This post is part of a draft for a new academic paper aimed at a graphic design journal and represents an idea-in-progress. Feel free to comment but questions on how or what next will be answered in future posts as I construct my paper.
Within an anaesthetic experience the very nature of it means that the very perception of the undergoing and doing falls below our conscious perception. We act and react to the causality as rhythmically as breathing but without a consummation of fulfilment. We may recognise we feel emotion as we experience or we may not. But to recognise and to perceive are not the same. In experience the relationship between action and the consequence of that action is given meaning through the perceiving of it. This is a cognitive action and one that selectively places the self into the experience. In recognition a signifier is enough to satisfy. A sign, a label, a familiarity that ‘this’ is what is needed to be done or undergone to move onto the ‘next’ thing is anaesthetic. Any resistance between an old or new experience is minimal. There is no call on the person to perceptually engage in an act of reconstructive doing, selecting meaning of the new experience from past experiences. It is within the placing of the self consciously within the experience that it becomes autotelic and it is this action that Visual Communication relies on within a communicational situation.
It is not a passive relationship between the graphic outcome and the viewer. The ‘aesthetics of surface’ certainly is meant to attract attention (Frascara, 2004, p85) but it is in the ‘aesthetics of use’ that the communicational power exists. It is within the perception of the graphic outcome that that object of attention’s meaning can be interpreted within the correct socio-cultural context. The perception and object are part of the same cognitive operation, they are built up together in the mind of the viewer and completed as a whole understanding. The past experiences and references to pre-understanding of the viewer are perceptually remade into a new pattern of understanding. This new experience is a meeting of the viewer with the designer in an experiential journey to meaning, and then to action. The experience of the past cannot be dismissed from this new pattern of understanding, but neither can it be dwelt upon, as the communicational situation is cognitively kinetic moving the viewer to action from perception. Perception is an act that is not reactive or unreflective. It calls for a personal act of engagement and responsively take in data from the situation to begin to understand what is unfolding. To perceive is to be immersed in the situation, to plunge (even for a fraction) into the context to see what is unfolding.
From perception comes awareness, and from perceptual selectivity comes understanding through interpretation leading to thoughtful action. This action leads to a behavioural change which is where Visual Communication has its strengths. The perception within a socio-cultural experience of undergoing and doing is causally limited. It is partly reconstructed from past experience but this become coefficient in creating new understanding and meaning to the current experience. This pre-understanding is not a bridge from one experience to another experience, but a partial expectation of outcomes that can be challenged and questioned, re-ordered and subverted. This leads to an individualisation of the current situation. Pre-understanding is a contribution that is neither a simple recollection or in its entirety subordinated to understand a new experience. This is a beginning of understanding, and perception advances like waves up a beach towards an action. The experience’s meaning is grown from the situational context, from pre-understood knowledge selectively framed by a personal socio-cultural context, toward an interpretative meaning that is pervaded emotionally throughout. This assimilation of waves toward a meaning elevates the experience beyond mere anaesthetic because the self is responsive within the unfolding experience that has eventually a culmination that is felt consciously, subconsciously and emotionally. This accumulation leads toward an objective autotelic fulfilment, that within Visual Communication is a behavioural change in the viewer. In discussing pre-understanding this segues back into a phenomenological discussion of hermeneutics, and how phenomenological interpretation can be synthesised with Visual Communication to aid the design of better interactions through a visualising valuation of the properties of an experience, long since “dismissed as unmeasurable” (McCullough, 2005, p44).
References
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
McCULLOUGH, M. (2005). Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Visual Communication and Exprience
This post is part of a draft for a new academic paper aimed at a graphic design journal and represents an idea-in-progress. Feel free to comment but questions on how or what next will be answered in future posts as I construct my paper.
The mere understanding of a Visual Communication graphic outcome in itself does not induce action. It is through the active interpretation of the outcome that shapes perceptual selectivity within the viewer (McCullough, 2005, p34). Through this cognitive processing, behavioural change is enacted through the viewer taking from the outcome a personal interpretation of varying strengths, dependent upon their own intellectual and socio-cultural ability. This intellectual appropriation of an action, suggested through the communicational situation created by the graphic outcome’s internal structure, happens within the communicational situation as a consummation of that very experience. When defining such an experience it is an essentially an autotelic experience that is being discussed. Psychologist Csikszentimihalyi (1990) frames two forms of experience - autotelic and exotelic (p67). These terms are derived from the Greek: telos meaning goal, auto meaning self and exo meaning outside. Csikszentimihalyi defines an autotelic experience as a self-contained experience where the reward is intrinsic to the experience itself, whilst exotelic is an experience where activities are performed for external reasons to the self. Experiences are a combination of both an internal and external elements, but it is within an autotelic experience that the optimal element is an end in itself that is intrinsically rewarding. Most experiences we have in our conscious day can be described as anaesthetic. For Dewey (1980) the description of an anaesthetic experience is one that does not begin or cease at any particular place, it is slack and discursive with no initiations or conclusions, where connections between incidental components within the experiences are unconcerning (p41). These everyday experiences are as Csikszentimihalyi names exotelic. They are external to our own existential self-determined purpose, and feature events we mechanically do as a norm of our existence.
Alternatively, an autotelic experience is an experience that in itself is self-purposeful which is analogous to a pragmatist philosophical aesthetic experience. From a pragmatist perspective an aesthetic experience is shaped not only through visuals, touch, smell, and hearing, but also from the past experiences of the individual experiencing it. But past experiences can at times be contradictory, ambiguous or complex. An aesthetic experience emerges from a lived experience, where the self can be lost in the moment but can return, feeling nourished and contented, the “irreducible totality of people acting, sensing, thinking, feeling, and making meaning in a setting, including the perception and sensation of their own actions” (McCarthy and Wright, 2004, p85). Dourish suggests from a pragmatist perspective that the world is “already filled with meaning. Its meaning is to be found in the way in which it reveals itself to us as being available for our actions” (2004, p116). The sharpness in contrast between a self-purposeful experience and everyday exotelic is immediately noticeable, even if consciously at the time it is not realised. In this sharp contrast it is impossible to combine the special qualities of the experience within the usual exotelic structure, so that the special qualities are given a status outside the everyday (p42).
So far this appears to be an intellectual process, but it is also an emotional, practical and mechanical process that together constitute integral components within experience. The complexity of these various components are interlinked and not ordered in succession during an interaction with events, people, objects and ideas. They do not assume ascendency over each other, but through the linkage move toward a culmination rather than a cessation. What is crucial here is that the culmination is not dependent upon the mechanistic component of the experience to finish, as the consummation is not wholly a conscious state. Within an aesthetic experience Dewey states that the experience is “anticipated throughout and is recurrently savored with special intensity” (p57). This type of experience is separated from the everyday anaesthetic experiences, and it is framed within this form of experiencing that a communicational situation is created by Visual Communication. As Frascara explains the act of communication is not the designer’s objective but designing the impact of that communication is (p13). The interaction between meaning and the viewer is paramount, and the interaction between visual elements within the graphic outcomes aids the reception, leading to the necessary change in behaviour. This interaction becomes a self-experience within the viewer once they take notice of the graphic outcome. How they engage making it a self-experience can be framed within a phenomenological flow proposed by Csikszentimihalyi. Dourish is aware that a phenomenological perspective framed using pragmatist aesthetics is only one perspective amongst others that has embodiment as a central focus. But he argues that phenomenology looks at “the pretheoretical, prerational world of everyday experience” (p106) making phenomenology a relevant starting point to account for the relationality between meaning and action.
References
CSIKSZENTIMIHALYI, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper
DOURISH, P. (2004). Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Cambridge: MIT Press.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
McCULLOUGH, M. (2005). Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing. Cambridge: MIT Press.
The mere understanding of a Visual Communication graphic outcome in itself does not induce action. It is through the active interpretation of the outcome that shapes perceptual selectivity within the viewer (McCullough, 2005, p34). Through this cognitive processing, behavioural change is enacted through the viewer taking from the outcome a personal interpretation of varying strengths, dependent upon their own intellectual and socio-cultural ability. This intellectual appropriation of an action, suggested through the communicational situation created by the graphic outcome’s internal structure, happens within the communicational situation as a consummation of that very experience. When defining such an experience it is an essentially an autotelic experience that is being discussed. Psychologist Csikszentimihalyi (1990) frames two forms of experience - autotelic and exotelic (p67). These terms are derived from the Greek: telos meaning goal, auto meaning self and exo meaning outside. Csikszentimihalyi defines an autotelic experience as a self-contained experience where the reward is intrinsic to the experience itself, whilst exotelic is an experience where activities are performed for external reasons to the self. Experiences are a combination of both an internal and external elements, but it is within an autotelic experience that the optimal element is an end in itself that is intrinsically rewarding. Most experiences we have in our conscious day can be described as anaesthetic. For Dewey (1980) the description of an anaesthetic experience is one that does not begin or cease at any particular place, it is slack and discursive with no initiations or conclusions, where connections between incidental components within the experiences are unconcerning (p41). These everyday experiences are as Csikszentimihalyi names exotelic. They are external to our own existential self-determined purpose, and feature events we mechanically do as a norm of our existence.
Alternatively, an autotelic experience is an experience that in itself is self-purposeful which is analogous to a pragmatist philosophical aesthetic experience. From a pragmatist perspective an aesthetic experience is shaped not only through visuals, touch, smell, and hearing, but also from the past experiences of the individual experiencing it. But past experiences can at times be contradictory, ambiguous or complex. An aesthetic experience emerges from a lived experience, where the self can be lost in the moment but can return, feeling nourished and contented, the “irreducible totality of people acting, sensing, thinking, feeling, and making meaning in a setting, including the perception and sensation of their own actions” (McCarthy and Wright, 2004, p85). Dourish suggests from a pragmatist perspective that the world is “already filled with meaning. Its meaning is to be found in the way in which it reveals itself to us as being available for our actions” (2004, p116). The sharpness in contrast between a self-purposeful experience and everyday exotelic is immediately noticeable, even if consciously at the time it is not realised. In this sharp contrast it is impossible to combine the special qualities of the experience within the usual exotelic structure, so that the special qualities are given a status outside the everyday (p42).
So far this appears to be an intellectual process, but it is also an emotional, practical and mechanical process that together constitute integral components within experience. The complexity of these various components are interlinked and not ordered in succession during an interaction with events, people, objects and ideas. They do not assume ascendency over each other, but through the linkage move toward a culmination rather than a cessation. What is crucial here is that the culmination is not dependent upon the mechanistic component of the experience to finish, as the consummation is not wholly a conscious state. Within an aesthetic experience Dewey states that the experience is “anticipated throughout and is recurrently savored with special intensity” (p57). This type of experience is separated from the everyday anaesthetic experiences, and it is framed within this form of experiencing that a communicational situation is created by Visual Communication. As Frascara explains the act of communication is not the designer’s objective but designing the impact of that communication is (p13). The interaction between meaning and the viewer is paramount, and the interaction between visual elements within the graphic outcomes aids the reception, leading to the necessary change in behaviour. This interaction becomes a self-experience within the viewer once they take notice of the graphic outcome. How they engage making it a self-experience can be framed within a phenomenological flow proposed by Csikszentimihalyi. Dourish is aware that a phenomenological perspective framed using pragmatist aesthetics is only one perspective amongst others that has embodiment as a central focus. But he argues that phenomenology looks at “the pretheoretical, prerational world of everyday experience” (p106) making phenomenology a relevant starting point to account for the relationality between meaning and action.
References
CSIKSZENTIMIHALYI, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper
DOURISH, P. (2004). Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Cambridge: MIT Press.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
McCULLOUGH, M. (2005). Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Phenomenology of Enjoyment - notes
This post is part of a draft for a new academic paper aimed at a graphic design journal and represents an idea-in-progress. Feel free to comment but questions on how or what next will be answered in future posts as I construct my paper.
Within his work on Flow (1990) psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentimihalyi provides eight components for a phenomenology of enjoyment. These components are all (or mostly) present in a particular aesthetic experience and are:
#1 Chance of completing
The sense of enjoyment appears to sit at an interface between boredom and anxiety. To enjoy an activity there appears a need for the tension between boredom and anxiety in completing it. Based upon an individual’s existing skills if the activity is too easy a person will become bored too quickly. If it is too difficult they will feel anxious about not completing it. Therefore the enjoyment emerges out of an aesthetic experience where that tension is exciting, and the completion is possible with an application of the ‘self’ in its achievement.
#2 Concentration on actions
When a person is engaged in an experiential moment that is not anaesthetic, all other aspects of their life can be existentially forgotten for a time, as enjoyable activities command a complete focusing on that moments actions. The structured demands of that experience impose a sense of order in the person’s consciousness, in turn excluding any interference from their everyday worries and responsibilities within the duration of that same experience.
#3 clear goals
Within the experience clear goals of open-ended activities emerge out of ambiguities, but these are not superficial and simple, nor are they always preformed. The open-endedness of creative situations begin with vague goals that are subsequently fleshed out during the activity in a sense of exploration. Without an emergent clarity of goals to aim for the experience will unstructured and meander. With even initial vague goals feedback will inform of when they have been met.
#4 immediate feedback
The kind of feedback that is worked toward is valid in its symbolic message it contains. It informs us of our level of success in achieving our goals. It creates order in consciousness and strengthens the structure of the self. The feedback required by the individual is variable. The key is that as long as the feedback is logically related to our goal, any feedback can become enjoyable - even feedback that isn’t positive.
#5 effortless involvement
Once in an enjoyable experience the desire and purpose is not to peak and to come out of the Flow of the experience - to return to a conscious self. A state of effortless involvement is enacted but this not all that it feels. To feel that, on reflection, the involvement has been effortless does still involve skilled performance. A lapse in concentration returns the individual to a state of self-consciousness, and self-evaluation - the state of Flow is interrupted.
#6 sense of control over self
Enjoyment in leisure activities is distinct from mundane everyday activities where any bad things can happen. Within an autotelic experience where the end is itself rewarding, the enjoyment is consuming without anxiety of failure. There is a paradox here as there is a sense of control over the self - or a lack of worry of about losing control that we do not have in our everyday existence.
#7 concern for self disappears
The loss of self-consciousness and concern for their self during an experience, is due to little opportunity for the self to feel threatened. Enjoyable activities have clear goals, stable rules and the challenge within the skills of the individual. Comfort zones can thus be pushed where the challenge is enjoyable. The loss of self-consciousness does not involve a loss of self or of consciousness - but just a loss of consciousness of the self.
#8 Sense of time is altered
The freedom from the tyranny of objective time when in a state of complete involvement is exhilarating. The intense concentration an individual finds themselves in when absorbed in an enjoyable experience. Timing may still be objectively the same, but the sensation of passing of time is altered. It may be perceived as speeding up or slowing down despite pacing of actions or goals.
In these phenomenological components the four existentials of spatiality, corporeality, temporality and relationality manifest themselves. It is within this phenomenological space that Visual Communication can connect and consociate with Interaction Design by providing rich abstracted concepts to visually develop the discipline further toward the design of better interactions.
References
CSIKSZENTIMIHALYI, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper
Within his work on Flow (1990) psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentimihalyi provides eight components for a phenomenology of enjoyment. These components are all (or mostly) present in a particular aesthetic experience and are:
#1 Chance of completing
The sense of enjoyment appears to sit at an interface between boredom and anxiety. To enjoy an activity there appears a need for the tension between boredom and anxiety in completing it. Based upon an individual’s existing skills if the activity is too easy a person will become bored too quickly. If it is too difficult they will feel anxious about not completing it. Therefore the enjoyment emerges out of an aesthetic experience where that tension is exciting, and the completion is possible with an application of the ‘self’ in its achievement.
#2 Concentration on actions
When a person is engaged in an experiential moment that is not anaesthetic, all other aspects of their life can be existentially forgotten for a time, as enjoyable activities command a complete focusing on that moments actions. The structured demands of that experience impose a sense of order in the person’s consciousness, in turn excluding any interference from their everyday worries and responsibilities within the duration of that same experience.
#3 clear goals
Within the experience clear goals of open-ended activities emerge out of ambiguities, but these are not superficial and simple, nor are they always preformed. The open-endedness of creative situations begin with vague goals that are subsequently fleshed out during the activity in a sense of exploration. Without an emergent clarity of goals to aim for the experience will unstructured and meander. With even initial vague goals feedback will inform of when they have been met.
#4 immediate feedback
The kind of feedback that is worked toward is valid in its symbolic message it contains. It informs us of our level of success in achieving our goals. It creates order in consciousness and strengthens the structure of the self. The feedback required by the individual is variable. The key is that as long as the feedback is logically related to our goal, any feedback can become enjoyable - even feedback that isn’t positive.
#5 effortless involvement
Once in an enjoyable experience the desire and purpose is not to peak and to come out of the Flow of the experience - to return to a conscious self. A state of effortless involvement is enacted but this not all that it feels. To feel that, on reflection, the involvement has been effortless does still involve skilled performance. A lapse in concentration returns the individual to a state of self-consciousness, and self-evaluation - the state of Flow is interrupted.
#6 sense of control over self
Enjoyment in leisure activities is distinct from mundane everyday activities where any bad things can happen. Within an autotelic experience where the end is itself rewarding, the enjoyment is consuming without anxiety of failure. There is a paradox here as there is a sense of control over the self - or a lack of worry of about losing control that we do not have in our everyday existence.
#7 concern for self disappears
The loss of self-consciousness and concern for their self during an experience, is due to little opportunity for the self to feel threatened. Enjoyable activities have clear goals, stable rules and the challenge within the skills of the individual. Comfort zones can thus be pushed where the challenge is enjoyable. The loss of self-consciousness does not involve a loss of self or of consciousness - but just a loss of consciousness of the self.
#8 Sense of time is altered
The freedom from the tyranny of objective time when in a state of complete involvement is exhilarating. The intense concentration an individual finds themselves in when absorbed in an enjoyable experience. Timing may still be objectively the same, but the sensation of passing of time is altered. It may be perceived as speeding up or slowing down despite pacing of actions or goals.
In these phenomenological components the four existentials of spatiality, corporeality, temporality and relationality manifest themselves. It is within this phenomenological space that Visual Communication can connect and consociate with Interaction Design by providing rich abstracted concepts to visually develop the discipline further toward the design of better interactions.
References
CSIKSZENTIMIHALYI, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper
Friday, 25 November 2011
Book Commission - Basics Digital Media: Interface Design
I've just been commissioned to write a new book on Interface Design by AVA Publishing. It is aimed at design undergraduates and graphic designers transitioning from print to interactivity.
The book is to be called Basics Digital Media: Interface Design and will feature text by myself, visual examples, case studies and interviews to be published in 2013.
I am seeking good examples of UI design. The work can be your work, favourite work from others or student/graduate work. Hope you can suggest some?
I have a Wiki that breaks down each chapter, explaining the structure and asks (in red type) for your suggestions by set deadlines.
Any suggestions that make it in the book will gain a acknowledgement, and a link. Any copyright clearances and licences will be dealt with by the publisher's picture editor before publication.
If you want to see this Wiki can you email me at dave.wood[at]gcu.ac.uk and I'll send you an invite.
Ta
The book is to be called Basics Digital Media: Interface Design and will feature text by myself, visual examples, case studies and interviews to be published in 2013.
I am seeking good examples of UI design. The work can be your work, favourite work from others or student/graduate work. Hope you can suggest some?
I have a Wiki that breaks down each chapter, explaining the structure and asks (in red type) for your suggestions by set deadlines.
Any suggestions that make it in the book will gain a acknowledgement, and a link. Any copyright clearances and licences will be dealt with by the publisher's picture editor before publication.
If you want to see this Wiki can you email me at dave.wood[at]gcu.ac.uk and I'll send you an invite.
Ta
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Communicational Situation
This post is part of a draft for a new academic paper aimed at a graphic design journal and represents an idea-in-progress. Feel free to comment but questions on how or what next will be answered in future posts as I construct my paper.
With its pervasiveness, graphic outcomes of Visual Communication vie for our attention embedded in our Westernised waking world. From shop shelves, to our streets, to our screens and even our mobile devices we are surrounded by combinations of text and image that manipulate our decision making within a communicational situation. But despite this pervasiveness the impact of Visual Communication’s outcomes are under-valued and perceived as problematic. Some reasons for this are that graphic outcomes are judged as being too subjective, giving “the illusion of [false] benefits (…) to help us 'make sense' of complex situations” (Love, 11 April 2010); or they simply are taken for granted as ‘noise’ (Meggs, 1992) within a visual channel of communication that is so deeply ingrained in our socio-cultural existence (Crowley, 2004, p182). These misconceptions leaves out so much of the intellectual design process and the emotional and social contexts (Kolko, 2010, p102) that Visual Communication draws from. Visual Communication is beyond mere decoration of doing the 'aesthetic bit’ - the artifice at the end of a long engineering, marketing or construction process.
Therefore the interaction within the internal life of the graphic outcome that a designer carefully crafts between its visual communicational hierarchy of type and image is not where its purpose lies. This would be artifice. The communicational situation created by the interaction of the graphic outcome’s denotational and connotational meaning, rests in the act of public interaction with it. As Frascara suggests the impact that a graphic outcome has on “the knowledge, the attitudes, and the behaviour” of the public interacting with it (p13) is more important. This is the external life of the graphic outcome, and is where its ‘aesthetics of use’ rests that go beyond the issues of simply form.
This external life of a graphic outcome exists within an existential aesthetic experience across the visual, a time and a place; and develops a truly interactive rather than passive relationship between the audience and the outcome. This existential reception in time and place is of course manipulated by the designer through the internal variables of the design, but only partly. From a ‘perspective of proximity’ (Bergstrom, 2008, p32) the designer balances the semiological relationship of these internal variables - how the text and images are laid out; the choice and use of typography; the art direction of tone, colour, composition, and flow. The communicational aspect of the graphic outcome is constructed by the designer either connotationally or denotationally but not ‘set’ by the designer. The meaning of the intended communication can either be on a deep level or a surface level. This is dependent upon the initial purpose of the design, but in principal there is a relationship between the viewer and the design. This ‘reading’ of the graphic outcome may only be truly revealed over time, and open to reception on an individual basis. Depending upon the individual they may not experience the full meaning as it can be completely dependent upon the context it is received in by the viewer, pervaded by their personal “attitudes, values and experiences” (Bergstrom, 2008, p80). This is an affective phenomenon where the designer attempts to frame the message to be interpreted, reliant on a direct relationship with the person interpreting it. It is emotional, cognitive, interpretive, and cannot be reduced to a procedural process of measurement. It is an aesthetic experience that goes beyond the surface into use… and phenomenologically interpretive.
Under-pinning such a hermeneutic (interpretive) phenomenological perspective is essentially an existential philosophical ground espoused by Martin Heidegger. Simplifying some heavy philosophy I may be forgiven for summing this up as the being of being. That opens things up into a consideration of the self in the lifeworld which can be separated into four existentials: lived space; lived body; lived time; and lived human relation (Van Manen, 1990, p101). These four existentials of lived space; lived body; lived time; and lived human relation can be differentiated from each other. But they can never be separated from each other. Our sense of self - our being of being - is constituent of all for parts. We exist bodily in time, in space, and not in isolation - we have experiences in interconnected situated moments. It is these existentials that inform our behaviour and can be calibrated to alter our future approaches to experiences. It is within this phenomenological space that the visual graphic outcomes of Visual Communication communicate to the public across time and place.
The cultural identity of the individual is influential to construct and interpret the graphic outcomes meaning. Barnard argues that this is a semiological communication, an aesthetic choice that is culturally connected and carries meaning (p28) through evoking a cognitive and emotional response. This is socially situated, and within this socio-cultural context understanding through interpretation (relevant to their personal context) shapes actions affording a change in the behaviour of the viewer. The ‘aesthetics of surface’ attracts and retains attention, but it is within the ‘aesthetics of use’ that the communication is made. This is mostly performed subconsciously on the periphery of everyday life, hence being perceptively ingrained in visually cultured societies. McCullough argues that both Architecture and Interaction Design address how context shapes actions, the former frames intentions whilst the latter connects mental states “to available opportunities for participation.” He describes these processes as ambient with peripheral benefits that are not found “in the seductive objects of attention” (2005, p47). Visual Communication also frames intentions and creates opportunities for participation. It’s ground is in framing decisions (which is more than creating mere ‘aesthetics of surface’), a visual constructor for how a “society constructs and communicates meaning” for itself - a “signifying system, within a much larger system” (Barnard, 2005, p67).
Visual Communication as a visual constructor for ‘aesthetics of use’ must aesthetically be appropriate and congruent to “establish clear relations of importance, inclusion, connection, and dependence”, and then to “guide the sequence in the perception of a message” (Frascara, 2004, pp67-68). This is crucial to aid the construction of meaning that will then elicit embodied action and change in behaviour that the graphic outcome seeks. The aesthetic factor within the outcome attracts and retains the attention to communicate possible actions, enabling understanding in the individual. But understanding can merely be accepting without further engagement (Shusterman, 1992), it is through interpretation that behavioural changes are facilitated. Understanding the communication is an active process that can be personally revised, influenced by an individuals own existing knowledge and therefore prejudiced in a way that unless open challenge can lead to misunderstanding. Understanding helps ground and guide interpretation, and it is through interpretation that an individual can explore, validate and modify their understanding. Interpretation acknowledges that there may be other interpretations or meanings, whereas understanding merely accepts without engaging further. Shusterman suggests that understanding on a highly intelligent level is “unreflective, unthinking, indeed unconscious” whilst proper interpretation is deliberate, critical and conscious thought (p133).
References
BARNARD, M. (2005) Graphic Design as Communication. Abingdon: Routledge.
BERGSTRÖM, B. (2008). Essentials of Visual Communication. London: Laurence King Publishing.
CROWLEY, D. (2004). Design Magazines and Design Culture. In: R. Poynor, (Ed.), Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp182-199.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
KOLKO, J. (2010). Thoughts on Interaction Design. Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann.
LOVE, T. (2010) Are Visual Approaches to Design Outdated? 8 April. PhD-Design [online]. [8 April 2010]. Available from: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A1=ind1004&L=PHD-DESIGN#11
McCULLOUGH, M. (2005). Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing. Cambridge: MIT Press.
MEGGS, P.B. (1992) Type and Image: The Language of Graphic Design. J. Wiley and Sons, Inc.
SHUSTERMAN, R. (1992). Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (2nd ed). Blackwell.
Van MANEN, M. (1990) Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. Ontario: The Althouse Press.
With its pervasiveness, graphic outcomes of Visual Communication vie for our attention embedded in our Westernised waking world. From shop shelves, to our streets, to our screens and even our mobile devices we are surrounded by combinations of text and image that manipulate our decision making within a communicational situation. But despite this pervasiveness the impact of Visual Communication’s outcomes are under-valued and perceived as problematic. Some reasons for this are that graphic outcomes are judged as being too subjective, giving “the illusion of [false] benefits (…) to help us 'make sense' of complex situations” (Love, 11 April 2010); or they simply are taken for granted as ‘noise’ (Meggs, 1992) within a visual channel of communication that is so deeply ingrained in our socio-cultural existence (Crowley, 2004, p182). These misconceptions leaves out so much of the intellectual design process and the emotional and social contexts (Kolko, 2010, p102) that Visual Communication draws from. Visual Communication is beyond mere decoration of doing the 'aesthetic bit’ - the artifice at the end of a long engineering, marketing or construction process.
Therefore the interaction within the internal life of the graphic outcome that a designer carefully crafts between its visual communicational hierarchy of type and image is not where its purpose lies. This would be artifice. The communicational situation created by the interaction of the graphic outcome’s denotational and connotational meaning, rests in the act of public interaction with it. As Frascara suggests the impact that a graphic outcome has on “the knowledge, the attitudes, and the behaviour” of the public interacting with it (p13) is more important. This is the external life of the graphic outcome, and is where its ‘aesthetics of use’ rests that go beyond the issues of simply form.
This external life of a graphic outcome exists within an existential aesthetic experience across the visual, a time and a place; and develops a truly interactive rather than passive relationship between the audience and the outcome. This existential reception in time and place is of course manipulated by the designer through the internal variables of the design, but only partly. From a ‘perspective of proximity’ (Bergstrom, 2008, p32) the designer balances the semiological relationship of these internal variables - how the text and images are laid out; the choice and use of typography; the art direction of tone, colour, composition, and flow. The communicational aspect of the graphic outcome is constructed by the designer either connotationally or denotationally but not ‘set’ by the designer. The meaning of the intended communication can either be on a deep level or a surface level. This is dependent upon the initial purpose of the design, but in principal there is a relationship between the viewer and the design. This ‘reading’ of the graphic outcome may only be truly revealed over time, and open to reception on an individual basis. Depending upon the individual they may not experience the full meaning as it can be completely dependent upon the context it is received in by the viewer, pervaded by their personal “attitudes, values and experiences” (Bergstrom, 2008, p80). This is an affective phenomenon where the designer attempts to frame the message to be interpreted, reliant on a direct relationship with the person interpreting it. It is emotional, cognitive, interpretive, and cannot be reduced to a procedural process of measurement. It is an aesthetic experience that goes beyond the surface into use… and phenomenologically interpretive.
Under-pinning such a hermeneutic (interpretive) phenomenological perspective is essentially an existential philosophical ground espoused by Martin Heidegger. Simplifying some heavy philosophy I may be forgiven for summing this up as the being of being. That opens things up into a consideration of the self in the lifeworld which can be separated into four existentials: lived space; lived body; lived time; and lived human relation (Van Manen, 1990, p101). These four existentials of lived space; lived body; lived time; and lived human relation can be differentiated from each other. But they can never be separated from each other. Our sense of self - our being of being - is constituent of all for parts. We exist bodily in time, in space, and not in isolation - we have experiences in interconnected situated moments. It is these existentials that inform our behaviour and can be calibrated to alter our future approaches to experiences. It is within this phenomenological space that the visual graphic outcomes of Visual Communication communicate to the public across time and place.
The cultural identity of the individual is influential to construct and interpret the graphic outcomes meaning. Barnard argues that this is a semiological communication, an aesthetic choice that is culturally connected and carries meaning (p28) through evoking a cognitive and emotional response. This is socially situated, and within this socio-cultural context understanding through interpretation (relevant to their personal context) shapes actions affording a change in the behaviour of the viewer. The ‘aesthetics of surface’ attracts and retains attention, but it is within the ‘aesthetics of use’ that the communication is made. This is mostly performed subconsciously on the periphery of everyday life, hence being perceptively ingrained in visually cultured societies. McCullough argues that both Architecture and Interaction Design address how context shapes actions, the former frames intentions whilst the latter connects mental states “to available opportunities for participation.” He describes these processes as ambient with peripheral benefits that are not found “in the seductive objects of attention” (2005, p47). Visual Communication also frames intentions and creates opportunities for participation. It’s ground is in framing decisions (which is more than creating mere ‘aesthetics of surface’), a visual constructor for how a “society constructs and communicates meaning” for itself - a “signifying system, within a much larger system” (Barnard, 2005, p67).
Visual Communication as a visual constructor for ‘aesthetics of use’ must aesthetically be appropriate and congruent to “establish clear relations of importance, inclusion, connection, and dependence”, and then to “guide the sequence in the perception of a message” (Frascara, 2004, pp67-68). This is crucial to aid the construction of meaning that will then elicit embodied action and change in behaviour that the graphic outcome seeks. The aesthetic factor within the outcome attracts and retains the attention to communicate possible actions, enabling understanding in the individual. But understanding can merely be accepting without further engagement (Shusterman, 1992), it is through interpretation that behavioural changes are facilitated. Understanding the communication is an active process that can be personally revised, influenced by an individuals own existing knowledge and therefore prejudiced in a way that unless open challenge can lead to misunderstanding. Understanding helps ground and guide interpretation, and it is through interpretation that an individual can explore, validate and modify their understanding. Interpretation acknowledges that there may be other interpretations or meanings, whereas understanding merely accepts without engaging further. Shusterman suggests that understanding on a highly intelligent level is “unreflective, unthinking, indeed unconscious” whilst proper interpretation is deliberate, critical and conscious thought (p133).
References
BARNARD, M. (2005) Graphic Design as Communication. Abingdon: Routledge.
BERGSTRÖM, B. (2008). Essentials of Visual Communication. London: Laurence King Publishing.
CROWLEY, D. (2004). Design Magazines and Design Culture. In: R. Poynor, (Ed.), Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp182-199.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
KOLKO, J. (2010). Thoughts on Interaction Design. Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann.
LOVE, T. (2010) Are Visual Approaches to Design Outdated? 8 April. PhD-Design [online]. [8 April 2010]. Available from: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A1=ind1004&L=PHD-DESIGN#11
McCULLOUGH, M. (2005). Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing. Cambridge: MIT Press.
MEGGS, P.B. (1992) Type and Image: The Language of Graphic Design. J. Wiley and Sons, Inc.
SHUSTERMAN, R. (1992). Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (2nd ed). Blackwell.
Van MANEN, M. (1990) Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. Ontario: The Althouse Press.
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
Obey the Visual - Synthesising a Visual Phenomenology?
This post is a draft for a new academic paper aimed at a graphic design journal. It continues on from the previous post, and represents writing-in-progress. Feel free to comment but questions on how or what next will be answered in future posts as I construct my paper.
I will be making a case for the development of a Visual Phenomenological Methodology within Visual Communication later in this paper. But before I do I wish to explore phenomenology’s existing connections. Phenomenology as a philosophical and a qualitative research methodology have yet to truly be adapted within a Visual Communication context. Design journalist Rick Poynor points out that the discipline “has long had an aversion to theory” (Poynor, 2003, p10).
This is no wonder because as young discipline Visual Communication does not have “a couple of centuries’ worth” of academic design literature (Rock and Poynor, 1995) that other disciplines may have. From the existing literature it does have the word phenomena is widely used (Heller & Ballance, 2001; Margolin & Buchanan, 1996; Williams & Newton, 2007; Huck et al, 1997; Hill & Helmers, 2004; Barry, 1997) to describe the internal and external characteristics of graphic outcomes or in pictorial representation. Kenney in his essay on Representation Theory in The Handbook of Visual Communication (2005, p112) discusses image representation through lenses of semiotics, rhetoric and phenomenology, concluding that a theoretical synthesis would be a useful model for understanding image representations.
In Kenney’s later book on Visual Communication Research Designs (2009) it features examples of qualitative research methodologies available to visual communicators such as ethnography, discourse analysis and content analysis. But still nothing on synthesising phenomenology into a useful methodology despite the liberal use of the term ‘phenomena’. At this point a brief review of phenomenology within a Visual Communication context would be beneficial. To begin this I will discuss Shepard Fairey’s “Obey The Giant” sticker campaign called by himself as an “experiment in Phenomenology” (Fairey, 1990).
The Obey The Giant sticker campaign began in 1989 and is still an active piece of Visual Communication as a meme and subversive street art. Using a reductively stylised stencil cut illustration of the deceased wrestler Andre the Giant (see fig. 1) stickers, posters and sprayed images have spread across cities in North America into the western world. The image of Andre’s face hypnotically stares straight out and solely features the command “obey”. Obey The Giant was originally an undergraduate illustration project initiated by Shepard Fairey. In 1990 he wrote a manifesto behind the sticker campaign in which he “attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the sticker and their relationship with their surroundings” (Fairey, 1990).
(Fig. 1 - Shepard Fairey and Obey The Giant (poster variant). Photo: Elizabeth Daniels)
The underlying tension of the campaign is the ambiguous nature of the relationship between image and text and it’s interpretation. Without Fairey’s context the sticker has been both embraced and rejected by people in the environments it is seen. A cultivated sense of a cultish communication is intrinsically linked to the phenomenon. In a later interview (undated, but at least post-1997) Fairey admits that Obey was “about creating an individual dialogue process that can expand into people trying to interpret it, and asking someone else, and then there’s two people talking about it. Something just going on that people can’t pigeonhole along with everything else” (Goodfellow, N.D.).
When journalists and commentators discuss Fairey’s Obey campaign they usually lead with the first line of his manifesto “The OBEY sticker campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology” (Fairey, 1990). Fairey briefly contextualises this statement with a brief explanation of phenomenology from a Heideggerian perspective. But this framing of the Obey campaign as a phenomenological experiment is very weak. He himself admits in interview with Goodfellow that he wrote it to satisfy college-educated people who “want you to empirically break down what it is, what it’s doing, and why. So I wrote the explanation for those intellectual Doubting Thomases, who’ve got to stick their finger in the hole” (Goodfellow, N.D.).
Fairey’s manifesto (Fairey, 1990) makes a clear statement that Obey is meant to stimulate curiosity and questioning of both the image itself and the image in the context of its surroundings. To achieve this he claims that the “first aim of phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one’s environment”. Citing Heidegger, Fairey’s definition of phenomenology is weakly understood, “Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation” (ibid.). As an example of Visual Communication it is a very strong project as an exercise in creating debate over meaning and interpretation. But as an example of Visual Communication using phenomenological theory and practice, it is a misnomer.
(To be cont.)
References
BARRY, A.M. (1997) Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image and Manipulation in Visual Communication. New York: State University of New York Press.
FAIREY, S. (1990) Manifesto – Obey Giant [online]. [Accessed 20 September 2011]. Available from: http://obeygiant.com/about
GOODFELLOW, C. (N.D) Andre The Giant Is Watching You [online]. [Accessed 27 September 2011]. Available from: http://obeygiant.com/articles/andre-the-giant-is-watching-you
HELLER, S. and BALLANCE, G. (2001) Graphic Design History. Allworth Communications.
HILL, C.A. and HELMERS, M.H. (2004) Defining Visual Rhetorics. Routledge.
HUCK, F.O., FALES, C.L. and RAHMAN, Z. (1997) Visual Communication: An Information Theory Approach. Springer.
KENNEY, K. (2005) Representation Theory. In K.S. SMITH, S. MORIARTY, K. KENNEY, and G. BARBATSIS (eds) Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media. Routledge. pp99-115
KENNEY, K. (2009). Visual Communication Research Designs. New York: Routledge.
MARGOLIN, V. and BUCHANAN, R. (1996) The Idea of Design. MIT Press.
POYNOR, R. ed. (2003) No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.
ROCK, M. and POYNOR, R. (1995) What Is This Thing Called Graphic Design Criticism? Eye. 4 (16) pp56-59
WILLIAMS, R and NEWTON, J.H. (2007) Visual Communication: Integrating Media, Art and Science. Routledge.
Images:
DANIELS, E. (N.D.) Shepard Fairey [online]. [Accessed 27 September 2011]. Available from:http://www.elizabethdanielsphotography.com/#/89542/898486
I will be making a case for the development of a Visual Phenomenological Methodology within Visual Communication later in this paper. But before I do I wish to explore phenomenology’s existing connections. Phenomenology as a philosophical and a qualitative research methodology have yet to truly be adapted within a Visual Communication context. Design journalist Rick Poynor points out that the discipline “has long had an aversion to theory” (Poynor, 2003, p10).
This is no wonder because as young discipline Visual Communication does not have “a couple of centuries’ worth” of academic design literature (Rock and Poynor, 1995) that other disciplines may have. From the existing literature it does have the word phenomena is widely used (Heller & Ballance, 2001; Margolin & Buchanan, 1996; Williams & Newton, 2007; Huck et al, 1997; Hill & Helmers, 2004; Barry, 1997) to describe the internal and external characteristics of graphic outcomes or in pictorial representation. Kenney in his essay on Representation Theory in The Handbook of Visual Communication (2005, p112) discusses image representation through lenses of semiotics, rhetoric and phenomenology, concluding that a theoretical synthesis would be a useful model for understanding image representations.
In Kenney’s later book on Visual Communication Research Designs (2009) it features examples of qualitative research methodologies available to visual communicators such as ethnography, discourse analysis and content analysis. But still nothing on synthesising phenomenology into a useful methodology despite the liberal use of the term ‘phenomena’. At this point a brief review of phenomenology within a Visual Communication context would be beneficial. To begin this I will discuss Shepard Fairey’s “Obey The Giant” sticker campaign called by himself as an “experiment in Phenomenology” (Fairey, 1990).
The Obey The Giant sticker campaign began in 1989 and is still an active piece of Visual Communication as a meme and subversive street art. Using a reductively stylised stencil cut illustration of the deceased wrestler Andre the Giant (see fig. 1) stickers, posters and sprayed images have spread across cities in North America into the western world. The image of Andre’s face hypnotically stares straight out and solely features the command “obey”. Obey The Giant was originally an undergraduate illustration project initiated by Shepard Fairey. In 1990 he wrote a manifesto behind the sticker campaign in which he “attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the sticker and their relationship with their surroundings” (Fairey, 1990).
(Fig. 1 - Shepard Fairey and Obey The Giant (poster variant). Photo: Elizabeth Daniels)
The underlying tension of the campaign is the ambiguous nature of the relationship between image and text and it’s interpretation. Without Fairey’s context the sticker has been both embraced and rejected by people in the environments it is seen. A cultivated sense of a cultish communication is intrinsically linked to the phenomenon. In a later interview (undated, but at least post-1997) Fairey admits that Obey was “about creating an individual dialogue process that can expand into people trying to interpret it, and asking someone else, and then there’s two people talking about it. Something just going on that people can’t pigeonhole along with everything else” (Goodfellow, N.D.).
When journalists and commentators discuss Fairey’s Obey campaign they usually lead with the first line of his manifesto “The OBEY sticker campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology” (Fairey, 1990). Fairey briefly contextualises this statement with a brief explanation of phenomenology from a Heideggerian perspective. But this framing of the Obey campaign as a phenomenological experiment is very weak. He himself admits in interview with Goodfellow that he wrote it to satisfy college-educated people who “want you to empirically break down what it is, what it’s doing, and why. So I wrote the explanation for those intellectual Doubting Thomases, who’ve got to stick their finger in the hole” (Goodfellow, N.D.).
Fairey’s manifesto (Fairey, 1990) makes a clear statement that Obey is meant to stimulate curiosity and questioning of both the image itself and the image in the context of its surroundings. To achieve this he claims that the “first aim of phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one’s environment”. Citing Heidegger, Fairey’s definition of phenomenology is weakly understood, “Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation” (ibid.). As an example of Visual Communication it is a very strong project as an exercise in creating debate over meaning and interpretation. But as an example of Visual Communication using phenomenological theory and practice, it is a misnomer.
(To be cont.)
References
BARRY, A.M. (1997) Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image and Manipulation in Visual Communication. New York: State University of New York Press.
FAIREY, S. (1990) Manifesto – Obey Giant [online]. [Accessed 20 September 2011]. Available from: http://obeygiant.com/about
GOODFELLOW, C. (N.D) Andre The Giant Is Watching You [online]. [Accessed 27 September 2011]. Available from: http://obeygiant.com/articles/andre-the-giant-is-watching-you
HELLER, S. and BALLANCE, G. (2001) Graphic Design History. Allworth Communications.
HILL, C.A. and HELMERS, M.H. (2004) Defining Visual Rhetorics. Routledge.
HUCK, F.O., FALES, C.L. and RAHMAN, Z. (1997) Visual Communication: An Information Theory Approach. Springer.
KENNEY, K. (2005) Representation Theory. In K.S. SMITH, S. MORIARTY, K. KENNEY, and G. BARBATSIS (eds) Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media. Routledge. pp99-115
KENNEY, K. (2009). Visual Communication Research Designs. New York: Routledge.
MARGOLIN, V. and BUCHANAN, R. (1996) The Idea of Design. MIT Press.
POYNOR, R. ed. (2003) No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.
ROCK, M. and POYNOR, R. (1995) What Is This Thing Called Graphic Design Criticism? Eye. 4 (16) pp56-59
WILLIAMS, R and NEWTON, J.H. (2007) Visual Communication: Integrating Media, Art and Science. Routledge.
Images:
DANIELS, E. (N.D.) Shepard Fairey [online]. [Accessed 27 September 2011]. Available from:http://www.elizabethdanielsphotography.com/#/89542/898486
Monday, 19 September 2011
Moving Across Boundaries REDUX - Dwiggins, Frascara and Cement (2nd edition)
This post is a draft of an introduction for a new academic paper aimed at a graphic design journal. It continues on from the previous post, and represents writing-in-progress. Feel free to comment but questions on how or what next will be answered in future posts as I construct my paper.
Before I begin this (see previous post) I want to establish a context to the problem and solution that I propose Visual Communication as a discipline can address. To do this I first wish to unpack what I mean as ‘aesthetics of surface’ and to establish what I mean by the ‘aesthetics of use’. This will be crucial for the main thrust of this paper’s thesis.
Firstly I want to define my use of Visual Communication as the disciplinary name. The term ‘Graphic Design’ was coined in 1922 by American typographer and printer William A. Dwiggins “to confer a loftier professional standing” (Heller, 2006, p10). In doing so graphic designers were raised from artisan to professional designer, predominantly servicing the commercial world. This new term also 'cemented’ graphic designers into a fixed narrow view of their socio-cultural contribution to contemporary visual culture, that was unfairly denigrated by others as "decorationists/dictators of style" (Laurel, 2003). Design critic Rick Poynor reminds us that the Modernist progenitors of the discipline such as Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy had naturally “moved freely across the boundaries” in the twenties and thirties “that later, more professionally-minded generations attempted to cement in place” (Poynor, 2004).
In 1999 Poynor made a statement that if, at the close of the twentieth century, the term Graphic Design had become too rigid it was “partly because it sounds like a largely technical procedure, but particularly because it fails to suggest the expanded possibilities of contemporary visual culture” (Poynor, 1999, p28). I argue that the term of graphic designer or graphic design is too narrow to describe the actual discipline that produces graphic forms of communication through the manipulation of the relationship between text | image. The outcomes of the design discipline have been more than graphic design, as it also encompasses illustration and now design for motion and interaction.
Since the end of the twentieth century the discipline has been undergoing true re-evaluation of it’s outcomes and boundaries. Therefore I follow Jorge Frascara’s use of the term Visual Communication as the purer definition of the creative design discipline, as it places the emphasis upon the method [design], the objective [communication] and the medium [visual], rather than just the creation of graphic forms [outcomes] (Frascara, 2004, p4). Frascara argues that the discipline of Visual Communication was deeper and richer than just the perceived design of the ‘artifice’, and it’s designers were more than mere creative facilitators of the ‘aesthetics of surface’ but facilitators of behavioural change. He suggests that the heart of Visual Communication is not the design of visual elements as artifice or surface, but the design of a “communicational situation” within which the design outcome impacts on the knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of its receiving audience.
The composition of aesthetic elements that rightly absorbs the attention of graphic designers is merely surface, tools and processes. It belies the actual true disciplinary strength of designing a communicational event through graphic outcomes that affect the “knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour of people” (ibid., p13) over time and space. Such a relational configuration of image and text affecting behaviour is reliant on a direct relationship with the person interpreting the graphic outcome. This relationship is situated within the internal and external life of the graphic outcome - within “itself, the medium, the place and the time” (Bergstrom, 2008, p82). This is where my argument for Visual Communication contributing more than what is usually expected beyond mere ‘aesthetics of surface’ through a communicational situation into a communicational event within the ‘aesthetics of use’. A way of achieving this, I will argue rests in a phenomenological methodology.
References
BERGSTRÖM, B (2008) Essentials of Visual Communication. London: Laurence King Pub.
BRUINSMA, M. and VAN DER MEULEN, S. (2003) Deep Sites: Intelligent Innovation in Contemporary Web Design. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
BURGOYNE, P. (2002) GB: Graphic Britain. London: Laurence King Publishing.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
HELLER, S. (2006) Better Skills Through Better Research. In: A. BENNETT, ed. Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design - A Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p10-13
LAUREL, B. ed (2003) Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. London: MIT Press.
MACDONALD, N. (2004) British Web Design: A Brief History. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp200-215.
POYNOR, R. (1999) Made in Britain: The Ambiguous Image. In N. BARLEY et al. Lost and Found: Critical Voices in New British Design. London: Birkhauser Verlag AG/The British Council. Pp 28-31
POYNOR, R. (2004) Spirit of Independence. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp.12-47
Before I begin this (see previous post) I want to establish a context to the problem and solution that I propose Visual Communication as a discipline can address. To do this I first wish to unpack what I mean as ‘aesthetics of surface’ and to establish what I mean by the ‘aesthetics of use’. This will be crucial for the main thrust of this paper’s thesis.
Firstly I want to define my use of Visual Communication as the disciplinary name. The term ‘Graphic Design’ was coined in 1922 by American typographer and printer William A. Dwiggins “to confer a loftier professional standing” (Heller, 2006, p10). In doing so graphic designers were raised from artisan to professional designer, predominantly servicing the commercial world. This new term also 'cemented’ graphic designers into a fixed narrow view of their socio-cultural contribution to contemporary visual culture, that was unfairly denigrated by others as "decorationists/dictators of style" (Laurel, 2003). Design critic Rick Poynor reminds us that the Modernist progenitors of the discipline such as Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy had naturally “moved freely across the boundaries” in the twenties and thirties “that later, more professionally-minded generations attempted to cement in place” (Poynor, 2004).
In 1999 Poynor made a statement that if, at the close of the twentieth century, the term Graphic Design had become too rigid it was “partly because it sounds like a largely technical procedure, but particularly because it fails to suggest the expanded possibilities of contemporary visual culture” (Poynor, 1999, p28). I argue that the term of graphic designer or graphic design is too narrow to describe the actual discipline that produces graphic forms of communication through the manipulation of the relationship between text | image. The outcomes of the design discipline have been more than graphic design, as it also encompasses illustration and now design for motion and interaction.
Since the end of the twentieth century the discipline has been undergoing true re-evaluation of it’s outcomes and boundaries. Therefore I follow Jorge Frascara’s use of the term Visual Communication as the purer definition of the creative design discipline, as it places the emphasis upon the method [design], the objective [communication] and the medium [visual], rather than just the creation of graphic forms [outcomes] (Frascara, 2004, p4). Frascara argues that the discipline of Visual Communication was deeper and richer than just the perceived design of the ‘artifice’, and it’s designers were more than mere creative facilitators of the ‘aesthetics of surface’ but facilitators of behavioural change. He suggests that the heart of Visual Communication is not the design of visual elements as artifice or surface, but the design of a “communicational situation” within which the design outcome impacts on the knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of its receiving audience.
The composition of aesthetic elements that rightly absorbs the attention of graphic designers is merely surface, tools and processes. It belies the actual true disciplinary strength of designing a communicational event through graphic outcomes that affect the “knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour of people” (ibid., p13) over time and space. Such a relational configuration of image and text affecting behaviour is reliant on a direct relationship with the person interpreting the graphic outcome. This relationship is situated within the internal and external life of the graphic outcome - within “itself, the medium, the place and the time” (Bergstrom, 2008, p82). This is where my argument for Visual Communication contributing more than what is usually expected beyond mere ‘aesthetics of surface’ through a communicational situation into a communicational event within the ‘aesthetics of use’. A way of achieving this, I will argue rests in a phenomenological methodology.
References
BERGSTRÖM, B (2008) Essentials of Visual Communication. London: Laurence King Pub.
BRUINSMA, M. and VAN DER MEULEN, S. (2003) Deep Sites: Intelligent Innovation in Contemporary Web Design. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
BURGOYNE, P. (2002) GB: Graphic Britain. London: Laurence King Publishing.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
HELLER, S. (2006) Better Skills Through Better Research. In: A. BENNETT, ed. Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design - A Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p10-13
LAUREL, B. ed (2003) Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. London: MIT Press.
MACDONALD, N. (2004) British Web Design: A Brief History. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp200-215.
POYNOR, R. (1999) Made in Britain: The Ambiguous Image. In N. BARLEY et al. Lost and Found: Critical Voices in New British Design. London: Birkhauser Verlag AG/The British Council. Pp 28-31
POYNOR, R. (2004) Spirit of Independence. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp.12-47
Saturday, 17 September 2011
Moving Across Boundaries - Dwiggins, Frascara and Cement
This post is a draft of an introduction for a new academic paper aimed at a graphic design journal. A rewritten version of this draft is featured in the next post.
Before I begin this (see previous post) I first need to establish a context to the problem and solution I propose that Visual Communication can address. To do this I first wish to unpack what I mean as ‘aesthetics of surface’ and to establish what I mean by the ‘aesthetics of use’. This will be crucial for the main thrust of this paper’s thesis. Firstly I want to explain my use of the disciplinary term of Visual Communication. The term ‘Graphic Design’ was coined in 1922 by American typographer and printer William A. Dwiggins “to confer a loftier professional standing” (Heller, 2006). In doing so graphic designers were raised to a profession predominantly servicing the commercial world, but it had also 'cemented’ them into a fixed view of their contribution that was unfairly denigrated as "decorationists/dictators of style" (Laurel, 2003).
In 1999 design critic Rick Poynor made a statement in an essay in the book Made in Britain. At the close of the 20th century he commented that if the term Graphic Design had become a too rigid term it was “partly because it sounds like a largely technical procedure, but particularly because it fails to suggest the expanded possibilities of contemporary visual culture” (Poynor, 1999, p28). He expands on this further in another essay in 2004, giving some indication that the discipline of Visual Communication was more than mere creative facilitators of the ‘aesthetics of surface’ merely creating pretty business stationary or adverts. Poynor reminds us that the Modernist progenitors of the discipline such as Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy had naturally “moved freely across the boundaries” in the twenties and thirties “that later, more professionally-minded generations attempted to cement in place” (Poynor, 2004). I argue that the term of graphic designer or graphic design is too narrow to describe the discipline.
Therefore I follow Jorge Frascara’s use of the term Visual Communication as the purer definition of the creative design discipline that produces graphic forms of communication through the manipulation of the relationship between text | image. Visual Communication places the emphasis upon the method [design], the objective [communication] and the medium [visual], rather than just the creation of graphic forms [outcomes] (Frascara, 2004, p4). The outcomes of Visual Communication have been more than graphic design, as it also encompasses illustration and now design for motion and interaction. Since the end of the 20th century the pure discipline of Visual Communication has been undergoing true re-evaluation, and positively can be viewed as a re-strengthening of its disciplinary roots in communication.
This is in part attributed to Visual Communication’s roots of ‘moving across boundaries’, knowing no bounds when adapting to the design within other forms of media beyond print. Some momentum and professional ground had been lost in the 1990s due to reticence of ‘cemented’ on trying to control the design process and the visual outcomes of new media that called for dynamic rather than static design solutions (Bruinsma and Van Der Meulen, 2003; Burgoyne, 2002; MacDonald, 2004). A different ‘mind-set’ that knew no bounds when it came to working with other forms of media was needed, that reflects the true “open”, “diverse”, “inclusive” and “inventive” heart of the discipline (Poynor, 2004) that constantly challenged its own established ‘rules’. These new designers chose to design for interactivity accepting a new mind-set that the user is king. They learnt to collaborate within multi-disciplinary teams of experts with different skill-sets to achieve solutions that contributed to the ‘aesthetics of use’.
References
BRUINSMA, M. and VAN DER MEULEN, S. (2003) Deep Sites: Intelligent Innovation in Contemporary Web Design. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
BURGOYNE, P. (2002) GB: Graphic Britain. London: Laurence King Publishing.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
HELLER, S. (2006) Better Skills Through Better Research. In: A. BENNETT, ed. Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design - A Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p10-13
LAUREL, B. ed (2003) Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. London: MIT Press.
MACDONALD, N. (2004) British Web Design: A Brief History. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp200-215.
POYNOR, R. (1999) Made in Britain: The Ambiguous Image. In N. BARLEY et al. Lost and Found: Critical Voices in New British Design. London: Birkhauser Verlag AG/The British Council. Pp 28-31
POYNOR, R. (2004) Spirit of Independence. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp.12-47
Before I begin this (see previous post) I first need to establish a context to the problem and solution I propose that Visual Communication can address. To do this I first wish to unpack what I mean as ‘aesthetics of surface’ and to establish what I mean by the ‘aesthetics of use’. This will be crucial for the main thrust of this paper’s thesis. Firstly I want to explain my use of the disciplinary term of Visual Communication. The term ‘Graphic Design’ was coined in 1922 by American typographer and printer William A. Dwiggins “to confer a loftier professional standing” (Heller, 2006). In doing so graphic designers were raised to a profession predominantly servicing the commercial world, but it had also 'cemented’ them into a fixed view of their contribution that was unfairly denigrated as "decorationists/dictators of style" (Laurel, 2003).
In 1999 design critic Rick Poynor made a statement in an essay in the book Made in Britain. At the close of the 20th century he commented that if the term Graphic Design had become a too rigid term it was “partly because it sounds like a largely technical procedure, but particularly because it fails to suggest the expanded possibilities of contemporary visual culture” (Poynor, 1999, p28). He expands on this further in another essay in 2004, giving some indication that the discipline of Visual Communication was more than mere creative facilitators of the ‘aesthetics of surface’ merely creating pretty business stationary or adverts. Poynor reminds us that the Modernist progenitors of the discipline such as Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy had naturally “moved freely across the boundaries” in the twenties and thirties “that later, more professionally-minded generations attempted to cement in place” (Poynor, 2004). I argue that the term of graphic designer or graphic design is too narrow to describe the discipline.
Therefore I follow Jorge Frascara’s use of the term Visual Communication as the purer definition of the creative design discipline that produces graphic forms of communication through the manipulation of the relationship between text | image. Visual Communication places the emphasis upon the method [design], the objective [communication] and the medium [visual], rather than just the creation of graphic forms [outcomes] (Frascara, 2004, p4). The outcomes of Visual Communication have been more than graphic design, as it also encompasses illustration and now design for motion and interaction. Since the end of the 20th century the pure discipline of Visual Communication has been undergoing true re-evaluation, and positively can be viewed as a re-strengthening of its disciplinary roots in communication.
This is in part attributed to Visual Communication’s roots of ‘moving across boundaries’, knowing no bounds when adapting to the design within other forms of media beyond print. Some momentum and professional ground had been lost in the 1990s due to reticence of ‘cemented’ on trying to control the design process and the visual outcomes of new media that called for dynamic rather than static design solutions (Bruinsma and Van Der Meulen, 2003; Burgoyne, 2002; MacDonald, 2004). A different ‘mind-set’ that knew no bounds when it came to working with other forms of media was needed, that reflects the true “open”, “diverse”, “inclusive” and “inventive” heart of the discipline (Poynor, 2004) that constantly challenged its own established ‘rules’. These new designers chose to design for interactivity accepting a new mind-set that the user is king. They learnt to collaborate within multi-disciplinary teams of experts with different skill-sets to achieve solutions that contributed to the ‘aesthetics of use’.
References
BRUINSMA, M. and VAN DER MEULEN, S. (2003) Deep Sites: Intelligent Innovation in Contemporary Web Design. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
BURGOYNE, P. (2002) GB: Graphic Britain. London: Laurence King Publishing.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
HELLER, S. (2006) Better Skills Through Better Research. In: A. BENNETT, ed. Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design - A Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p10-13
LAUREL, B. ed (2003) Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. London: MIT Press.
MACDONALD, N. (2004) British Web Design: A Brief History. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp200-215.
POYNOR, R. (1999) Made in Britain: The Ambiguous Image. In N. BARLEY et al. Lost and Found: Critical Voices in New British Design. London: Birkhauser Verlag AG/The British Council. Pp 28-31
POYNOR, R. (2004) Spirit of Independence. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp.12-47
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
An Ontological Bangle
This post is a draft of an introduction for a new academic paper aimed at a graphic design journal. Feel free to comment but questions on how or what next will be answered in future posts as I construct my paper.
In a recent Tweet from Nico MacDonald (a commentator on design communication, facilitation, and research) he quoted ex-BMW designer Chris Bangle’s provocative comment from a Creatives Morning lecture that “Designers are good at visualising possibilities but we are not showing possibilities to people” (MacDonald, 2011). This statement struck a chord as my current research is focused on expanding the resources of Visual Communication, through a hermeneutic visual discourse, to aid the design of better interactions. To unpack that thought further my interest lies in how Visual Communication itself can influence the design processes within Interaction Design beyond the mere artifice of skinning code.
The visual possibilities of how the interaction’s interface will look (the aesthetics of surface) is not the only point in a design process that Visual Communication design can contribute to. I wish to not only propose a thesis that Visual Communicators can and should be brought into a multidisciplinary team for designing interactions much earlier in the design process; but also to propose a new visual methodology that will demonstrate how this can be achieved. I will build an argument for the embracing of Visual Communication by Interaction Design teams as an ideal facilitator of not only behavioural change in the audience (Frascara, 2004), but also an actual contributor to the design of the aesthetics of use (Dunne, 1997).
My main thrust to this thesis is the argument that within the design discipline of Visual Communication it can and does help to reveal things “from concealment” (Palmer, 1969, p129) and this process falls within hermeneutic phenomenology. I will discuss how a fusion of Visual Communication and techniques of interpretative phenomenology can be adapted to reveal the structure of an experience, which can then be visually captured and interpreted as themes of an experience - in turn “showing possibilities to” interaction designers of how people experience interactions. This may go some way to reassure Bangle that design, especially Visual Communication, can contribute more than what is usually expected of a designer.
References
DUNNE, A. (1999). Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience and Critical Design. London: RCA CRD Research.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
MacDONALD, N. (2011) @Nico_Macdonald Chris Bangle @London_CM: Designers are good at visualising possibilities but we are not _showing possibilities_ to people #CreativeMornings. Twitter [online] Posted: 9:44am Tuesday 6th September. Available from: https://twitter.com/#!/Nico_Macdonald/status/110996796733534208, [Accessed on: 6th September 2011]
PALMER, R.E. (1969) Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
In a recent Tweet from Nico MacDonald (a commentator on design communication, facilitation, and research) he quoted ex-BMW designer Chris Bangle’s provocative comment from a Creatives Morning lecture that “Designers are good at visualising possibilities but we are not showing possibilities to people” (MacDonald, 2011). This statement struck a chord as my current research is focused on expanding the resources of Visual Communication, through a hermeneutic visual discourse, to aid the design of better interactions. To unpack that thought further my interest lies in how Visual Communication itself can influence the design processes within Interaction Design beyond the mere artifice of skinning code.
The visual possibilities of how the interaction’s interface will look (the aesthetics of surface) is not the only point in a design process that Visual Communication design can contribute to. I wish to not only propose a thesis that Visual Communicators can and should be brought into a multidisciplinary team for designing interactions much earlier in the design process; but also to propose a new visual methodology that will demonstrate how this can be achieved. I will build an argument for the embracing of Visual Communication by Interaction Design teams as an ideal facilitator of not only behavioural change in the audience (Frascara, 2004), but also an actual contributor to the design of the aesthetics of use (Dunne, 1997).
My main thrust to this thesis is the argument that within the design discipline of Visual Communication it can and does help to reveal things “from concealment” (Palmer, 1969, p129) and this process falls within hermeneutic phenomenology. I will discuss how a fusion of Visual Communication and techniques of interpretative phenomenology can be adapted to reveal the structure of an experience, which can then be visually captured and interpreted as themes of an experience - in turn “showing possibilities to” interaction designers of how people experience interactions. This may go some way to reassure Bangle that design, especially Visual Communication, can contribute more than what is usually expected of a designer.
References
DUNNE, A. (1999). Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience and Critical Design. London: RCA CRD Research.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
MacDONALD, N. (2011) @Nico_Macdonald Chris Bangle @London_CM: Designers are good at visualising possibilities but we are not _showing possibilities_ to people #CreativeMornings. Twitter [online] Posted: 9:44am Tuesday 6th September. Available from: https://twitter.com/#!/Nico_Macdonald/status/110996796733534208, [Accessed on: 6th September 2011]
PALMER, R.E. (1969) Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Abstract: Visual Communication and the Aesthetics of Use: A Visual Phenomenological Methodology
I'm coming to a point where my transfer from MPhil to the full PhD is imminent. I have been drafting my transfer document for what feels like aeons in between writing and presenting papers, teaching and assessing. The last step is here and below is the newly written abstract for the transfer document. Once the transfer has happened I'll archive the document on this blog.
Visual Communication and the Aesthetics of Use:
MPhil Transfer Document
Abstract
As a part-time ECA postgraduate student I am proposing my transfer to complete a practice-based PhD in Visual communication. My researched thesis is an inquiry into a new practical Visual Phenomenological Methodology to aid interaction designers to design better interactions. This is proposed by using visual hermeneutic interpretation of collected “sensory data” to reveal to a designer the phenomenological structure of a studied experience. The development of a hermeneutic phenomenological framework to generate visually interpreted “inspirational data” will enable interaction designers to design from a fresh perspective of proximity to their users. By understanding the experiences a user actually has within an interaction, the designers can inform their future design decisions based on users' aesthetic perception of what they (want to) experience.
In synthesising Visual Communication methods with phenomenological research methods, Visual Communication can demonstrate its worth in the development of the ‘aesthetics of use’ beyond the ‘aesthetics of surface’. The creation of such a design methodology would cultivate a closer alignment between HCI and Visual Communication, repositioning it as a fresh influence over Interaction Design much earlier in the idea-generation and modelling phases. This paper will present my thesis in a context that argues for a successful transfer from MPhil to PhD in order to complete the doctorate. In this paper I succinctly introduce the framework and area of study before explaining my research plan. This plan includes research questions, methodology, timeframe and proposed PhD chapter titles. It will end with a discussion of work completed to date including peer reviewed papers and practical project work. The appendices include more detail on aspects of the practical work beyond the scope of the main paper.
Visual Communication and the Aesthetics of Use:
A Visual Phenomenological Methodology
MPhil Transfer DocumentAbstract
As a part-time ECA postgraduate student I am proposing my transfer to complete a practice-based PhD in Visual communication. My researched thesis is an inquiry into a new practical Visual Phenomenological Methodology to aid interaction designers to design better interactions. This is proposed by using visual hermeneutic interpretation of collected “sensory data” to reveal to a designer the phenomenological structure of a studied experience. The development of a hermeneutic phenomenological framework to generate visually interpreted “inspirational data” will enable interaction designers to design from a fresh perspective of proximity to their users. By understanding the experiences a user actually has within an interaction, the designers can inform their future design decisions based on users' aesthetic perception of what they (want to) experience.
In synthesising Visual Communication methods with phenomenological research methods, Visual Communication can demonstrate its worth in the development of the ‘aesthetics of use’ beyond the ‘aesthetics of surface’. The creation of such a design methodology would cultivate a closer alignment between HCI and Visual Communication, repositioning it as a fresh influence over Interaction Design much earlier in the idea-generation and modelling phases. This paper will present my thesis in a context that argues for a successful transfer from MPhil to PhD in order to complete the doctorate. In this paper I succinctly introduce the framework and area of study before explaining my research plan. This plan includes research questions, methodology, timeframe and proposed PhD chapter titles. It will end with a discussion of work completed to date including peer reviewed papers and practical project work. The appendices include more detail on aspects of the practical work beyond the scope of the main paper.
Running in Hermeneutic Circles: A Visual Phenomenological Methodology
Just been notified that my new paper has been accepted for the Second Interaction Symposium on Culture, Creativity, and Interaction Design at BCS HC I2011 in Newcastle in July. The paper is called Running in Hermeneutic Circles: A Visual Phenomenological Methodology and it is the first stage of developing a Visual Communication methodology synthesising phenomenology.
I'm adding this abstract to the list of papers above.
More info on the symposium as I get it.
I'm adding this abstract to the list of papers above.
More info on the symposium as I get it.
Friday, 15 April 2011
4 months in
OK a lot has happened in the last 4 months of silence on here. I am in the process of writing my MPhil transfer document to proceed fully with my PhD. This is proving more challenging than anything else I've written so far. I have probably 16,000+ words and appear to have a block on how to concise communicate what I've done so far. My main block, I believe, lies in knowing what to leave out of this simple transfer document.
Whilst attempting this I have written a third paper, presented that at conference, and now got that same paper published (or soon to be) in a peer-reviewed design journal. Easy-peasy compared to writing this transfer document! Counter-intuitive. Go figure!
The above paper "A Can of Worms: Has Visual Communication a Position of Influence on Aesthetics of Interaction?" was presented at Design Principles and Practices 2011 in Sapienza University of Rome on 2nd February. It will be published soon in the peer-reviewed Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal, and can be read on this blog (see tabs above).
Anyway, enough plugging. Back to the transfer document - draft 2.
Whilst attempting this I have written a third paper, presented that at conference, and now got that same paper published (or soon to be) in a peer-reviewed design journal. Easy-peasy compared to writing this transfer document! Counter-intuitive. Go figure!
The above paper "A Can of Worms: Has Visual Communication a Position of Influence on Aesthetics of Interaction?" was presented at Design Principles and Practices 2011 in Sapienza University of Rome on 2nd February. It will be published soon in the peer-reviewed Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal, and can be read on this blog (see tabs above).
Anyway, enough plugging. Back to the transfer document - draft 2.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Validity and Reliability of a Phenomenological Methodology
Validity and reliability within qualitative research compared to quantitative has been widely debated. As phenomenology’s ground is in the lived experience of a phenomena, its validity is held within understanding that experience as experienced. Jasper (1994) describes this as understanding the phenomenon from the “accounts of those who have experienced it” and revealing “the 'essence' of an experience” p312). This differs from a broader generalizable research paradigm of explanative or predictive results from objective reality, “thus a question of generalizability within phenomenology is inappropriate in that the researcher does not intend to produce a theory of general application at the outset. On the contrary, ‘the purpose of phenomenology as a research method is to generate concepts and theories' which can then be tested using other methods” (p313). Therefore within a phenomenological methodology it’s validity is in the revealed essence, and its truth is contained, in my study’s case, in the visual hermeneutic circle of interpretation. The reliability of interpretation may be quantifiably problematic, but by keeping as closely to each participant’s felt experience from their interview and observation data, my methodology will prove both valid and reliable. As with qualitative research my method will be transparent and therefore its rigour will be clear.
References used:
JASPER, M.A. (1994) Issues in Phenomenology for Researchers of Nursing. Joumal of Advanced Nursing,19, 309-314
JASPER, M.A. (1994) Issues in Phenomenology for Researchers of Nursing. Joumal of Advanced Nursing,19, 309-314
Thursday, 9 December 2010
Pecha Kucha: 20 slides - 20 seconds.
I'm presenting an overview of an aspect of my research position to an audience of 75 at Pecha Kucha Edinburgh #10 on 10th December.
Here is essentially what I'd like to say on the night (but if you're there it will be mostly ad-libbed).
"Like many from a creative design discipline I’m always confronting people’s perceptions of design as one of surface. This is a common misconception that in my broader academic research I’m attempting to dispel. The aesthetics of surface will upon closer inspection give way to the aesthetics of use. My design discipline of Visual Communication is continually prone to being seen as purely a subjective exercise. But it is about the use of communication.
In approaching the aesthetics of use I am following the work of Jorge Frascara who argues that Visual Communication is about changing behaviour. Visual Communication as a discipline has two main design outcomes: graphic design and illustration. The discipline’s name places the emphasis upon the method (design), the objective (communication) and the medium (visual), rather than just the creation of graphic forms (outcomes). The quality of it’s objective is measured in how behaviour is changed.
To understand how this change can be measured I am developing a visual phenomenological methodology through which to understand experience. Using hermeneutic phenomenology as a philosophical grounding, I’ve begun to capture and visually identify themes of experience. These themes can be interpreted to reveal the structures of a studied experience - in fact some of the volunteers are in the audience tonight - [shout out] - and where experimented on in here last month.
The phenomenological themes are revealed through a hermeneutic circle of interpretive analysis. The researcher (me) isolates, using an established framework by van Manen, delves deeper from a position of existing understanding. By breaking each participant’s experience down into constitutive themes, these themes can be individually interpreted - in my case visually. Then the themes can be combined and interpreted as a whole, before being tested for validity and uniqueness to the particular experience under study. This then changes the original understanding, moving the research forward into a deeper understanding of how that experience is structured.
Under-pinning this hermeneutic phenomenological perspective is essentially an existential philosophical ground espoused by Martin Heidegger. Simplifying some heavy philosophy in the few minutes I have, I may be forgiven for summing this up as the being of being. That opens things up into a consideration of the self in the lifeworld which can be separated into four existentials: lived space; lived body; lived time; and lived human relation.
Lived space or spatiality is our being in the world. All our experiences happen within a context, and that context shapes the experiences we have. We, in a way, for a time become the space we are in - our felt space. Within a particular experience we may be conscious or not of this felt space - each aspect of this space consciously or sub-consciously influencing our actions.
Lived body or corporeality is our embodiment in the world. We make sense through our senses, and that sense of our bodies within our experience shapes our experience. Embodiment is how we encounter physical and social reality directly rather than abstractly. Embodiment denotes a form of participative status, a property that allows us to make our engagement with the world meaningful.
Lived time or temporality is our subjective perception of time - how we understand our sense of time and how it affects us. Temporality includes our previous experiences, our memories (real and false) that leave traces on our present. As we exist in the lifeworld our new experiences are pressured and influenced by our lived time. We exist in a perpetual state of becoming so our past is forever changing as we exist.
Lived human relation or relationality is the other through which we seek understanding of our self. All our experiences happen within a context, and that context shapes the experiences we have. It is the lived relation we maintain with others, both physical and abstract that shapes the experiences we have. This includes the interpersonal space that we share with others within the lifeworld - our lived world in which have our experiences.
The four existentials of lived space; lived body; lived time; and lived human relation can be differentiated from each other. But they can never be separated from each other. Our sense of self - our being of being - is constituent of all for parts. We exist bodily in time, in space, and not in isolation - we have experiences in interconnected situated moments. It is these existentials that inform our behaviour and can be calibrated to alter our future approaches to experiences.
There are two forms of experience. An anaesthetic experience is where we are on automatic pilot performing tasks with little focus on action or purpose is automatic. Alternatively, an autotelic experience is an experience that in itself is purposeful which leads to, from a pragmatist philosophical position as John Dewey suggests, aesthetic experiences. These aesthetic experiences are purposefully enjoyable in their interaction - with a beginning, middle and a culmination that is enjoyable.
John Dewey and Richard Shusterman suggests a pragmatic philosophical framework on how aesthetic experiences are structured. It is through the work on Flow by psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentimihalyi [pronounced Me-high Cheek-sent-me-high]that provides a phenomenology of enjoyment. His eight components are all (or mostly) present in a particular aesthetic experience. In these phenomenological components the four existentials are present. This provides me as a Visual Communication researcher the rich abstracted concepts to visually develop the discipline further toward the aesthetics of use.
#1 Chance of completing
The sense of enjoyment appears to sit at an interface between boredom and anxiety. To enjoy an activity there appears a need for the tension between boredom and anxiety in completing it. Based upon an individual’s existing skills if the activity is too easy they will become bored quickly; too difficult they will feel anxious about not completing it. Enjoyment emerges out of an aesthetic experience where that tension is exciting, and the completion is possible with an application of the self in its achievement.
#2 Concentration on actions
When in a moment, that can be described as FLOW or an aesthetic experience, all other aspects of our life can be forgotten for a time. This is a by-product of being where enjoyable activities command a complete focusing on that moments actions. The clearly structured demands of the experience impose a sense of order in our consciousness. This in turn excludes any interference of our everyday worries and responsibilities - for a time.
#3 clear goals
Clear goals are not superficial and simple, nor are they always preformed. Clear goals of open-ended activities emerge out of ambiguities. The open-endedness of creative situations begin with vague goals that are subsequently fleshed out during the activity in a sense of exploration. Without clear goals to aim for the experience is unstructured and will meander. With even initial vague goals feedback will inform of when they have been met.
#4 immediate feedback
The kind of feedback that is worked toward is valid in its symbolic message it contains. It informs us of our level of success in achieving our goals. It creates order in consciousness and strengthens the structure of the self. The feedback required by the individual is variable. The key is that as long as the feedback is logically related to our goal, any feedback can become enjoyable - even feedback that isn’t positive.
#5 effortless involvement
Once in an enjoyable experience the desire and purpose is not to peak and to come out of the Flow of the experience - to return to a conscious self. A state of effortless involvement is enacted but this not all that it feels. To feel that, on reflection, the involvement has been effortless does still involve skilled performance. A lapse in concentration returns the individual to a state of self-consciousness, and self-evaluation - the state of Flow is interrupted.
#6 sense of control over self
Enjoyment in leisure activities is distinct from mundane everyday activities where any bad things can happen. Within an autotelic experience where the end is itself rewarding, the enjoyment is consuming without anxiety of failure. There is a paradox here as there is a sense of control over the self - or a lack of worry of about losing control that we do not have in our everyday existence.
#7 concern for self disappears
The loss of self-consciousness and concern for their self during an experience, is due to little opportunity for the self to feel threatened. Enjoyable activities have clear goals, stable rules and the challenge within the skills of the individual. Comfort zones can thus be pushed where the challenge is enjoyable. The loss of self-consciousness does not involve a loss of self or of consciousness - but just a loss of consciousness of the self.
#8 Sense of time is altered
The freedom from the tyranny of objective time when in a state of complete involvement is exhilarating. The intense concentration an individual finds themselves in when absorbed in an enjoyable experience. Timing may still be objectively the same, but the sensation of passing of time is altered. It may be perceived as speeding up or slowing down despite pacing of actions or goals.
Here I’ll end as my time has passed and my pacing may be spot on or not. This has been an overview of the richness of pursuing the four existentials to understand the aesthetics of use."
Here is essentially what I'd like to say on the night (but if you're there it will be mostly ad-libbed).
"Like many from a creative design discipline I’m always confronting people’s perceptions of design as one of surface. This is a common misconception that in my broader academic research I’m attempting to dispel. The aesthetics of surface will upon closer inspection give way to the aesthetics of use. My design discipline of Visual Communication is continually prone to being seen as purely a subjective exercise. But it is about the use of communication.
In approaching the aesthetics of use I am following the work of Jorge Frascara who argues that Visual Communication is about changing behaviour. Visual Communication as a discipline has two main design outcomes: graphic design and illustration. The discipline’s name places the emphasis upon the method (design), the objective (communication) and the medium (visual), rather than just the creation of graphic forms (outcomes). The quality of it’s objective is measured in how behaviour is changed.
To understand how this change can be measured I am developing a visual phenomenological methodology through which to understand experience. Using hermeneutic phenomenology as a philosophical grounding, I’ve begun to capture and visually identify themes of experience. These themes can be interpreted to reveal the structures of a studied experience - in fact some of the volunteers are in the audience tonight - [shout out] - and where experimented on in here last month.
The phenomenological themes are revealed through a hermeneutic circle of interpretive analysis. The researcher (me) isolates, using an established framework by van Manen, delves deeper from a position of existing understanding. By breaking each participant’s experience down into constitutive themes, these themes can be individually interpreted - in my case visually. Then the themes can be combined and interpreted as a whole, before being tested for validity and uniqueness to the particular experience under study. This then changes the original understanding, moving the research forward into a deeper understanding of how that experience is structured.
Under-pinning this hermeneutic phenomenological perspective is essentially an existential philosophical ground espoused by Martin Heidegger. Simplifying some heavy philosophy in the few minutes I have, I may be forgiven for summing this up as the being of being. That opens things up into a consideration of the self in the lifeworld which can be separated into four existentials: lived space; lived body; lived time; and lived human relation.
Lived space or spatiality is our being in the world. All our experiences happen within a context, and that context shapes the experiences we have. We, in a way, for a time become the space we are in - our felt space. Within a particular experience we may be conscious or not of this felt space - each aspect of this space consciously or sub-consciously influencing our actions.
Lived body or corporeality is our embodiment in the world. We make sense through our senses, and that sense of our bodies within our experience shapes our experience. Embodiment is how we encounter physical and social reality directly rather than abstractly. Embodiment denotes a form of participative status, a property that allows us to make our engagement with the world meaningful.
Lived time or temporality is our subjective perception of time - how we understand our sense of time and how it affects us. Temporality includes our previous experiences, our memories (real and false) that leave traces on our present. As we exist in the lifeworld our new experiences are pressured and influenced by our lived time. We exist in a perpetual state of becoming so our past is forever changing as we exist.
Lived human relation or relationality is the other through which we seek understanding of our self. All our experiences happen within a context, and that context shapes the experiences we have. It is the lived relation we maintain with others, both physical and abstract that shapes the experiences we have. This includes the interpersonal space that we share with others within the lifeworld - our lived world in which have our experiences.
The four existentials of lived space; lived body; lived time; and lived human relation can be differentiated from each other. But they can never be separated from each other. Our sense of self - our being of being - is constituent of all for parts. We exist bodily in time, in space, and not in isolation - we have experiences in interconnected situated moments. It is these existentials that inform our behaviour and can be calibrated to alter our future approaches to experiences.
There are two forms of experience. An anaesthetic experience is where we are on automatic pilot performing tasks with little focus on action or purpose is automatic. Alternatively, an autotelic experience is an experience that in itself is purposeful which leads to, from a pragmatist philosophical position as John Dewey suggests, aesthetic experiences. These aesthetic experiences are purposefully enjoyable in their interaction - with a beginning, middle and a culmination that is enjoyable.
John Dewey and Richard Shusterman suggests a pragmatic philosophical framework on how aesthetic experiences are structured. It is through the work on Flow by psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentimihalyi [pronounced Me-high Cheek-sent-me-high]that provides a phenomenology of enjoyment. His eight components are all (or mostly) present in a particular aesthetic experience. In these phenomenological components the four existentials are present. This provides me as a Visual Communication researcher the rich abstracted concepts to visually develop the discipline further toward the aesthetics of use.
#1 Chance of completing
The sense of enjoyment appears to sit at an interface between boredom and anxiety. To enjoy an activity there appears a need for the tension between boredom and anxiety in completing it. Based upon an individual’s existing skills if the activity is too easy they will become bored quickly; too difficult they will feel anxious about not completing it. Enjoyment emerges out of an aesthetic experience where that tension is exciting, and the completion is possible with an application of the self in its achievement.
#2 Concentration on actions
When in a moment, that can be described as FLOW or an aesthetic experience, all other aspects of our life can be forgotten for a time. This is a by-product of being where enjoyable activities command a complete focusing on that moments actions. The clearly structured demands of the experience impose a sense of order in our consciousness. This in turn excludes any interference of our everyday worries and responsibilities - for a time.
#3 clear goals
Clear goals are not superficial and simple, nor are they always preformed. Clear goals of open-ended activities emerge out of ambiguities. The open-endedness of creative situations begin with vague goals that are subsequently fleshed out during the activity in a sense of exploration. Without clear goals to aim for the experience is unstructured and will meander. With even initial vague goals feedback will inform of when they have been met.
#4 immediate feedback
The kind of feedback that is worked toward is valid in its symbolic message it contains. It informs us of our level of success in achieving our goals. It creates order in consciousness and strengthens the structure of the self. The feedback required by the individual is variable. The key is that as long as the feedback is logically related to our goal, any feedback can become enjoyable - even feedback that isn’t positive.
#5 effortless involvement
Once in an enjoyable experience the desire and purpose is not to peak and to come out of the Flow of the experience - to return to a conscious self. A state of effortless involvement is enacted but this not all that it feels. To feel that, on reflection, the involvement has been effortless does still involve skilled performance. A lapse in concentration returns the individual to a state of self-consciousness, and self-evaluation - the state of Flow is interrupted.
#6 sense of control over self
Enjoyment in leisure activities is distinct from mundane everyday activities where any bad things can happen. Within an autotelic experience where the end is itself rewarding, the enjoyment is consuming without anxiety of failure. There is a paradox here as there is a sense of control over the self - or a lack of worry of about losing control that we do not have in our everyday existence.
#7 concern for self disappears
The loss of self-consciousness and concern for their self during an experience, is due to little opportunity for the self to feel threatened. Enjoyable activities have clear goals, stable rules and the challenge within the skills of the individual. Comfort zones can thus be pushed where the challenge is enjoyable. The loss of self-consciousness does not involve a loss of self or of consciousness - but just a loss of consciousness of the self.
#8 Sense of time is altered
The freedom from the tyranny of objective time when in a state of complete involvement is exhilarating. The intense concentration an individual finds themselves in when absorbed in an enjoyable experience. Timing may still be objectively the same, but the sensation of passing of time is altered. It may be perceived as speeding up or slowing down despite pacing of actions or goals.
Here I’ll end as my time has passed and my pacing may be spot on or not. This has been an overview of the richness of pursuing the four existentials to understand the aesthetics of use."
Saturday, 27 November 2010
What it's all about… (I hope)
I am interested in the aesthetics of interaction, specifically visualising and facilitating behavioural change in the user’s actions for the benefit of the user. My own journey into interaction design has come through my native design discipline of Visual Communication, and it’s design outcomes of graphic design and illustration. For too long Visual Communication’s contribution to the design of better interactions has (wrongly) been at the end of the design, engineering or construction process - “doing” the aesthetic bit, the artifice. Over the Twentieth century the design outcomes of graphic design and illustration have become so “deeply ingrained in the texture of daily life that (they are) taken for granted” (Crowley, 2004). The misconception that graphic designers are merely the ‘decorationists/dictators of style’ (Laurel, 2003), or just contribute ‘added value’ (Petersen et al., 2004) belies a perceived prejudice based on its commercial service to marketing and advertising. This is unfortunate as Visual Communication’s outcomes go beyond mere decoration, and beyond subservience to consumerism. It leaves out so much of the intellectual design process, and the emotional and social contexts (Kolko, 2010, p102) that the discipline draws from, I am going to suggest a way Visual Communication can be influential earlier in the process of designing interactions.
The visual is a central communication channel in humans’ ability to communicate; together with vocal, touch and smell. Neuroscience, together with anthropology, is even beginning to shed light on understanding our ancient visual communication skills, unlocking our implicit, experiential capacity for communication (Lewis-Williams, 2004). Although the original meanings and messages contained within the earliest images of Visual Communication such as cave paintings are no longer explicitly understood, the power of the visual resonates over millennia. It is clear that the images do encapsulate meaning, we have the semiotic signifiers but what is signified is culturally lost to us. It is within that semiotic framework that is still used that modern designers now use word and image effectively to communicate. As such they have developed the visual culture of 20th and 21st century life, shaping new aesthetic forms across a variety of old and new media, and changing human behaviour as a result. This is why I am interested in using Visual Communication as an influence on designing better interactions. The aesthetic is crucial in designing for use of an interaction and is linked into usability in many ways that can not be measured. Tractinsky (2004) has gone some way to measure the effects of aesthetics on interactions, but aesthetics can only be truly understood qualitatively. I will, in this paper, suggest that this understanding can be done using a pragmatist philosophical view of aesthetics, and the visualising of a phenomenological methodology to interpret experience as directly from the viewpoint of the user as possible. In both cases I will present an argument, both theoretical and practical, on how Visual Communication can help in this. I have two main themes: the connecting of Visual Communication to HCI through a phenomenological study of ‘aesthetics of use’ to understand the phenomenon; and that Visual Communication is a facilitator for behavioural change and therefore well placed to confidently contribute to both design of interactions and ‘aesthetics of use’.
The use of a phenomenological methodology draws on Heideggerian Hermeneutics (1982)(1993), and is based upon a qualitative research framework proposed by Moustakas (1994) where the ‘phenomena’ of an experience can be revealed, which is beyond the reach of quantitative measurement. Moustakas’ framework is adapted to an interpretative phenomenological model using the guidance of van Manen’s (1990) suggestions. Within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research Harrison (2007) has been researching into how to qualitatively understand experience. In a pragmatic philosophical way the meaning of what is experienced is “constructed on the fly, often collaboratively, by people in specific contexts and situations, and therefore that interaction itself is an essential element in meaning construction.” (p7). This meaning construction is interpretable and is “irreducibly connected to the viewpoints, interactions, histories, and local resources available to those making sense” of the experience (p7). This HCI perspective allows for synergy with the strengths of Visual Communication, and which can provide an alternative methodology within which to study the ‘aesthetics of use’.
In the first section of this paper I will expand upon my rationale behind my argument of repositioning Visual Communication as an influence upon Interaction Design. I will expand this rationale with a review of the literature strengthening the argument for facilitation for behavioural change, and the use of phenomenology to connect Visual Communication to HCI, in order to understand actual experience of behaviour. The following sections will explain the methods I am engaging to practically create a visual phenomenological methodology, and the initial results of this visual research. Finally I will end with a discussion of the directions, strengths and weaknesses of the current approach. Future work will be discussed before reaching a conclusion.
The visual is a central communication channel in humans’ ability to communicate; together with vocal, touch and smell. Neuroscience, together with anthropology, is even beginning to shed light on understanding our ancient visual communication skills, unlocking our implicit, experiential capacity for communication (Lewis-Williams, 2004). Although the original meanings and messages contained within the earliest images of Visual Communication such as cave paintings are no longer explicitly understood, the power of the visual resonates over millennia. It is clear that the images do encapsulate meaning, we have the semiotic signifiers but what is signified is culturally lost to us. It is within that semiotic framework that is still used that modern designers now use word and image effectively to communicate. As such they have developed the visual culture of 20th and 21st century life, shaping new aesthetic forms across a variety of old and new media, and changing human behaviour as a result. This is why I am interested in using Visual Communication as an influence on designing better interactions. The aesthetic is crucial in designing for use of an interaction and is linked into usability in many ways that can not be measured. Tractinsky (2004) has gone some way to measure the effects of aesthetics on interactions, but aesthetics can only be truly understood qualitatively. I will, in this paper, suggest that this understanding can be done using a pragmatist philosophical view of aesthetics, and the visualising of a phenomenological methodology to interpret experience as directly from the viewpoint of the user as possible. In both cases I will present an argument, both theoretical and practical, on how Visual Communication can help in this. I have two main themes: the connecting of Visual Communication to HCI through a phenomenological study of ‘aesthetics of use’ to understand the phenomenon; and that Visual Communication is a facilitator for behavioural change and therefore well placed to confidently contribute to both design of interactions and ‘aesthetics of use’.
The use of a phenomenological methodology draws on Heideggerian Hermeneutics (1982)(1993), and is based upon a qualitative research framework proposed by Moustakas (1994) where the ‘phenomena’ of an experience can be revealed, which is beyond the reach of quantitative measurement. Moustakas’ framework is adapted to an interpretative phenomenological model using the guidance of van Manen’s (1990) suggestions. Within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research Harrison (2007) has been researching into how to qualitatively understand experience. In a pragmatic philosophical way the meaning of what is experienced is “constructed on the fly, often collaboratively, by people in specific contexts and situations, and therefore that interaction itself is an essential element in meaning construction.” (p7). This meaning construction is interpretable and is “irreducibly connected to the viewpoints, interactions, histories, and local resources available to those making sense” of the experience (p7). This HCI perspective allows for synergy with the strengths of Visual Communication, and which can provide an alternative methodology within which to study the ‘aesthetics of use’.
In the first section of this paper I will expand upon my rationale behind my argument of repositioning Visual Communication as an influence upon Interaction Design. I will expand this rationale with a review of the literature strengthening the argument for facilitation for behavioural change, and the use of phenomenology to connect Visual Communication to HCI, in order to understand actual experience of behaviour. The following sections will explain the methods I am engaging to practically create a visual phenomenological methodology, and the initial results of this visual research. Finally I will end with a discussion of the directions, strengths and weaknesses of the current approach. Future work will be discussed before reaching a conclusion.
Rationale
Before I begin to explain how I propose to reposition Visual Communication’s influence on Interaction Design through the ‘aesthetics of use’, I first need to define Interaction Design. This design discipline emerged out of several disciplines including HCI over twenty-five years ago. The term Interaction Design was coined by Bill Moggridge (2007) who felt that there was an opportunity to define a new user-centred design discipline, dedicated to creating imaginative and attractive solutions based upon real needs and desires. This would provide a designed level of aesthetic pleasure in the use of products, systems and services (p14). Interaction designer Jon Kolko (2010) describes the discipline as designing a person’s physical and emotional dialogue. This is a satisfactory experience and engagement, resulting in a form of positive and enjoyable behavioural change, achievable by the interplay of aesthetics, functionality and usability that goes beyond the computer desktop screen. This “emphasizes the human side of technology” (pp11-13), presenting interactive opportunities within the ‘aesthetics of use’, where aesthetic value is culturally situated. This position involving aesthetics can be problematic from a quantitative HCI perspective, but through a phenomenological methodology it can be qualitatively understood. I intend to present such a framework based upon a Visual Communication framework.
Since the development of graphic design as a recognised design field (Heller, 2006), its design discipline of Visual Communication has explored the “cultural phenomena” in order to connect, to communicate, and to alter behaviour. It’s literature often discusses ‘phenomena’ but then uses other qualitative methodologies to try and understand it (Kenney, 2009) such as Grounded Theory, Ethnography etc. With HCI researchers working within a phenomenological, rather than a functionalist, paradigm it brings HCI closer to Visual Communication in exploring aesthetics. Thus providing an opportunity to reposition the latter as an influence on Interaction Design.
I have developed a new design framework, adapting phenomenological methodologies outlined by Moustakas and van Manen into a visual rather than textual methodology. Through developing such a methodology visually, the outcomes of the ‘aesthetics of use’ can be mapped, making the method initially useful to Interaction Designers. I am interested in how aesthetic experience can be mapped using techniques of manipulation of text | image. Within a research project entitled “Internal | External 2010” I examined what is effective in the formation of such a Visual Communication Phenomenological Methodology.
Using a group of eleven Edinburgh-based volunteers from a broad social mix I have experimented with the development of that methodology. I used adapted cultural probes, contextual interviews, observations of an interactive experience and recording techniques to collect the raw phenomenological data. These qualitative methods of data collection are all established and used by many researchers, were adapted to interpretative phenomenological methods. The volunteers were observed all performing similar tasks using an interactive artefact in what Lim (2007) describes as an ‘interaction design space’, based at the University of Edinburgh’s Inspace gallery. From this observation, together with the rich data collected from the contextual interviews and probe, the volunteers’ experiences and behaviours are textually and visually documented, and then visually interpreted using phenomenologically structured Visual Communication techniques, to understand the volunteers aesthetic pleasure of using the interactive artefact. Using a visual hermeneutic circle of reduction, visual outcomes were finally created to phenomenologically interpret the phenomena of ‘aesthetics of use’. This will be discussed in detail later in the paper. Before this I will outline, through the literature, the important theories which I have used to underpin the methodological framework I propose.
Since the development of graphic design as a recognised design field (Heller, 2006), its design discipline of Visual Communication has explored the “cultural phenomena” in order to connect, to communicate, and to alter behaviour. It’s literature often discusses ‘phenomena’ but then uses other qualitative methodologies to try and understand it (Kenney, 2009) such as Grounded Theory, Ethnography etc. With HCI researchers working within a phenomenological, rather than a functionalist, paradigm it brings HCI closer to Visual Communication in exploring aesthetics. Thus providing an opportunity to reposition the latter as an influence on Interaction Design.
I have developed a new design framework, adapting phenomenological methodologies outlined by Moustakas and van Manen into a visual rather than textual methodology. Through developing such a methodology visually, the outcomes of the ‘aesthetics of use’ can be mapped, making the method initially useful to Interaction Designers. I am interested in how aesthetic experience can be mapped using techniques of manipulation of text | image. Within a research project entitled “Internal | External 2010” I examined what is effective in the formation of such a Visual Communication Phenomenological Methodology.
Using a group of eleven Edinburgh-based volunteers from a broad social mix I have experimented with the development of that methodology. I used adapted cultural probes, contextual interviews, observations of an interactive experience and recording techniques to collect the raw phenomenological data. These qualitative methods of data collection are all established and used by many researchers, were adapted to interpretative phenomenological methods. The volunteers were observed all performing similar tasks using an interactive artefact in what Lim (2007) describes as an ‘interaction design space’, based at the University of Edinburgh’s Inspace gallery. From this observation, together with the rich data collected from the contextual interviews and probe, the volunteers’ experiences and behaviours are textually and visually documented, and then visually interpreted using phenomenologically structured Visual Communication techniques, to understand the volunteers aesthetic pleasure of using the interactive artefact. Using a visual hermeneutic circle of reduction, visual outcomes were finally created to phenomenologically interpret the phenomena of ‘aesthetics of use’. This will be discussed in detail later in the paper. Before this I will outline, through the literature, the important theories which I have used to underpin the methodological framework I propose.
Phenomenology in Other Design Disciplines
Before this new adaptation of an established methodology can be explained, a brief review of phenomenology within other design disciplines needs to be discussed. Principally phenomenology, at least philosophically have been used within product, architecture and interior design, to some degree in order to understand spatial-temporal relationships. Wang and Wagner have recently attempted a mapping of phenomenological philosophy to the design process (2007). They conclude that “phenomenological studies have elevated many facets of human experience to the level of rigorous knowledge (or at least to the level of rigorous academic consideration of these facets as knowledge). This approach is useful for the design disciplines in that these domains stress the spontaneous, the creative, and the aesthetic” but they argue not to raise “phenomenological inquiry to a totalizing position” just yet as their mapping exercise isn’t robust enough yet. In their argument for mapping the phenomenologists they create a geography of four quadrants in which they place architecture. These four conceptual regions are: individual phenomenology, phenomenology of history and culture, phenomenology of design production, and phenomenology related to metaphysics. These quadrants are connected by orthogonal and diagonal lines, and acts as a slider between each section in which different forms of architecture may be placed to be be understood through a particular philosopher. This is a theoretical geography, and beyond the mapping the discourse into phenomenology still remains theoretical rather than practical.
Folkmann (2010) uses the philosophical work of Merleau-Ponty as a theoretical grounding through which to study aesthetics phenomenologically within design, arguing that Merleau-Ponty’s ideas can be mapped into design because, “every piece of design contains an idea, a dimension of immateriality; vice versa, design is only conceivable as something conceivable as something concretely manifested – when speaking of immaterial design.” (p46) Mainly the design examples Folkmann discusses are from Product Design but they do have connections straight into Interaction Design. The term ‘aesthetic function’ is discussed in the paper to frame a dimension in which meaning is constructed. The argument is that “aesthetics in design is a matter of how design relates to meaning. It is not enough to ask what the meaning of a specific design is on a conceptual level (the “idea”), we must also ask how it performs or reflects this meaning in its physical form, and how it relates to the kind of self-reflective “aesthetic function” where it displays a surplus of meaning.” (p49)
The phenomenological model being proposed here a codification of levels of aesthetic-ness that can be selected by a designer based upon their relevance to a particular design solution. Folkmann’s model is only a theoretical interpretation rather than an actual phenomenological methodology. Unlike HCI’s research position, the determination of how to understand what is meant by aesthetics isn’t framed from a pragmatic philosophical point. The application of phenomenology in this context is, like Wang and Wagner, theoretical rather than directly practical. This appears to be a method to frame studies on design practice, rather than to help the design of better solutions. In a comparative design paper on phenomenology Blackwell et al. (2009) use another theoretical position, this time from a comparative theology use of phenomenology. This model of applying phenomenology to design practice again is theoretical. Emerging from the shadow of architecture Dr Tiiu Poldma (2003) has used phenomenology to study her interior design students. This pedagogical approach appears on face value to be more about the students experience rather than using the philosophy in application to the design process like Brown and I are advocating. Whilst the main focus is pedagogical it does take a more interpretive and contextual approach to phenomenology, but uses the theory as a meta-study to understand and interpret studio practice rather than a methodology within interior design itself.
Finally from another product perspective Brown (2006) goes some way closer to a practical application of phenomenology to the design process in his Masters of Design dissertation. He concludes that, “the goal of the phenomenological design process is to offer the next generation of designers a new way of thinking about the artifacts we create” and that the “beauty of this design process is that it is free from the assumptions placed on the world by the metaphysical culture in which we live. It allows the designer to seek out deeply personal design solutions creating a more relative design experience.” (p141). Applying his thesis to transportational design, his approach uses the structure of a phenomenological research methodology to apply to a designer’s thinking, from an Aristotelean/Husserlian perspective. This places his methodology within a descriptive model of phenomenological research, rather than a Heidegerrian interpretive model. My argument is for a development of a visual adaption of a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology that rather than just sets out criteria for a phenomenologically-based design thinking, actually develops a practical methodology with it. This will be a visual technique to describe from a first-person point of view their experience within a situation that needs deigning for. Instead of just design thinking a visual hermeneutic approach will allow a designer to interpret the reduced themes of the studied experience, to make those “deeply personal design solutions” that Brown suggests to design a “more relative design experience” using an actual adaptable visual methodology.
In the next sections of this paper I will discuss a direct use of phenomenology that is a methodology rather than merely a theoretic position. In order to explain this I will use what van Manen describes as an existential writing process (p173) on my current practical research project Internal | External 2010. In doing so I will begin to provide the framework for a Visual Communication Phenomenological Methodology. This will provide practical application for designers, whilst being theoretically underpinned by interpretive phenomenological philosophy. To do this I will first discuss methods and then preliminary results. Using visual examples from the study I will end on a discussion, including an evaluation of the pros and cons of the initial experiments, leading to suggested future work before concluding.
Folkmann (2010) uses the philosophical work of Merleau-Ponty as a theoretical grounding through which to study aesthetics phenomenologically within design, arguing that Merleau-Ponty’s ideas can be mapped into design because, “every piece of design contains an idea, a dimension of immateriality; vice versa, design is only conceivable as something conceivable as something concretely manifested – when speaking of immaterial design.” (p46) Mainly the design examples Folkmann discusses are from Product Design but they do have connections straight into Interaction Design. The term ‘aesthetic function’ is discussed in the paper to frame a dimension in which meaning is constructed. The argument is that “aesthetics in design is a matter of how design relates to meaning. It is not enough to ask what the meaning of a specific design is on a conceptual level (the “idea”), we must also ask how it performs or reflects this meaning in its physical form, and how it relates to the kind of self-reflective “aesthetic function” where it displays a surplus of meaning.” (p49)
The phenomenological model being proposed here a codification of levels of aesthetic-ness that can be selected by a designer based upon their relevance to a particular design solution. Folkmann’s model is only a theoretical interpretation rather than an actual phenomenological methodology. Unlike HCI’s research position, the determination of how to understand what is meant by aesthetics isn’t framed from a pragmatic philosophical point. The application of phenomenology in this context is, like Wang and Wagner, theoretical rather than directly practical. This appears to be a method to frame studies on design practice, rather than to help the design of better solutions. In a comparative design paper on phenomenology Blackwell et al. (2009) use another theoretical position, this time from a comparative theology use of phenomenology. This model of applying phenomenology to design practice again is theoretical. Emerging from the shadow of architecture Dr Tiiu Poldma (2003) has used phenomenology to study her interior design students. This pedagogical approach appears on face value to be more about the students experience rather than using the philosophy in application to the design process like Brown and I are advocating. Whilst the main focus is pedagogical it does take a more interpretive and contextual approach to phenomenology, but uses the theory as a meta-study to understand and interpret studio practice rather than a methodology within interior design itself.
Finally from another product perspective Brown (2006) goes some way closer to a practical application of phenomenology to the design process in his Masters of Design dissertation. He concludes that, “the goal of the phenomenological design process is to offer the next generation of designers a new way of thinking about the artifacts we create” and that the “beauty of this design process is that it is free from the assumptions placed on the world by the metaphysical culture in which we live. It allows the designer to seek out deeply personal design solutions creating a more relative design experience.” (p141). Applying his thesis to transportational design, his approach uses the structure of a phenomenological research methodology to apply to a designer’s thinking, from an Aristotelean/Husserlian perspective. This places his methodology within a descriptive model of phenomenological research, rather than a Heidegerrian interpretive model. My argument is for a development of a visual adaption of a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology that rather than just sets out criteria for a phenomenologically-based design thinking, actually develops a practical methodology with it. This will be a visual technique to describe from a first-person point of view their experience within a situation that needs deigning for. Instead of just design thinking a visual hermeneutic approach will allow a designer to interpret the reduced themes of the studied experience, to make those “deeply personal design solutions” that Brown suggests to design a “more relative design experience” using an actual adaptable visual methodology.
In the next sections of this paper I will discuss a direct use of phenomenology that is a methodology rather than merely a theoretic position. In order to explain this I will use what van Manen describes as an existential writing process (p173) on my current practical research project Internal | External 2010. In doing so I will begin to provide the framework for a Visual Communication Phenomenological Methodology. This will provide practical application for designers, whilst being theoretically underpinned by interpretive phenomenological philosophy. To do this I will first discuss methods and then preliminary results. Using visual examples from the study I will end on a discussion, including an evaluation of the pros and cons of the initial experiments, leading to suggested future work before concluding.
The Phenomenological Perspective
The exploration of designing interactions within a matrix of the user’s embodied and situated personal understanding is a HCI paradigm shift “to recognizing a plurality of perspectives (…) taking into account but not adjudicating the varying and perhaps conflicting perspectives of users.” (Harrison, 2007, pp7-8). The move to a phenomenological paradigm within HCI allows for a profitable linkage with Visual Communication to support Interaction Design.
Phenomenology is both a philosophical movement and a research methodology. The former provides a theoretical framework that connects Dourish’s embodied interactions, Suchman’s situated actions, McCullough’s digital ground to a pragmatic understanding (Dewey, 1980)(Shusterman, 1992) of the aesthetics of experience. In phenomenological research there are two forms, descriptive (eidetic) and interpretive (hermeneutic). Descriptive phenomenology follows the philosophy of Edward Husserl, and hermeneutic phenomenology the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (Lopez, 2004, p727). Heidegger uses the term Dasein to describe existence in respect to our own understanding of being in the world. Our “Being grows out of the average understanding of Being in which we are always involved” (1993, p49). This is ontological as to understand Being is “itself a determination of Being” (p54). This existential understanding is a “constitution-of-Being of the being that exists”(p55) in the world, and phenomenology is a concept of method through which to study the phenomena of Being, an expressed maxim of “To the things themselves!” (p72). Phenomenology investigates the Being of Beings, on studying the ‘how’ and ‘what’ meaning of a phenomena, making known the structures of Being. This investigation is hermeneutic, and it is in hermeneutic phenomenology that proposes that all understanding is interpretive (Johnson, 2000, p143). This ontological investigation of bringing out the Being of Beings helps thematise that structure.
Phenomenological reduction of these themes of Being within a specific phenomena (e.g. an aesthetic experience) begins with the apprehension of Being, to the understanding of the uncovered themes of Being, returning back through interpreting these themes of the studied experience, to the apprehension of the Being. This is a Hermeneutic Circle of interpretation, reducing the uncovered themes of the studied phenomena to “uncover commonalities and differences” (Benner, 1994, p104) seen through the eyes of the individual, to illuminate “that would have been overlooked in a purely descriptive approach” (Lopez, 2004, p734).
This hermeneutic process is contextual to a situated, cultural and historical “meaning of being in the world” (Earle, 2010, p288) (Johnson, 2000, p144) and the interpretation is conditional on the temporality of Being (Heidegger, 1982, p17) between the apprehension of Being and the understanding of the uncovered themes of Being within a studied situation. This systematic movement within a hermeneutic circle of interpretation affords the interpreter to check for “incongruities, puzzles, and unifying repeated concerns” (Benner, 1994, p113), and leads the interpreter through a cycle of “understanding, interpretation, and critique” (p120) to “uncover naturally occurring concerns and meanings” (p112) to understand the phenomena as directly as possible - as directly as experienced. Other qualitative methods attempt to examine the peripheral limitations or delimitations that surround it. In a phenomenological study the researcher enters the research open to understand the phenomena fully through the eyes of the participant. This is to understand their behaviour within that specific experience of the phenomena.
The framework for such a phenomenological research methodology is taken from two recognised academics Moustakas (1994) and van Manen (1990). Moustakas has proposed an actual staged framework for a methodology that researchers have used. This framework can be adapted for both eidetic and hermeneutic research, but to adapt it for an interpretive phenomenological study van Manen’s guidance needs to be followed. This framework, influenced primarily from nursing literature, will be discussed later in the paper and provides an established research methodology in which to explore the aesthetic experience. In doing so Visual Communication can be repositioned away from being seen as the end “artifice” and brought back to the earlier conceptualising design stages. The methodology as used to date is a written study, where each stage of writing and rewriting within a hermeneutic circle reduces the themes to a composite synthesis of meaning. van Manen advocates the writing process and offers five ways to approach writing up of the findings: thematically, analytically, exemplificatively, exegetically, or existentially (p173). He also offers a proviso to choosing the best approach that opens the methodology up beyond a purely textual outcome. Whilst he suggests the researcher can choose a combination of the above, decided by the nature of the studied phenomena, he also practically (or pragmatically) opens this up potentially beyond the textual. He calls on the researcher to be “creative in finding approaches and procedures uniquely suited” (p163) to both a particular project and the individual researcher. This is another a profitable linkage that Visual Communication can use to support Interaction Design through connecting to HCI. A purely textual representation of a phenomenological study of an experience is only partially useful for inspiring an interaction designer understand a particular experience. Visual data is a valuable source for both understanding and inspiration, and according to Benner (1994) the “use of interpretive phenomenology for interpreting visual sources of data is not yet well developed, but visual data are central to many lines of inquiry amenable to interpretive phenomenology, particularly social practices, embodied skills, and the study of lived experience.” (p120). This was sixteen years ago and through a literature search this remains under-developed. I propose within this paper how a Visual Communication Phenomenological Methodology can be developed and using a practical pilot project how it can be visually conducted.
Phenomenology is both a philosophical movement and a research methodology. The former provides a theoretical framework that connects Dourish’s embodied interactions, Suchman’s situated actions, McCullough’s digital ground to a pragmatic understanding (Dewey, 1980)(Shusterman, 1992) of the aesthetics of experience. In phenomenological research there are two forms, descriptive (eidetic) and interpretive (hermeneutic). Descriptive phenomenology follows the philosophy of Edward Husserl, and hermeneutic phenomenology the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (Lopez, 2004, p727). Heidegger uses the term Dasein to describe existence in respect to our own understanding of being in the world. Our “Being grows out of the average understanding of Being in which we are always involved” (1993, p49). This is ontological as to understand Being is “itself a determination of Being” (p54). This existential understanding is a “constitution-of-Being of the being that exists”(p55) in the world, and phenomenology is a concept of method through which to study the phenomena of Being, an expressed maxim of “To the things themselves!” (p72). Phenomenology investigates the Being of Beings, on studying the ‘how’ and ‘what’ meaning of a phenomena, making known the structures of Being. This investigation is hermeneutic, and it is in hermeneutic phenomenology that proposes that all understanding is interpretive (Johnson, 2000, p143). This ontological investigation of bringing out the Being of Beings helps thematise that structure.
Phenomenological reduction of these themes of Being within a specific phenomena (e.g. an aesthetic experience) begins with the apprehension of Being, to the understanding of the uncovered themes of Being, returning back through interpreting these themes of the studied experience, to the apprehension of the Being. This is a Hermeneutic Circle of interpretation, reducing the uncovered themes of the studied phenomena to “uncover commonalities and differences” (Benner, 1994, p104) seen through the eyes of the individual, to illuminate “that would have been overlooked in a purely descriptive approach” (Lopez, 2004, p734).
This hermeneutic process is contextual to a situated, cultural and historical “meaning of being in the world” (Earle, 2010, p288) (Johnson, 2000, p144) and the interpretation is conditional on the temporality of Being (Heidegger, 1982, p17) between the apprehension of Being and the understanding of the uncovered themes of Being within a studied situation. This systematic movement within a hermeneutic circle of interpretation affords the interpreter to check for “incongruities, puzzles, and unifying repeated concerns” (Benner, 1994, p113), and leads the interpreter through a cycle of “understanding, interpretation, and critique” (p120) to “uncover naturally occurring concerns and meanings” (p112) to understand the phenomena as directly as possible - as directly as experienced. Other qualitative methods attempt to examine the peripheral limitations or delimitations that surround it. In a phenomenological study the researcher enters the research open to understand the phenomena fully through the eyes of the participant. This is to understand their behaviour within that specific experience of the phenomena.
The framework for such a phenomenological research methodology is taken from two recognised academics Moustakas (1994) and van Manen (1990). Moustakas has proposed an actual staged framework for a methodology that researchers have used. This framework can be adapted for both eidetic and hermeneutic research, but to adapt it for an interpretive phenomenological study van Manen’s guidance needs to be followed. This framework, influenced primarily from nursing literature, will be discussed later in the paper and provides an established research methodology in which to explore the aesthetic experience. In doing so Visual Communication can be repositioned away from being seen as the end “artifice” and brought back to the earlier conceptualising design stages. The methodology as used to date is a written study, where each stage of writing and rewriting within a hermeneutic circle reduces the themes to a composite synthesis of meaning. van Manen advocates the writing process and offers five ways to approach writing up of the findings: thematically, analytically, exemplificatively, exegetically, or existentially (p173). He also offers a proviso to choosing the best approach that opens the methodology up beyond a purely textual outcome. Whilst he suggests the researcher can choose a combination of the above, decided by the nature of the studied phenomena, he also practically (or pragmatically) opens this up potentially beyond the textual. He calls on the researcher to be “creative in finding approaches and procedures uniquely suited” (p163) to both a particular project and the individual researcher. This is another a profitable linkage that Visual Communication can use to support Interaction Design through connecting to HCI. A purely textual representation of a phenomenological study of an experience is only partially useful for inspiring an interaction designer understand a particular experience. Visual data is a valuable source for both understanding and inspiration, and according to Benner (1994) the “use of interpretive phenomenology for interpreting visual sources of data is not yet well developed, but visual data are central to many lines of inquiry amenable to interpretive phenomenology, particularly social practices, embodied skills, and the study of lived experience.” (p120). This was sixteen years ago and through a literature search this remains under-developed. I propose within this paper how a Visual Communication Phenomenological Methodology can be developed and using a practical pilot project how it can be visually conducted.
The HCI Perspective
Without a formal externalised, repeatable process a critique of aesthetics is not possible from a functionalist HCI perspective. HCI’s theoretical root has ‘deep philosophical incompatibilities’ (Bardzell, 2009, p2357) with understanding aesthetics. The existing paradigms that HCI traditionally has worked within have raised empirical, scientific, objective knowledge as the normative (Bertelsen & Pold, 2004) (Udsen & Jurgenson, 2005). This functionalist position of examining and analysing the effect of computer systems upon human cognitive processing (Tractinsky, 2000), hasn’t been open to anything less than systematic observation. Through this scientific functionalist approach, HCI research has lead to generalisations that translate into efficient and optimised fits between computers and humans. With its focus upon functionality and usability, traditionally HCI has seen anything to do with aesthetics as ‘inversely proportional’ to usability (Ahmed et al., 2009) with warnings as to negative, detrimental affects upon efficient functionality (Tractinsky, 2004). It must be stressed that this is a traditional HCI position. As sections of the HCI research community (Harrison, 2007) are using a Phenomenological Matrix to understand experience, especially aesthetic experience, this strengthens my research perspective.
Traditional HCI, influenced by the engineering and psychology roots, has had a dismissive attitude towards aesthetics and the visual aspects of design because the emotional aspects of its influence are not revealed through the hard science of its research methods. Over the last decade, developing on Norman’s work on emotional design (2005), some HCI researchers led by Harrison, have observed the HCI paradigm developing from a position of ‘objective knowledge’ into a position from where knowledge arises from ‘situated viewpoints’ (Harrison et al., 2007). Harrison describes the three paradigms of HCI.
The first paradigm took its inspiration from HCI’s roots in industrial engineering and ergonomics, and located itself firmly within an objective and functional view of design. The second HCI paradigm focused upon a “central metaphor of mind and computer as symmetric, coupled information processors”. This intellectual position came from the influence on HCI from Cognitive Psychology. Both these first two paradigms are not mutually exclusive but overlap, and can be mapped onto Petersen’s five elements of interaction (Petersen et al., 2004). The first four interaction styles are: system, tool, dialogue and media. The system style positions the user as part of the computer system; the tool style positions the user as being in control of the system, the dialogue style positions both the user and machine as equal partners in communication, and a media style places the interactive system as a mediator between human-human communication.
The first paradigm of coupling man and machine can be seen in what Petersen defines as a System Perspective and also a Tool Perspective. Within a System Perspective the user is seen as being part of the system - as part of the machine, whereas the Tool Perspective shifted the user to an operable status, as a user of the machine. The second paradigm can be mapped to their Dialogue Partner Perspective where the user is in equal partnership with the machine, or the Media Perspective where the machine is the communication mediator between humans (Petersen et al., 2007).
Petersen’s fifth element of interaction and Harrison’s 3rd paradigm both share a phenomenological perspective that up to recently has been marginalised and subordinated under objective functionalism. In the third paradigm of HCI the focus is upon the emergent experience of humans as embodied actuators within a physical and social world.
With Harrison’s argument for the third paradigm and Petersen’s exploration of aesthetics from a Pragmatist perspective there is now an opportunity to reposition Visual Communication as an influence upon Interaction Design. This repositioning is not superficial in a desire to place the emphasis solely upon the visual design of the surface. The aesthetics of interaction, within which Visual Communication can still inform and influence, places the aesthetic not on the control of the appearance but upon an interaction that reveals itself to be aesthetic in its experience.
It is within this phenomenological space that the rhetorical voice of Visual Communication can connect and consociate with Interaction Design. It has been important to look to HCI research to locate connections with the functionalist to strengthen Visual Communication’s repositioning. To do this Petersen’s five interaction styles have been mapped to the first two paradigms of HCI, and the fifth style linking to aesthetics. Harrison’s third HCI paradigm has been crucial to this positioning, as Harrison’s phenomenological thesis is bringing HCI closer in dialogue to my position. Petersen’s work on Pragmatist Aesthetics, influenced by Dewey and Shusterman, presents a framework to form a bridge to Visual Communication via Interaction Design, using phenomenological research methodology.
Traditional HCI, influenced by the engineering and psychology roots, has had a dismissive attitude towards aesthetics and the visual aspects of design because the emotional aspects of its influence are not revealed through the hard science of its research methods. Over the last decade, developing on Norman’s work on emotional design (2005), some HCI researchers led by Harrison, have observed the HCI paradigm developing from a position of ‘objective knowledge’ into a position from where knowledge arises from ‘situated viewpoints’ (Harrison et al., 2007). Harrison describes the three paradigms of HCI.
The first paradigm took its inspiration from HCI’s roots in industrial engineering and ergonomics, and located itself firmly within an objective and functional view of design. The second HCI paradigm focused upon a “central metaphor of mind and computer as symmetric, coupled information processors”. This intellectual position came from the influence on HCI from Cognitive Psychology. Both these first two paradigms are not mutually exclusive but overlap, and can be mapped onto Petersen’s five elements of interaction (Petersen et al., 2004). The first four interaction styles are: system, tool, dialogue and media. The system style positions the user as part of the computer system; the tool style positions the user as being in control of the system, the dialogue style positions both the user and machine as equal partners in communication, and a media style places the interactive system as a mediator between human-human communication.
The first paradigm of coupling man and machine can be seen in what Petersen defines as a System Perspective and also a Tool Perspective. Within a System Perspective the user is seen as being part of the system - as part of the machine, whereas the Tool Perspective shifted the user to an operable status, as a user of the machine. The second paradigm can be mapped to their Dialogue Partner Perspective where the user is in equal partnership with the machine, or the Media Perspective where the machine is the communication mediator between humans (Petersen et al., 2007).
Petersen’s fifth element of interaction and Harrison’s 3rd paradigm both share a phenomenological perspective that up to recently has been marginalised and subordinated under objective functionalism. In the third paradigm of HCI the focus is upon the emergent experience of humans as embodied actuators within a physical and social world.
With Harrison’s argument for the third paradigm and Petersen’s exploration of aesthetics from a Pragmatist perspective there is now an opportunity to reposition Visual Communication as an influence upon Interaction Design. This repositioning is not superficial in a desire to place the emphasis solely upon the visual design of the surface. The aesthetics of interaction, within which Visual Communication can still inform and influence, places the aesthetic not on the control of the appearance but upon an interaction that reveals itself to be aesthetic in its experience.
It is within this phenomenological space that the rhetorical voice of Visual Communication can connect and consociate with Interaction Design. It has been important to look to HCI research to locate connections with the functionalist to strengthen Visual Communication’s repositioning. To do this Petersen’s five interaction styles have been mapped to the first two paradigms of HCI, and the fifth style linking to aesthetics. Harrison’s third HCI paradigm has been crucial to this positioning, as Harrison’s phenomenological thesis is bringing HCI closer in dialogue to my position. Petersen’s work on Pragmatist Aesthetics, influenced by Dewey and Shusterman, presents a framework to form a bridge to Visual Communication via Interaction Design, using phenomenological research methodology.
The Interaction Design Perspective
The development of the discipline of Interaction Design has been summarised earlier in this paper, but Moggridge from the beginning strove for giving “aesthetic pleasure as well as lasting satisfaction and enjoyment” (2007, p14) in the work that was to be designed. Interaction designers Jon Kolko and Dan Saffer reflect upon this. Saffer summarises the scope of his discipline by detailing what it was not,
“It wasn’t product design exactly, but they were definitely designing products. Nor was it communication [graphic] design, although they used that discipline’s tools as well. It wasn’t computer science either, although a lot of it had to do with computers and software” (2006, p3).
Kolko sees the discipline as designing a person’s physical and emotional dialogue with an interactive artefact or system, leading to both a satisfactory emotional experience and a satisfactory engagement with the content. Once used, the experience should result in a form of behavioural change that is positive, and enjoyable. In my intention to reposition Visual Communication’s influence earlier in the Interaction Design process, it is crucial also to look below the aesthetics of the surface, the visual interface or form, into what Dunne describes as the ‘aesthetics of use’ (1999). To explore and drill-down below the surface of an interaction, into what Nake describes as the ‘subface’ (2008) and Lim et al. term the ‘interaction design space’, an interaction designer needs to gain knowledge about the nature of the interaction; the intent, needs and desires of the user; and the material attributes that can be manipulated to iteratively develop the design. The materials interaction designers use differs from the materials used within Product or Graphic Design (Lim, 2007) and are more ‘flexible, ungraspable, and phenomenal’ (ibid. p245). It is in understanding these attributes of design and their manipulation that creates an interactive experience greater than the attributes used (ibid. p239).
But as Interaction Design’s materials are not tangible, non-qualitative critics have argued that it cannot formalise a design process that is procedurally executable or repeatable. Kolko sees a need for Interaction Design to position itself into a duality that “emphasizes the human side of technology.” (2010, pp11-13). This physical and emotional dialogue is synonymous with McCarthy and Wright’s (2004) underdeveloped ‘emotional-volitional’ component of the relationship between the human and the technology. They discuss users now becoming active consumers who are no longer passive in the relationship with technology, but through their imaginations and emotional attachment to their chosen technology. This quality of experience is a “felt and sensual quality” (p13) within a situated moment that is more than an instrumental exotelic experience. It is what Dewey (1980) describes as an aesthetic experience, a refined form of everyday experience that is satisfying and creative.
Dewey, a pragmatist philosopher, describes aesthetic experience as the “conversion of resistance and tensions, of excitations that in themselves are temptations to diversion, into a movement toward an inclusive and fulfilling close.” (p58) Csikszentimihalyi in his psychology research on FLOW lists eight major components to an aesthetic experience. He describes a phenomenology of enjoyment that can frame an autotelic experience that Dewey would describe as aesthetic. Csikszentimihalyi’s eight components that may all feature together (or in cases only one) are: a chance of completing a task; concentration on actions; action has clear goals; immediate feedback on actions; a deep but effortless involvement; a sense of control over own actions; concern for the self disappears (yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger afterwards); and the sense of the duration of time is altered (p49).
McCarthy and Wright argue that it is the dynamic involving “cumulation, conservation, tension and anticipation” (p64) within a user that is always moving toward a fulfilment where the diversion away from natural obstacles, resistances and tensions are overcome leading toward an outcome that Dewey describes as a close that is both fulfilling and inclusive. This instrumentality of means-end is not exclusively functional but emotionally felt. It sits within a existential situation where the event is always becoming, conditional on the context and the temporality of the situation. The aesthetic experience emerges from the lived experience, where the self can be lost in the moment but can return, feeling nourished and contented. McCarthy and Wright’s perspective on the implications of a ‘emotional-volitional’ component goes beyond a subjective state to the “irreducible totality of people acting, sensing, thinking, feeling, and making meaning in a setting, including the perception and sensation of their own actions” (p85). This is to draw the distinctions between an intrinsic and extrinsic understanding that meaning fluctuates between autotelic and exotelic experience: for both its own sake and for exterior purpose. Dourish (2004) suggests that meaningful experiences are situated within, and shaped by a person’s immersion within the experience.
McCullough develops the argument that actions are shaped by their contexts and that opportunities for participation become available through cognitively encountering them in a situated way. The embodied interaction is resultant from the surrounding possibilities for participation, but the interaction emerges and is shaped peripherally from possible affordances rather than directly imposed choices. The experience is cognitively embodied, with the meaning of it changing through interaction with the system or artefact through its creation and manipulation (McCullough, 2005, p126). The situated action from where the understanding of the experience emerges is at once cognitive, temporal, physical and social (Anderson, 2003). This shifts the focus of an interaction away from the control of the designer and onto a user’s experience of the artefact or system they are using (Gajendar cited in Kolko, 2010, p120). This McCullough sees as a shift of design values “objects to experiences, from performance to appropriateness, from procedure to situation, and from behaviour to intent” (2005, p50). This experience framed within a ‘emotional-volitional’ perspective leads towards a phenomenological approach to understanding and interpreting it. Reframing an experience of an interactive artefact, system or service within such a framework allows for the experience to begin to be understood by the interaction designer as close as possible through the eyes of the user. In doing so new insights in how to design a better user experience can be made through interpretations on human’s real lived useage. In the next section of the literature review this new paradigm will be discussed.
“It wasn’t product design exactly, but they were definitely designing products. Nor was it communication [graphic] design, although they used that discipline’s tools as well. It wasn’t computer science either, although a lot of it had to do with computers and software” (2006, p3).
Kolko sees the discipline as designing a person’s physical and emotional dialogue with an interactive artefact or system, leading to both a satisfactory emotional experience and a satisfactory engagement with the content. Once used, the experience should result in a form of behavioural change that is positive, and enjoyable. In my intention to reposition Visual Communication’s influence earlier in the Interaction Design process, it is crucial also to look below the aesthetics of the surface, the visual interface or form, into what Dunne describes as the ‘aesthetics of use’ (1999). To explore and drill-down below the surface of an interaction, into what Nake describes as the ‘subface’ (2008) and Lim et al. term the ‘interaction design space’, an interaction designer needs to gain knowledge about the nature of the interaction; the intent, needs and desires of the user; and the material attributes that can be manipulated to iteratively develop the design. The materials interaction designers use differs from the materials used within Product or Graphic Design (Lim, 2007) and are more ‘flexible, ungraspable, and phenomenal’ (ibid. p245). It is in understanding these attributes of design and their manipulation that creates an interactive experience greater than the attributes used (ibid. p239).
But as Interaction Design’s materials are not tangible, non-qualitative critics have argued that it cannot formalise a design process that is procedurally executable or repeatable. Kolko sees a need for Interaction Design to position itself into a duality that “emphasizes the human side of technology.” (2010, pp11-13). This physical and emotional dialogue is synonymous with McCarthy and Wright’s (2004) underdeveloped ‘emotional-volitional’ component of the relationship between the human and the technology. They discuss users now becoming active consumers who are no longer passive in the relationship with technology, but through their imaginations and emotional attachment to their chosen technology. This quality of experience is a “felt and sensual quality” (p13) within a situated moment that is more than an instrumental exotelic experience. It is what Dewey (1980) describes as an aesthetic experience, a refined form of everyday experience that is satisfying and creative.
Dewey, a pragmatist philosopher, describes aesthetic experience as the “conversion of resistance and tensions, of excitations that in themselves are temptations to diversion, into a movement toward an inclusive and fulfilling close.” (p58) Csikszentimihalyi in his psychology research on FLOW lists eight major components to an aesthetic experience. He describes a phenomenology of enjoyment that can frame an autotelic experience that Dewey would describe as aesthetic. Csikszentimihalyi’s eight components that may all feature together (or in cases only one) are: a chance of completing a task; concentration on actions; action has clear goals; immediate feedback on actions; a deep but effortless involvement; a sense of control over own actions; concern for the self disappears (yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger afterwards); and the sense of the duration of time is altered (p49).
McCarthy and Wright argue that it is the dynamic involving “cumulation, conservation, tension and anticipation” (p64) within a user that is always moving toward a fulfilment where the diversion away from natural obstacles, resistances and tensions are overcome leading toward an outcome that Dewey describes as a close that is both fulfilling and inclusive. This instrumentality of means-end is not exclusively functional but emotionally felt. It sits within a existential situation where the event is always becoming, conditional on the context and the temporality of the situation. The aesthetic experience emerges from the lived experience, where the self can be lost in the moment but can return, feeling nourished and contented. McCarthy and Wright’s perspective on the implications of a ‘emotional-volitional’ component goes beyond a subjective state to the “irreducible totality of people acting, sensing, thinking, feeling, and making meaning in a setting, including the perception and sensation of their own actions” (p85). This is to draw the distinctions between an intrinsic and extrinsic understanding that meaning fluctuates between autotelic and exotelic experience: for both its own sake and for exterior purpose. Dourish (2004) suggests that meaningful experiences are situated within, and shaped by a person’s immersion within the experience.
McCullough develops the argument that actions are shaped by their contexts and that opportunities for participation become available through cognitively encountering them in a situated way. The embodied interaction is resultant from the surrounding possibilities for participation, but the interaction emerges and is shaped peripherally from possible affordances rather than directly imposed choices. The experience is cognitively embodied, with the meaning of it changing through interaction with the system or artefact through its creation and manipulation (McCullough, 2005, p126). The situated action from where the understanding of the experience emerges is at once cognitive, temporal, physical and social (Anderson, 2003). This shifts the focus of an interaction away from the control of the designer and onto a user’s experience of the artefact or system they are using (Gajendar cited in Kolko, 2010, p120). This McCullough sees as a shift of design values “objects to experiences, from performance to appropriateness, from procedure to situation, and from behaviour to intent” (2005, p50). This experience framed within a ‘emotional-volitional’ perspective leads towards a phenomenological approach to understanding and interpreting it. Reframing an experience of an interactive artefact, system or service within such a framework allows for the experience to begin to be understood by the interaction designer as close as possible through the eyes of the user. In doing so new insights in how to design a better user experience can be made through interpretations on human’s real lived useage. In the next section of the literature review this new paradigm will be discussed.
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