than steam engines
now. He reminds us that our creations are not
permanent, that there are always unforeseen con-
sequences to our efforts. I mean, you can tell how
a steam engine works by just looking at it, but a
complex, distributed, ubiquitous system? Theres
no way to maintain that!
The book culminates with the sisters huddled
face-to-face, forced to reconcile their hatred for
each other or continue alone with their own futile
efforts. In this moment it seems Sterling is speak-
ing directly to the reader: You have a decision to
make; is this the world you want in the future?
By expanding his reach to address the state of the
natural world, the role of individuals in societ-
ies, and the proliferation of modern technology,
Sterling constructs an intellectual playground for
the thinkers and makers of technological marvels
to not only paint a world we should avoid, but also
to challenge our imaginations, our actions, and
what is worth our time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ryan Jahn is an interac-
tion designer with Empathy Lab in Conshohocken,
Pennsylvania, where he advocates for contextual
research methods and user-centered design pro-
cesses for Fortune 500 clients. Jahn has a diverse
set of design experience and skills ranging from
financial and pharmaceutical software systems, to branded e-com-
merce websites, to researching truancy among teens in Savannah,
Georgia. He is also co-founder of Moat Design Studio and a mem-
ber of Part-Time Studios in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516022
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00 i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
26
The Importance of Constraints
past six months, weve listened
to political leaders around the
world argue the need to overhaul
their respective financial infra-
structures. In such a paradigm-
shifting environment, what is
the changing role of design?
It would seem almost a bit
pointless to talk about user prod-
uct experiences in the midst of
this world financial crisis, with
legions of people concerned
about jobs and livelihoods. Who
cares about usability when no
one wants to spend a dime?
So, lets talk about design on a
macro level.
At the time of this writing, the
financial crisis had already evap-
Its a common perception that
if you want to make money, you
shouldnt become a designer.
Instead, head toward investment
banking, where annual bonuses
are in the millions, certainly
more than any designeror doc-
torwill make in a lifetime.
However, since late 2008
weve seen this world order turn
upside down, with major banks
collapsing, giant corporations
desperately seeking government
bailout, and investment bank-
ers by the tens of thousands
losing their lucrative jobs. It
seems those once high-flying
financial careers have almost
vanished overnight. For the
orated a total of US$13 trillion in
housing and stock market losses;
an amount almost equivalent to
the nations GDP of $13.8 trillion.
In other words, whatever rev-
enue the U.S. reaped in the past
year was flushed awaya true
weapon of mass destruction.
And the story is not yet over.
Surely youve wondered
just how we wound up in this
state of affairs. Why did lead-
ing financial institutions like
Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns,
and Washington Mutual col-
lapse? Why are major players
like GM, Ford, Chrysler, Fannie
Mae, AIG, and Freddie Mac fac-
ing bankruptcy and in need of
Whats Design Got to Do with
the World Financial Crisis?
Elaine Ann
elaine.ann@kaizor.com | Kaizor Innovation
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
27
FEATURE
government bailout? How is it
possible that no experts can
predict the global scale of dam-
age that will ultimately unravel?
Has anyone ever asked whether
current businesses or financial
and political systems have been
designed properly?
Our inquisitive design minds
inspired us to investigate what
has actually taken place to cause
this domino effect. Granted, we
are not financial experts; we are
designers who strive to make
complex things easy to under-
stand. In the end, isnt design all
about KISS (keep it simple, stu-
pid)? Indeed, it is our responsibil-
ity to design products and sys-
tems for consumers that are easy
to use and simple to understand.
So, if a significant percentage of
the general public cannot fully
comprehend how we find our-
selves in the midst of financial
devastation, it must be just pure
bad design or communication
from the sourceWall Street.
The goal for this article is
twofold:
Decipler complex irarcial
concepts visually for everyone to
understand;
Foir ou le speciic values
of design and how designers can
actually help create complex sys-
tems beyond the current defini-
tion of artifacts design.
The Big Picture of the
Financial Crisis
One of the first things we learn
in design school is to ask the
right questions. As educational
pioneer John Dewey once said,
A problem well defined is half
solved. If you dont ask the right
questions, youll be solving the
wrong problems.
So, first we must ask some
fundamental questions:
Vly slould credi cards
make it possible for cardholders
to spend money they dont have
(credit crisis)?
Vly is i possible o receive
money from angel investors for
a startup business and then sell
out the company before even
making a profit? (dot-com bust)
Vly vas i possible o buy
a house with no down payment,
free of interest, for a whole year?
(subprime-mortgage crisis)
Vly slould people vlo do
not comprehend investments be
allowed to hold shares of a com-
pany that may expose them to
huge financial risks?
Vly slould i be possible o
make more money in the stock
market than working hard at
your day job?
These problems are hardly new
to us. We should have learned
from the savings and loan crisis
of the 1980s and early 1990s and
the dot-com bust in the early
2000s. The subprime-mortgage
crisis and credit crunch of today
should strike some familiar i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
28
The Importance of Constraints
companies they are supposed to
monitor. Its like students rating
a teachers performance. Why
would teachers choose to give
poor grades to students whose
reviews can cost them their jobs?
3. The system is designed to be
a zero sum game. In order for
financial institutions to com-
pete for business, it is favorable
for them to underestimate the
risks on the investments they
promote and leverage aggres-
sively in order to get promising
profits and big bonuses. Only the
investment bank that wins gets
the business. They are playing
a win-lose game rather than a
win-win one.
With so much financial con-
fusion, it is impossible to cre-
ate a holistic picture of what
is going on. Such a challenge
defies even the resources of
the governments and financial
institutions themselves. Add
to this complexity the cryptic
financial language that prevents
the average citizen from fol-
lowing the financial industrys
intricacies. Eye-crossing terms
such as MBS (mortgage-backed
securities), CDOs (collateralized
debt obligations), CDS (credit
default swaps), derivatives,
and securitization are thrown
around with abandon. (Ill bet
just reading that last sentence
gave you a headache.)
How does this all relate to
design? The accompanying dia-
gram illustrates the financial
crisis in a clear and comprehen-
sible manner. The goal here is
not to accurately depict financial
industry terms or decipher their
detailed operations, but to make
the core elements simple to
digest by showing the big picture
and its correlations to average
citizens like ourselves.
chords as well. Could it be that
in repeating the same mistakes
over and over again, there is
something fundamentally flawed
in design of the system?
If these essential questions
are not straightened out, this
flawed pattern will keep repeat-
ing itself every five to 10 years.
Its like going on a yo-yo diet,
but this time the serious eco-
nomic turmoil might take much
longer to rebound, as most have
described this period as worse
than the Great Depression.
Indeed, excusing these financial
cycles as inevitable sounds
a lot like pardoning computer
crashes as part of owning a PC
(Apple will definitely disagree
with that!).
What seems to be a serious
design flaw in the financial
system is the built-in egregious
misalignment of interests and a
zero-sum-game approach. What
this means is:
1. The system is designed to
reward those who focus only on their
own piece of the pie. For example,
aggressive mortgage lenders
take commission with little con-
sideration if home owners can
actually repay their mortgages;
investment bankers garner large
bonuses with little concern for
investors if their assets go down
the drain. These industries com-
pensate employees for closing as
many business deals as possible,
regardless of whether those
deals are sound.
2. The system is designed with
a built-in conflict of interest. For
example, rating agencies are
paid by the companies they
rate. So much for impartiality.
Similarly, governmental regula-
tory agencies charged with polic-
ing these financial institutions
receive funding from the very
What Does Design Have
to Do with It?
Design is defined on one level as
the blueprint for artifacts and
products like brochures, tooth-
brushes, websites, and software,
among others. However, as
Nobel Prize winner Herb Simon
explains: Everyone designs who
devises courses of action aimed
at changing existing situations
into preferred ones. When we
look deeper, design is actually
about designing human behav-
iorhow people interact with
products or with other people.
Its only through understanding
people and behavior that we can
design systems that work. So one
can easily borrow this attitude
and approach on a much more
macro level of design: clearly
representing how consumers
interact with investment banks,
financial experts, mortgage
lenders, and so on.
I would say that design can be
defined in the financial crisis on
four levels:
Desigr, as ir lumar-
centered design, is an approach
that has empathy for people
and takes into consideration
the needs and perspectives of
people using the products and
services we design. The finan-
cial institutions that designed
and distributed faulty products
into the market did not care
about their end users. This ties
into ethics, and human-centered
design, as we know it, has the
right end goal.
Desigr, as ir desigr vil
a holistic approach, looks at
problems from a big-picture
perspective, taking into account
interests of various parties and
the interrelationships between
the entire system. This holistic
approach in problem solving cuts i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
29
FEATURE
across segmented functional
departments or disciplines with
a united goal in mindthe inter-
ests of the end user.
Desigr, as ir visualizaior,
can help map out complex rela-
tionships in a graphical form
that is otherwise difficult to
understand in text and num-
bers. Mapping a complex system
visually can help governments
or policymakers design a better
system to align various interests
more effectively as well as make
it more comprehensive for the
general public. A picture is truly
worth a thousand words.
Desigr, as ir ease o use, car
help simplify otherwise complex
financial products. The complex-
ity of existing financial jargon
allows the fudging of investment
risks that has promoted the
crisis to this scale. It has been
created by bad communication
where even financial profession-
als do not fully understand what
they are selling and governments
do not know how to regulate.
Is the Role of Design Shifting?
What this article hopes to bring
home is the awareness that
designers with the mind-set and
approach to clarify the complex
can operate at a much higher
strategic level of design.
As designers, weve had the
opportunity of bringing the field
of user-experience design into a
new market here in Asia; along
with it comes the challenge of
communicating what we do as
a profession. Through our expe-
riences, I discovered that our
work as designersif explained
well on a strategic levelcan
have benefits beyond new prod-
uct development. In fact, it can
influence governmental services
and organizational change. In
Hong Kong and China, since
the field is so new, it could very
much be a blank piece of paper
with the opportunity of redefin-
ing what designers can really
offer at a strategic level.
Recently, I have been engaged
in a project where we presented
the concept of user-centered
design to the Hong Kong
Government Public Services.
Kaizor led a team of 16 students
at the Hong Kong Polytechnic
Universitys masters design
course in proposing innova-
tive service design concepts to
improve public services in Hong
Kong. This initiative is spon-
sored by the Hong Kong Design
Center and the Hong Kong
Governments Efficiency Unit.
The course disseminated
students to do field research on
Hong Kong job seekers and relat-
ed governmental staff to under-
stand the problems and experi-
ences of finding jobs. The insights
served as a springboard to
innovative service concepts, with
an eye on redesigning govern-
mental services to enhance the
job-seeking experience on a local
level. The various teams also
used visualizations and scenarios
to demonstrate future concepts,
a method that is unheard of in
the traditional approach to public
services design.
Similar scenarios have also
occurred in the U.K. where the
government in collaboration
with the U.K. Design Council
has commissioned designers
to work with frontline staff
and users to overhaul the new
Adult Advancement and Career
Service. As the U.K.s Minister
for Innovation Ian Pearson
contends, Building design into
the services of local authorities
and government departments
is going to be important for
the future. The contribution of
design to innovation hasnt been
emphasized enough until now,
but user-led innovation always
clearly demonstrated the impor-
tance of design in developing
new products, processes and
new ways of working.
This financial crisis woefully
demonstrates that designers
can, and should, consider how
their skill sets add value not only
in designing products but also
in conveying complex systems
in fields beyond the traditional
definition of design. Design, at
a macro level, is a much-needed
skill here in Asia, just as it is
in the rest of the world. If the
financial system were as easy to
understand as Apples desktop
designs, and were designed with
the real needs of end users in
mind, the world might not have
had to face this devastating
crash, leaving us to figure out
how best to reboot our economy.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Carmen Tsui, Jan
Lo, Jilly Tang, James Ann, and Wu
Bao Rong for their help with and con-
tribution to this article.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elaine Ann is the founder/
director of Kaizor
Innovation, a strategic inno-
vation consultancy that
helps companies strategize
and research for the China market. Born
and raised in Hong Kong and having lived
in the U.S. for 12 years, Anns bicultural and
bilingual background provides unique
insights bridging cultures. Prior to returning
to Asia, she worked at Fitch, Razorfish,
Henry Dreyfuss, and Philips Design. She
has an EMBA from the Cheung Kong
Business School in Beijing and a masters
in interaction design from Carnegie Mellon
University.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516023
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00 i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
30
The Importance of Constraints
[1] Several early activ-
ist communications
projects are described
in Chandler, A. and
Neumark, N. (eds), At a
Distance: Precursors to
Art and Activism on the
Internet Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2005.
that, in some instances, antici-
pate broader technical trends.
Contestational designers also
offer new models of engaging
with technology, people, and
social issues that challenge
implicit assumptions about how
design operates.
Activists have long been
technology innovators, from
the underground press to early
experiments with neighborhood
networking, low-power FM broad-
cast, and satellite television [1].
These efforts multiplied with the
growth of Internet and mobile
phone networks. There are now
many examples of activist tech-
nology projects. Protest.net was
an early online collaborative cal-
endar that continues to list pro-
tests and activist events around
the world. Riseup.net and Resist.
ca have offered free, anonymous
email and message boards for
activists for nearly a decade.
Environmental organizations
such as Greenpeace have used
GPS, aerial photography, and
satellite imagery to document
illegal logging and mining opera-
tions around the world. Tools
like FrontlineSMS and Riottones
enable groups to use text mes-
saging and to create subversive
mobile phone ringtones.
There is also a tradition of
arts-based activist technology
development [2]. The Electronic
Disturbance Theaters FloodNet
project explored distributed
Over the past decade, a growing
movement of politically engaged
designers and engineers has
been quietly building technical
infrastructure for contemporary
protest movements. The efforts
of these contestational design-
ers have largely gone unrecog-
nized by the mainstream tech-
nology development community.
A slew of articles and books in
both the academic and popular
press describe the impact of
websites, blogs, mobile phones,
and the like on political activ-
ism, but the dominant narrative
assumes a nearly effortless tran-
sition between the appearance
of new technologies and their
adoption by activists. Technology
use by activists is generally pre-
sented as simply another form of
consumer behavior, analogous to
other kinds of end-user adoption.
Notably absent from this formu-
lation is any accounting of the
productive human labor involved
in creating or adapting technolo-
gies to meet activist needs.
The technical community in
general, and interaction design-
ers and computer-human inter-
action specialists in particular,
can learn from contestational
designers. Protest movements
involve users, communities,
and needs that differ from
those faced by mainstream
designers. Activist technology
developments unique context
leads to innovative solutions
denial-of-service attacks as an
activist strategy. Artist and engi-
neer Natalie Jeremijenko built
robotic dogs that sniff out envi-
ronmental contamination. The
Institute for Applied Autonomy
created robots that hand out
subversive literature and spray
paint graffiti on the street, as
well as mapping software that
allows activists to catalog CCTV
surveillance camera locations.
Projects like these contend
with a unique set of design
constraints. Activist technology
projects often support immedi-
ate, short-lived campaigns and
events. They are imbued with
a sense of urgency stemming
partly from the passion that
motivates much political action,
and partly from the highly con-
tingent environment in which
activist projects occur. Activists
respond opportunistically to
dynamic political, legal, and
technical environments. Projects
are undertaken in extremely
compressed time frames, some-
times with no more than a few
days or weeks between concep-
tion and realization.
The immediacy of activist proj-
ects, coupled with a perpetual
lack of funding, forces a kind of
rough-and-tumble innovation.
Contestational designers adopt
highly fluid processes. They learn
to quickly identify and exploit
short-lived opportunities. Tactics
and technologies often develop in
Learning from Activists:
Lessons for Designers
Tad Hirsch
tad.hirsch@intel.com | Intel Research
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
31
FEATURE
[2] Thompson N. and
G. Sholette, eds., The
Interventionists: Users
Manual for the Creative
Disruption of Everyday
Life. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2004; offers a
recent but by no means
exhaustive catalog of
artist-activist projects.
[3] I refer here to exploit-
ing excess capacity
whether squatting
abandoned buildings or
utilizing privately owned
bandwidthrather
than, say, vandalism or
violence.
[4] Indeed, failure can
sometimes enhance
an activists reputation;
especially if it presents
an opportunity to dem-
onstrate commitment to
the movement by, say,
getting arrested.
tandem: Plans evolve to embrace
new technical capabilities, while
changing campaign objectives
in the midst of a project provoke
new design directions.
Design iterations tend to
be very public experiments.
Contestational designers seldom
have the time or resources to per-
form controlled trials. New ideas
are developed and deployed very
quickly. Evaluation is immediate
and unsentimental. If an idea
shows promise, it is refined and
reused. If not, it is abandoned.
Contending with direct opposi-
tion by state, corporate, and non-
governmental actors also influ-
ences design decisions. Projects
often, but not always, privilege
quick deployment and replicabil-
ity over long-term sustainability.
Concerns about confiscation and
subpoenas lead to minimal data-
collection and retention policies,
and highlight the importance of
trust in determining end-user
adoption. Activists willingness
to engage in extra-legal activity
[3] also enables unique design
opportunitiesincluding the cre-
ation of socio-technical artifacts
that maintain complicated, even
parasitic relationships with exist-
ing infrastructure. For example,
activist communications projects
often rely on corporate or aca-
demic bandwidth and machines
that are utilized without their
owners knowledge or permission.
Operating in the face of often
overwhelming opposition also
translates into a willingness to
take risks and an acceptance of
failure [4]. Activists generally
expect their communications
systems to fail, either through
direct interference or technical
snafu. Accordingly, designers
place an emphasis on creating
redundant systems. For example,
activists will build websites,
low-power FM stations, and SMS
broadcast systems all to support
a single protest to ensure that
information continues to flow,
even if one or more of those sys-
tems goes down.
Activist and mainstream
design projects also structure
relationships between designers,
collaborators, and end users dif-
ferently. Contestational designers
consider their work to be a form
of political activism that is moti-
vated by personal commitment
to an issue or cause. It is usually
a volunteer activity, enabling
designers to pick and choose
their projects and collaborators at
will. Accordingly, contestational
designers enjoy a greater degree
of autonomy than many of their
commercial counterparts.
The personal autonomy exer-
cised by contestational designers
is tempered by commitments
to the individuals, organiza-
tions, and movements with
whom they work. The bonds
they form with their collabora-
tors may run deeper than those
between traditional designers,
clients, and users. Relationships
in commercial design projects
are always adversarial to some
degree. Regardless of intent, all
parties are seen at least in part
as potential sources of litiga-
tion and intellectual property
disputes and must be kept at
arms length. Relationships
are formalized with contracts,
nondisclosure agreements and
so on. Activist relations, by con-
trast, tend to be predicated on
notions of solidarity rather than
structured by legal documents.
Collaborators are fully engaged
participants; intellectual prop-
erty is meant to be widely dis-
seminated, rather than locked up
in patents. Relationships tend to
outlast projects, with designers
continuing to provide advice and i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
32
[5] It may also speak
to some contestational
designers ability to
leverage skills honed
by working on activist
projects into influential
positions in mainstream
R&D organizations.
whom existing social structures
are somehow unsatisfying or
inadequate. It is in their nature
to continuously experiment with
social form, innovating new
organizational structures and
new social relations. Activist
communities have always devel-
oped extensive social practices
and technologies that support
alternative forms of social orga-
nization, including consensus-
based decision making, non-
hierarchical organizations, and
affinity-based social networks.
That these ideas have in recent
years found widespread appeal
in corporate, academic, and mass
culture and are at the heart of
many so-called Web 2.0 tech-
nologies demonstrates activists
capacity for anticipating nascent
but deeply felt social needs [5].
Finally, contestational design-
ers challenge the way that design
is positioned relative to the
broader society in which it oper-
ates. Contestational designers
are openly partisan practitioners
who take sides in pressing issues
of the day. They are neither
objective technicians nor hired
gunsimages that continue to
dominate the technical develop-
ment community. Contestational
technical expertise to activist
groups long after a particular
project is completed.
Most significantly, contesta-
tional design projects proceed
from a set of assumptions that
diverge from the usual logics
of communications technology
development. While mainstream
design emphasizes workplace
productivity and consumer expe-
rience, activist innovation is gen-
erally concerned with personal
empowerment, collective action,
and non-hierarchical organiza-
tional models. As it happens,
activist technology has directly
influenced broader technical
trends. For example, the interna-
tional network of Indymedia sites
built in the late 1990s and early
2000s inform open publishing
platforms and the citizen jour-
nalism movement. Similarly,
an SMS broadcast service called
TXTmob that was created for
protestors at the 2004 U.S.
Republican National Convention
helped inspire the development
of Twitter and micro-blogging.
That activist technology
would differ from and in some
cases anticipate broader trends
shouldnt be surprising. By defi-
nition, activists are people for
designers are autonomous
agents, striving to unleash the
full potential of their powers to
advance agendas to which they
are personally committed. Their
collaborators are neither clients
nor consumers, but full partners
committed to ongoing struggles
for human rights and social jus-
tice. The work may be unpaid,
but it is deeply rewarding. As
such, it should be an inspiration
to designers everywhere.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tad Hirsch is a research
scientist with the People
and Practices Research
group at Intel, where he
works on emerging tech-
nologies for natural resource management,
sustainable agriculture, and social move-
ments. He previously developed mobile
phone services for political activists at
MITs Media Lab, and taught in the digital
media department at the Rhode Island
School of Design. He has worked with
Motorolas Advanced Concepts Group and
the Interaction Design Studio at Carnegie
Mellon University, and has several years
experience in the nonprofit sector. Hirsch is
also a frequent collaborator with the
Institute for Applied Autonomy. He holds a
Ph.D. in media arts and sciences from MIT,
and an M.Des. in interaction design from
Carnegie Mellon University.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516024
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00 i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
33
JUMP (see Figure 1a), each
allowing players to prompt basic
actions that avatars perform
in video games. The installa-
tion used a floor projection
setup where the presence and
movements of participants
were tracked using a camera
(see Figure 1b). The projec-
tion on the floor was updated
based on participants actions
and displayed graphics in an
abstract language of simple
2-D shapes; a restrained color
palette (white, grey, and red);
and simplified physics simula-
tions (collision, acceleration,
friction, among others). These
simple game modules could be
experienced by only one player
What are the challenges and
rewards facing designers devel-
oping digital games using alter-
native input devices? How can
these games engage participants
and give them unique interac-
tive experiences beyond the
casualness of mini-games? In an
attempt to answer these ques-
tions, I will describe the design
process behind two physical
gaming installations I am cur-
rently developing.
First, some background. In
2005 I developed an interac-
tive installation called MOVE
in which participants were able
to play through six different
game modules: AVOID, CHASE,
COLLECT, HIDE, THROW, and
at a time. Moreover, they rapidly
increased in difficulty, leaving
players just a few minutes to
experience each game module
and giving them no chance to
win (see Figure 1c).
The installation turned out
to be quite successful, espe-
cially with a younger audi-
ence. Children between the
age of six and 12 would often
spend hours at a time trying
to master the games, forming
lines around the projection and
replaying them over and over
again. Why was this simple
gameplay project so addictive
for children accustomed to
more sophisticated game expe-
riences at home?
Physical Games,
Beyond Mini-games
Andrew Hieronymi
ahierony@gmail.com | Savannah College of Art and Design
Figure 1a. MOVE is an interactive installation divided into six distinct modules: JUMP, AVOID, CHASE, COLLECT, THROW, and HIDE. i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
34
Three Very Different Design Paths
One main difference between
MOVEs setup and traditional
game consoles is that instead of
using a gamepad or joystick to
interact with the games, partici-
pants use their whole body. The
various games would react to dif-
ferent gestures, such as running
(CHASE), jumping (JUMP), waving
ones arm (COLLECT), flapping
both arms (THROW), and so on.
Besides the unusual experi-
ence of seeing a projected circle
on the floor following you as you
run around (CHASE), it seems
that a closer mapping of the
expected user input with the out-
put generated on screen leads to
a more intuitive, satisfying sen-
sation. Take the unmitigated suc-
cess of games such as Nintendos
Wii Tennis, where players wave
their arms holding the Wiimote
mimicking real-life tennis ges-
tures in order to control their
avatars on the virtual court.
The type of interaction
required from participants is also
simpler than the often complex
button combination and hand-eye
coordination required from tra-
ditional video games. Despite the
fact that MOVEs game modules
are very punishing and players
last only a few minutes, they
often feel that they failed because
of poor body coordinationthe
ability to jump, move, or react fast
enough to prevent their on-screen
avatar (usually a circle) from col-
liding with the incoming threat
(usually another circle). This fail-
ure to act fast enough was viewed
as something that could easily be
overcome by repeated play, and
failure led to less discouragement
because moving ones body is a
more natural act than orches-
trating a correct combination of
button pushes with fingers on a
gamepad.
Another important element
that differentiates MOVE from
games played on a console or
in an arcade is the placing of
the screen. Because the projec-
tion is on the floor, players are
more engaged with the game
environment. Since they dont
rely on the intermediary of a
projected realistic avatar or sil-
houette mirroring their action
on a vertical projection, theres
less perceived distance between
the space for input and output.
And as players are not looking
at an avatar reacting to their
movements, their sense of iden-
tification is altered, and their
interactioninstead of going
through a two-step process,
Figure 1b. MOVE uses a floor projection setup where presence and movements of
participants are tracked using a camera.
Floor Projection
Infared Lamp
Projector Black & White Camera
Computer
Figure 1c. MOVE presented at FILE RIO 2007, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
35
FEATURE
[1] Huhtamo, E.
Seeking Deeper
Contact. Interactive Art
as Metacommentary.
Convergence 1, no. 2
(1995): 81-104.
[2] Salen. K. and E.
Zimmerman. Game
design and meaningful
play, from Handbook
of Computer Games
Studies, edited by Joost
Raessens and Jeffrey
Goldstein, Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 2005.
intense physical movement,
their duration was brief so as not
to be too exhausting; because
they were short, they allowed
quick permutation of players,
important in a gallery or media-
event setting, which sometimes
means large crowds.
Nonetheless, I was curious
to see if it would be possible to
give players a more complex
gameplay experience through
a physical gaming installation.
Instead of providing a simple
goal (avoid circle), I wanted to
give players a combination of
direct, short-term goals and
indirect, long-term goals: what
Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen
call micro and macro goals [2].
Would it be possible for players
to develop strategies by balanc-
ing priorities between micro and
macro goals in a hectic, physi-
cal environment? Such a game
would require a higher learning
curve, thereby risking alienating
casual or inexperienced gamers,
and void the advantage that the
physical setting and intuitive
body input provides.
Longer gameplay would lead to
deeper immersion for the play-
ers within the representational
environment and could allow for
a more complex depiction of sys-
tem simulations, giving players
more convincing and complex
roles. Nonetheless, the attempt
to depict a representational
world could lead to a loss in the
immediacy that the abstract
shapes of MOVE afforded, which
gave players a higher conscious-
ness of their own actions as
opposed to a feeling of immer-
sion in a virtual world.
Creating a multiplayer game
environment would allow
emphasizing interaction between
players, and creating interesting
first acting and then seeing the
result of the screenleads to a
more direct, seamless type of
interaction.
Finally, theres a performative
quality in playing through the
various modules and executing
the different full-body gestures
in front of an audience. While
most adults would be uneasy
and self-conscious, the games
confer a sense of competition,
pride, and drive to excel to
younger players.
Even though MOVE ended
up providing a very enjoy-
able, entertaining experience
to most people who interacted
with it, my initial ambition
when designing it was to raise
a certain consciousness about
the combination and complex-
ity of the various actions that
participants accomplish when
controlling their avatars in video
games. I wanted to deconstruct
basic avatar behavior by separat-
ing actions in individual game
modules, and offer participants
a way to perform those actions
through a series of mini-games.
The installation was a means
to deconstruct a medium (video
games) using the medium itself,
a process that media theorist
Erkki Huhtamo has described as
metacommentary [1].
After MOVE, I became inter-
ested in the challenge of design-
ing multiplayer, physical gaming
installations that would give
users a gameplay experience
more complex than what MOVE
provided. Single-player mini-
games could offer only limited
interactive experiences, even
though they worked quite well
within a physical gaming context.
The games could be learned
very easily thanks to simple
rules. Because they required
scenarios and tensions between
collaboration and competition in
the game, but at the risk of cre-
ating an overly confusing gam-
ing environment for the players.
In Virtual Ground and Flying
Machinetwo physical gaming
installationsI attempted to
address these issues.
Virtual Ground
After MOVE, I decided to develop
a multiplayer physical game
with a similar installation setup,
a floor-based projection with
graphics updated based on par-
ticipants movement tracked by
a camera located on the ceiling
and pointing down vertically to
the projection.
This new installation, Virtual
Ground, is a loose reference to
the technical definition in which
a virtual ground is part of an
electrical circuit that is main-
tained in a state of equilibrium,
usually through a process of
negative feedback.
The first reason for using this
title was my interest in develop-
ing a game around the analogy
of electrical flow, in which a
virtual electrical current repre-
sented by a line drawn between
players would charge a particle
which, in turn, would be used to
gradually light up a grid-based
surface projected on the floor.
At the beginning of the game,
participants see a floor projec-
tion with a grid of 4x3 squares.
Inside the grid, a small circle
(particle) is rebounding within
the boundaries of the grid. As
participants enter the projected
area, circles appear on the floor,
following them and adjusting
their movement to be always
in the center of the partici-
pants silhouette. A line appears
between participants and adjusts i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
36
Three Very Different Design Paths
itself dynamically according to
their position (see Figure 2a).
When the particle hits the line
between participants, it gets
charged, and if it hits one of
the borders of the grid, that bor-
der (corresponding to the width
of one of the squares of the grid)
gets charged as well. The goal of
the game is to charge opposing
borders of the grid in order to
light up the rows between bor-
ders (Figure 2b). If the particle
hits one of the circles of a par-
ticipant while they are standing
above a charged part of the grid,
the grid turns dark again. The
goal of the game is to charge the
whole grid. This game can poten-
tially accommodate as many
players as the projection surface
would allow, each new player
connected by a line to two other
players (Figure 2c). Once the grid
is completed, a new grid with a
higher resolution (8x6 squares)
appears, offering a more difficult
challenge (Figure 2d).
I assumed that in order to cre-
ate a game with more complex
game mechanics, it could be
beneficial to keep the interaction
elements at their most simple
and intuitive so as to encourage
an easy entry and low learning
curve barrier for players, who
could then focus on discovering
the more complex rules of the
game. After my experience with
MOVE, I realized that among
all the different interactive ges-
tures I had asked participants
to perform while playing the six
different game modules, the one
that was the most intuitive and
easy to understand was simply
to move on the projected surface
and have a circle position itself
underneath them. When partici-
pants moved, the circle would
follow them and reposition itself
with a slight delay underneath
their feet. This simple relation-
ship between player and visual
graphic were used in the mod-
ules CHASE, HIDE, and AVOID,
which were the games in MOVE
that were the easiest for par-
ticipants to understand without
explanations.
Creating a game in which the
only possible input from par-
ticipants would be directional
movement across a 2-D plane
has led to successful gameplay
mechanics in video games. The
most famous example is maybe
Pac-Man, an arcade game in
which the player controls an ani-
mated mouth through a maze,
avoiding ghosts and eating dots.
A more sophisticated example
using a 3-D space is Katamari
Damacy, in which the player
controls a small character push-
ing a sticky ball that increases
in size as objects stick to it. The
challenge resides in exploring
the play area in search of objects
to collect. Only objects smaller
than the ball will stick to it,
increasing the size of the ball
and allowing players to collect
increasingly bigger objects.
The second important refer-
ence to the concept of virtual
ground is the idea of equilib-
rium, or negative feedback. In
MOVE, the common gameplay
mechanic behind each game
module was that the longer play-
ers interacted with the game,
the more the game increased
in difficulty, eventually leading
the player to lose. Ultimately,
games were impossible to win,
and were based on the typi-
cal setup experienced in early
arcade games, where success
was measured in high scores
in this case, how long players
could last without losing. On
Figure 2d. Once a grid of color is completed, a new grid with a
higher resolution appears, offering a higher difficulty challenge.
2
1
3
Figure 2c. Virtual Ground can be played by as many players as
the projection surface allows, each new player is connected by
a line to two other players.
3
2
4
1
Figure 2b. The goal of the game is to charge opposing sides
of the grid by hitting them with the particle in order to light up
the rows between borders.
2
1
Figure 2a. In Virtual Ground, a particle rebounds against a
line connecting the players circles.
1
2
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
37
FEATURE
[3] Csikszentmihalyi,
M. Flow: The
Psychology of Optimal
Experience. New York:
HarperCollins, 1991.
[4] Parts of the Flying
Machine section
were translated and
adapted from Hybrid
Playground: Integracin
De Herramientas Y
Estrategias De Juego
Audiovisual Interactivo
En Los Parques
Infantiles, by Clara Boj
and Diego Diaz.
the contrary, in Virtual Ground
I decided to explore the oppo-
site setup, offering participants
a game environment in which
they could never lose, where the
game would regulate itself by
increasing in difficulty based on
player interaction, similar to the
negative-feedback effect of a vir-
tual ground. As more fields get
colored, getting hit by a particle
becomes more likely, and if hit,
then the fields are set back to
black, letting players try again.
In his famous theory of
flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
describes a state where users
are engaged in an activity where
they are in complete controla
state in between boredom and
anxiety [3]. Such a state has
often been described as the holy
grail for game designers; it is
the closest association with the
elusive concept of fun. A game is
fun if a player achieves a state of
flow between boredom and anxi-
ety. In MOVE, this balance was
achieved for only a limited time;
players were overwhelmingly
subjected to too much difficulty
before losing.
To achieve a state of flow for
casual players, one approach
has been implementing what
is called dynamic difficulty
adjustment (DDA)a system
behavior controlling the diffi-
culty of the game and adjusting
it based on player performance.
One successful example is Wii
Tennis, where a single player
can face increasingly stronger
opponents as they progress,
and their results are monitored
with a score system. If players
start to lose too frequently, the
system decreases the difficulty
level by offering them weaker
opponents. Players are less dis-
couraged to continue and can
improve their gameplay without
feeling defeated.
In Virtual Ground, players
who attempt to fill the grid with
color have two main challenges
to overcome: First, to position
the line at such an angle to be
able to charge two opposite lines
to create a filled row; second,
to avoid having their circle hit
by the particle while standing
above a charged area. The only
possible penalty is having a row
of color turn back to black if they
get hit. That would simply force
them to start over again to try
to fill that row with color. This
mechanic is not adjusting the
difficulty of the game but is pro-
viding a self-regulating difficulty
where players try to achieve a
goal without ever losing. They
are attempting to reach a goal,
filling all the rows with color,
and if they make a mistake, they
simply fall slightly behind.
This approach should allow for
an easier point of entry for casu-
al players, while still offering
deeper gameplay than MOVEs
modules and increased difficulty
at higher level for dedicated
players. Thus, the game can be
enjoyed either for a short period
of time or for longer periods if
one seeks to master the game.
This game was designed to
offer players an interesting expe-
rience of tension between collab-
orating to fill the grid with color
while at the same time struggling
to maintain enough individual
space to move around and avoid
getting hit by the particle.
Flying Machine
Flying Machine is a game cur-
rently in development designed
exclusively for the Hybrid
Playground platform [4]. Hybrid
Playground is an interactive
installation project initiated
by Clara Boj and Diego Diaz of
Valencia, Spain, under their
collective name Lalalab, and
developed in collaboration with
media artist and programmer
Martin Nadal of Madrid. The
concept behind the project is
to combine mobile gaming and
physical gaming within a play-
ground to encourage interaction
between children.
The installation consists of
various sensors attached to play-
ground devices such as swings,
slides, merry-go-rounds, and
spring riders that wirelessly
send information about the chil-
drens movements to a server
that in turn communicates with
a PDA on which a digital game
is unfolding using the physical
interfaces of the playground as
input devices.
This setup transforms a play-
ground into a physical-digital
interactive system in which a
group of children play a videog-
ame using physical actions and
Such a state has often
been described as the
holy grail for game
designers; it is the
closest association with
the elusive concept of
fun. A game is fun
if a player achieves a
state of flow between
boredom and anxiety.
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
38
Three Very Different Design Paths
movements. The playground
doesnt need any significant
alteration except for installing
sensors enclosed in boxes in
order to detect various move-
ments such as tilt, motion, and
rotation. These boxes are quite
compact and do not affect the
handling of the various play-
ground devices.
Lalalab designed a series
of mini-games for Hybrid
Playground in which teams of
four players can play simul-
taneously. Each team has one
leader, who handles the PDA
with the digital game, and three
players wearing identification
bracelets. Each team has a spe-
cific color and an avatar in the
digital game. These roles are
interchangeable at any moment
during gameplay. The play-
ers wearing the bracelets are
tracked in the playground and
perform the physical actions of
the game. The fourth player, or
leader, oversees the unfolding
of the game on the PDA screen
and acts as a guide to the other
team members, giving them
precise orders to undertake
the actions that each game
requires. Each element of the
playground has various mini-
games with different degrees
of difficulty that players have
to overcome. The movements
of the children engaged with
the physical devices of the
playground generate the input
required to control the avatars
in the digital game.
Because the game system of
Hybrid Playground is adaptable
and allows for a wide range of
possible game scenarios, Lalalab
is interested in having game
designers create original games
for their platform. They asked
me if I would be interested in
designing a game exclusively for
Hybrid Playground.
I became very interested
in the challenge of designing
a gameplay experience that
would go beyond the success-
ful mini-games. The feedback
and experience they had test-
ing those games for Hybrid
Playground with children had
been overwhelmingly positive.
I felt that since their platform
was successful with mini-games,
the challenge of creating a game
with a higher learning curve and
more demanding gameplay was
similar to the challenges I faced
designing Virtual Ground.
My main inspiration for
designing what eventually
became Flying Machine was
the work of Swiss artist Jean
Tinguely, whose elaborate kinetic
sculptures resembling useless,
overly complicated machines,
have fascinated me ever since
I saw a retrospective as an
eight-year-old growing up in
Switzerland. The idea of control-
ling a virtual machine using ele-
ments of a playground seemed to
be a possible direction for a game
played by children between the
age of six and ninethe main
age group targeted by Lalalab for
Hybrid Playground.
I decided on the design of
a machine grounded on the
floor, which a crew of children
would have to lift. Each child,
controlling a different part of
the machine, takes it through a
coordinated effort to reach an
altitude of a thousand meters,
avoiding increasingly menacing
obstacles along their way.
The machine consists of two
balloons that have to be inflated
for upward movement, a propel-
ler for horizontal movement,
three air cannons aimed at dis-
sipating clouds, and a main can-
non shooting at the bombs hid-
den behind the clouds (as shown
in Figure 3a).
The children control the vari-
ous parts of the machine using
the playground elements as
input devices. The machines
state and movement are repre-
sented on the PDA screen held
and closely monitored by the
captain, who shouts orders to
his crew: left balloon, inflate
faster!; propeller, go right, air
cannon, shoot!, and so forth (see
Figure 3b and Figure 3c).
Every time a balloon collides
with a bomb, the machine spins
downward and declines in alti-
tude, signaling to the children
that its time for them to switch
roles, each now controlling a new
part of the machine by moving
to different elements in the play-
ground, with another child tak-
ing the role of captain (Figure 3d).
The main challenge of the
game is the careful coordination
of all the different parts of the
machine through vocal commu-
nication between the captain and
its crew. Children activating the
different sensors cannot see the
consequence of their actions and
thus have to rely entirely on the
captains orders. In turn, the cap-
tain must anticipate the move-
ments of the machine, balloons
being inflated to the point where
they explode, clouds hiding
bombs that need to be dispelled,
bombs that need to be shot, then
communicate effectively with
timing to his/her crew the neces-
sary actions they need to accom-
plish given the current on-screen
situation (see Figure 3e).
To prevent the game from
being overly difficult and
frustrating for the children, I
decided to implement a dynamic i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
39
FEATURE
Figure 3a. Flying Machine is controlled by inflating its
balloons for upward movement, a propeller for horizontal
movement, air cannons aimed at dissipating clouds,
and a main cannon shooting at the bombs hidden
behind the clouds.
Figure 3d. Every time a balloon collides with a bomb, the
machine spins downward and declines in altitude.
A
l
l
i
m
a
g
e
s

b
y

A
n
d
r
e
w

H
i
e
r
o
n
y
m
i
e
x
c
e
p
t

f
l
y
i
n
g

M
a
c
h
i
n
e

F
i
g
u
r
e
s

3
b
,

3
c
,

a
n
d

3
e

w
h
i
c
h

a
r
e

b
y

D
i
e
g
o

D
i
a
z

a
n
d

C
l
a
r
a

B
o
j
.
Figure 3b. The machines state and movement are represented on the PDA screen held and closely moni-
tored by the captain, who shouts orders to his crew: left balloon, inflate faster!, propeller, go right!,
air cannon, shoot!, and so forth.
Figure 3e. The captain must anticipate the movements of the machine, then communicate effectively with
the crew the necessary actions they need to accomplish given the current on-screen situation.
Figure 3c. The children control various parts of the machine using the playground elements as input
devices.
Three Very Different Design Paths
[5] Chen, J. Flow
in Games. 2006.
Available at http://www.
jenovachen.com/flow-
ingames.
difficulty adjustment system
similar to the one I designed for
Virtual Ground.
This time, I found inspiration
in the game and thesis paper of
a USC student, Jenova Chen, who
had written a paper titled Flow
in Games, in which he analyzes
a game he designed [5]. In his
game, Flow, the player controls a
creature through a 2-D top-down
view as it evolves in a subma-
rine environment, eating smaller
organisms and avoiding bigger
ones. As it successfully eats
other organisms, the creature
sinks in deeper waters, signaled
by a darkening of the blue back-
ground representing the water
environment. Chen was very
interested in Csikszentmihalyis
flow theory, and decided to
use a DDA system to control
his game. He implemented a
very simple strategy where the
player, rather than being penal-
ized if his creature got eaten by
a bigger organism, would simply
float back up to higher waters,
regressing in a level with an
opportunity to try again.
I decided to employ a similar
strategy with Flying Machine,
where instead of using a health
bar feature common in video
games to penalize players when
they hit an obstacle, I would
simply have the machine spiral
down and lose altitude, giving the
team time to switch controls and
resume their ascension again.
In further iterations of the
game, I would like to implement
the following features: design
of custom versions of machines
based on a library of parts as well
as the physical elements avail-
able in a given playground; power
up collection as the machine is
gaining altitude, to overcome
more challenging obstacles; and
enable multiple machines with
their respective team to interact
within a shared environment
seen across multiple PDAs.
Conclusion
What makes working on these
installations so fascinating and
yet so challenging is the unique
convergence of three different
creative disciplines with very
different sets of constraints:
interaction design, interactive
art, and game design. To be
successful, these installations
require a careful balancing
between opposites in each one of
these disciplines.
From an interaction design
standpoint, these physical
installations are attempting
to move away from traditional
input devices such as the mouse
or gamepad and use alterna-
tive gestural interfaces. How
does one balance the need for
a required level of user-friend-
liness to make the installation
accessible while at the same
time introduce novel or at least
unusual methods of interac-
tions? Part of the answer can be
found in replacing learned con-
ventions, such as button clicks,
with more natural body gestures
closely mapped with the actions
depicted within the environment
represented in the game.
As interactive art, these instal-
lations are faced with the tension
between providing a deconstruc-
tive discourse about the com-
putational medium itself while
at the same time engaging the
audience by offering an immer-
sive experience. Should the inter-
face be a mirror or a window?
Here again, the solution probably
comes from giving participants
an interface in which using their
bodies in a natural way can free
their mind from memorizing but-
ton combinations and let them
reflect on the close relationship
between their bodily actions and
the designed system.
Finally, to return to the main
question this article tries to
address, can these physical
installations provide more than
casual game experiences? It
remains to be seen since both
projects are still a work in prog-
ress, but certainly one can draw
inspiration from nondigital
physical games, where the use of
the body constrained to a fixed
set of rules has often been suc-
cessful at providing these games
with deeper gameplay.
It appears that body mapping
might be the strategic design
approach to take in order to cre-
ate a meaningful experience
through these installations.
Despite the fact that work in this
direction has significant history,
there isnt yet a set of estab-
lished standards for designers
and artists to follow, making the
design of these projects all the
more exciting to pursue.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Hieronymis recent
work focuses on the
boundaries between
games and art in physical
environments. He has talk-
ed and exhibited internationally in art ven-
ues and media festivals, such as Ars
Electronica, SIGGRAPH, FILE, IxDA
Interaction, Microwavefest, and Futureplay
among others. Hieronymi has received an
M.F.A. from the Design | Media Arts
department at the University of California,
Los Angeles (05), and a diploma of fine
Arts from Ecole Suprieure des Beaux-Arts,
Geneva, Switzerland (98). He is a profes-
sor of interactive design and game devel-
opment at the Savannah College of Art and
Design in Savannah, Georgia.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516025
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00 i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
41
FEATURE
[1] Jimmy Wales.
Hi... nupedia-l. Mar.
11, 2000. <http://
web.archive.org/
web/20010506015648/
http://www.nupedia.
com/pipermail/
nupedia-l/2000-
March/000009.html>
[2] Diderot, D. The
Encyclopedia (1755).
In Rameaus Nephew,
and Other Works, edit-
ed by Jacques Barzun
and Ralph Henry
Bowen. Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing
Company, 2001, 277,
283.
[3] Wells, H.G. World
Brain. London:
Methuen, 1938, 49, 54.
Wikipedia was an accident. I sometimes offer
this (admittedly) exaggerated claim in response
to those who confuse Wikipedias current success
with its uncertain origins. At the start, it was but
the most recent contender in an age-old pursuit
of a universal encyclopedia: a dream that the lat-
est technology would provide universal access
to world knowledge. Jimmy Waless and Larry
Sangers first attempt at what would eventually
become Wikipedia, the wiki-based encyclopedia
that anyone can edit, was neither of these things.
So, by saying that Wikipedia was an accident, I
dont mean it was unwelcomefar from itbut
that it was a fortuitous turn of events unforeseen
by even its founders. Moreover, it was evidence of
contingencys role in technological innovation.
The Vision
In March 2000, Jimmy Wales, cofounder of
Wikipedia and its Nupedia progenitor, sent his first
message to the Nupedia e-mail list: My dream is
that someday this encyclopedia will be available
for just the cost of printing to schoolhouses across
the world, including 3rd world countries that
wont be able to afford widespread internet access
for years. How many African villages can afford a
set of Britannicas? I suppose not many.[1] In this
statement one can find a particular type of enlight-
ened aspiration: A universal encyclopedic vision
of increased information access and goodwill.
For example, Denis Diderot, editor of the famous
French Encyclopdie, wrote that a society of men
bound together in a feeling of mutual good will
to collect all the knowledge that now lies scat-
tered over the face of the earth, to make known
its general structure to men among whom we live,
and to transmit it to those who will come after us.
[2] At the beginning of the 20th century, the hope
that modern information technology might finally
lead to the realization of this universal vision is
seen in the works of a seminal documentalist
and of a famous author: Paul Otlets Universal
Bibliographic Repertory and H. G. Wellss World
Brain. They expected the novel technologies of the
index card, loose-leaf binder, and microfilm to
facilitate radically accessible information that also
bridged the distance between people.
Given advances in technology and the insecu-
rity of the interwar period, Wells believed that
intellectual resources were squandered, that
we live in a world of unused and misapplied
knowledge and skill and professional men of
intelligence have great offerings but do not form
a coherent body that can be brought to general
affairs. He hoped that a world encyclopedia could
solve the problem of that jig-saw puzzle and bring
all the scattered and ineffective mental wealth of
our world into something like a common under-
standing. Given the advances in micro-photog-
raphy, Wells felt the time is close at hand when
a student, in any part of the world, will be able to
sit with his projector in his own study at his or her
convenience to examine any book, any document,
in exact replica. And much like one of Wikipedias
greatest strengths, it need not limit itself as a row
of volumes printed and published once and for all
but could instead be a sort of mental clearing-
house for the mind, a depot where knowledge and
ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested,
clarified, and compared in continual correspon-
dence with all that was happening in the world
[3]. Yet it was not until the wiki that this vision
came to be even partially realized.
The Web
To understand the success of Wikipedia as the
most credible realization of the universal encyclo-
pedic vision, one must also understand a failing of
Wikipedia: The Happy Accident
Joseph Reagle
joseph.nyu@reagle.org | New York University
Joseph Reagles work on Wikipedia and its predecessors opened my eyes to a fascinating history. Im delighted he
has provided this account of the origin of the most interesting digital object since the Web itself. Jonathan Grudin
P
h
o
t
o
g
r
a
p
h

b
y

L
o
u
n
g
e
r
i
e
42
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
Three Very Different Design Paths
[4] Berners-Lee, T.
Weaving the Web: The
Original Design and
Ultimate Destiny of the
World Wide Web by Its
Inventor. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco,
1999, 67-84.
[5] Nelson, T.H. Literary
Machines: The Report
On, and Of, Project
Xanadu Concerning
Word Processing,
Electronic Publishing,
Hypertext, Thinkertoys,
Tomorrows Intellectual
Revolution, and Certain
Other Topics Including
Knowledge, Education
and Freedom. 91.1.
Sausalito, Ca.: Mindful
Press, 1992, third chap-
ter zero, 13.
[6] Wilson, D. and
A. M. Reynard.
Interpedia Frequently
Asked Questions and
Answers. Discussion
Group. 15 Feb. 1994.
comp.infosystems.
interpedia. 27 Oct.
2005. <http://
groups.google.de/
groups?selm=CL9x0u.
B4x%40acsu.buffalo.
edu&output=gplain>
See questions 1, 1.2,
1.1, and 4.5.
[7] Shannon, P.
Regarding Sanger and
Shannons Review of
Y2K News Reports.
Forum. 11 Jan. 2000.
Time Bomb 2000. 27
Oct. 2005. <http://www.
greenspun.com/bboard/
q-and-a-fetch-msg.
tcl?msg_id=002I9H>;
and Sanger, L. I Am
a Clueless Newbie.
Mailing list. 9 Mar.
2000. Nupedia-L. 7
June 2006. <http://
web.archive.org/
web/20030822044803/
http://www.nupedia.
com/pipermail/nupedia-
l/2000-March/000003.
html>
the Web as we know it, but not as it was first con-
ceived. In his memoir of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee
describes his motivation for the Web as a univer-
sal medium for sharing information. While todays
Web was seen as a hobbled upstart by hypertext
pioneer Ted Nelson, it falls short of even Berners-
Lees original vision, to which he now refers in its
richer potential as the Semantic Web.
In any case, despite the Webs early limitations,
or perhaps because of them, in January 1993 there
were nearly 50 different Web browsers. These
were inspired by Berners-Lees original Web client
and more or less implemented the early specifica-
tions for HTTP (network transport), HTML (content
markup), and URL (resource locators/identifiers).
However, one client was to stand out: Mosaic,
and subsequently Netscape. Unfortunately, some
Mosaic developers seemed intent on overshadow-
ing the World Wide Web and failed to implement
the critical feature of editing the Web: Marc and
Eric [Mosaic developers] explained that they had
looked at that option and concluded that it was
just impossible. It cant be done. This was news
to me, since I had already done it with the World
Wide Web [client] on the NeXT though admittedly
for a simpler version of HTML. [4] Consequently,
for many people the Web became a browsing-only
medium until the arrival of the WikiWikiWeb.
An Internet Encyclopedia
While the technologies of the earlier half of the
century failed to satisfy, computer networks
inspired a new generation of information univer-
salists. Consider how similar Ted Nelson sounds
to his predecessors on declaring, We have to save
mankind from an almost certain and immediately
approaching doom through the application, expan-
sion and dissemination of intelligence. [5]
Although the idea of an Internet encyclopedia
nearly coincides with the Internets birth, an
Interpedia became a topic of public discussion
in the early 1990s. However, at that time there
were almost too many technical options: Would
it be based on Gopher, WAIS, or the new thing
called the Web? In addition to the confounding
array of options, Doug Wilson, maintainer of the
Interpedia FAQ, wrote, the term Interpedia is
ambiguousto some it means the text, to some
software, and to others what we will have when
we have both. [6] A consequence, in part, of this
technical uncertainty was an ambiguity in vision.
Would Interpedia be part of the Internet, or, if it
referenced existing services, would it be some-
thing that ends up being the net [6]? When the
Web became undeniably predominant a few years
later, projects like the Distributed Encyclopedia
and GNUPedia expected to naturally take advan-
tage of one of the Webs greatest features: decen-
tralization. Different articles would be maintained
by single authors on unrelated websites. This is
unlike Wikipedia, which is created through fine-
grained and incremental collaborations by many
at a single site.
It was not until the new millennium, with the
Web almost ubiquitous and free and open source
software providing the collaborative inspiration,
that a serious commitment to a free online ency-
clopedia was made. After Larry Sanger earned
his Ph.D. in philosophy, he wrote to Jimmy Wales,
entrepreneur and fellow philosophy listserv sub-
scriber, about a possible successor to his Y2K
newslettersthe year 2000 had passed without
much incident and Sanger was looking for new
work. Wales counter-proposed his encyclopedia
idea and asked Sanger if he would be interested in
leading the project. So in 2000 Wales hired Sanger
to launch and manage Nupedia.com, building
the finest encyclopedia in the history of human-
kind. [7] But Nupedia struggled: Its underlying
collaborative software lacked functionality, and
it was difficult to procure commitments from
expert volunteers for the significant work entailed
in writing and reviewing articles. The univer-
sal vision, providing a low-cost encyclopedia to
schoolhouses across the world, seemed reason-
able. The technology, too, seemed capable of inex-
pensively supplying information throughout the
world, and of facilitating the work of distant con-
tributors. Yet something more was needed and it
would be found only by what seems to have been
an accident.
Wiki and Wikipedia
Wiki wiki means superfast in the Hawaiian
language, and Ward Cunningham chose the
name for his collaborative Web software in 1995
to indicate the ease with which one could edit
pages. Cunningham, an advocate of software
design patterns, attended a conference on pattern
languages during which he agreed to collect and
post user-submitted patterns if contributors sent
him a structured text file, which he could then i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
44
Three Very Different Design Paths
[8] Cunningham, W.
Correspondence on
the Etymology of Wiki.
Nov. 2003. Cunningham
& Cunningham, Inc.
2005. 4 Oct. 2008.
<http://c2.com/doc/
etymology.html>
[9] Sanger, L..
Lets Make a Wiki.
Mailing list. 10 Jan.
2001. Nupedia-L. 15
Nov. 2005. <http://
web.archive.org/
web/20030414014355/
http://www.nupedia.
com/pipermail/nupedia-
l/2001-January/000676.
html>
[10] History of
Wikipedia. Wikimedia.
8 Jan. 2009. <http://
en.wikipedia.org/w/
index.php?oldid=
262685944>
[11] Sanger, L.
Wikipedia Is Now
Useful! Wikipedia. 26
June 2001. <http://
en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Wikipedia:Ann
ouncements_2001#
June_26.2C_2001>
and Interpedia Is
DeadLong Live
Wikipedia. Discussion
Group. 23 Sept. 2001.
comp.infosystems.
interpedia. 3 Nov. 2005.
<http://groups.google.
com/group/comp.
infosystems.interpedia/
browse_thread/thread/
d0eef272f840b9c2/bb0
38fa078a1bf8d?lnk=st&
q=group:*interpedia*&r
num=17&hl=en#bb038
fa078a1bf8d>
[12] Nupedia.
Wikipedia. 21 Dec.
2008. <http://
en.wikipedia.org/w/
index.php?oldid=
259360273>
Since its start, Wikipedias growth has been
extraordinary. Within six months Sanger
announced that the Wikipedia is now useful.
In September 2001 he proclaimed on Usenet:
Interpedia is deadlong live the Wikipedia.
Interpedias noble dream of creating a free, open
encyclopedia lives onnot quite in the form
imagined, but in a very open and free form with
which many early participants would probably
approve. [11] Wikipedia proved to be so suc-
cessful that when the server hosting Nupedia
crashed in September 2003 (with little more than
24 complete articles and 74 more in progress) it
was never restored [12]. Yet Sanger continued to
be committed to an authoritative expert-driven
reference work and was never fully reconciled
with Wikipedias radical openness and explo-
sive growth. Then, with the burst of the Internet
bubble, Sanger, like many others in the industry,
was laid off (from Bomis); he resigned from his
Wikipedia role shortly thereafter. Still, he con-
tinued to comment, criticize, and eventually
compete with a new expert-friendly wiki project,
Citizendium. The English version of Wikipedia now
exceeds two million articles, having long ago sub-
sumed most of the original Nupedia content. The
Wikimedia Foundation, incorporated in 2003, is
now the steward of Wikipedias in many languages,
a wiki based dictionary, a compendium of quota-
tions, collaborative textbooks, a repository of free
source texts, and a collection of images that can be
used by other Wikimedia projects.
Considering these remarkable resources and the
long and dogged pursuit of the universal encyclope-
dic vision, Wikipedias emergence seems inevitable.
But when one looks more closely at the history, at
the unfortunate neutering of the Web by the brows-
er, at the productive laziness prompting the creation
of the wiki, at chance emails and lunch conversa-
tions, it can equally be seen as a happy accident.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Reagle is an
adjunct professor at NYUs Department of Media,
Culture, and Communication where he studies col-
laborative cultures. As a former research engineer at
MITs Lab for Computer Science he served as a
Working Group Chair and author within IETF and
W3C on topics including digital security, privacy, and Internet policy.
A book, based on his dissertation, about Wikipedia collaboration
should be available in 2009.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516026
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00
automatically process and post online. This was
surprisingly difficult for many: I was amazed
at how people who sent me files couldnt follow
even the simple rules. I was three pattern docu-
ments into this thing, and getting pretty tired
of it already. So I made a form for submitting
the documents. [8] This user-editable repository
would come to be known as the Portland Pattern
Repositoryand the first wiki. In a sense, wiki
captures the original conception of the World
Wide Web as both a browsing and editing medi-
um, the latter capability largely forgotten. Wiki
makes this possible by placing a simple editor
within a Web-page form, and the functionality of
formatting and linking is carried out by the wiki
server. Any browser can now edit.
In early January 2001, there was an increasing
frustration associated with Nupedia productiv-
ity. The need to publish more articles, as well as a
greater popular interest in contributing, was not
well matched by the expert-dependent multistep
editorial process. Hence, the stage was set for the
introduction of a wiki. On January 2, Sanger had
lunch with Ben Kovitz, a friend from Internet phi-
losophy lists, during which Kovitz introduced the
idea of wikis to Sanger. Sanger immediately saw
this as a possible remedy to Nupedias problems,
permitting wider uncredentialed contribution and
collaboration on articles that would then be fed
to Nupedias credentialed editorial review. Within
a day, Sanger proposed the idea to Wales, and
Nupedias wiki was announced on January 10 in a
message entitled, Lets make a Wiki:
No, this is not an indecent proposal. Its an idea to add a
little feature to Nupedia. Jimmy Wales thinks that many
people might find the idea objectionable, but I think not.
As to Nupedias use of a wiki, this is the ULTIMATE
open and simple format for developing content. We have
occasionally bandied about ideas for simpler, more open
projects to either replace or supplement Nupedia. It seems
to me wikis can be implemented practically instantly,
need very little maintenance, and in general are very low-
risk. Theyre also a potentially great source for content [9].
However, Wales was right: Nupedia contribu-
tors did resist Nupedia being associated with a
website in the wiki format. Therefore, the new
project was given the name Wikipedia and
launched on its own address, Wikipedia.com, on
January 15, 2001 [10]. i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
45
FORUM TIMELINES
EDITOR
Jonathan Grudin
jgrudin@microsoft.com
[1] United Ngunnawal
Elders Council
2008. Department
of Disability, Housing
and Community
Services, Multicultural,
Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Affairs,
updated 13 May 2008.
<http://www.dhcs.act.
gov.au/matsia/atsia/
ngunnawal_issues>
Elders Council. The purpose of the council is to
advise the ACT chief minister on matters associ-
ated with indigenous issues across the ACT [1].
In recent times Aboriginal culture and tra-
ditional knowledge have come to the forefront.
Aboriginal elders want to continue passing
on their traditions, knowledge, and culture to
younger generations, but it is difficult to do so in
a globalized, modern, multicultural society like
Australia. Elders are concerned about the younger
generations growing up without their culture,
about a lack of interest in their language, dance,
and traditions. To prevent its extinction, the
elders want to preserve Aboriginal culturefam-
ily histories, traditional language, and customs
for their descendents.
With the onset of the technological age, it has
been suggested that information technology
can preserve Aboriginal culture and traditional
knowledge in a format that can be distributed
easily and for many years to come. Moreover,
this technology enables the digital repatriation
of traditional artifacts from major museums
around the world, the recording of rock art sites,
and the digital management of cultural heritage.
This material is also attractive to anthropologists
and linguists for research purposes. Interestingly,
the nations scientists also want to preserve
Aboriginal traditional knowledge, but for reasons
like carbon pollution management, which is asso-
ciated with global warming.
Information technology may offer a solu-
tion to the storage, distribution, and retrieval
of Aboriginal traditional knowledge through
databases and Web technologies. Databases in
their architecture assume a western European
governance hierarchyin that there is a single
database administrator who holds the systems
The way in which Western European societies
organize themselves reflects other aspects of
their world. The governance structure of a com-
munity is one example. The small rural commu-
nity where I reside in Australia has a population
of 1,200, but the shire itself has approximately
11,000 residents. Recently, we voted for our local
government representatives, who then voted in
a mayor of the shire. Federal elections are con-
ducted in the same manner: We vote for federal
representatives, and the governing political party
votes for a leader, the prime minister, to govern
Australia. This is all very neatly ordered and
assumes a particular hierarchy of governance.
But what if a society were not structured in such
a manner? What if it did not have a leader but
rather were led by a council of the wisest and
sometimes oldest members of the society with
perhaps a single, alternating spokesperson but
not one leader? What if that society were a sub-
culture within a structured hierarchical society?
This is how Australian Aboriginal communities
are structured.
Having a council of elders to govern a com-
munity is how Aboriginal communities are
organized. Historically, Aboriginal communities
are led by a council of elders, among whom the
power is distributed. Usually, all family groups in
that community are represented. While Australia
has been colonized for more than 200 years,
Aboriginal communities are for the most part
still governed or represented through some form
of Aboriginal council of elders. Even in urban
areas, elders councils exist to represent the indig-
enous people of the land. One example of this is
in Australias capital city, Canberra, where the
Australian Capital Territorys (ACT) government
recognizes and supports the United Ngunnawal
Reconstructing Australian
Aboriginal Governance by
Systems Design
Peter Radoll
Peter.Radoll@anu.edu.au | Jabal Indigenous Higher Education Centre, Australian National University
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
46
Three Very Different Design Paths
EDITOR
Gary Marsden
gaz@acm.org
FORUM UNDER DEVELOPMENT
[2] Verran, H., M.
Christie, B. Anbins-King,
T. van Weeran, and W.
Yunupingu. Designing
digital knowledge
management tools with
Aboriginal Australians.
Digital Creativity, 18, no
.3 (2007): 129-142.
also the design of the database and the database
management system, or DBMS, which is of more
concern, as that is where the power struggle
begins. The issues of and with using informa-
tion technology for storing Aboriginal traditional
knowledge come from the same Verran et al.
article, in which they also find it difficult to
match Aboriginal values with the design con-
straints of information technology, stating: We
look at ways of proceeding that connect well
enough with both traditions in particular cir-
cumstances. [2] Here lies a fundamental issue
with designing information technology solutions
for Aboriginal communities. The question then
is, what does well enough mean? Well enough
for whom, in what circumstances, and from
whose perspective?
The DBMS design is a major consideration for
Aboriginal communities because it assumes there
is a hierarchy in both administration of the data-
base and also access to the database. The design
of the DBMS is such that there needs to be a data-
base administrator who implements processes to
ensure integrity and control, providing levels of
access to those who want to access the data. How
do you ensure the security and integrity of the
database when there could be up to 10 or more
members of a community that expect equal secu-
rity rights and access to the database? This issue
they struggle with is, who should have what type
of access and who should not have access?
So rather than a single leader with total con-
trol over the database, who would normally be
the database administrator, the governance of
Aboriginal communities is such that the entire
council of elders would expect equal access to
the database, with all of the council deciding on
who has access to what data. As those who pres-
ently administer databases would understand,
having 10 or so database administrators would
prove to be a most interesting situation from
many aspects.
Over the years I have witnessed and experi-
mented with various ways to try and overcome
this problem. I have witnessed database segment
encryption based on username and password
so that the data can be decrypted only by using
the depositors password. I have witnessed elders
councils deciding on a leader to hold the admin-
istrator password authority, but this has led to
many arguments and has altered the governance
administrator password. I call this the god
password. This means that one person is respon-
sible for the administration of the database but
is also responsible for providing access to the
data. This model is in contrast to Aboriginal
community governance and must be addressed
in the design of the system. While many have
attempted to address this, to date there has not
been a successful solution to this fundamental
database-design issue.
The debate about the use of databases and
digitizing of traditional knowledge is ongoing,
but to understand the chasm between the two
worlds of Aboriginal communities and informa-
tion technology, we need to understand that the
two are not compatible. This complexity of infor-
mation technology and Aboriginal communities
is best summed up by Verran et al.: It is work
that involves the intersection of two quite differ-
ent knowledge traditions where little is held in
common between the ways the traditions under-
stand themselves. [2] This is coming closer to
the issue of where the design of the technology is
routed in a tradition that is at best foreign to the
Aboriginal communities upon which it is being
imposed. That is, databases are not valueless as
they assume there is a logical hierarchy both in
data storage and also administration and access.
This not only relates to the data being stored but
Rather than a single
leader with total control
over the database, who
would normally be the
database administrator, the
governance of Aboriginal
communities is such that
the entire council of elders
would expect equal access
to the database.
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
48
Three Very Different Design Paths
that connect[s] well enough to both cultures.
We have a society that is governed by a council
of elders and a well-respected Aboriginal elder
articulating that power corrupts. And we have a
keeper of the god password.
Ideally, information technology design should
change to reflect the Aboriginal communities
upon which it is being imposed, to ensure that
the culture they so want to preserve is not being
altered by the technology being used to preserve it.
The future signs, however, are encouraging,
with more and more work taking place in the
field of HCI for development, as this column
attests. It is our belief that as new technology is
created for different indigenous communities, ICT
as a whole will benefit from new design solutions
and ideas.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Peter Radoll is the direc-
tor of Jabal Indigenous Higher Education Centre at
the Australian National University. He holds two
degrees in information technology and worked as a
systems administrator and systems developer for
more than seven years before returning to universi-
ty to undertake a Ph.D. in information systems examining the
uptake of information technology in Australian Aboriginal homes.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516027
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00
structure of the Aboriginal community itself.
Once one person from one family has control
over the database and access to the data, the
most common issue that occurs is that thosein
the community, who do not associate with that
family, are excluded. These disputes are quite
normal in Aboriginal communities. With infor-
mation technology solutions, there must be a
single keeper of the god password, which can
exclude all other families from being able to
access the data stored. This in effect denies many
from accessing their own cultural material.
As I have stated previously, the reason for
elders councils is to distribute the governance
power across a community rather than in one
leader. The example above is a demonstration of
what happens when there is an interruption to
the traditional Aboriginal governance. This abuse
of power is not uncommon in Aboriginal com-
munities, as well-respected Aboriginal Elder Uncle
Chicka Dixon articulated in a public lecture about
Aboriginal community leadership and the strug-
gle for social justice in the 1960s: I didnt want
power; power corrupts. [3]
We are now in the position where technology
is imposed upon a culture where little is held in
common with the imposing culture, combined
with a notion of projects proceeding in a way
[3] Uncle Chicka Dixon.
A History of the Political
Struggle: A Personal
Point of View by Dr.
Chicka Dixon, Directed
by Jason De Santolo. 36
min. Jumbunna Annual
Lecture 2005, University
of Technology, Sydney,
Australia, 2006. DVD.
An aboriginal design mosaic in front of Parliament House Canberra, Australia, designed by a renowned indigenous artist Michael Nelson Jagamarra in 1988.
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
49
FORUM UNDER DEVELOPMENT
Sneaky little devil, that iPod
shuffle. The beauty of this well-
designed object is that, in its
simplicity, it unmasked the digi-
tal complexity of the rest of my
life. It has started a whirlwind
of digital tidying in my house
that is driving not just me but
all my friends mad.
This is a cautionary tale, and
heres how it all began. Recently,
I received an iPod shuffle, which
I love for a number of reasons. It
was an expected gift, so it makes
me happy because of what it
connotes. 2009 also happens to
be the 30-year anniversary of
the birth of the personal sound-
track. In 1979 Sony launched the
Soundabout, a portable, 14 oz.
personal stereo that became bet-
ter known as the Sony Walkman.
Thus, I was actually gifted a
reflective moment in the his-
tory of personal technology. The
shuffles form factor is superb.
Its small and light and easy to
carry around, and it has a built-
in clip, which means I am not
constantly dropping it. And its
silver, so it matches my hand-
bag. It is easy to set up and use.
It does not violate Churchills
Design Principle No. 1, which is
to never interrupt humans on
their path to gratification unless
you are: A. trying to teach them
something, B. a game designer
with a fiendish plot twist in
mind, or C. you know they are
Zen monks in training or mem-
bers of a self-discipline cult. The
shuffle takes you to gratifica-
tion at autobahn speed; it goes
straight from package to perfor-
manceno setup frustration,
no waiting to use the new toy.
Finally, I love the feature refer-
enced in the marketing tagline
life is randomduring the
2005 product launch. As soon as
it is plugged in, the shuffle auto-
fills with songs randomly select-
ed from a users music library (or
a specific playlist).
Generally I am not a person
who likes random. I like to know
whats coming next. I like match-
ing beats and evoking moods
with music. I create playlists. So
at first I thought the iPod broke
with Churchills Design Principle
No. 2: Keep the surprises to a
minimum and user control to a
maximum. However, this little
device has brought some seren-
dipity to my life, and as a result
it has reinvigorated my love of
my music collection. I have been
reintroduced to music that has
lain dormant, invisibly resting
deep inside my computer in
places I never browse. With the
shuffle at the helm, I am regaled
with Matisyahu followed by
Abba followed by Motrhead fol-
lowed by Thomas Tallis followed
by Mozart followed by Pole fol-
lowed by Zappa. Some of these
bring a smile to my face; others
lead me to wistful emotional
archaeology.
But, heres the rub, and the
genesis of Churchills Design
Principle No. 3: Know that your
device, if truly successful, will
bring about much change, will
have knock-on effects in the life
of the individual who embraces
it. This principle is the closest I
have ever come to sounding like
a fortune cookie.
Why this principle? Because
my shuffle sparked a compul-
sion to tidy up, to consolidate
my music. I reasoned that if one
library were this much fun, how
great might it be if my shuffle
could sample from all my
music? So, I decided to consoli-
date my iTunes libraries from
my three computers. Sounds
easy, right? No. Here we go
down the rabbit hole that began
with the shuffle.
Let me tell you, trying to fuse
three iTunes libraries from dif-
ferent computers is not as easy
as it should be. First, nothing to
do with the music library itself,
I encountered the problem of
storage space. Between the three
libraries, I have hundreds of
gigabytes of music. As a result
Digital Order:
Just Over the Horizon or
at the End of the Rainbow?
Elizabeth F. Churchill
Yahoo! Research | churchill@acm.org
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
50
Models and Principles Relevant to Design
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
51
OPINION Ps AND Qs
of my first attempt to merge
my libraries, my poor computer
started creaking and slowed
to a crawl. Only 5 gigabytes of
free space. Bloat alert. Abort
copy. Move into computer CPR.
Purchase an external hard drive
and attach to ailing computer.
Several hours later, I began
the copy again. All seemed to
be going well. But post-copy,
on firing up iTunes, I could not
see the music I knew I had. So
I tried a menu option: Add to
Library and went hunting for
the files. This did not work. So, I
took a peek in the iTunes library
folder. (This is like looking in
that cupboard where you shove
everything you will need for tax
time, myriad bits of paper that
may be useful and demand to
be sorted come March.) I saw
that I didnt have a consistent
folder structure. To be clear,
I had a lot of structure, but it
did not appear to be consis-
tent structure. Why not? Who
knows! Perhaps I inherited some
structure from bygone days
when I was in love with another
mp3 player.
Suddenly I was in a series
of Internet forums, searching,
browsing, asking questions,
begging people for information,
and feeling frustrated that I did
not know all-things-database;
swiftly realizing no one else
seemed to know what was going
on either and I had no grounds
on which to evaluate the differ-
entsometimes conflicting
advice I was reading.
To cut to the chase and save
you the dull and drawn-out
details, in the end I called a
friend who is not only patient,
but also the Dr. Doolittle of
the computer kingdom. He
came over and sorted out what
he diagnosed as a meta-data
problem. He muttered all along
about meta-data and index
files, and inscrutable menus.
And that he is not a Mac user
and why is this folder structure
so complicated
We (well, he) completed the
merge days later. The resultant
tidy folder of folders in fold-
ers, Russian-doll style, was a
beautiful thing to behold. This
clean slate set in motion the
kind of obsessive compulsive
behavior that would have made
Lady Macbeth proud. My greedy,
music-hungry eyes lit upon the
remaining 600 or so CDs I had
not yet ripped. Anything that
looked like a CD was put in line
for the music-ripping conveyer
belt. Then I set about solving the
next problem that emerged
removing duplicates from my
music library. There were up
to three versions of various
CDs, each in a different format,
making it difficult to decide
which version was best. So, back
online I went, reading about
formats and de-duping, i.e.,
removing duplicates. Carrying
out version comparison and
removing duplicates should be
easythis surely follows the
really basic principle that bor-
ing dull repetitive tasks should
be done by computers who
are good at that sort of thing,
while we humans do the cre-
ative stuff. Isnt that what batch
processing is all about? Finally,
thanks to iDupe, a nifty little
application that simplifies the
duplicate music file problem,
the job was done. I had ripped
hundreds of CDs and was ready
to shuffle randomly across hun-
dreds of gigabytes of music.
Then, my newly purchased
Seagate external hard drive
refused to mountintermit-
tently. I now had all my tamed
music files and folders on an
apparently failing hard drive.
Detour again. This time, how-
ever, I was in a complete panic.
I did not yet have a backup of
those clean music files, old
and new. Having at this point
sunk hours into this music
organizing process, I was not
ready for a repeat perfor-
mance. All the while, a recent-
ly unearthed 1980s song by
the Fixx, One Thing Leads to
Another played in my mind,
accompanying my distress.
Fast-forward a few days. I am
under my desk inserting a new
Having just been
knee-deep in a mess of
digital files, it was clear
to me that to date my
personal information
management technique
had been the work
of many, somewhat
sentient, processors: Me,
my applications and my
devices. Each of us had a
different idea of what a
file hierarchy should
look like.
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
52
Models and Principles Relevant to Design
terabyte drive in my computer.
I am backing-up and con-
solidating my farm of external
hard drives. I am researching
RAID backup solutions. I have
gone insane.
I think some have called this
insanity personal information
management; that much laud-
ed activity in which an indi-
vidual (quite possibly an OCD
individual) sorts and resorts
and stores his/her personal-
information items (e.g., fles,
email messages, Web favor-
ites, contacts) with retrieval in
mind. Having just been knee-
deep in a mess of digital files,
it was clear to me that to date
my personal information man-
agement technique had been
the work of many, somewhat
sentient, processors: Me, my
applications and my devices.
Each of us had a different idea
of what a file hierarchy should
look like. Thus, over the years,
we collectively created a mud-
dled set of incompatible file
hierarchies. Each local decision
we mademe and my applica-
tions and applianceswas, in
some sense, optimized within
the realm of local control and
convenience. But the global
picture, illuminated by my
innocent shuffle, turned out to
be unwieldy, and detours were
necessary when the multiple
possible breaking points got
strained. None of us involved
owned or understood enough
about the global situation to be
aware of the problem or easily
fix it. That being said, in ret-
rospect, it was probably up to
me to be vigilant all along. But
how was I to know vigilance
was required? I was seduced by
convenience and wanting to get
on with my social, embodied
life. Tidying and maintaining
my digital closets was not my
top priority.
This all begs the question:
Would I have done things dif-
ferently had I known? If I had
known that the merge and
removal of duplicates was
going to be such a pain, would
I have not set up several dif-
ferent libraries? More likely, I
would have done everything
the way I did it and said to
myself: Ill clean up later.
Hindsight is not foresight, and
in this instance there was
none to be had. How would I
have known there would be
clean-up? I have been dealing
with layers of systems, each of
which in itself was supposed to
be the ultimateand final
solution. (Each music format
was supposed to be the one,
right? And I am old enough to
remember the day when 640K
was supposed to accommodate
anybodys digital needs.)
Ultimately, Im not unhappy
about this unplanned cleanup. I
am reminded of my friend who
wanted a crunchy crunchy
thing (aka a disposal unit) in
her kitchen sink. When she
speced what she wanted, she
realized it required a double
sink. This double sink was larg-
er than her current sink, which
required the kitchen counter to
be replacedand on the story
goes. A kitchen extension into
where the garden patio had
been, several thousands of dol-
lars and many months of dust
later, she has a gorgeous new
kitchen, all sparked by the dis-
posal unit and justified in one-
step increments. She is happy,
no question. But my point is
you never know what is going to
spark that life revolution.
Reflecting on my encounter
with my shuffle and its conse-
quences, I have some lessons
to add to my ad hoc design
principles:
Lessor Orelooser corrol
and good things might happen
(or falling in love, even with a
device, can change your life)
Lessor Tvorardom car
lead to order
Lessor Tlreedigial order
is an ongoing and time-consum-
ing process, not an end state,
not least because the world
itself keeps changing around us
Lessor !ourle soluior
does not lie in well-developed,
mental models of individual
devices and applications; its
about charting multiple tech-
nological worlds of negotiated
meaning
Lessor !ive currer, sae
of the art personal-information
management does not scale to
the bigger digital person Ive
become. Contemporary person-
al-information management
concepts and applications, no
matter how well scoped for my
smaller self or my partitioned
self (work/home/hobby), are
pint sized, and therefore out of
their depth when dealing with
my digital ocean.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elizabeth
Churchill is a principal research scientist at
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
Churchill researches how people manage
their digital and physical archives. She
rates herself a packrat, her greatest joy is
an attic stuffed with memorabilia.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516028
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00 i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
53
OPINION Ps AND Qs
[1] Dubberly, H. and S.
Evenson. The Analysis-
Synthesis Bridge
Model. interactions 15,
no.2 (2008).
[2] Beer, S. Decision and
Control: The Meaning of
Operational Research
and Management
Cybernetics. New York:
John Wiley & Sons,
1966.
[3] Kay, A. interviewed
in Project 2000, a
video produced by
the author while at
Apple Computer, Inc.,
Cupertino, 1988.
[4] Argyris, C.
Reasoning, Learning
and Action: Individual
and Organizational. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
1982.
Models are ideas about the worldhow it might be
organized and how it might work. Models describe
relationships: parts that make up wholes; struc-
tures that bind them; and how parts behave in rela-
tion to one another.
For example, the sun rises in the east, moves
across the sky, and sets in the west. Or the earth
orbits the sun.
Models support communication and learning.
Models help bridge the gap between observing and
making, between research communities and design
communities [1]. Models are especially important in
interaction and service design.
Making Sense and Guiding Action
Models help us make sense of things. Stafford Beer
wrote, Now in trying to account for the behavior
of a complicated system, the scientist has first to
represent it in the formal terms he knows how to
manipulate.... The formal representation of the
system that he builds is called a model. This model
is something different than the diagrams that are
drawn [2]. Alan Kay noted, Models are our voodoo
dolls. We do most of our thinking in models [3].
Models begin with things or events that we
observe. We want to describe or explain what we
see. Pieces fit together; patterns emerge; we posit
causes and effects. Under this frame, evidence
leads to models.
Models are conjectureshypotheses. They are
not formed by deduction or induction but by abduc-
tioninferring the most likely story to explain the
evidence. Abduction is the creative heart of science,
engineering, and design. Its mechanism remains
unknownthough preparation and persistence
may aid the process.
Models are not the special province of science.
We use them all the time. Models help us recognize
new situations as similar to others we have encoun-
tered. Without a model, recognizing the similarities
might be difficult.
Models also help us predict likely futures: what
actions other actors may take, consequences of those
actions, and what actions best respond to threats
or most efficiently help us pursue our goals.Armed
with our models predictions, we act accordingly.
Chris Argyris wrote, Although people do not
[always] behave congruently with their espoused
theories [what they say], they do behave congruent-
ly with their theories-in-use [their mental models]
[4]. Under this frame, models lead to action.
Learning As Forming and Reforming Models
If we are present and engaged (that is, paying
Observation can be a source of new models. Observation can be a source of new models.
observations new models
suggest
Models are ideas about the worldhow it might be organized
and how it might work.
Models are ideas about the worldhow it might be organized
A representation of the
Ptolemaic model of the world
systema geocentric view.
A representation of the Coper-
nican model of the solar
systema heliocentric view.
A representation of the
Sun
Earth
A representation of the Coper-
Sun
Earth
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
54
Models and Principles Relevant to Design
Models of Models
Hugh Dubberly
Dubberly Design Office | hugh@dubberly.com
Editors note: This forum presents models relevant to interaction design and service design. It describes the models,
how they might be used, and why they matter. It also describes the models origins and contrasts related models.
In its first year, forum articles described models of innovation process, design process (Analysis-Synthesis Bridge),
customer experience cycle, learning in design and product development, the trend from a mechanical to a biological
frame in design (era analysis), design research types (map), and interaction types (taxonomy).
However, none of the articles presented a model of models. We correct that oversight here.
attention) and yet we have an accident or make
a mistake, the cause may be some defect in our
models. That is, our models suggested one out-
come, but we have found another. The difference
between expectation and outcome creates an
opportunity for learning.
Learning involves forming models and reforming
them based on feedback. We observe some behavior
in our environment; it suggests models, which we
use to predict future behavior and guide our actions.
Additional observations provide feedback, which
helps us revise and refine our models. We learn.
When outcomes do not match our predictions, we
have two choices:
1. Reject the data
Vcrc mcusurcmcrs :ruccuruc
Vus rc cs proccuurc juucu
Vus rc rcporcr l:uscu
2. Accept the data
s : rcc.ur o our mouc
s : u spcc:u cusc Mcur:rq our mouc :s css usc
ju u rc cxrcmcs or our mouc rccus rcj:rcmcr or
cxcrs:or.
Vus prc.:ous uuu :ruccuruc or :rsujj:c:cr
Mcur:rq uc rccu o rc.:sc our mouc.
Under this frame, we modify our models based
on the results of our predictionswe subject them
to feedback. Learning is inextricably linked with
models and involves:
Creairg rev models.
Revisirg exisirg models.
Extending a model so that it corresponds to
more observations (broadening).
or cxumpc, Focmy :rrouuccu cyccs
u:r:r cyccs o uccour jor rc rcroqruuc
mo:or oj Murs.
Refining a model so that it more closely cor-
responds to observation (deepening).
or cxumpc, cpcr jouru ru 5rurcs olscr.u
:ors sroucu ru rc purcs joou ur c:p:cu
(ro c:rcuur pur urouru rc sur.
Generalizing modelsreframing a model of a
specific event as a model of a more general set
of phenomena.
or cxumpc, rc sr:j jrom rc Focmu:c o
Copcrr:cur mouc :s ur cxumpc oj u qcrcru
cusc ru rccurs rrouqrou rc r:sory oj sc:
crcc us orc :mporur mouc q:.cs uuy o
urorcr. urr rumcu r:s u 'puruu:qm sr:j.
lderiyirg model primiivesirdirg paerrs
that recur across many models, often based on
fundamental rules of geometry or topology.
or cxumpc, rc curr orl::rq rc sur :s u
spcc:u cusc oj u morc qcrcru mouc oj suc:cs
orl::rq pr:mury lou:cs, ur:cr ucscr:lcs orcr
cuscs sucr us rc moor orl::rq rc curr or
Our models guide our actions. Our models guide our actions.
new models actions
guide
We evolve our models as we test their predictions. We evolve our models as we test their predictions.
observations new models actions what happens
future events
suggest reinforce yes
no
predict
frame + filter
may suggest
existing models
consistent? guide affect compared
EDITOR
Hugh Dubberly
hugh@dubberly.com
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
55
FORUM ON MODELING
surs orl::rq rc ccrcr oj u quuxy. / syscm
:r ur:cr orc ccmcr rc.o.cs urouru urorcr :s
u juruumcru pucrru 'pr:m::.c or lu:u
:rq locr oj moucs.
We use models and learn through them, not only
as individuals but also as groups. Learning takes
place on at least four scales:
l ru:.:uuu
2 Vorrqroup (or puy cum, ur:cr :s composcu oj
:ru:.:uuus
Orqur:zu:or, ur:cr :s composcu oj uorrqroups
+ Cuurc, ur:cr :s composcu oj orqur:zu:ors
Learningforming and reforming models
begins with individuals. It can expand to work-
groups, organizations, and even entire cultures.
That is, a model may be highly idiosyncratic, rarely
shared with others. Or it may be highly convention-
al, widely shared by others.
At each scale, three levels of process are at work:
l Fr:muryrc uc:.:y u ruru, urucrsoou rrouqr
moucs.
2 Sccoruorucru:rcc curr:rq (uru ucs:qr:rq, :mpro.
:rq pr:mury proccsscs, ru :s, rcj:r:rq moucs oj pr:mury
proccsscs.
r:ruorucrmcucurr:rq (curr:rq ulou curr:rq,
:mpro.:rq sccoruorucr proccsscs, ru :s, :mpro.:rq mou
cs oj curr:rq uru moucs oj moucs.
Passing models from one generation to the next
is a responsibility of teachers and managers. Models
are what students take away from school and what
young people take away from early jobs. Models are
what you remember after leaving.
Peter Senge noted that developing and sharing
models is fundamental to learning organizations.
He suggests that a leaders role is to improve both
his or her own mental models and those of the
organizationto test and add to the mental models
of others [5].
Design is a young profession; design practices
that operate as learning organizations are rare.
Typically, models remain implicit. Students learn
by watching teachers, managers, and colleagues.
Universities, professional organizations, and
design practitioners have much opportunity to
improve the way designers learnto develop sys-
tems for forming and reforming models of design
processes.
Limits and Costs
Earlier, I described observation shaping models; but
models also shape what we seewhat we let our-
v
Questions to Ask
When Making Models
For any set of observations (or system), we may imagine many models.
And for any (mental) model, we may imagine many representations.
What processes lead to good models?
What processes lead to good representations?
How do we recognize a good model?
How do we recognize a good representation?
All models have a purpose and serve constituents. Models have a point of
view; and they advocate it. Models are always political.
Acknowledge the subjectivity of modeling: Consider your constituents.
Speak with them to learn their needs and their views of the system
(situation).
Directly observe the system; record your observations. If you are modeling
a system that does not exist, observe similar systems.
Constituents goals and system observations form the criteria against
which we judge both model and representation.
Why are we making a model?
What decisions or actions will it support?
Who are the constituents for the model?
What are their goals?
How can the constituents be involved in the modeling process?
How will decisions about the model and representation be
made?
Models are not objective. They leave things out. They draw boundaries
between what is modeled and what is not, between the system and its
environment, and between the elements of the system.
Framing a systemdefining itis editing. What we think of as natural
boundaries, inside and outside, are somewhat arbitrary. The people
making the model choose what boundaries to draw and where to draw
them. That means they have to agree on the choices.
What should the model attempt to predict?
What is in the system, and what is not?
Who or what are the actors?
What resources do they use?
How do they affect one another?
What level of abstraction or degree of granularity is appropriate?
Enlist others to work with you. Begin with discussion. Use a whiteboard to
record comments. Record the whiteboard in photographs.
Write a working title for the model.
Create quick, low-fidelity sketches. Identify the systems elements and
write the name of each on a Post-it note. At the beginning, dont worry
about having too many elements or the wrong elements. Editing comes
later.
Arrange the Post-it notes to describe the systems structure. Group similar
elements. Place elements that often interact near each other. Avoid
repeating elements. Label connections.
Review your proto-model to see which model primitives or patterns it
includes. Are these appropriate, or would others be better? Does the
proto-model build on or suggest already established or generalized
models?
Revise your proto-model.
Present the proto-model to your constituents; tell them the models story.
Observe their reactions; ask for feedback; reflect on what was easy or
difficult to explain. Record these results, and create an issues list for
debugging the model.
Revise. Increase fidelity and detail as appropriate. (Determining whats
appropriate becomes easier with practiceas your model of modeling
grows.)
The quality of models and representations increases with iteration, so
Iterate. i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
56
[5] Senge, P. M. The
Fifth Discipline: The
Art and Practice of the
Learning Organization.
New York: Doubleday,
1990.
[6] Star, S. L. and J. R.
Griesemer. Institutional
Ecology, Translations,
and Boundary
Objects: Amateurs
and Professionals in
Berkeleys Museum of
Vertebrate Zoology,
1907 - 1939. Social
Studies of Science 19,
no.3 (1989): 387-420.
selves notice. Our models tell us what is important,
what counts, what to look for. Peter Senge wrote,
Models [are] so powerful in affecting what we do...
because they affect what we see. Two people with
different mental models can observe the same
event and describe it differently, because theyve
looked at different details [5]. Under this frame,
models also lead to evidence.
In a similar way, models already shared within
an organization may limit its ability to see new
evidence, understand changing situations, or act in
its own interest. Old models often resist new ones
and inhibit learning. Thats why organizations need
to expose the fundamental models that guide them
and periodically challenge those models.
Creating or revising a model is meta-activity,
taking us outside the primary activity in which we
were engaged. It requires attention, energy, and
time. But a new or improved model may pay divi-
dends; it may reduce accidents or other unexpected
outcomes, or it may make an individual or group
more competitive. In this way, forming and reform-
ing models may pay for itself. Sharing models
may reduce group costs and thus create value. But
the cost of adopting new models can also inhibit
their spread. Adoption requires value that clearly
outweighs cost.
Agreement and Understanding
Models are closely tied to stories. We explain mod-
els by telling stories, and when we tell stories, lis-
teners form modelsmental pictures of the actors,
how they are related, and how they behave.
Shared models support discussions. They are
examples of what Susan Star called boundary
objects, artifacts that enable discourse at the
boundaries between communities of practice [6].
By sharing our models, we may be able to confirm
where we agreeand discover where we disagree.
Models provide a basis for shared understanding,
agreement, and group action. They also build trust
and enable collaboration.
Agreement begins with individual understand-
ingforming our own models. Through conversa-
tion, we begin to understand each others models
When Judging (Mental)
Models, Consider Four
Basic Criteria:
1) FIT
How does the model fit the evidence?
Is our evidence relevant?
Is it reliable?
Is it sufficiently granular? (Depth.)
Do we have enough evidence to draw
meaningful conclusions? (Breadth.)
Are the elements of the model necessary and
sufficient?
Are the elements of the model MECE
mutually exclusive and collectively
exhaustive?
2) LEAST MEANS
Is there a simpler way to explain the evidence?
Given two models explaining the same
evidence, Ockham told us to prefer the
simpler.
3) CONSISTENCY
Is the model internally consistent?
Is it free from contradiction?
4) PREDICTIVE VALUE
What predictions does the model make?
Are our models predictions consistent with
later observations?
Do the models predictions help us make
decisions that might have been more difficult
without them?
Our models affect what we see. Our models affect what we see.
observations new models
suggest
frame + filter
Models are explained by stories; stories build models. Models are explained by stories; stories build models.
models and
stories are tools
for thinking
models and
stories are tools
for discussion models stories
are explained by
create
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
57
FORUM ON MODELING
When Judging
Visual Representations,
Consider Five
Basic Criteria:
1) FIT
Is the representation congruent with the model?
Do representation and model have similar
structures?
Are all the elements in the model explicit in the
representation?
2) LEAST MEANS
Could the model be represented in a
simpler way?
What can be removed without changing the
meaning? (Remove decoration.)
Could conventional symbols or other standard
patterns make reading easier?
3) CONSISTENCY
Are the means of representation consistent?
Similar forms should represent similar
functions or similar content. Likewise, similar
functions or similar content should be
represented by similar forms.
Are all elements and their connections
labeled?
4) CONTRAST
What about the model should appear to be
most important?
Does the most important thing appear
most important? (Not everything is equally
important. Important elements of the model
should stand out in the representation. One
way to achieve contrast is through scale,
making more important items larger than less
important items.)
5) HIERARCHY
How do the elements of the system appear to fit
together?
Is the structure of the system clearly visible?
Do we know where to look first?
Can we find a clear path through the model?
The final test of the model (and
representation) is with the audience.
Does the audience understand it?
Do they agree with it?
Do they agree that they agree?
Will they act on it?
Marsh Affinity Croup Services Administered PIans,
a Servlce of Seabury and Smlth:
l|le lnsutonce
- Group Term
- Group l0-ear Term
- Group 20-ear Term
leolth Cote
- Ma[or Medlcal
- Short Term Medlcal
- Catastrophe Ma[or Medlcal
Ctou 0entol lnsutonce
Acc|Jentol 0eoth 8 0|smemoetment
lon 7etmCote
0|soo|l|ty lncome
Liberty MutuaI Administered PIans:
- Group Savlngs Plus
'
Auto and Homeowners
|nsurance
www.acm.org/membership/insurance
ACM Insurance Programs
www.acm.org/membershlp/lnsurance
ACM's Insurance Programs Dffer
Members Creat VaIuel
ACM offers assoclatlon-sponsored lnsurance programs
ln a varlety of lmportant areas. These plans are
endorsed by ACM because they offer flexlblllty and
solld protectlon. Please check the ACM |nsurance
Program Slte www.acm.org/membershlp/lnsurance
for plan detalls and updated lnformatlon.
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
58
unify interface widgets. Service models unify cus-
tomer touch points. Brand models unify messages.
Platform models unify individual products.
Drawing has long been an essential skill for
designers and the heart of design education. Bill
Buxton, Dick Powell, and others assert that draw-
ing is the essence of design [8]. Are they correct?
Perhapsif designers focus on objects. But when
attention turns to systems, modeling becomes the
essence of design. Design education and practice
must adapt to this changing reality.
Von Bertalanffy wrote, The advantages and dan-
gers of models are well known. The advantage is
in the fact that this is the way to create a theory
i.e., the model permits deductions from premises,
explanation, and prediction, with often unexpected
results. The danger is oversimplification: to make it
conceptually controllable, we have to reduce reality
to a conceptual skeletonthe question remaining
to form models of the others models. We compare
our model with the others model. Are our models
congruent? Do we agree? And then, do we agree
that we agree? If so, we have reached an agree-
ment over an understanding. We have a basis for
trust, collaboration, and action [7].
Models in Design
As designers increasingly focus on systems and
communities of systems, we need to improve our
modeling skills.Without modeling, system design is
not possible. Often service systems and computer-
based applications are partly hidden or invisible, or
they stretch across time and space and cannot be
seen all at once or from a single vantage point. In
such cases, models must stand in for systems dur-
ing analysis, design, and even operation.
Using models, designers can unify otherwise
separate artifacts and actions. Interaction models
Shared models are the basis for understanding, agreement, and action. Shared models are the basis for understanding, agreement, and action.
my model of the subject
my model of your model
of the subject
my model of the correspondence
of your model of the subject
to my model of the subject
(Do we seem to agree?)
Do we seem to agree, that we agree?
your model of the subject
me
subject
you
[7] Pangaro, P. conver-
sations with the author,
Mountain View, 1999.
[8] Buxton, B. Sketching
User Experiences. San
Francisco: Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers,
2007.
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
59
FORUM ON MODELING
whether, in doing so, we have not cut out vital parts
of the anatomy. The danger of oversimplification
is greater, the more multifarious and complex the
phenomenon is [9].
Keeping in mind the multifarious and complex
nature of designand the attendant dangerswe
must bring more rigorous modeling to our work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Hugh Dubberly manag-
es a consultancy focused on making services and
software easier to use through interaction design
and information design. As vice president he was
responsible for design and production of
Netscapes Web services. For 10 years he was at
Apple, where he managed graphic design and corporate identity
and co-created the Knowledge Navigator series of videos.
Dubberly also founded an interactive media department at Art
Center College of Design and has taught at San Jose State, IIT/ID,
and Stanford.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516029
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00
[9] von Bertalanffy,
L. General Systems
Theory: Foundations,
Development,
Applications. New York:
George Braziller, 1969.
The process of representing an idea may change the idea itself. The process of representing an idea may change the idea itself.
Representation
Idea Subject
Representation
Idea
Thinking about how to explain our observations may lead us to
think of alternatives or related ideas.
Thinking about how to explain our observations may lead us to
Idea Subject
Observation may suggest models, but models also frame and
filter observations.
Observation may suggest models, but models also frame and
Idea Subject
Sharing a model may also change it. Sharing a model may also change it.
Representation
Idea Subject Idea
All these feedback loops, and more, act simultaneously
shaping and reshaping our models.
All these feedback loops, and more, act simultaneously
Representation
Idea Subject Idea
Representation
Idea
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
60
Models and Principles Relevant to Design
and technology into technol-
ogys territory. All good debaters
and negotiators know that you
must control the turf: You have
to get the discussion on your
own territory, where the terms
and frames of reference are in
your favor. We have to move
away from the technological
imperatives and move back to
the needs of peopleto put the
onus on the technology to follow
human imperatives, constraints,
and behavior.
There are excellent examples
we can use to show off the vir-
tues of good design. Consider
how the best voice-technology
systems work today. Suppose
the system has been interacting
with a customer over a possible
airplane flight and now wishes
to know if it should make the
reservation. It asks, Would you
like me to reserve this flight for
you? In theory, all the person
has to do is say yes or no.
In the early days of voice
recognition, some effort was
made to train people to respond
properly, because anything
else confused the system. This
was forcing human behavior
onto technologys territory. This
approach failed.
People have a wide variety
of ways of expressing either
response. We can say yes by
uttering uh-huh, sure, OK, yes,
um, yeah, or, cough...wait...um...
thats fine. And we can express
no by uttering no, no way, sorry,
uh-uh. Moreover, people could
We are failing.
Are products getting more or
less usable? Every year products
do get better; every year shows
a growth in good design. But
the number of new products
and most important of all, new
product categoriesgrows even
faster. We preach the virtues of
good design to the converted, so
most of the time our messages
fall on deaf ears. Actually, when
it comes to the ever-increasing
number of new product catego-
ries, our messages dont even
reach any ears.
That there is a fundamental
mismatch between people and
machines is well recognized
within the human-centered
design discipline. This gives
rise to many of our cherished
principles about the need for
explanation, explicit communi-
cation, etc. Such principles are
designed to let people know pre-
cisely what is expected of them
so they might behave appropri-
ately. I call this the communi-
cative strategy.
I believe if a communication
failure is widespread, the prob-
lem must be in the message. Let
me suggest a new approach, one
that tries to give the engineers,
programmers, and the non-hip
design community a different
way to think about the issues.
The communicative strategy has
failed, so lets try anew.
The problem with the com-
municative approach is that it
puts the battle between people
very well say other things, such
as what, not now, later, which
flight was that, make it a later
flight etc. Or imagine someone
saying Oh, I dont know, maybe,
um, well sure. Yes. Do it. A
simple word-spotting program is
apt to hear the know and think
the person said no.
Today good systems accept all
of these utterances (and many
more). Moreover, even if the
system cant understand the
response, it does not blame the
person; it asks for assistance in
understanding. So with that last
complex utterance, it might ask:
I believe you said yes; is this
correct? These systems do not
ask people to accommodate the
technology; they ask the tech-
nology to accommodate people.
The systems follow several
principles. One is to constrain
the task domain so much that
only a few responses are likely,
and the system can interpret
all of them. This is the kind of
flexibility I call compliant and
tolerant. Another is to try to
infer the customers intention,
and to try to satisfy the inten-
tion, regardless of the words
spoken. This is effective when it
works, but it can be dangerous
when its wrong, it can be very
wrong. But where the task is well
understood and constrained,
all of these approaches work
extremely well.
Unfortunately, many of our
systems today are rigid and
unbending. I still find it surpris- i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
61
OPINION THE WAY I SEE IT
Compliance and Tolerance
Donald A. Norman
Nielsen Norman Group and Northwestern University | norman@nngroup.com
ing how little understanding
there is of this issue among engi-
neers and programmers. The
point is simple: Stop trying to
argue that we need systems that
are usable. The problem with
this argument is that nobody
deliberately tries to make sys-
tems that are not usable, so
they dont think they have to
do anything differently. After
all, they can use their own sys-
tems, right? Instead, lets argue
for doing something different,
something the designers might
not normally think of: making
systems compliant, bestowing
systems with tolerance.
Biological systems are compli-
ant. They yield naturally to forc-
es. Move a hand over a doorknob
and the palm and fingers natu-
rally adjust to the size, shape,
and location and then exert
precisely the proper amount
of force and torque to hold and
turn the knob. Biology naturally
adapts. Technological systems
have to be designed with high
precision: They do not have
much tolerance for mismatches
in specifications. But people
and all biological systemsdo
not need this ultra-high preci-
sion. They adjust naturally to
the environment, producing
highly robust, reliable, fault-
tolerant operation.
Because of this fundamental
mismatch, because people can-
not naturally produce actions
with the great precision required
of mechanical systems, we have
invented a wide range of devices
to help manage the mismatch in
sizes and fits. For example, con-
sider shims, moldings, faceplates
and cover plates, slotted screw
holes, and turnbuckles. In some
cases, brute force is used: In
automobile factories, workers still
use mallets to hammer pieces
into alignment. All of these are
ways of either covering up dis-
crepancies in fit or of adjusting
after the fact to make things fit.
Note that compliance and
tolerance are fundamentally
related. Compliance is a way of
overcoming rigid requirements
of tolerance. Cover plates are a
way of hiding errors. Others are
a way of making adjustments
after the fact to make up for
the mismatches that invariably
result. I find it interesting that
there are no analogies of shims,
cover-ups, or adjustable parts
in nature. Biological systems
are flexible, growing systems,
naturally compliant, naturally
adjusting themselves to work
together. No rigid mechanical
specifications there.
With the advent of comput-
ers and embedded processors in
almost every device imaginable,
the problems have escalated.
Now, not only must we meet
rigid mechanical specifications,
but we must meet strict logical
ones as well. We need to con-
form to the procedures of the
machine, providing it the infor-
mation it needs when it wants it,
in the format it requires.
Here is where the request
for compliance and tolerance
helps. Instead of complaining
about unnecessary rigidity in
specifications and requirements,
let us ask instead for compliant
systemssystems that comply
with normal human behavior.
There are good examples
already, ones to which we can
point and use as baselines for
developers. First, let me describe
the traditional, noncompliant,
intolerant method. Then Ill
describe a system that does the
same task with great compli-
Figure 2. The form you submitted contains errors. This is
the response when a legitimate phone number is entered
into the website, but not in the format it wants. The user
learns that something is wrong, but not why. The number is
valid, but evidently the format is not.
The form you submitted
contains errors. The affected
form fields are outlined in red
The phone number you
exhibited appears to be
invalid
Phone (including area code)*
847-555-1212
Figure 1. The website request for a telephone number. The *
means the information is required: The digits show the entry
of a real, working number.
Phone (including area code)*
847-555-1212
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
62
Models and Principles Relevant to Design
ance, great tolerance. Gracefully.
Here is the intolerant exam-
ple. Just recently I tried to sign
up for a lecture series and was
asked for my phone number
(including area code, it prompt-
ed me). Well, thats reasonable:
Maybe they would call me if
the lecture were cancelled? So I
typed my number.
Now, telephone numbers are
another abomination imposed
upon us by the rigid require-
ments of machines. Ten digits
is more than the normal short-
term memory span of a busy,
multitasking person can hold, so
to make numbers manageable,
we have evolved conventions for
breaking the string into shorter,
more meaningful groupings. To
do this, we use punctuation
spaces, parentheses, periods,
dashes, or commasto separate
the groups. In the United States,
we tend to group a phone number
into units of 3, 3, and 4, some-
times with parentheses around
the first three digits. (I ignore
the complications caused by
the optional prefixes of 1, +1,
because it would make the fol-
lowing text longer. Note, however,
that discussing them would make
my argument even stronger.)
Punctuation marks are not
part of the telephone number:
They are there only to make
it easier for us to perceive and
remember them. They dont
cause us any problem. When
we dial a number manually,
we simply enter the digits and
skip over the rest. A compli-
ant, human-tolerant machine
should be just as flexible as a
person: All it has to do is accept
the digits and ignore the non-
digits. (And look to see if the
first characters are 1 or +1
and then either keep, delete, or
add them to strings that dont
have them.)
But no, many systems are
built without compliance, with-
out any tolerance. They want
the number their way only. So
when I typed in the number as
shown in Figure 1, I was scolded,
as shown in Figure 2: The form
you submitted contains errors.
(To maintain my privacy, I
am showing the telephone num-
ber for directory assistance for
Northern Chicago suburbs. Its a
perfectly legitimate number, and
just to make sure, I tested it.)
I reviewed the number once
more; it looked good to me. I got
no hint as to the nature of the
problem, simply a note that my
entry was unacceptable. Some
systems at least show what
format a proper phone number
should have, but not this one.
Similar problems exist in
many different venues. Credit
card numbers are printed in a
friendly format on the card; the
long digit string is divided into
convenient shorter groups. But
most computers wont let the
number be typed in that way:
It must be typed as one long
string, which is therefore highly
likely to contain errors, yet very
difficult to proofread.
In the RISKS Digest, the mail-
ing list for professionals inter-
ested in the problems caused by
technology, one set of mailings
described a security system with
the challenge question: What
is your zodiac sign? If you hap-
pened to be born under the sign
of Leo, you are excluded, because
for security reasons, your
answer to question 1 must be
at least 4 characters in length.
Actually, the length restriction
applied to all their questions,
which means your favorite color
could not be red, your dogs
name could not be Sam, your
favorite TV show could not be
24, ER, or CSI, etc. Similarly,
other security systems ask for
the name of the city in which
you were born, but allow city
names to be only one word long.
So if you were born in New York
or San Diego, youre out of luck.
Whats going on here? Lack
of compliance, lack of toler-
ance. If compliance had been a
design specification, perhaps we
wouldnt have these instances.
So now let me turn to a positive
example: how Microsoft does
things right.
Compliance Done Properly
Microsoft Office Outlook has done
a brilliant job of handling tele-
phone numbers, dates, times, and
addresses. Thats surprising, since
this is a product that people usu-
ally target with complaints, but
I intend to heap praise upon it.
When Outlooks address book or
contact forms ask for a telephone
number, they accept any format
the person wishes to use, figures
out the proper country, and refor-
mats it accordingly. Start a phone
number with +358, and Outlook
knows that you are typing a
Finnish number, so it doesnt try
to format it the way it would a
U.S. number. If it is an American
number, you can use almost any
spacing character you wish, as
long as the number has the usual
seven, 10, or 11 digits. As a result,
you can type in any of these
American phone numbers:
5551212
555.1212
847 555-1212
(847) 555-1212
847.555.1212
8475551212
+18475551212 i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
63
OPINION THE WAY I SEE IT
country/region, date, time, and
number and measurements,
which means, for example, that
you can instruct the machine
that 1/9 is 1 September. Yes, this
is old news and is a practice now
uniformly followed in the world
of computer operating systems,
but the same is not yet true for
all devices and systems.
Outlook goes even further in
its tolerance for input forms: It
allows some use of natural lan-
guage. Type today or the day
after tomorrow, and Outlook
produces the proper date. Times
can be entered in almost any
form as long as it can be inter-
preted: Type 3 PM, 3 P, 3p, 3pm,
or 15, and you get 3 PM. In fact,
just a number works, such as
8, even though that would nor-
mally be ambiguous, indicating
either a.m. or p.m. But Outlook
uses context. If a starting time
of 9 a.m. is selected, then typing
8 for the end time yields 8 p.m.
But if the starting time were 7
a.m., the 8 would be interpreted
as meaning 8 a.m. In Outlooks
calendar, typing now for the
date yields todays date, while
typing now for the time yields
the current time.
All of them are transformed
into either 555-1212, (847) 555-
1212, or in the last case, +1 (847)
555-1212.
Most systems are just as bad
with dates as they are with
phone numbers. We say dates in
all sorts of ways. Most systems
scold us if we dont do it just the
way they like, again, often not
even telling us what they like.
Here are some of the ways in
which people write January 20,
2009:
1/20/09
1/20/2009
20/1/2009
20 Jan 09
2009.01.20
20th January 09
Hurrah for Outlook! It shows
huge compliance, huge tolerance
for our variability. It takes all of
these formats and transforms
them into the target specifica-
tion it prefers: Tue 1/20/2009. But
even better, the target specifica-
tion is set by the person using
the computer and is stored with-
in the operating system, so all
programs can use the same for-
mats. The settings allow speci-
fication for language, keyboard,
Intentions
Perhaps the most compliant
systems in daily use are search
engines. Because they have so
many daily users, they can try
to infer intentions, suggesting
alternative spellings or phrases.
These can be quite effective for
a number of reasons. First, they
are offered in a nonintrusive,
optional manner. The person
can ignore them. Second, most
search engines do the search as
specified in addition to making
suggestions, so if the sugges-
tion is wrong, no harm is done.
Third, they are often effective
because they are based upon
literally millions of other inputs
to the system. I am often sur-
prised by how many legitimate
responses I get when I make
a typing error and specify my
search improperly. This means
two things. One is that many
of the site creators made simi-
lar mistakes in their postings,
which allows me to find them.
But second, and better yet,
many sites keep track of com-
mon typos and other search
errors and add these terms to
their sites so they can be found
anyway. Thus, Jakob Nielsen is i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
64
Models and Principles Relevant to Design
careful to make sure that his
website can be found even if
Jakob is spelled with a c and
Nielsen with an o.
Here, the compliance and
accommodation is provided
by the target as well as by the
system. (Google, Live Search,
and Yahoo! all get to the cor-
rect targets when asked to find
jacob nielson, and all suggest
the use of Nielsen. None sug-
gest using Jakob.)
Although I praised Microsoft
Outlook, I think its fair to con-
demn Microsoft Word for its
failed attempt to determine a
persons intentions. Many of us
have learned the workaround
for Word: When changing
the formatting of a sentence,
request the change and then
do a control-z (or on a Mac, an
apple-z). That is, Word seems to
assume that any format change
should apply to the entire docu-
ment, so it adds a second, invis-
ible command after the initiated
one. It is therefore necessary to
undo that added command. In
the writing of this document,
I have spent 30 minutes undo-
ing formatting changes that
seem to appear, willy-nilly, out
of nowhere. Yes, if a persons
intention could be divined, we
could devise truly effective,
compliant systems. But this is a
dangerous path. People seldom
know their own intentions, so
how can a machine discover
them? Microsoft Word stands as
the pinnacle of failure, angering
and frustrating its many users
because of its insistence on
automatic operations.
Outlook, bless you. Word,
damn you. Suggestion: The
design teams should talk with
one another.
Accommodation
We want systems to be on
human turf. How do we convey
this to the engineer and pro-
grammer communities?
That is the battle we fight.
Engineers and programmers,
even intelligent, well-meaning
ones, have grown up taking
the machines point of view.
But these people are experts at
the inner workings of technol-
ogy. These are not the ordinary
people for whom we design our
systems. Nonetheless, because
of their skills, they dominate
the technological community.
These are the people we need
to convince.
I recommend changing the
battleground. Bring it back to
human terms: Ask for compli-
ance and tolerance. Those are
new concepts for designers, but
as concepts go, theyre easy
to understand. Ask our engi-
neers, programmers, and fellow
designers to aim for compliant
systems, tolerant systems.
As it stands, we must accom-
modate technology. It is time
to transform the technology to
accommodate us.
Disclaimer: Norman has been a con-
sultant to the Microsoft Office team,
but as far as he can tell, none of his
suggestions ever made it to product.
He had nothing to do with the virtues
he praises in this article.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Don Norman
wears many hats, including cofounder of
the Nielsen Norman group, professor at
both Northwestern University and KAIST
(South Korea), and author. His last book
was The Design of Future Things, and the
next book? Well, who knows, but this essay
will be in it. He lives at jnd.org.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516030
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00 i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
65
OPINION THE WAY I SEE IT
[1] Vance, M. L., ed.
Disabled faculty and
staff in a disabling soci-
ety: Multiple identities in
higher education. New
York: Association on
Higher Education and
Disability, 2007.
[2] Jaeger, P. T.,
and C. A. Bowman.
Understanding
Disability: Inclusion,
access, diversity, & civil
rights. Westport, CT:
Praeger, 2005.
I recently received an email from a doctoral candi-
date, in a field unrelated to my own, seeking career
advice about the process of finishing a disserta-
tion and navigating the academic job market as a
person with a disability. Such a request is not that
unusual in my experience, primarily because there
are so few successful academics with disabilities.
I recently contributed a chapter to an edited book
on the unique career challenges of being an aca-
demic with a disability [1], and several of the chap-
ter authors started a running joke about whether
there were any academics with a disability who did
not contribute to the book. Further, as only about
15 percent of persons with disabilities are born
with them, the majority of academics with disabili-
ties tend to be people later in their careers.
As a result, very few people with a disability
go through the academic job market and tenure
process. And many of those individuals, primarily
for sake of survival in a career path based around
perceptions of performance by ones peers, opt to
downplay their disability to the greatest extent
feasible and believable. As part of this strategy,
many academics with disabilities avoid research-
ing and writing about disability to avoid marginal-
ization. And others are simply steered away from
studying disability by their dissertation advisors.
In contrast, I have made equality of access for per-
sons with disabilities a key part of my research,
and my advisor even encouraged me do my dis-
sertation on the topic. I have also been very open
about my own disability in my scholarship when
it was relevantfor example, the introduction of
one of my books gives an overview of some of my
personal adventures with disability discrimination
during my education [2].
The striking part of the email I received was not
the request for advice, but how the author intro-
duced himself. After mentioning his name, edu-
cational status, type of disability, and reasons for
contacting me for guidance, this individual raised
a hesitationhe was concerned that I might not
be able to relate to his situation. His concern was
not rooted in the fact that we have very different
disabilities. Instead, he was concerned about the
fact that he acquired his disability as an adult,
whereas I was born with mine. He was focusing
on whether my experiences might be relevant for
him, as he anticipated that a person born with a
disability and a person who acquired a disability
as an adult would perceive, consider, and react to
the challenges and discriminations posed by aca-
demia differently.
This point has considerable validity, not only in
the context of academia, but also in many other
contexts, including how one accesses informa-
tion and communication technologies (ICTs). As
the design of ICTs becomes more sensitive to the
needs of all users, the pursuit of universal usabil-
ity will need to focus on differences such as the
one raised here. As has been noted many times,
making ICTs accessible for persons with disabili-
ties will go a long way toward making ICTs univer-
sally usable. While many streams of research have
linked access to personal and perceptual factors,
tying the insights from disability studies to factors
related to age will be helpful in achieving inter-
generational universal usability of ICTs.
Clearly, each individual has different skills,
experiences, and challenges when it comes to
using an ICT. However, careful consideration of
users selected for the testing of an ICT is neces-
sary to understand the potential barriers to use of
that ICT. Testing of designs often ignores persons
with disabilities. When they are included, their
presence usually is limited to broad categories,
Persons with Disabilities
and Intergenerational
Universal Usability
Paul T. Jaeger
University of Maryland, Center for Information Policy and Electronic Government | pjaeger@umd.edu
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
66
Models and Principles Relevant to Design
[3] Jaeger, P. T. User-
centered policy evalu-
ations of Section 508
of the Rehabilitation
Act: Evaluating e-gov-
ernment websites for
accessibility. Journal of
Disability Policy Studies
19, no. 1 (2008): 24-33.
[4] Jaeger, P. T., and B.
Xie. Developing online
community accessibility
guidelines for persons
with disabilities and
older adults. Journal of
Disability Policy Studies.
(in press).
[5] Burnett, G., P. T.
Jaeger, and K. M.
Thompson. The social
aspects of information
access: The viewpoint
of normative theory of
information behavior.
Library & Information
Science Research 30,
no. 1 (2008): 56-66.
such as one person with a visual impairment.
However, visual impairments include complete
blindness, limited vision, motion blindness, severe
color blindness, and other variations. Every type of
disability (mobility, hearing, visual, cognitive, and
others) includes such layers. To truly test for equal
access, not only must different types of disabilities
be accounted for, but different levels of each dis-
ability must be considered as well [3].
Disability and accessibility also link strongly to
age. Just as a child and an older adult will each
approach ICTs in unique ways, the ways in which
a person with a disability approaches an ICT will
be influenced by the age at which that individual
first acquired a disability. Someone born with a
disability will perceive, adjust, accommodate, and
overcome challenges in a different manner from
someone who acquires a disability as a youth, as
an adult, or as an older adult [2]. While none of
these approaches will necessarily be more effec-
tive, the process by which a child accesses an ICT
may vary greatly between a child without a dis-
ability, a child born with a disability, and a child
who acquired a disability.
Designing for intergenerational universal
usability can also benefit from considering the
parallels between the needs of different age
groups and persons with disabilities. Just as
children and older adults will both benefit from
certain design features, designs that provide
improved access for persons with physical and
cognitive disabilities will greatly improve access
for older adults. Persons with disabilities and older
adults can be limited in their access to and use
of ICTs by a wide range of factors. Online, these
barriers can range from accessibility problems
with Internet service providers to Web browsers
that are not compatible with vital assistive tech-
nologies to inaccessible websites. Adjustable font
size, simple color schemes, clutter-free interfaces,
intuitive organization, and easy navigability on a
website, for example, will be of great benefit both
to older adults and persons with disabilities (and
probably to many young users, as well).
The lessons of disability studies for designing for
intergenerational universal usability of ICTs will
likely become more significant as social network-
ing becomes a core part of Internet activity. Social
networking activities have broadened the Internet
from simple information access to emphasizing
communication between users. Providing equal
access takes on very different dimensions when
the focus is on equal access to communication
rather than equal access to information, and older
adults and persons with disabilities will benefit
from many of the same approaches to and guide-
lines for accessibility of social networking sites
and applications [4].
Ultimately, the most fundamentaland likely
the most difficultaccessibility challenge is in
the fact that access is a multifaceted concept.
Access is larger than just physical dimensions
(reaching an ICT) and intellectual dimensions
(understanding the information provided by the
ICT). There are also social dimensions of access
that dictate how an individual will use the infor-
mation in their social interactions [5]. The social
dimensions of access are under-studied by schol-
ars, but it seems quite possible that social access
presents another area in which the needs of
persons with disabilities intersect with the needs
of older adults. Since both groups face similar
challenges in accessing ICTs, they likely share
important social characteristics in attitudes
toward ICTs and how to treat information gained
through them.
While these are just a sampling of potential
connections of persons with disabilities to chil-
dren and older adults in terms of access to ICTs,
the examples discussed in this article hopefully
demonstrate the value of lessons from disability
studies in designing for intergenerational univer-
sal usability. In my reply to the email that began
this discussion, I explained that, while there
will be differences in experiences in academia
for a scholar who has been visually impaired his
entire life and for a scholar who became mobility
impaired as an adult, the similarities will be much
more compelling and helpful than the differences.
The same seems to hold true for considerations of
disability-related issues and age-related issues in
designing for universal usability.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Paul T. Jaeger, Ph.D., J.D., is an assis-
tant professor in the College of Information Studies and is the direc-
tor of the Center for Information Policy and Electronic Government
(www.cipeg.umd.edu) at the University of Maryland. His research
focuses on the ways in which law and public policy shape access
to and use of information. Jaeger is the author of more than 70 jour-
nal articles and book chapters, along with six books.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516031
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00
EDITOR
Allison Druin
allisond@umiacs.umd.edu
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
67
FORUM LIFELONG INTERACTIONS
doing as Stone recommended:
a significant quantity of broad-
based user research.
Stones talk offered one view
of how corporations navigate
the relationship between design
and research. While in Japan,
I observed another corporate
strategy tackling the same
problem. I was working with
clients to conduct in-home
research, and we were invited
to sit in on some (so-called)
usability studies. The clients
were gathering reactions to
different designs for inkjet car-
tridges. They presented partici-
pants with two different exam-
ples: First, a familiar rectilinear
plastic black version with a
small white label indicating the
color and part number, and sec-
ond, an organic soft form, mold-
ed in the vibrant color of the
ink. Its no big surprise which
one people liked best. They
flicked the black box away, but
they squealed Kawaii! (cute,
in Japanese) and grasped and
stroked the soft, bright form: a
very emotional reaction.
At the time I was pretty sur-
prised that our client was using
research for something like this.
One solution was the unde-
signed status quo; the other was
absolutely gorgeous. Why bother
with the expense of research to
validate some obviously excel-
lent design work? Eventually, I
realized that my client did this
In 2005 I attended a BayCHI
panel discussion entitled
User Research Strategies:
What Works, What Does Not
Work. The panel featured
user research leaders from key
design-y Silicon Valley tech
firms: Adobe, Intuit, Yahoo!,
eBay, and Google. After a num-
ber of (perhaps deservedly)
self-congratulatory pitches from
companies that had worked
hard to deploy user research
into every part of their design
process, Maria Stonethe first
person hired by Google to do
user research full timestood
up and kicked off her talk with
the following:
What Id like to argue today is the
goal should be good design, not more
user data. Its always possible to col-
lect very interesting user data. But if
the goal is to create a great product,
is collecting user data always the
best way to go about it? Do great
product ideas in fact come from
interesting user data? People who
invented [Google websearch] had a
great idea, and they focused on this
idea and they improved it byvery
targeted usability testing. Should
we have told those early search engi-
neers, You know what, you should
go just study librarians for a couple
of years. You would really learn a
lot about how people do search and
you really need to understand that
space deeper? My answer to that
question is probably no. They were
doing something great. They had lots
of ideas on how to do how it well.
They had good tools for improving
their product the way it was. Doing
the broader user research may have
been interesting, but given their lim-
ited resources, it probably should not
have been a priority.
Perhaps there was an ele-
ment of rationalization, given
the limited utilization of user
research at Google at that time.
Stones rhetoricimplying that
a study of searching behavior
would be a two-year boondog-
gleappears somewhat defen-
sive. While Stone acknowledged
that the search marketplace
was becoming increasingly
complicated, and that 2005
might have been an appropriate
time to consider broader user
research, her thesis seemed
almost contradictory: Maybe
exploratory research isnt nec-
essary at all?
Google produced an incred-
ibly successful and easy-to-use
killer app with Google search,
without doing any exploratory
user research. Now, of course,
Google designs a wide range of
software (including chat, cal-
endar, word processing, email,
mapping, spreadsheets, presen-
tations, news reader, browsing,
social networks, blogging, photo
editing, and video sharing) and
they have a much larger user
research team, presumably

2
0
0
8

M
i
c
h
a
e
l
L
i
c
h
t
e
r

/

w
w
w
.
l
i
c
h
t
e
r
p
h
o
t
o
.
c
o
m
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
69
OPINION TRUE TALES
Ships in the Night (Part I):
Design Without Research?
Steve Portigal
Portigal Consulting | steve@portigal.com
research not for insight but for
persuasion. They needed to
convince other people in the
organization that going beyond
the status quo was going to have
a dramatic impact, and the best
way to do that was through the
supposed objectivity of sound
bites gathered in a research set-
ting. With that perspective, I had
to admire my clients for under-
standing how to help great ideas
succeed in their own culture.
The classic design-without-
research approach is for design-
ers to make it for themselves.
This has been heralded as the
best approach by software com-
pany 37signals: Every product
we build is a product we build
for ourselves to solve our own
problems. But there seem to
be some cultural consequences
for hewing to that attitude too
dearly. Witness this 2006 blog
post from 37signals [1]:
While we appreciate customers
who take the time to write in and
tell us what they want, the way
people phrase things often leads to
raised eyebrows. Every feature thats
missing is essential, a must-have,
and the fact that its missing is kill-
ing someone. Yet the #1 thing that
people like about our software is how
simple it is. To give you an idea of
what its like to be on the receiving
end, here are some excerpts from
recent 37signals support emails and
forum posts.
Unfortunately, the posted
excerpts indicate a poorly con-
cealed contempt for their own
customers for being too intense,
too clueless, or basically not
cool. The mirror between
designer and user cracks when
you stop loving your user as you
would love yourself.
I used to think there was a
certain class of company for
which design for yourself
would work: Companies found-
ed (and staffed) by enthusiasts
for products like pro-audio gear,
mountain bikes, or camping
gear. Those companies tend
to brand themselves as active
participants who know what an
extreme backpacker or serious
dirt rider or gigging bass player
would need. By extension, they
hope customers will perceive
their products as authentic
and high quality. But I had my
eyes opened a few months ago
in a conversation with Steve
Brown, head of design and user
experience at Nortel, and for-
merly a partner at Fiori Product
Development. Steve suggested
that this approach may be
fine for an entrepreneur who
is starting a company, but he
has seen many larger compa-
nies who believed they were
the customer and were thus
unable to innovate because
they couldnt see the market
differently.
While user-research-eschew-
ing Apple is everyones poster
child for design for yourself,
I find Harley-Davidson to be
a more compelling example
(although I may be compar-
ing Apple(s) and oranges). At
Harley, Willie G. Davidson is
the grandson of the original
Davidson. Senior vice president
and chief styling officer, he
is known as Willie G. And he
looks exactly like a guy who
rides a Harley: big, bearded,
and leather-clad. If we judge a
bike by its fairing, the designer
is the customer. Thats part of
the Harley brand: In a recent
Harley-Davidson annual report,
executives appear next to their
Pacic Northwest National Lab
seeks candidates to research and
develop next generation interface
and interaction designs for visual
information analysis.
See jobs.pnl.gov,
jobs #115382, 117048.
Need User Interface
Researcher/Designer!
Have a question
about advertising
opportunities?
CONTACT US

acmmediasales@acm.org
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
70
[1] Useless, absurd,
must, need, appalled,
just, infuriating, essen-
tial, etc. Signal vs.
Noise. 12 April 2006.
<http://37signals.com/
svn/archives2/useless_
absurd_must_need_
appalled_just_infuriat-
ing_essential_etc.php>
bikes, and we know that they
all ride. A crucial part of Willie
G.s role is to preserve the leg-
acy of the brand; the company
communicates that it is (and
always has been) part of the
culture for which its designing.
People at Harley, we believe,
use the products and live
the lifestyle. But underneath
it all is a sense that Harley-
Davidson, through its history,
has created the brand (i.e., the
products and their meaning) in
partnership with its customers.
For all the tribal connectedness
Apple has facilitated, the com-
pany itself is not a participant.
It is a benefactor.
Meanwhile, some compa-
nies announce proudly that
they dont use market research
because they are creating the
vision, and people cant ask for
the future until its created for
them. I once sat in the lobby of
a major Asian consumer elec-
tronics firm and read a similar
statement in one of those coffee-
table-design-porn-slash-legacy
books. But then I went into my
meeting and kicked off a really
interesting and impactful cus-
tomer research activity, and no
one once mentioned the chest-
thumping statement in the book.
Often the rejection of research
comes out of a failure to under-
stand how to conduct it effec-
tively. For example, in Brunner
and Emerys book Do You Matter,
they champion the need to
conduct upfront research in the
design process to understand
what people are doing, how
theyre doing it, whats going on
in their lives, what their issues
are, and what problems they
face. But a few paragraphs later,
they appear to be very caution-
ary about evaluative research,
throwing out the baby with
badly executed bathwater:
[T]hey put a design in front of
customers and say, What do you
think? And the customers say, Well
I dont know; I dont know if I like
this; its new; its scaring me; its too
big; its too round; its too square.
Thats the kind of response you get.
People who use this kind of research
come back and say to the designers
People think this is too square
youve got to make it more round.
Most customers have a hard time
articulating their design preferences.
You can do far better by watching,
listening, and observing.
Im a big fan of what do you
think? questions because they
let the participant respond on
their own terms first. But to be
effective, theres much more
to consider: What do people
tell you first; how do they tell
you; what reasons do they give;
how can you triangulate that
response against other things
youve learned about them; and
how can you help them get to
a point where theyre engaged
enough in this new idea to give
a meaningful response? And of
course, we dont have to take
these answers literally and
make our design more square
or more round; we can see that
those responses are trailheads
to follow for a deeper under-
standing of how this new thing
is or isnt making sense to them.
Like everything else in design
and research (often overlap-
ping terms that Ive avoided
specifying here), the answer to
design without research? is,
it depends. Among other fac-
tors, it depends on how much
we already know about our
customers (perhaps through
our own experience). It depends
on what we hope to learn and
how we want to use that learn-
ing to create action. It depends
on where we are in the devel-
opment timeline of a product
or service, and whether the
product or service is new, me-
too, innovative, or a redesign.
It depends on business con-
straints like time to market, the
maturity of the category, and
the cost to evolve the design.
No doubt it depends on other
things as well. What do you
think it depends on?
Next time, Ill look at part
two: Research without design?
And even though well probably
end up at it depends again, I
expect the trip will be thought
provoking.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Steve Portigal
is the founder of Portigal Consulting, a
boutique agency that helps companies
discover and act on new insights about
themselves and their customers. He is an
accomplished instructor and public speak-
er, and an avid photographer who curates
a Museum of Foreign Grocery Products in
his home. Steve blogs regularly for All This
ChittahChattah, at www.portigal.com/blog.
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516032
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00
The company communicates
that it is (and always has
been) part of the culture
for which its designing.
People at Harley, we believe,
use the products and live
the lifestyle.
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
71
OPINION TRUE TALES
i
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
s


M
a
y

+

J
u
n
e

2
0
0
9
72 72
Interactions Cafe
On Changing the World
While Paying the Bills
Jon: Bruce Sterlings really done it this timehe
claims that not only are technologists full of hot
air, but so are designers. Recently, I was at the
IxDA conference, and the buzz was about the
ability to effect behavioral change at a cultural
level. Robert Fabricant, Dan Saffer, and even John
Thackara all claimed that the designers role is to
pursue massive change. Is this just a lot of hot air?
Richard: I certainly hope not. I wholeheartedly
endorse Elaine Anns arguments in this issue that
design has a major role to play in bringing the
world out of the financial crisis.
Roger Martindean of the Rotman School
of Management and someone Ive often refer-
encedagrees. During his appearance at the
Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last
November, I asked Roger to tell us how greater
use of design thinking might have prevented the
world financial crisis. A part of his response was
that designers would have looked at the big picture
and designed a mortgage system that was holisti-
cally elegant, unlike the one that failed. The cre-
ators of the existing system turned a blind eye to
very stupid features of the system; designers would
not have done that.
Jon: Thats all well and good, butspecifically
with the massive change or wicked problems type
of argumentthe U.S. government doesnt seem to
care, or see much value in design or designers. Its
a bunch of lawyers and lifer politicians, and theres
not a lot we can do to get any sort of nonlinear,
abductive thinking in the mix. Im wondering if all
of these huge issues, many of which were brought
about by large corporations, are going to be left to
the large corporations to fix on their own.
Richard: There is good reason for pessimism.
What would you need to see happen to become at
least a little more optimistic?
Jon: I believe in the transformative power of
design, but Ive also watched design thinkers take
an exceptionally reductionist view to difficult prob-
lems. Climate change simply isnt something thats
going to be solved, in the same way that poverty
isnt something to be solved. Wicked problems are
defined by Horst Rittel as a class of social problems
that is not binary. To be optimistic, I need to see
an indication that the larger wedesigners, on a
global scalecan actually do this type of work and
pay our mortgages. Because thats ultimately whats
stopping the designers I know and associate with
from diving head on into problems of this scale; they
cant pay the bills when they stop building widgets.
Richard: This issue contains articles calling
for the abandonment of obsolete conceptions of
usability and user-centered design, consistent
with a shift occurring in the world toward service
and sustainable design. A shift that, because of its
nature, should involve designers in work that takes
a broader view while paying the bills.
In upcoming issues, we plan to focus more on
how to change the roles design and designers play
in companies, with an upcoming contribution of
this nature from Roger Martin.
Some have called for Obama to create cabinet-
level positions focused on innovation and design,
or for companies to shift their focus to transforma-
tion rather than innovation and design. Do such
proclamations do any good? Should you and I take
some sort of related stance via interactions, or by
doing so, would we only be adding to the hot air?
Jon: Yes, I suppose that would be just more noise.
We need real actionactivist work, the type of
work Tad Hirsch talks about, or gaming work as
described by Andrew Hieronymi. More and more,
Im coming to the conclusion that we cant take the
wickedness out of social problems because humans
are inherently as complicated as the problems
weve created. Perhaps we should set our sights
much lower, and focus on the banal, the comi-
cal, the thoughtful, or the beautiful. These design
opportunities are more immediate, and are more
immediately solved. Sterling ends his piece quoting
Charles Eames: Design is a method of action. Ill
quote Eames, too: Choose your corner, pick away at
it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability,
and that way you might change the world.
Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko
DOI: 10.1145/1516016.1516033
2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/0500 $5.00
DnIine ooks
& Courses Programsl
ACM's
Helping Members Meet Todays Career Challenges
NWl Dver 2,500 DnIine Courses in MuItipIe Languages
PIus 1,000 VirtuaI Labs from Iement kl
The ACM Onllne 8ooks Collectlon lncludes fuII
access to 600 onIine books from Safarl' 8ooks
Onllne, featurlng leadlng publlshers lncludlng
O'Pellly. Safarl puts a complete |T and buslness
e-reference llbrary rlght on your desktop. Avallable
to ACM Professlonal Members, Safarl wlll help you
zero ln on exactly the lnformatlon you need, rlght
when you need lt.
All Professlonal and Student Members also
have fuII access to 500 onIine books from
8ooks24x7', ln ACM's rotatlng collectlon of
complete unabrldged books on the hottest
computlng toplcs. Thls vlrtual llbrary puts
lnformatlon at your flngertlps. Search, book-
mark, or read cover-to-cover. our bookshelf
allows for qulck retrleval and bookmarks let
you easlly return to speclflc places ln a book.
pd.acm.org
www.acm.org/join
ACM's new Onllne Course Collectlon lncludes over 2,500 onIine
courses in muItipIe Ianguages, 1,000 virtuaI Iabs, e-reference
tooIs, and omine capabiIity. Program hlghllghts:
7he ACM -Learning CataIog - round-the-clock access to 2,500+ onllne courses on a wlde range of
computlng and buslness toplcs, ln multlple languages.
xcIusive vLab" VirtuaI Labs - l,000 unlque vLab' exerclses place users on systems uslng real
hardware and software allowlng them to galn lmportant [ob-related experlence.
Reference 7ooIs - an e-Peference Llbrary extends technlcal knowledge outslde of the classroom, plus
onllne Lxecutlve Summarles and qulck reference cards to answer on-the-[ob questlons lnstantly.
Dmine PIayer - members can access assessments and self-study courses oMlne, anywhere and anytlme,
wlthout a llve |nternet connectlon.
A downloadable Qulck Peference Gulde and a l5-mlnute slte orlentatlon course for new users are also
avallable to help members get started.
The ACM Onllne Course Program ls open to ACM Professlonal and Student Members.
600 DnIine ooks from Safari
ACM members are ellglble for a speciaI
40% savings oner to upgrade to a Premlum or
Pull Llbrary subscrlptlon through 1une l5, 2009.
Por more detalls vlslt:
http://pd.acm.org/books/about_sel.cfm
500 DnIine ooks
from ooks24x7
CACM_ACM_Books_and_Courses_4C_full-page_LMNTK:Layout 1 4/9/09 11:59 AM Page 1
ocmqueue ls gulded and wrltten by
dlstlngulshed and wldely known lndustry
experts. The newly expanded slte also oners
more content and unlque features such as
/onetqueue blogs by authors who
"unlocklmportant content fromthe ACMDlgltal
Llbrary and provlde commentary, videos,
downloadable audio, roundtabIe discussions,
plus unlque case studies.
ocmqueue provldes a crltlcal perspectlve
on current and emerglng technologles by
brldglng the worlds of [ournallsm and peer
revlew [ournals. |ts dlstlngulshed Ldltorlal 8oard of experts makes sure that 's hlgh
quallty content dlves deep lnto the technlcal challenges and crltlcal questlons software englneers
should be thlnklng about.
vlslt toJoyl
http://queue.acm.org/
8LOGS APT|CLLS COMMLNTAP CASL STUD|LS MULT|MLD|A PSS CTO POUNDTA8LLS
has nowmoved compIeteIy onIine!