Been quiet but not idle… UXPA Talk - "DYNAMIC SINSIGN" 21st May

Although the blog has been quiet I haven't. I've been busy with my students, proofing my new book and working hard on my PhD. Some of the results of that work will appear on this blog over the coming weeks and presented to the members of User Experience Professionals Association in Edinburgh on the 21st May.

The talk is called Dynamic sinsign: Sign-action communicating experiential themes. Check out the link here to book a place.
http://uxpa-scotland.org/events.php
The talk is free for UXPA members, £10 for non-members, and £5 for students. Pay at the door. [Payment is a UXPA thing - I'm speaking for no fee so I have nothing to do with the money!]  

Venue
Skyscanner: Quartermile One, 15 Lauriston Pl, Edinburgh EH3 9EN. LATECOMERS CAN NOT BE ADMITTED  

Information

DYNAMIC SINSIGN:SIGN-ACTION COMMUNICATING EXPERIENTIAL THEMES

About the event
This talk emerges out of Dave’s current research-in-progress into interaction design from a Visual Communication perspective. Through a clever synthesis of Peircean semiotics and Martin Heidegger, Dave will discuss how the user experience can be revealed in a new way that connects HCI and interaction design with Visual Communication. The 45 minute illustrated talk is for any UX designer who’d like to get into the mind of the user to see what they experience in a hermeneutically direct way that personas and mental models can’t communicate.

In the first section of Dave’s talk he’ll set out the context for how Visual Communication can inform user experience:

• Visual Communication as a facilitator in behavioural change 
• Interpreting the Hidden 
• Signified Inspirational Data 

In the second section, Dave will illustrate his proposition with some early research experimental graphic outcomes and methods:

• Experience probes - capturing experiences 
• Experiential themes and dynamic sinsigns - visual interpretation 
• Visual Hermeneutic Circle - analysing and reduction 

Dave will reveal some of the philosophy that structures the central idea and implications. He will end by discussing the development of an experimental qualitative methodology to explore this further. The nascent Visual Phenomenological Methodology will be developed over the next year as part of his PhD, and Dave would welcome conversations with industrial partners to develop a Knowledge Transfer Partnership.

More about the speaker 
Dave is author of Interface Design: An introduction to visual communication in UI design to be published by Bloomsbury (AVA) in October 2013. Originally an illustrator, in 1997 he made the transition into interaction design designing interfaces. In the last decade he has become more interested in the user experience and the re-positioning of the design discipline of Visual Communication over the design of future interactions. His interest now lies in understanding the user's experience in the interaction and exploring how this can be communicated to other designers.

He is a lecturer in digital design and design researcher at Glasgow Caledonian University, teaching on BA(Hons) Graphic Design for Digital Media. He teaches across all 4 years, and in the 3rd year he teaches a user experience module called Design and the User to design students.

A member of the Interaction Design Association, he has academically published his research and is currently in the practical phase of a practice-based Visual Communication PhD at Edinburgh College of Art. Check out his academic profile http://gcal.academia.edu/DaveWood/ and blog http://internalexternal-2010.blogspot.co.uk/.

Being in the World Documentary

maciasterence. (2012) Being in the World [online]. [Accessed 4th October 2012]. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_18LfSA2Qs

Quotes:

"We're thoroughly conditioned by the world we are in, and that world is a world of customs, traditions, practices that we are so immersed in that we no longer see a way out of it. So the only way to do anything skillfully, with innovation, insight, sensitivity, and authentically is to be appropriating traditions, practices, customs that are all around us in the world that we just absorbed."

Taylor Carmen, Professor of Philosophy, Barnard College, Colombia University (37:10)

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Behaviour Change

O’Neill, S. (2008) Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction. London: Springer-Verlag.

“The key to solving this fundamental problem [_{compatibility of Heidegger’s, Merleau-Ponty’s and Peirce’s theories}] is in understanding the relationship between perception and conception. In other words, in developing a theory that takes into account how veridical perceptual experiences of the ‘real’ world that are derived through direct perception become, stored, represented or re-perceived in our minds as knowledge. Furthermore this theory also has to take into account how this knowledge is fed back into the world as mediated representations that signify that same knowledge in our heads, allowing us to communicate and socially construct the everyday world of our reality.” (p133)

Annotation

Phenomenologically it is difficult to know for certain what one person sees is the same for others, but through a socio-cultural consensus meaning is agreed, attributed, and mediated through a visual grammar of signs. These signify meanings that are socially constructed and that can be successfully interpreted leading to a change in behaviour that the designer is trying to facilitate. How this behaviour change unfolds can be phenomenologically revealed, and also visually communicated.

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… The Phenomenology of Signification

O’Neill, S. (2008) Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction. London: Springer-Verlag.

“From the Peircean perspective, the focus is on the phenomenology of signification, i.e. signs as they are experienced. This is very useful as a starting point for understanding how users might experience interactive media signs.” (p81)

Annotation

Drawing on work by Peirce, O’Neill conjures up a term that connects my research areas together. The phenomenology of signification looks at how semiotic signs are experienced. Although no more than a term at present, like aesthetics of interaction it presents a way of synthesising pragmatics, semiotics and phenomenology together to explore how visual communication can influence interaction design.

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Socio-cultural Codes

O’Neill, S. (2008) Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction. London: Springer-Verlag.

“Metaphor then, is important to understanding interactive media. Connotation on the other hand has not really been considered in relation to interactive media. The focus in HCI has largely been to increase efficiency and usability by reducing ambiguity, thus removing the possibility of connotation. Thinking about the connotative aspects might provide new avenues for signification and further layers of interactive media. It might give us an extra tool to help us understand how people interpret interactive media within the larger social context in which they appear. (…) If interpretation is important to understanding interactive media, then the semiotic concept of codes is particularly relevant to developing a semiotics of interactive media, because it identifies interactive media objects as texts that can be decoded or even recoded culturally by a user at the interface level. It is important here, not to confuse cultural codes with binary code or programming, even though there is also something inherently semiotic about them.” (p78)

Annotation
O’Neill develops his case away from the denotative binary HCI perspective into a more nuanced world that visual communication occupies through connotation and metaphor. These two areas of nuanced communication have been a staple in visual communication. The selection and shaping of semiotic signs has been a valuable tool in the designer’s skill set, but how these tools work cannot be quantified. Visual communication draws from the socio-cultural codes of the relevant audience to encode meaning in subtle and interesting ways, to draw the audience into reading the design. Metaphor helps put the audience into a familiar place to understand how to interpret the meaning encoded in the design. Denotation, or this means this may communicate quickly but can be cold and, well, binary. Connotation on the other hand draws on an abstract richness of human communication that can, if interpreted correctly by the target audience, impart far more meaning than it’s parts. This is the difference between automated and anaesthetic experiences, and a phenomenology of enjoyment that an aesthetic experience can afford.

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Showing Possibilities To

O’Neill, S. (2008) Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction. London: Springer-Verlag.

“The embodied phenomenological approach does much better at describing the way in which we inhabit our media-saturated environments. (…) Its weakness is that it does little to explain how we make the transition from acting and doing in the world to thinking, reflecting and imagining about things that may or may not yet exist in the world. The movement from doing to thinking and thinking back to doing is not entirely clear. The one piece missing here is a theory that concentrates on the role of the stuff in the world itself in terms of how it can signify what we mean when we manipulate it.” (pp43-44)

Annotation
O’Neill identifies that phenomenology’s weakness is in explanation. This reminded me of a 2011 tweet from Nico MacDonald (a commentator on design communication, facilitation, and research) where 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 how Visual Communication can and does help to reveal things “from concealment” (Palmer, 1969, p129) and this process falls within hermeneutic phenomenology. 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 to aid the design of better 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.

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Semiotics and Phenomenology (and) Pragmatism

O’Neill, S. (2008) Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction. London: Springer-Verlag.



“The cognitive theories from psychology, which tend to understand human beings as information processing units and phenomenological approaches, which turn towards the importance of the body and action without thought. An alternative strand of theory that is particularly relevant to our concerns with new media is that of semiotics, which tries to understand interaction from the perspective of signification and communication.” (p39)

Annotation
Here O’Neill begins to set out how semiotics is associated with a phenomenological (and even pragmatist) approach to understanding experience. Just as Ihde created a postphenomenology from a fusion of pragmatism and phenomenology, for me to create a visual communication phenomenological methodology the synthesising semiotic theory into understanding interactive experiences is crucial. 

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Intentionality

O’Neill, S. (2008) Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction. London: Springer-Verlag.

“The problem of inter-subjectivity is that, while we can each experience the world in an ontological sense, how can we know that each of us is experiencing the same things, given that we do not have direct access to each other’s thoughts and experiences. (…) Dourish posits that intentionality sets up the relationship between embodied action and meaning (Dourish, 2001, p138).” (p38)

Annotation:

Harman (2007) posits that phenomenology can re-establish itself “by expanding the concept of intentionality to the point where it covers the entirety of the things themselves, thereby freeing us from the growing staleness of the philosophy of human access” (p123). Dourish (2001) sees in the Husserlian distinction between act and matter that the manifested intentionality of acting over the matter, of interacting, holds a relationship between the meaning of the interaction and the embodied action of the interaction. O’Neill (2008) concisely reminds that phenomenology offers a philosophy and methodology to reveal what others see as much as possible considering problem of a metaphysical state of being only being existentially experienced.  

Guerilla Metaphysics… Intentionality

HARMAN, G. (2007) Guerilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. Open Court Publishing Company.

“The way to revive phenomenology is not through external rituals of compliance with Husserl’s vocabulary, but by expanding the concept of intentionality to the point where it covers the entirety of the things themselves, thereby freeing us from the growing staleness of the philosophy of human access. (…) Instead of maintaining the usual focus on categorical intuition, so favoured by disciples of Heidegger, I propose that we examine the simple Husserlian distinction between act and matter.” (p23)

Annotation:
Harman (2007) posits that phenomenology can re-establish itself “by expanding the concept of intentionality to the point where it covers the entirety of the things themselves, thereby freeing us from the growing staleness of the philosophy of human access” (p123). Dourish (2001) sees in the Husserlian distinction between act and matter that the manifested intentionality of acting over the matter, of interacting, holds a relationship between the meaning of the interaction and the embodied action of the interaction. O’Neill (2008) concisely reminds that phenomenology offers a philosophy and methodology to reveal what others see as much as possible considering problem of a metaphysical state of being only being existentially experienced. 

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Ready-to-Hand and Present–at-Hand

O’Neill, S. (2008) Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction. London: Springer-Verlag.

“Heidegger essentially posits two different ways of being-in-the-world in relation to stuff or equipment, to use Heidegger’s term, that one finds there (physical entities, such as tools and technologies that for our purposes, we shall identify as media); these are ready-to-hand and present–at-hand. (…) Heidegger claims that our everyday encounters with the phenomena of our world are the ‘first’ way in which we come to understand them. (…) Through this process of interaction we develop skilful use of the material of the world and we in turn develop tacit, embodied knowledge or ‘know-how’ that allows us to cope smoothly with the world around us, enabling our immediate survival. (…) Present-at-hand is an essentially different ‘disclosure’ of being, whereby we are no longer engaged in using the equipment of the world, but we instead are thinking about it. Our activities are internal and mental rather physical and active. This type of being-in-the-world provides us with a second kind of knowledge, ‘know-that’ rather than ‘know-how’.” (p35)

Annotation
When discussing Heideggerian phenomenology in the context of interaction design then there are two ways to frame how we approach an interactive artefact: it may be either ready-to-hand or present–at-hand. The former is focused more on a physically active state of imminent use, but in the latter our activities are internal and cognitive, thinking about when to engage in active use. In both conditions we are aware of the interactive artefact without actually using it, but once we are ready we can begin interacting from these polar positions. 

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Phenomenological Relationships

O’Neill, S. (2008) Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction. London: Springer-Verlag.

“Heidegger makes explicit the idea that the nature of our being-in-the-world is not only related to the world we inhabit, but to the fact that we are aware that we exist in that world. In short, a fundamental aspect of our being-in-the-world is that we are concerned about (aware of) ourselves being-in-the-world. Furthermore, another aspect of Heidegger’s conception of ‘Being’ is that our being-in-the-world is a being-with-other-beings (being as people, things or entities that exist in the world around us). Those other beings may or may not have a concern for being with us, but we most definitely have a concern for being-with them as they have an effect on how we exist. Our consciousness and our knowledge of the world are deeply entwined with our phenomenological relationship to it.” (pp34-35)

Annotation
O’Neil in building his case for the semiotics of embodied interaction naturally takes a Heideggerian perspective seeing “our consciousness and our knowledge of the world [as being] deeply entwined with our phenomenological relationship to it” (p35). Our interconnectivity with others shapes how we see and interact with the world we perceive as our reality. 
 

Beneath Interpretation… Pragmatism Meets Phenomenology

SHUSTERMAN, R. (1991) Beneath Interpretation. In: D.R. HILEY, J.F. BOHMAN, and R. SHUSTERMAN (Eds.) The Interpretive Turn. Cornell University Press. pp102-128

“Interpretation is also practiced and theorized in terms of formal structure with the aim not so much of exposing hidden meanings but of connecting unconcealed features and surfaces so as to see and present the work as a well-related whole.” (p108)

Annotation
The formal structure of interpretation from a pragmatist perspective seeks to connect the parts with the whole experience being interpreted. It is not so much focused on simply revealing the hidden, it is more interested in the connections between the internal and external features of an experience to arrive at a full understanding of its meaning. This separates this from a phenomenological approach that is concerned with revealing the hidden. So pragmatism supports interpretation and synthesised with phenomenology can provide a structure to not only examine an experience through the aesthetic, but also to strengthen the validity of a phenomenological methodology against accusations of being unscientific. Although a full Ihdean postphenomenology is not what is being advocated, there are lessons in the synthesising the best of both philosophies into a practical visual communication methodology. 

Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory… Visually Revealing the Whole and Parts of an Experience

PALMER, R.E. (1969) Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

“For the theory of interpretation, then, it makes a great difference whether thinking is conceived strictly in ideational terms, for then interpretation itself is dealing not with an unknown matter which has to be brought to light but with the clarification and evaluation of already known data. Then its task is not the primary ‘showing’ of the thing but that of achieving correctness among several possible interpretations. Such presuppositions tend to keep one always in clear light of what is already known instead of bridging the gap between light and darkness.” (p146)

Annotation:
In this context interpretation is framed within a phenomenological inquiry into visually revealing the whole and parts of an experience, bringing to light the meaning of actions within. It is not about interpreting what is already revealed in a new way. As Palmer puts it, “its task is not the primary ‘showing’ of the thing but that of achieving correctness among several possible interpretations” (p146).

Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory… Toward Accepted Knowledge

PALMER, R.E. (1969) Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

“in Being and Time Heidegger finds a kind of access in the fact that one has with his existence, along with it, a certain understanding of what fullness of being is. It is not a fixed understanding but historically formed, accumulated in the very experience of encountering phenomena. (…) Ontology must turn to the processes of understanding and interpretation through which things appear; it must lay open the mood and direction of human existence; it must render visible the invisible structure of being-in-the-world. How does this relate to hermeneutics? It means that ontology must, as phenomenology of being, become a ‘hermeneutic’ of existence. (…) It lays open what was hidden; it constitutes not an interpretation of an interpretation but the primary act of interpretation which brings a thing from concealment.” (p129)

Annotation:

Through hermeneutic interpretation from a Heideggerian phenomenology understanding needs to be seen as more than an interpretation-of-an-interpretation. It is a primary act that brings those internal aspects of being into the external world through discussion toward accepted knowledge. The hermeneutic, intuitive circle of inquiry, counter to being invalid, is a powerful tool to bring those things from concealment that logic alone cannot.

Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory… Horizonal

PALMER, R.E. (1969) Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

“Explanatory interpretation makes us aware that explanation is contextual, is ‘horizonal.’ It must be made within a horizon of already granted meanings and intentions. In hermeneutics, this area of assumed understanding is called preunderstanding.” (p24)

Annotation:

Interpretation for explanatory purposes works in a context of established meanings with granted intentions. In phenomenology this is defined as horizonal. In the Husserlian transcendental school this allows for bracketing of experience to be set, and in Heideggerian phenomenology this horizonality focuses on the pre-understanding that interpreters bring to what they are analysing. “Heidegger’s analysis indicated that ‘understanding’ and ‘interpretation’ are foundational modes of man’s being” (p42).

A Heideggerian Phenomenological Perspective on the Concept of Person… Not Functionalist or Deterministic

LEONARD, V.W. (1994) A Heideggerian Phenomenological Perspective on the Concept of Person. In: P. BENNER (Ed.), Interpretive Phenomenology: Embodiment, Caring, and Ethics in Heath and Illness. Sage Publications, Inc. pp43-64

“Disputes in hermeneutic interpretation resolve based on the plausibility of alternative interpretations, and the plausibility of an interpretation, cannot be reduced to a-priori-derived, cut-and-dried criteria.” (p61)

Annotation:
Ihde (2009) states that a criticism of phenomenology is that it is perceived as antiscientific and “locked into idealism or solipsism” (p23). Hirsch (1967, p166) criticises the hermeneutic circle’s circularity of thinking as an imprisonment of thought that can lead to self-confirming hypotheses in the interpreter. The nature of interpretation as understood within a holistic and phenomenological perspective acknowledges that a ‘correct’ interpretation cannot be produced by functionalist or deterministic hard science, as science is not suited to the explaining how humans process and experience the world. From a functionalist and deterministic perspective the hermeneutic methods are viewed at best with scepticism and at worst academic hostility.

A Heideggerian Phenomenological Perspective on the Concept of Person… Interpretive Analysis

LEONARD, V.W. (1994) A Heideggerian Phenomenological Perspective on the Concept of Person. In: P. BENNER (Ed.), Interpretive Phenomenology: Embodiment, Caring, and Ethics in Heath and Illness. Sage Publications, Inc. pp43-64

“Interpretive Analysis

Transcribed interviews, observational notes, diaries, and samples of human action are treated as text analogues for interpretive analysis. The data analysis in a hermeneutic study is carried out in three interrelated processes: thematic analysis, analysis of exemplars, and the search for paradigm cases. In the thematic analysis, each case (all interviews, field notes, etc.) is read several times in order to arrive at a global analysis. (…) From this, an interpretive plan emerges. Each interview is then read from the perspective of the interpretive plan. As this microanalysis is carried out, additional lines of inquiry may emerge from the data and are added to the interpretive plan. (…) From this analysis come ‘exemplars:’ stories or vignettes that capture the meaning in a situation in such a way that the meaning can then be recognized in another situation that might have very different objective circumstances. (…) The last aspect of the interpretive analysis involves the identification of paradigm cases: strong instances of particular patterns of meaning. Paradigm cases embody the rich descriptive information necessary for understanding how an individual’s actions and understandings emerge from his or her situational context: their concerns, practices and background meanings. They are not reducible to formal theory – to abstract variables used to predict and control. Rather, what are recognized are ‘family resemblances’ between a paradigm case and a particular clinical situation that one is trying to understand and explain.” (p59)

Annotation:
Through the use of a hermeneutic interpretative analysis of what the observed describe in their experiences as a microanalysis of the themes that are revealed from it. Leonard describes a three-part interrelated process comprising of the thematic analysis [internal], followed by analysis of exemplars [external] and a paradigm case search [imaginative variation]. This interpretative analysis models to Moustakas’ (1994) phenomenological research methodology. The exemplars in this case are external as they are dependent on other studies and are part of the researcher’s analysis rather than what the researcher is revealing in the subject. The looking for exemplars is an act of external validation. The paradigm case search appears to be health practice specific, and therefore not in its entirety useful beyond healthcare. What the paradigm case search does suggest though is a way to examine the interpretations made by the researcher to ensure that there are no additional explanations. This appears to be what the imaginative variation phase of a phenomenological research methodology seeks to do.