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/.

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Connection Through Pragmatism

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

 

“we live in a world that has been vastly altered by our cognitive abilities such that we inhabit not only the empirical world of physical entities but also the world of sign systems, which are a direct result of our cumulative interactions with the world (and each other) over time. Thus, the relationship between the subject and the object is dealt in a pragmatic way, where external phenomena are experienced as signs that are meaningful to the organism and there is no separation of the two.” (p144)

Annotation

The experience of an empirical authentic relationship within an environment between the person and the objects in that environment is mediated by the inauthentic semiotics of what those same objects afford to the person as to how they can be used. O’Neill argues that there is no separation between the modes of a meaningful existence, “Because we perceive before we conceive, we find that the body is at the root of our conceptual apparatus as well as being able to engage with the world without having to think about it” (p158). As the human is an essential organism in the environment and not distinct from the environment. Seen in a pragmatic way, the semiotic signs from the objects in the environment communicates meanings that lead to action that impacts on the nature of the same environment.

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… 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. 

Beneath Interpretation… No Understanding is Foundational

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

“Since our current hermeneutic turn derives in large part from the rejection of foundationalism, it is not surprising that the central arguments for hermeneutic universalism turn on rejecting foundationalist ideas of transparent fact, absolute and univocal truth, and mind-independent objectivity. For such ideas underwrite the possibility of attaining some perfect God’s-eye grasp of things as they really are, independent of how we differently perceive them, a seeing or understanding that is free from corrigibility and perspectival pluralities and prejudices that we willingly recognize as intrinsic to all interpretation. I think the universalists are right to reject such foundational understanding, but wrong to conclude from this that all understanding is interpretation. Their mistake, a grave but simple one, is to equate the nonfoundational with the interpretive. In other words, what the universalists are successfully arguing is that all understanding is nonfoundational; that is always corrigible, perspectival, and somehow prejudiced or prestructured; that no meaningful experience is passively neutral and disinterestedly nonselective. But since, in the traditional foundationalist framework, interpretation is contrasted and designated as the form of nonfoundational understanding, the inferior foster home of all corrigible, perspectival perception, it is easy to confuse the view that no understanding is foundational with the view that all understanding is interpretive. Yet this confusion of hermeneutic universalism betrays an unseemly residual bond to the foundationalist framework, in the assumption that what is not foundational must be interpretive.” (pp108-109)

Annotation

There are intrinsic prejudices within interpretation as we all perceive within our own reality, collectively mediated within the socio-cultural conditions we share. Hermeneutic interpretation rejects any foundationalist ideas that there is an absolute truth, for a pluralism of perspectival truth that can be corrected, rectified, or reformed with fresh data. But there is a danger in assuming that all understanding that does not have a foundational base has to be interpretive. Prof. Shusterman (1991) cautions that a pragmatic universalist perspective on understanding as nonfoundational should not confuse “the view that no understanding is foundational with the view that all understanding is interpretive” (pp108-109). Equating the interpretative with the nonfoundational has a danger of seeing all understanding as interpretation. Palmer (1969) does have the distance to see understanding as a preliminary act of interpretation, and Bohman (1991) from a holistic perspective acknowledges that a ‘correct’ functionalist or deterministic interpretation cannot explain how humans process and experience the world.

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. 

Beneath Interpretation… Pragmatists and Interpretation

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

“Pragmatists, like Nietzcheans, insist on rejecting the very idea of any foundational, mind-independent, and permanently fixed reality that could be grasped or even sensibly thought of without the mediation of human structuring. Such structuring or shaping of perception is today typically considered to be interpretation, and so we find contemporary pragmatists like Stanley Fish repeatedly insisting that interpretation comprises all of our meaningful and intelligent human activity, that ‘interpretation is the only game in town.’ All perception and understanding must be interpretation, since ‘information only comes in an interpreted form.’ Thus, even in our most primitive and initial seeing of an object, ‘interpretation has already done its work.’” (pp103-104)

Annotation
Through a pragmatist perspective all perception and understanding arises out of a mediated human structuring into meaningful interpretation. Pragmatists reject a reality that is independent of the mind, foundational and permanently ‘fixed.’ Interpretation is the conduit through which we construct our reality.

Postphenomenology and Technoscience… Hermeneutic Relationship

IHDE, D. (2009) Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures. New York: State University of New York Press.

“Hermeneutic relations. I have always held that human technology (experiential) relations form a continuum. As one moves along a continuum, one finds technologies that engage one’s more linguistic, meaning-orientated capacities. Here, while the engagement remains active, the process is more analogous to our reading or interpreting actions than to our bodily action. There are hints of this in Heidegger’s example of the old style turn signal on old European cars, a pointerlike device that pops up and points as a signifying artefact. Writing, of course, is itself a technology, and it is one of the rare examples partially analysed by Husserl as a technology that changes one’s sense of meaning. But my own earlier examples were drawn from instrument readings. Instrument panels remain ‘referential,’ but perceptually they display dials, gauges, or other ‘readable technologies’ into the human-world relationship. And while, referentially, one ‘reads through’ the artefact, bodily-perceptually, it is what is read.” (p43)

Annotation:
Ihde discusses an experiential continuum in human technology, where the process of active engagement in a technology is more meaning-orientated. It is more about interpreting actions than conscious bodily action. Perceptively the information in the visual affordances and calls to action are referentially ‘read through,’ what is read is ‘bodily-perceived’ for the action to be performed. There is a hermeneutic relationship here that pragmatically is practical but can be revealed phenomenologically. 

Postphenomenology and Technoscience… Hybrid Philosophy

IHDE, D. (2009) Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures. New York: State University of New York Press.

“Postphenomenology is a modified, hybrid phenomenology. On the one side, it recognizes the role of pragmatism in the overcoming of early modern epistemology and metaphysics. It sees in classical pragmatism a way to avoid the problems and misunderstandings of phenomenology as a subjectivist philosophy, sometimes taken as antiscientific, locked into idealism or solipsism. Pragmatism has never been thought of this way, and I regard this as a positive feature. On the other side, it sees in the history of phenomenology a development of a rigorous style of analysis through the use of variational theory, the deeper phenomenological understanding of embodiment and human active bodily perception, and a dynamic understanding of a lifeworld as a fruitful enrichment of pragmatism. And, finally, with the emergence of the philosophy of technology, it finds a way to probe and analyse the role of technologies in social, personal, and cultural life that it undertakes by concrete – empirical – studies of technologies in the plural. This, then, is a minimal outline of what constitutes postphenomenology.” (p23)

Annotation:
How postphenomenology is useful is that it is a hybrid philosophy, and as such it has solved some of the criticisms of phenomenology as being antiscientific and “locked into idealism or solipsism” (p23) by turning to the strengths of pragmatism. Phenomenology offers a “rigorous style of analysis through the use of variational theory” (ibid.) that coupled with pragmatic structures enriches how embodiment and the perception of the human body are understood. 

Postphenomenology and Technoscience… Synthesising Pragmatism

IHDE, D. (2009) Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures. New York: State University of New York Press.

“The enrichment of pragmatism includes its recognition that ‘consciousness’ is an abstraction, that experience in its deeper and broader sense entails its embeddedness in both the physical or material world and its cultural-social dimensions. Rather than a philosophy of consciousness, pragmatism views experience in a more organism/environment model. The reverse enrichment from phenomenology includes its more rigorous style of analysis that develops variational theory, recognizes the role of embodiment, and situates this in a lifeworld particular to different epochs and locations.” (p19)

Annotation:
Pragmatism as a philosophy is enriched by seeing human ‘consciousness’ as a deeper embedment situated in a life-world within a socio-cultural context. This merges with phenomenology in order to analyses how to reveal this. Ihde’s postphenomenology makes connections more with Husserl’s transcendant version of phenomenology than it does with Heidegger’s existentialist version. As my study is Heideggerian I need to be careful what and who I synthesise postphenomenological ideas. What is important though is how pragmatism can be synthesised, which will be useful to ensure pragmatic aesthetics is synthesised into my thesis securely. 

Postphenomenology and Technoscience… Pragmatics and Phenomenology

IHDE, D. (2009) Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures. New York: State University of New York Press.

“I have coined a special terminology, reflected in the title, postphenomenology and technoscience. And while a postphenomenology clearly owes its roots to phenomenology, it is a deliberate adaptation or change in postphenomenology that reflects historical changes in the twenty first century.” (p5)

Annotation:
Postphenomenology is useful as although I am staying within phenomenology, Ihde’s ideas do show possibilities to how I can synthesise pragmatic aesthetics with a phenomenological methodology, to reveal and visually communicate an experience of an interaction to help interaction designers. 

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.