week 10. material talks and methodology

Understanding agency in interaction design materials, 2012. (material talks back)

       "The notion of agency puts focus on the emerging properties of materials and how they actively contribute to the way that design activity unfolds."

     "The analyses showed how interaction design is to a large extent driven by emergent                 characteristics of available materials."

    Schön, D. The Reflective Practitioner: design materials ‘talk back’ to designers’

    "Instead, humans and material objects intra-act; i.e. not only do the humans construct meaning     out of their representational acts, but the objects themselves actively contribute in the meaning

    making process."

    "Agency is thus not an attribute of things but, an “on-going reconfiguring of the world” [1]."

Computational Compositions: Aesthetics, Materials, and Interaction Design, Wiberg, 
2010.  (Material Turn宣言）

Methodology for materiality: interaction design research through a material lens, Wiberg, 2013. (Methodology)

        "Fig. 1, ... a methodology that takes a point of departure in material studies. ... to account for         the dynamics of working back and forth between materials and wholeness."    

        Fig. 2, Extended schematic description

            Materials: Properties, Character

            Details: Aesthetics, Quality

            Texture: Appearance, Authenticity

            Wholeness: Composition, Meaning

        "...an organizing methodological structure based on the simple dialectic tradition in design to work         back and forth between details and wholeness, materials and textures."

New Materialism by Fox and Alldred (2018) (New Materialism Ontology)

Doing new materialist data analysis: a Spinozo-Deleuzian ethological toolkit  (Fox & Allred, 2021) (New Materialism Methodology)

material-centered design vs. user-centered design

Questions:

1. How to relate "material talks" concepts to Wabi-sabi ?

2. How to apply Wiberg's methodology to wabi-sabi aesthetics and HCI design?

HW 4, Material Exploration in everyday life

1. design your own "Material Probes" 
    ex. Spyn project , botanic printers, 綉珍's app logo probes, ....
     Probes with digital technology in the form of 照片、貼紙、馬達、LED、...
2. record and collect how these probes appear in everyday life (照片、影片)
3. discuss how these "variations" of material interaction imply the nature of the material (with a phenomenological approach), related terms could be wabi-sabi, unfinalized, unfinished, imperfection, worn media, ... 

or analyse with Wiberg's framework and write up the dialectic results.

deadline: May 19, 2025

week 9. introducing material turn

1. Definition of Material Turn

2. Framework and Strategy of Material Interaction (Featuring Anna Vallgårda)

    A Material Strategy: Exploring Material Properties of Computers, 2010, IJDesign.

   Giving form to computational things: developing a practice of interaction design, Anna Vallga˚rda, 2014. PUC (Framework)

    Temporal Form in Interaction Design, 2015, IJDesign

    The Hedonic Haptic Player, 2017, IJDesign

3. (Post-)Phenomenological approach to Materiality (Featuring James Pierce)

    

    Material awareness: promoting reflection on everyday materiality, 2009 (post-phenomenology)

    A phenomenology of human-electricity relations, 2010 (phenomenology)

    Electric materialities and interactive technology, James Pierce, 2013 

(phenomenology)

    Machine Learning Uncertainty as a Design Material: A Post-Phenomenological Inquiry, 2021

 

     

Readings in Part II Material Turn:

Computational Compositions: Aesthetics, Materials, and Interaction Design, Wiberg, 
2010. 

"Material interactions": from atoms & bits to entangled practices, 2012, ACM CHI panel

Understanding agency in interaction design materials, 2012. (material talks back)

Methodology for materiality: interaction design research through a material lens, Wiberg, 2013. (Methodology)

Giving form to computational things: developing a practice of interaction design, Anna Vallga˚rda, 2014. (Framework)

Electric materialities and interactive technology, James Pierce, 2013 (Phenomenological approach to materiality)

PUC theme issue: material interactions, 2014. (special issue, PUC)

Broken probes: toward the design of worn media, Daniela Rosner, 2014 (wabi-sabi)

Interaction Design as a Bricolage Practice, Anna Vallgårda & Ylva Fernaeus, 2015

Expanding on Wabi-Sabi as a Design Resource in HCI, Vasiliki Tsaknaki & Ylva Fernaeus, 2016

FeltRadio: Sensing and Making Sense of Wireless Traffic, 2016

Questions:
1. How does Microboundary relate to Wabi-sabi
2. Wabi-sabi and system 1/2 thinkings?
3. What is the relationship between wabi-sabi and mindful interaction?


HW3: 

Student presentation on Wabi-Sabi & its design cases on May 5th (week 12).

Reference:

Wabi-Sabi：給設計者、生活家的日式美學基礎

日本美學：物哀、幽玄、侘寂（全三冊）：從唯美的物哀，深遠的幽玄，到空無的侘寂。掌握日本美學關鍵的獨家著作。

mid-term project demo

 1.  students present mid-term projects

2. introducing tarot-structural mapping methods to compose new method-cards

   (a) decompose the meanings of each card in a Tarot deck (major acarna)

   (b) structurelize the deck 

   (c) collecting elements in g a new (or an emerging) area and  remapping to the structure 

reference:

Tarot-mapping workshop

week 7. slow tech & mindful interaction

1. Students propose concepts of project 1.

Design Frictions for Mindful Interactions

"Microboundaries

A microboundary is an intervention that provides a

small obstacle prior to an interaction that prevents us

rushing from one context to another. It does this by

creating a brief moment in which we might reflect on

what we're doing. This small barrier to interaction can

be implemented via a short time cost and prompts a

switch from System1 behaviour to that of System2.

Microboundaries slow us down before acting."

 designed friction to provide "micorboundary" for system 1 changing to system 2
 System 1 v.s. system 2 thinking by Daniel Kahneman

The aesthetic of friction (Pleasurable Troublemakers)

Designing Mindful Interaction:The Category of Performative Object by Kristina Niedderer

Questions:
What are the possible experiential qualities that are elicited by slow technology? anticipation, mindfulness, reflection, microboundaries?




References:

Increasing Accuracy by Decreasing Presentation Quality in Transcription Tasks

Designing with Friction: Inverting Notions of Seamless Technology

Gardening Frictions in Creative AI: Emerging Art Practices and Their Design Implications

Design for friction. A literature review on “friction” as a method for reflection in design interventions

“diegetic frictions” and “extra-diegetic frictions”

"“diegetic” refers all situations, events and char-acters that act inside a narration, whereas “extra-diegetic” refers to all narrative devices

that act outside of the narrative world (Neumeyer, 2009)"

Figure 4. Slow Tech -> friction

Intention Is All You Need

"It is telling that the archetypical dimension in the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations (Green, 1989) is viscosity, a metaphor rooted in materials and resistances, aiming to bridge them with

the seemingly immaterial and disembodied world of notations."

"There have been proposals to design GenAI systems that introduce productive resistances as catalysts for the development of intention. Rather than an assistant, AI can act as a critic or provocateur (Sarkar, 2024;

Sarkar et al., 2024). AI can be antagonistic (Cai et al., 2024). AI can cause cognitive glitches (Hollanek,

2019). AI can act as cognitive forcing functions (Buçinca et al., 2021). These proposals are counter to

traditional narratives of system support, system disappearance, and system non-interference. They can

be seen as successors to previous counternarratives raised by researchers such as critiques of the doctrines

of simplicity and gradualism (Sarkar, 2023c), critiques of seamlessness (Chalmers & MacColl,

2003), critiques of reversible interactions (Rossmy et al., 2023), the case for design frictions and microboundaries

(Cox et al., 2016), reframing of ambiguity as design resource (Gaver et al., 2003), and

calls for attention checks in AI use (Gould et al., 2024).10"

"How can we build GenAI tools with inherent, productive resistances that are part of working with the

tool, not an additional thing that users need to “pay” attention to?"

Design Frictions on Social Media: Balancing Reduced Mindless Scrolling and User Satisfaction

A Special Interest Group on Designed and Engineered Friction in Interaction

week 6. mindful interaction

Engagement Through Embodiment: A Case For Mindful Interaction

1. How can mindful interaction create slowness?

2. What are principal rules to create mindfulness?

Blendie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DDkwdPaYmk

reference:
Designing Mindful Interaction:The Category of Performative Object
http://niedderer.org/po.html
 

Form making practice

 

  https://www.flickr.com/photos/yufangised/6930476257/in/dateposted/

channel of mindfulness meditation wheel for iPhone

Zenta Project by Ling-Yuan Chiu

Attention Regulation Framework: Designing Self-Regulated Mindfulness Technologies(TOCHI'19)

Body Matters: Exploration of the Human Body as a Resource for the Design of Technologies for Meditation (DIS'20)

Exploring and Designing Embodied Mindfulness-based Interactive Technologies For Mental Wellbeing (2021)

Interoceptive Interaction: An Embodied Metaphor Inspired Approach to Designing for Meditation (CHI'21)

Beyond Meditation: Understanding Everyday Mindfulness Practices and Technology Use Among Experienced Practitioners

Movement?Sensory? guiding? meditation? VR? 

Slow design by Barbara Grosse-Hering
Slow Design for Meaningful Interactions
Slowlab

week 5. slow design & slow lab

Student presentation on:
The slow design principles

 Related design cases :
  Slow design by Barbara Grosse-Hering

Question and discussion:
1. what are the differences between slow tech and slow design?
2. What are the possible applied area of Redstrom's slow tech and the Slow Lab's design principles?

     (see "

From use to presence: on the expressions and aesthetics of everyday computational things")

related papers in Slow Lab: (should we read?)

http://slowlab.net/RESOURCES/Resources-PUBLICATIONS-Slow-reading-s

 REFLECTION, CONSCIOUSNESS, PROGRESS: CREATIVELY SLOW DESIGNING THE PRESENT

Project 1 proposal: March 31, 2025

             project presentation: April 7th, 2025
Slow Something:
  0. collect your annotated portfolios for slow technology or slow design (see Botanical Printer )

  1. propose slow + another_thing
  2. discuss the time element (fast vs. slow), reflective aspects, amplifying environments (hide or reveal), form (simple or complex), material...

  3. Let generative AI play a role in data-transformation and form-making
  4. Sketch your design (design the form, and print out as situated probes (see Botanical Printer )
  5. Evaluate your design (situated photos, 翻頁年曆, google 日曆提醒法...)
  6. summarize design principles

References:

1. Odd Interpreters

2. Indoor weather station / Local barometer / drift table

3. Photobox / Olly radio 

4. Reflexive printer / mettle / Crescendo Message / Botanical Printer

week 4. evaluating slow technology

Student presentation :

The slow design principles
 Slow design by Barbara Grosse-Hering

1. Reading "Evaluating Slow Technology"
2. Message with slow technology examples:

ChatterBox

Raven Slow Messaging

SLOWLY app

https://www.futureme.org/

Cyberlink U Messenger app

GoSlow: designing for slowness, reflection and solitude

Pensieve: supporting everyday reminiscence

Photobox: on the design of a slow technology

The reflexive printer: toward making sense of perceived drawbacks in technology-mediated reminiscence

Reflexive printer from Benforest on Vimeo.

From 紙飛機 app to mettle

Mettle in HCII 2015

CrescendoMessage 2015

Aesthetics of Friction

Question: 

  1. How to design the quality of "Anticipation"?

  2. How to evaluate slow design?

  3. What is mindful interaction? How to relate it to slow design?

Reading articles:

1. Slow Technology

   p. 209 : Evaluating Slow Technology

   art work vs. tools  evaluation

   " in a way similar to the methods developed in art critique: cultivating evaluation as the art of explanation and understanding."

2. Slow Design for Meaningful Interaction

    introducing slow design principles

    Case study of JuicyMo:

      1. current use analysis 2. ideation of JuicyMo  3. explain relevance to 6 principles 4. user test with principle cards and semi-structured interview

3. Engagement through Embodiment

    propose 3 interaction movements

    analysis through interaction vocabularies (paired contrasts)

    levels of Richness, Control & Engagement (quantitatively)